[w0utert]

>> Stuff like this is expected and only logical, as wrong as it may be

Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see what's "wrong" about Apple using private API's and workarounds that are not available to 3-rd party apps. I also don't see how this is different from about every other piece of commercial software in existence, the Windows API is well known to be full of undocumented API's that are only used by Microsoft, for example.

The only way I could interpret a commercial vendor using private API's unvailable to third party applications as 'wrong' is if they secretly use them to gain a competitive advantage over third-party vendors of competing applications. This is clearly not the case on iOS, because the whole system is already locked down, and publishing applications directly competing with Apple stock apps is explicitly disallowed in the submission guidelines. Whether you agree about that is a different thing, but there's nothing secret about it.

As far as I can tell, there also is no pattern whatsoever of Apple applications somehow using magic killer unicorn features that are unvailable to third-party apps. Did anyone ever get the impression that third-party apps on iOS are second rate compared to stock apps? I surely haven't, I'd even go as far as saying it's the opposite. Also the list of app bundle exceptions that can use UIPopoverController is so small, I expect there's a much simpler explanation here. Most likely UIPopoverController does not work reliably on iOS, except in some restricted use cases, and Apple chose to disable it for third-party apps to prevent applications with broken user interfaces or having to support UIPopOverController use cases they didn't intend to be used on smalls screens.