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Inside Apple's iPhone SDK Gag Order
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Tom Yager takes a closer look at Apple's iPhone SDK confidentiality agreement, which restricts developers from discussing the SDK or exchanging ideas with others, thereby leaving no room for forums, newsgroups, open source projects, tutorials, magazine articles, users' groups, or books. But because anyone is free to obtain the iPhone SDK by signing up for it, Apple is essentially branding publicly available information as confidential. This 'puzzling contradiction' is the 'antithesis of the developer-friendly Apple Developer Connection' on which the iPhone SDK program is based, Yager contends. 'You'll see arguments from armchair legal analysts that the iPhone developer Agreements won't stand up in court — but those analysts certainly won't stand up in court on your behalf.' Anyone planning to launch an iPhone forum or open source project should have 'a lawyer draft your request for exemption, and make sure that the Apple staffer granting it personally commits to status as authorized to approve exceptions to the iPhone Registered Developer and iPhone SDK Agreements,' Yager warns."
I am a big Apple supporter and member of the apple rumors community... however...
Apple can get away with this because they can outspend almost any web/forum site. If they are in the right or wrong, who cares? They can keep throwing lawyers at you until you give.
They attack Apple rumors site on a routine basis for BS claims of copyright or trade secrets. If I take a picture of somebody else holding a pre-release iPhone, how is that copyright? They are in the public!
Look at the EULA and Apple attacking the company making mac clones. Most lawyers do not think that the EULA would stand; however, no company (other than microsoft or google) could tolerate the time/money that fighting would cost.
So with this NDA issue, I can't buy a book, read a forum, get any assistance at all with writing my iPhone application... So what the hell good is an SDK you can't talk about? Is this cellular fight club or something?
Apple, fix this shit. Really. Fix it now. There's no excuse for not letting the NDA go, no way that it protects you. The phone's been jailbroken, it _will_ be unlocked, so why stifle development?
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Yes, Do Without.
I really don't understand why everyone is willing to buy Apple products at inflated prices with draconian contracts of adhesion.
A phone is a phone is a phone. Don't fall for it.
Buy generic phones, or better yet, just take the free one provided with your wireless providers contract of adhesion.
If more people thought this way, there would be less of this insanity in the marketplace, and manufactures would have to compete by price alone.
...then the future for computer users and developers is heading toward some pretty shitty seas.
http://mediagoblin.org/
apple: are you trying to dislodge MS as the most hated computer company around? keep it up, mate....
They're already there, as far as I'm concerned. Apple's business practices just reeks of some mad power trip in general. They absolutely despise people using their products (be it hardware or software) in ways that they had not intended. Microsoft is FAR their superior in that regard. The main evil with Microsoft is seen by the IT professional, not the consumer. With Apple, it's generally the other way around.
The only explanation I can see for Apple's recent surge in popularity is their marketing, which is absolutely top notch.
Can you think of a single fanboy that doesn't defend his obsession to death? ... then again, I guess that *is* the definition of fanboy.
It won't end until the piratebay.org steps in and provides a safe, secure, overseas forum to discuss apple products.
... its just talking to another human being who has the same program you have... like, Idea sharing.
OH wait, this isn't even piracy. It isn't even 'stealing'
I guess they really mean it when they say "Think Different". As in, don't you DARE think what he's thinking. Don't even think about thinking about it...
Kaspersky dosen't like that idea
Slashdotters apparently don't like that you can never write browsers, music/video players or background applications.
I can't think of any other company that has ever done anything like this. I'm really just curious, has any company ever publicised a SDK that has been so very private and restrictive? No other browsers?!?
This story reminds me of the time I tried to hook my Apple cinema display up to my Cable box's DVI port, it's just not worth it, even if you get it to work, you have 5 more lbs of monitor you've got to hide somewhere, just because Apple wanted to squeeze a little dough out of people with more proprietary cable connectors.
Apple has always been about "Show me the money", every action they take reemphasized that they are only interested in more money, not innovation. Here though, they really go out of their way to stifle innovation with literals like "...calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise...". It really says it all, don't bother trying to write this for our hardware, you may compete with us in such a way that we can't fuck you properly.
