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."

Comments

no sale, here, then

[TheGratefulNet]

I had no idea about this. I don't follow apple things (...) but given how sue-happy they are, they can certainly live without MY buying any of their gear.

simply because of this, alone; I vow not to buy an iphone. I was not really in the market but now I know for sure that apple is on my blacklist (at least the evil phones).

apple: are you trying to dislodge MS as the most hated computer company around? keep it up, mate....

Re:no sale, here, then

[loganrapp]

Well, that's one more reason to wait and see how the HTC Dream and other Android-using devices work out.

Re:no sale, here, then

[Bones3D_mac]

Apple charged iPod owners $10 for the 2.0 software update. There is some claim that business law requires them to do this, which is nonsense as Sony routinely give the PSP new features for free. MS released their 2.0 Zune update for free for older Zune's etc... So I'm not sure why Apple is defended in this practice when Sony and MS are possibly two of the most evil companies out there.

Yeah, this is the same crap they pulled on their customer base who purchased 802.11n-ready hardware, then charged them to turn it on. Their reasoning, a bunch of meaningless jargon that somehow seems to lack any basis in reality outside of Apple:

Apple said it is required under generally accepted accounting principles to charge customers for the software upgrade. "The nominal distribution fee for the 802.11n software is required in order for Apple to comply with generally accepted accounting principles for revenue recognition, which generally require that we charge for significant feature enhancements, such as 802.11n, when added to previously purchased products,"

Needless to say, this ploy has been affectionately dubbed the "Apple Tax" by those who were duped by it.

Re:no sale, here, then

[Orlando]

I own an iPod Touch and it is HANDS DOWN the greatest tech device I've ever bought.

I wholeheartedly agree. I have owned my fair share of tech, but the iPod Touch is the best designed, most pleasurable piece of equipment I've used to date. I still have a smile on my face each time I use it, and I've had it for a couple of months now.

The difference Apple brings to the market is that extra yard. Yes their stuff is expensive compared to the competition, yes there are problems with it, yes they are no better than others in terms of things like the non-disclosure agreement. But still the extra polish, the attention to detail makes it worth it for me.

What bugs me

[CODiNE]

Is the way the iPhone dev Center refuses to use a cookie and remember your login info. Every stinking time you want to download the new SDK or check for new sample code, you have to log in. Again. Then you close your browser and and hour later, oop, sign in again. I've downloaded the SDKs now a total of 9 times, so I've definitely typed in my login name and password at least 20 times now. Considering there's no software update for XCode I'd imagine most other devs have too.

I had assumed this would be lifted Real Soon Now.

[w3woody]

After all, the iPhone SDK cannot remain a "beta" forever, and once it's no longer a beta, I presume the SDK will show up side-by-side with the MacOS X Cocoa SDK from which it was derived.

Most of Apple's beta stuff has the same confidentiality agreement, so I presumed this was just a bug.

Message Received.

[mkcmkc]

Apple doesn't want me to program their hardware. I hear and will obey...

That's amazingly stupid!

[zullnero]

When I first got into Palm development 10 years ago, there was a vibrant and amazing community...I used to participate heavily in the mailing list and forums back then. If you wanted to do something that wasn't explained in the manual, you could post a question...and there was a good chance the person giving you a reply was one of their top OS design engineers. Microsoft started doing some of that later on when they had so many employees with free time on their hands...but you couldn't put a price on that kind of interaction. It seriously helped me pick up the platform so quickly, and that helped me build a pretty good career for myself. Even now I'm still a Palm OS hobbyist for mainly that reason.

I can't see that happening with iPhone. What a stupid, stupid way to go about things. Palm didn't even have a robust platform, and they kept a huge market dominance way longer than they should have by making it easy to develop for their platform by keeping things out in the open. You had to sign agreements, but it wasn't this fascist Apple crap for sure. I'll take on any Apple fanboy on that point.

