Would You Like an Apple or a BadApple Podcast?

Whenever something's new, hot and potentially profitable, there are some people that want to grab a piece of the cake for themselves even if the means used to do it are not always the most "orthodox" ones.

And this seems to be the case of the "BadApple" software, as reported by John Borland for CNET News. This plug-in for iPods, developed by a company called BadFruit (well, it looks like these guys have something against Apple, and are not afraid to show it), adds podcasting support for the iTunes, providing access to hundreds of podcasts inside the iTunes shell, with downloads working in the same way that the iTunes music store itself works.

If you think that this might be the work of some Mac-loving hackers that are angry with Steve Jobs, you might be wrong, because the software has a sophisticated privacy policy and terms of use that may point to something big planned for the future, perhaps even the disclosure of the programmers' identities.

Even the words on the site state the fact that Apple has nothing to do with this release, and we quote: "BadApple is NOT from the Beatles. It's also not from Apple Computer Inc. It's definitely not endorsed or approved by Apple. In fact, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want you to use BadApple". So, they're well organized, have access to funds and technology, and also want a piece of Apple's business. It looks like it's a company.

And all the clues point to the site MP3Tunes.com, the online song store belonging to the MP3.com founder Michael Robertson. Log files created by the software show that it communicates to a server hosted by MP3Tunes, and the code inside the software package also shows links to MP3Tunes.

It's also an interesting fact that no one, neither Apple nor MP3Tunes employees, had any comments regarding this subject. Perhaps the company from Cupertino is still testing the waters, in order to see who's who?