#FF00AA

Unfortunately, one of the sticking points of the original program was that it contained a BASIC interpreter, where users could enter their own code. While this functionality wasn’t exposed in the version that made it into the store, turns out it could be enabled through some hokery-pokery.

Apple’s constantly vigilant Extreme iPhone App Squad caught wind of this Easter egg and, to little surprise, the Commodore 64 app has been pulled from the store.

A C64 emulator with a hidden BASIC interpreter gets pulled the minute Apple finds out about it, because it’s against the SDK’s terms; meanwhile, Yelp’s augmented reality easter egg, or Google’s use of undocumented features to detect when you put the phone to your ear, are vastly publicized, but stay unpunished. I can’t decide whether it’s blatant favoritism, or Apple is actually scared of a BASIC interpreter running on the iPhone.

P.S. I had assumed the whole “hack” thing was bullshit, but after checking out how it worked I could quite believe that the interpreter’s availability was indeed an accident. (It’s not like they could remove the code that interprets BASIC anyway.) Unlike the Google and Yelp cases.