Par for the course

[Anonymous Coward]

This is par for the course for Apple. They make a habit of suing or gagging (by gag order) enthusiast sites... Apple fans almost joke that they know when a leak is dead-on when the lawsuits start. They mismanufactured (and maybe still do -- who knows?) the Intel Macs, specifying a full tube of thermal paste per CPU instead of a dab... and when someone published an excerpt of the service manual which ALSO said to use a full tube.. instead of Apple saying "oops", they Cease and Desisted them into pulling this info down. There's the wireless card driver hole from last year* -- Apple pushed the people who found this hole into using a 3rd-party card to demonstrate it -- and THEN had the nerve to play it up as "ohh.. that didn't even involve Apple wireless hardware", and making sure Apple fanbois filled in the blank (inccorectly) as "Apple wireless hardware drivers were not succeptible" instead of the truth that Apple just strongarmed them into not demonstrating it. That's just from the last year. In general, Apple suppresses info about hardware flaws both on their forums and to a lesser extent elsewhere. Between this and PR, people seem to think Apples are flawless, and they are far from it. I would NEVER buy a Macintosh because of a) general dick-like behavior of the company and b) I'd NEVER, EVER get a straight answer on if a model has any production problems, bugs, flaws or "issues".. as I can about Dells or just about any normal model.

*Which also was present in drivers for quite a few cards -- buffer overflows, allowing possible exploitation without even being associated to a wifi network by sending out corrupted wireless packets.

Not quite accurate

[StarKruzr]

There is nothing else like it on the market right now.

http://www.consumerdepot.com/products.asp?id=N810RB&referer=google

It is not only "like" the iPod touch, it is far and away more capable.

Re:Not quite accurate

[xSauronx]

I was at a crossroads recently, and needed some kind of upgrade, on $800 budget, to my thinkpad/aging tower combo, and was seriously considering getting a cheapo desktop and a nokia n810.

] ended up getting a steal on a Thinkpad T60, which I will love, but the 810 practically makes me salivate. /geek

Boycott is nice and all...

[crhylove]

....but it's not a real solution, unless there is a real alternative. Unfortunately, openmoko is just plain poorly designed, too expensive, and did I mention that it sucks?

What we need is an openmoko that not only beats the iphone all the way on price and freedom, but on design as well. Hell, just clone the iPhone exactly for now.

With the inherently poor design decisions that seem to consistently go into FOSS projects, such as Ubuntu and OpenMoko, I have to wonder if they don't have some voracious and vocal corporate plants somewhere in the project actively sabotaging the overall movement. Or maybe I need a tin foil hat.

Re:It does not have less memory

[azemute]

As previously mentioned, the n8*0 series has full SDHC support, meaning support of up to 32GB cards [technically more]. The n810 however only has a single miniSDHC slot, meaning that [at the moment] only 8GB cards can be used in it [since that's the biggest that exists].

The CPU is indeed slower, and what is worse, the PowerVR graphics subsystem is totally unused at the moment. This is being worked on... and thus is the advantage and saving grace of the Nokia devices: they are extensible. The Apple devices are not.

The article is more or less refering to how Apple is attempting to curb development of their device, and that is the fundamental difference of philosophy. Neither is right nor wrong, just different.

Also, the n810 is not a phone, and never will be. [Save SIP capabilities, of course.]

Oh, finally, and just as a matter of form: the iPhone's support for bluetooth is fairly rudimentary: it lacks support for A2DP / DUN & SPP and OBEX.

Re:no sale here either

[ProppaT]

I agree. You remember back in the 80's when all the new appliances had that really cool feature where you didn't have to press a button, just touch the metal button on the front? Yeah, it was slick back then, but it's fallen to the wayside. Why? People want tactile feedback. Our fingers are designed to rely on feedback. With touch interfaces we don't get that.

All this new touch screen mumbo jumbo is slick and all, but I have a feeling it's going to follow suit for exactly the same reasons. Touch screen is great when you're using a stylus; however, when you're using a device that has a small handful of simple functions (on/off, play, ff/rw, pause/stop, vol up/down), simple tactile feedback is critical.

Why do we have the nubby bumps on keyboards on the f and j keys? Heck, why do we have individual keys instead of a touch pad? It's the nature of the beast and it will all come full circle or, at very least, both technologies will come together.

Re:If this is the computing model of the future

[Meneth]

It's a big, fat lie, of course.

Not only is Symbian closed-source, bug-ridden and otherwise horribly hard to write for.

All programs must also be digitally signed by Symbian Inc. to be installable on consumer phones. And if you use certain "protected" APIs, you'll have to shell out some 20 USD per signing.

Yes, documentation is freely available, but it's so lacking in important details that it might as well not be.

Furthermore, I think that the comment edit box should be enlarged.