Apple has been criticized lately for some of its questionable app rejections, as well as the recent expunging of Google Voice apps from the App Store. Now, it seems as if Apple has seen fit to use its veto power to address one common criticism of the App Store—the flood of apps with questionable content or utility. Developer Khalid Shaikh had his iPhone developer license revoked, and his 900+ apps were summarily removed from the App Store.

Shaikh built a business model that took advantage of the worst aspects of the iPhone App Store. His team of 26 engineers—based in India and Pakistan and working 12 hours days, six days a week—churned out nearly 1,000 apps that merely agregated articles and other content from the Web in such cleverly titled apps as "US Army News," "Skin Care Updates," and "WWE Updates." He sold these apps for $4.99 each, with the goal of "less product value" and "more monetization." Shaikh told MobileCrunch that he was making thousands of dollars a day with this technique.

Shaikh's apps resulted in numerous complaints to Apple, many of which concerned questionable copyrights over some of the material in the apps. For that reason, Apple chose to terminate his developer agreement and removed all of his offerings from the App Store. From the letter Apple sent to Shaikh informing him of the news:

Pursuant to Section 3.2(d) of the iDP Agreement, you agreed that “to the best of Your knowledge and belief, Your Application and Licensed Application Information do not and will not violate, misappropriate, or infringe any Apple or third party copyrights, trademarks, rights of privacy and publicity, trade secrets, patents, or other proprietary or legal rights (e.g. musical composition or performance rights, video rights, photography or image rights, logo rights, third party data rights, etc. for content and materials that may be included in Your Application).” Apple has informed you of numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of your Applications and reminded you of your obligations to obtain the necessary rights prior to submission of your Applications. Nevertheless, we continue to receive the same or similar types of complaints regarding your Applications despite our repeated notices to you. The persistent nature of such complaints has led us to conclude that you are entering into the representations and warranties in the iDP Agreement in bad faith by misrepresenting that you have all the necessary rights for your submissions.

Frankly, we have to applaud this move from Apple. Insofar as Apple has put itself in a position of gatekeeper, pruning such shady apps from the store only improves it. Shaikh isn't even the worst offender—MobileCrunch identified Brighthouse Labs, which has over 2,000 99� apps, many of which are similar to those posted by Shaikh. But, for every right move Apple makes, it still seems to have about 10 to 20 missteps. When even well-made, highly regarded apps have trouble getting approved, it's clear there is still much more room for improvement.