So What’s Happening with Sling Player on the iPhone?
Posted on 17 April 2009, at 5:10 pm, by Christopher Gavula
I’ve been following the progress of the Sling Player for the iPhone since it was demonstrated in January. Recently, however, there have been rumors that it isn’t going to appear on the App Store due to objections from AT&T. So I did a little research and here’s what we know at this point:
The app was submitted to Apple for approval at the end of March and as of this writing, the app has not yet been approved or rejected, but Sling seems confident it will be approved.
These 2 things are the only FACTS at this time.
I’ve seen it erroneously reported that the app had been “removed” from the App Store (which is interesting since it’s never been approved, hence never appeared on the App Store).
Boy Genius Report posted a rumor (picked up by others) from an unverified source that claimed AT&T was pressuring Apple to reject the app and that Apple was planning on doing so. AT&T may or may not be pressuring Apple, but the fact remains that nothing has happened so far and BGRs report has caused numerous other sites to repeat this rumor. BGR has also updated their original story to include Slings comments.
The Sling Community itself, however, it was reported that this rumor isn’t verified and in their conversations with reps from Sling, Sling indicates it has had no word from Apple. One commenter reports that the ”tip” was received by at least one other media outlet that rejected it due to the fact that IP address of the tip was actually at a prison in West Virginia. This is also unverified, however.
It continues to amaze me how quickly things get mistreported and distorted as they move along on the net, especially if the site in question has a bias regarding the object of the rumor. Sometimes there’s confirmation at the end of the road, sometimes retraction, somtimes nothing. Lately, however, it seems this kind of “mis-reporting” seems to be happening more frequently, and the examples are increasingly blatant. Are you seeing the same thing? Do the facts take a back seat to getting a story out quickly? Tell us what you think!
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April 17th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Seems kind of odd that Skype can predict the exact day their app will be approved but Sling sits around waiting. The length of time that seems to have passed is suspicious to me.
April 18th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Me thinks Sling would use ALOT more bandwidth than Skype…and both would eat up lots of the cell companies bandwidth. Even the G1 version of Skype won't let you do Skype to Skype or Skype to Phone on 3g….or even wifi for that matter.