At yesterday’s Apple WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs listed the cool Pulse newsreader first among the iPad apps he praised. I like it too. But All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher is reporting that the New York Times (which recently published an upbeat story about Pulse) successfully lobbied Apple to yank Pulse from the App Store shortly after its keynote kudos. The Times contends that Pulse’s use of Times newsfeeds and framed NYTimes.com content violates their terms of service.
It’s unclear what damage is being done to the Times: Its RSS feeds provide summaries only, so you use Pulse to read the newspaper’s stories without visiting the Times site and being exposed to the advertising it carries. You gotta think that it’s Times lawyers, not Times journalists, who think that Pulse is a problem rather than a source of new readers.
Here’s hoping that the kerfuffle doesn’t keep Pulse out of the App Store for long. Yanking the Times from the default feeds would be one solution. The Times reconsidering its complaint would be a better one.
[UPDATE: It’s back!]
[UPDATE: The Times is unhappy that it’s back!]