Slashdot reports that VLC has been pulled from the App Store. Inevitably, the article is followed by lots of comments about Apple being some kind of Evil Big Brother, utterly ignoring the fact that it was pulled due to VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont being a bit of a dick about a perceived clash between the GNU General Public License and the App Store terms of use.

Still, I’m not terribly sad. All iOS devices lack the storage for loads of on-board video and VLC was a bit iffy anyway. If you’ve a PC or Mac lurking about the place, I instead highly recommend grabbing a copy of Air Video (£1.79, App Store) or StreamToMe (£1.79, App Store), both of which enable live-to-iOS-device streaming and conversion of files accessible to your computer. It’s a bit annoying leaving a computer on, but these apps offer a hugely flexible system, and they also (assuming you have the right leads) provide a simple way to get content from a drive connected to your Mac or PC to your TV, just by using an iOS device.

I’m personally also hoping that 2011 will bring full AirPlay support for third-party apps, enabling converted content to be fired wirelessly to an Apple TV, or, if Jobs decides that’s the Worst Idea Ever, for the apps to be used as a remote to control the same app running on another device. AirPlay’s great, but it gets old wandering across the room and finding a fiddly virtual button to pause a movie when the dog decides he needs a wee.