The only explanation I can see for Apple's recent surge in popularity is their marketing, which is absolutely top notch.
So in the past 10 years, the switch to a unix based operating system with modern object oriented apis, the switch to intel hardware that made an easier transition for windows developers, the acquisition and development of technologies like multi-touch, the negotiating with record labels to break out of the subscription model, the adoption of open source for many parts of the operating system (from Darwin to WebKit) and so on had nothing to do with it?
Yeah, it's silly that they haven't lifted the NDA yet, but it's not like developers have gotten excited about their platform because of brightly colored commercials.
Every anti-competitive trick used by M$ is also used by Apple. However, M$ has a monopoly and Apple doesn't. For some people, this is reason enough to abstain from hating Apple. Unfortunately, such people don't realize that they are just becoming silent promoters of such tricks.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
If you read the documentation that is available after agreeing to the discolsure agreement, you'll see that it is all marked as unfinished. They have a reasonably strong argument in their favor of preventing the widespread publishing of stupid wrong information based on incomplete and potentially incorrect documentation while they finish it up.
The NDA will surely be lifted when the documentation is finished.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
As an owner of an iPhone 3G who previously owned dozens of different phones from all possible manufacturers (SE, Nokia, Siemens, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, just to name a few), I have to say that iPhone is superior for two simple facts:
1) It is, BY FAR, the most intuitive and easy-to-use-out-of-the-box phone I have ever used.
2) It is fun to use. Sure, all new phones are fun in the beginning, but after 2 weeks with this phone I still enjoy every time I surf the web or write an eMail with it. Something that never happend to me with any other phone (and not with any of the same generation competitors of the iPhone).
So yes, it has many downsides, Apple are bastards when it comes to their control freakiness but their products are better.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say sometimes Apple's anti-competitive practices make Microsoft look like angels by comparison.
I'm no M$ fan in anyway but I do find it remarkable how much stuff Apple get away.
Too true!
A Mac can set you back a few thousand, but Microsoft's PC only... uh... okay, Microsoft don't sell PCs.
So OS X costs $129, which is just ridiculous compared to Microsoft's Vista, which is only... oh. $239 is the recommended price for Home Premium, and goes up to $399 for Ultimate.
Well, at least Microsoft beat Apple on mouse prices! Woo! Good mice too (I always use them).
Yup, except for computers and operating systems, Microsoft beat Apple's pricing every time.
To be fair, they don't make computers.
"but there is nothing wrong with that because Apple has no monopoly in any market."
Nothing wrong to you maybe, personally I think no matter what the game, the players should all be playing by the same rules.
"the whole sue-the-blogger fiasco was grounded in law"
Yea, grounded in bad law, which doesn't make it right. The Nuremberg trials after the Holocaust established that.
Let's be clear, given the evidence at hand, if history was different and Apple were in Microsoft's position there would be, if anything, far less openness and freedom for innovation in the software industry.
Nothing wrong to you maybe, personally I think no matter what the game, the players should all be playing by the same rules.
The effect of which will be to ensure that an entrenched monopoly can never be taken down, even by a better competitor.
As an example, imagine any competitor selling a product when the monopoly can temporarily drop their price to near zero.
Playing by the same rules is nice on paper, but when you get into reality you have to see that the big players have more clout than the little ones, so unless their hands are tied in some manner, they'll kill the little players stone dead. It is in their interest to kill competition off as quickly as possible.
Anti-trust laws (and their equivalents around the world) are an attempt to even the playing field, not distort it.
Yea, grounded in bad law, which doesn't make it right. The Nuremberg trials after the Holocaust established that.
You are kidding here, I assume. No sane person could put those two together.
Moving swiftly on...
Let's be clear, given the evidence at hand, if history was different and Apple were in Microsoft's position there would be, if anything, far less openness and freedom for innovation in the software industry.
No, you think this is so. I think it's not. History went another way and we can only speculate. Don't pretend that your opinion is any more valid than mine on this. We're both guessing.
