This article is a perfect time to lament the poor quality of many of these 'news' sites. Nowhere in the story does it say that Slashgear made any attempt to contact Apple and ask about this situation. Apple has an entire media department that you can call and ask (http://www.apple.com/pr/).

The worst case is that Apple will give you a no comment, or we'll get back to you. That you can report. But here all we have is a sentence wasted burbling And considering that NDrive isn’t the only GPS application available on the iPhone, or within the App Store proper, we’re not sure why Apple would choose now, or this app, to pull that lever.

At the start of the article they claim That would mostly be because Apple hasn’t had any reason to use it. Is that true? Did they ask Apple?

If you follow the blog chain backwards you'll come to someone who did call Apple, and has a possible explanation for why the application was removed: it appears NDrive may not have fully licensed the map data used in the application.

The entire article would be much more interesting if they'd called Apple and asked them a few questions. And then called NDrive and asked them about the map licensing, or called Teledata and asked them. You know, actually done some work towards the article rather than 'reporting' rumors.

Also, they need someone to look over their copy.

Several customers are reporting that the application called NDrive, which was developed by a small team to be a GPS alternative.

What did the customers do? Also, I'm pretty sure this small team did not develop an alternative to GPS. That would have required launching and maintaining a large number of satellites.

And then subsequently pulled from customer’s iPhones as well.

One customer or many?

Some months ago I wrote a blog post about baggage tags used on airlines (http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/whats-on-baggage-tag.html). In it you'll see documented the work it took (with a little help from a friend) to get the answers I wanted.

And the other day I was writing something that appeared on The Times' web site and needed information about the status of the BT site at Goonhilly (http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/06/sea-sand-sun-...). I simply called BT's media relations and they were very, very helpful. They even got me an answer on a day when half their staff were off on a training course.

I voted you up, purely for the irony.

> What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife's divorce lawyers. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor.

> The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24 months. Journalists were quick to mock the poor "broke" guy that had $200k a month expenses, failing to note that legal fees constituted the majority.

That's utterly despicable - Grellas, can you help us put together a plan to disbar and exile everyone involved in the divorce racket or something? Talk about a destruction of wealth, energy, time, and life - it's embarrassing that we let this happen to people in the United States.

Our family/divorce courts and the associated personnel are destructive, vindictive, and capricious. This needs to change. Why do people stand for it? What can we do?

Telling my girlfriend's parents that she's getting married. :)

There are even worse stories.

My parents divorced two years ago. I was paying my mother's attorney bills because she had no money and hadn't had a job in 35 years.

After the first bill from my mother's attorney, for $15,000, I asked the firm to cap expenses at $5,000. I explained that I was just a kid and didn't have $15k per month to spend. They agreed, in writing.

Then they didn't invoice for 4 months, and at the end of that 4 month period (when nothing really happened in the divorce), they invoiced for $175,000.

Yes, $175,000.

It's currently in arbitration with the Virginia State Bar, two years later. Hopefully we'll prevail, but it's not looking good.

Divorce attorneys are the lowest, most predatory "profession" on the planet. Exorbitant divorce fees are not just a plight of the wealthy.

I have no solutions, and hope Grellas can weigh in on this thread.

The lawyers always win.

ah yeah good ol' "but Africa" reasoning. You can apply that logic to almost everything. Sorry but why don't you return your freshly bought iPhone and donate the money to charity's? And do you really need a car, can't you ride your bike? Do we really need Reddit if we could buy food in Africa instead?

Maybe that's a little harsh, but we spend money EVERY friggn day on things that could be invested in Africas problems. Making this point leads to nowhere and Africa's problems are far more complex anyway. There's defiantly nothing wrong in donating a few bucks to Reddit.

(also pacifism is neither extreme nor wrong)

"Finally?"

"Finally," Gmail introduces rich text signatures?

Not, "Finally, America Gets Out of Debt" or, "Finally, a Global Inter-Cultural Renaissance" or hell, even "Finally, a Fast T-Mobile Android Phone With an Effing Slide-Out Keyboard," but, "Finally... Gmail Introduces Rich Text Signatures?" This is what we were waiting for, with bated breath and Cheetoh-dust-encrusted fingertips?

I'm not angry, internet. I'm just disappointed.