Not really. I think everyone knows, whether they want to admit it or not, that Apple gets to say what all the hardware buttons do. To what other end would Apple do anything with that authority other than to benefit Apple?

This wasn't some random feature that Apple capriciously decided wasn't allowed. It's not like they told Marco, "you're not allowed to make, save, and sync readable versions of web articles". The application you're talking about changed the behavior of the hardware buttons on the phone. Nobody was really surprised that Apple objected to that.