Apple will never be in Microsoft's position because of their behavior... it automatically limits them to a low percent. Microsoft got where they are because they allowed (encouraged) rampant piracy of everybody else's stuff, Hardware, BIOS, etc. and they let any developer play for cheap with almost no strings. Of course that's why we have the huge mess of poor security, out-of-date browsers, and masses of old code that won't go away... being so big cost them the first-mover position... Forget how many copies of Vista are sold... how many REPLACED XP? Apple is pushing 30%-50% upgrade rate on Tiger boxes... Microsoft couldn't touch that if they gave the new OS away for free.. the joys of being a monopoly is that you have to cater to EVERYONE... Microsoft table scraps would create another Apple-size company overnight.
Er, what? How is that good governance. I'm trying really hard to think of why we should allow artificial product tying ... and failing.
How is society served by requiring iTunes to activate an iPhone? How does the free market benefit when Apple abuse their iTunes install base to install Safari for Windows?
I can swallow "natural" tying .... like the iPhone SDK to a Mac .... because implementing the SDK in a cross platform fashion is hard and that shouldn't be an aspect of law. But Apple actually had to go out of their way to make the iPhone depend on iTunes and I'm just having a really hard time seeing why that kind of crap should only be illegal when you're a monopoly. Because to me it seems inherently bad.
Another non-sequitur. A company is just a group of people. It's not illogical to dislike a company, anymore than it's illogical to dislike a group of bullies at high school, or a band, or a political party. Companies don't get a special "get out of emotions free" card through virtue of being incorporated.
I'll try to respond easily to your comment of:
"If more people thought this way, there would be less of this insanity in the marketplace, and manufactures would have to compete by price alone."
Actually, I can't. That is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If manufacturers compete on price alone, all we are left with as consumers, is crappy generic products.
Competition based on design, functionality, features, quality, service etc is a Good Thing. Competition based purely on price is a race to the bottom. It hurts us, the consumers. It hurts the employees of the manufacturers as they fight to keep costs as low as possible.
G4 Hackintosh
They tie it to iTunes, because that's the software they use for synchronising it with a computer. It also happens to be the software that someone owning an Apple device with music capabilities is likely to be using.
Would you also be complaining if they released some standalone sync software, which did exactly the same thing as iTunes currently does?
Rules do change when you hit monopoly status. But just because some shady business practice is legal doesn't make it right, something that should escape criticism, or something that we want to support by purchasing Apple's products.
Some of us don't want to give our money to any company that tries to force you into a contractual relationship just to develop your own software, thus stifling open source development. Much like we don't want to give our money to companies that try to shackle their customers - why should a customer have to "jailbreak" their iPhone?
A company is supposed to be about providing value to its customers, not luring them with a little value, then turning around and denying the customer fair use of their own property just to extract their pound of flesh from a largely captive audience. Some phone carriers do this kind of nonsense by crippling the Bluetooth profiles on phones its customers use. Heaven forbid you add your own ringtones, even though the phone is capable of it, rather than pay the carrier for the exact same data you've already bought elsewhere. Apple does it by limiting your ability to put files on the phone, limiting what software can be developed for the phone, and generally trying to prevent you from using your own device in any way Apple doesn't like. It's like GM selling cars that won't drive near a Midas shop.
These sorts of things are all very legal but also anti-consumer. The GP is right that these tactics aren't going to go away as long as people continue to tolerate and encourage them by patronizing such companies.
I am currently shopping for a phone. The iPhone would have been one of my leading candidates if it wasn't for this kind of nonsense. I'll probably end up getting an HTC model instead. If more people took that approach, maybe Apple would get the message that what it's doing isn't acceptable.
I agree, but you have to remember that their overbearing protection schemes are also the reason that their products are popular. Say what you want about it from a Freedom perspective, but when one person/group/company controls the entire ecosystem, they're able to weed out the junk that plagues the other ecosystems out there. A year and a half on I still can't get decent drivers for Vista for my very-current-at-the-time system, but I've absolutely never had issues of hardware or driver compatibility on my MBP.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?