Marco Arment pulls his popular ad blocker Peace from the App Store

Update: The developer of the top-selling iOS ad blocker has pulled it from the App Store because it “just doesn’t feel good”. While users can benefit from them through faster mobile web loading times, the ad blockers are a potential threat to Google, as well as publishers, which rely on mobile and desktop ads to generate revenue.

Arment wrote that adblockers have an important asterisk: they are beneficial for many people in different ways, but they also hurt some.

Some users have complained that the app does not deliver on its fundamental objective: “Terrible app. Not only doesn’t it conform to design standards, it’s also incompatible with most of my devices”. In some countries as many as 40% of people already use ad blockers.

Apple doesn’t have its own ad blocker app and I’m sure if it released one there would be quite a bit of controversy.

Earlier this week, Apple released iOS 9 to the public and all was good, for some time.

But then there are users who rate it low because they’ve had bad experiences moving their data from their Android device to an iOS one.

Given that the app was priced at about $3 and was the top paid app for a couple of days, Marco obviously saw significant sales from Peace.

“Peace required that all ads be treated the same-all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white”, Arment writes. “This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn’t serve our goals or beliefs well enough”.

Help is at hand for iPhone and iPad owners whose gadgets froze up with the so-called “Slide to Upgrade” bug while trying to update to iOS, after Apple today issued an official fix for the problem.

Arment is offering a refund to anyone who downloaded Peace.

According to Arment, “Even though I’m ‘winning, ‘ I’ve enjoyed none of it. That’s why I’m withdrawing from the market”.

Media companies got a bit of peace – when the developer of a popular iPhone ad-blocker app announced it was pulling the controversial piece of software.