Slashdot Mirror
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."
Only if it applies to those MacFags.
this kind of mentality puzzles me. There are a lot of apple users out there, who, like you, acknowldge that they're being dicked around ....You care about them, they beat you up, and you keep coming back. Why?
Makes sense to me. They like dick.
A bug ... kinda like that one that said that Safari had to be installed ONLY on apple branded computers?
You know, the safari that apple pushed out through the itunes update to a whole bunch of PCs on purpose?
Why?
+++ATH0
Sigh....one of these days somebody will actually link to an interesting product. I didn't even look real hard to know I would NEVER buy that thing you posted. People don't want a miniature computer looking device, they want a convergence device that looks decidedly NOT like a computer. "Internet Tablet PC"? Could you come up with a worse name?
Please stop dismissing the iPhone/iTouch as just a phone or a music player when you know full well it's a whole new platform, and that even in it's infancy is far more usable and with much more potential (not to mention market penetration) than any other class of device out there. It's not a music player, it's not a phone, it's a handheld OS X computer that happens to play music. Perhaps by Apple naming it an iPod, or a iPhone is the trojan horse that makes people want to buy it, as opposed to the shelves of unsold Nokia 8*0 "Internet Tablet PC" - which I'm assured by half the people in this discussion is better than Apple's offerings in every possible way.
iTunes has destroyed my music collection, not once but several times. The iTunes user interface also has serious problems, as the many third party attempts at fixing it show.
Well that's interesting because I've been using the same iTunes library through multiple computers and OS/iTunes upgrades for over 5 years now and i've never had a single problem. Hey look, i can post worthless anecdotes too! Also please, point me to these all these high-profile projects dedicated to fixing the gaping flaws in the iTunes UI....*crickets*
> but when one person/group/company controls the entire ecosystem
I can't help it if people can't understand that there isn't a "Vista PC". Microsoft just makes one component that PC makers use, along with CPUs, GPUs, storage devices, power supplies, etc. to make a system. Buy from a crappy company and you get a crappy machine. Blame the company who sold you the system if they didn't properly integrate the subsystems.
Apple has the advantage of making the OS and the integrated systems, but the drawbacks have proven to far outweigh the benefits. Yes, proven.
The invisible hand of the marketplace has rendered it's verdict. If Apple's way were better they would have found broad market acceptance by now and not just be a small[1] niche seller of luxury goods to customers who buy status symbols. Especially nowadays since Apple is a fabless builder who could double their production in China with a phone call... if they had more customers willing to pay super premium prices for under performing products with insane legal restrictions.
How many times per year does /. excoriate Apple for the huge fscking hole in their product line they refuse to fill, just to gouge their limited customer base? That tells me that Apple is convinced that introducing a midrange choice would just result in most of the current customers buying that instead of the insane Xeon monsters they have to buy currently and few new customers being added. And they are probably correct.
The knowledge that Apple is totally sue happy is probably a minor reason major accounts avoid them. Individuals generally don't care, knowing they would have to do something infamous to be worth suing, but a corporation with deep pockets and a legal department worries about getting entangled with rogues.
[1] iPod excepted. They managed to dominate that segment for a while, but competition has finally delivered enough quality products at better prices that their dominance is fading. But I was never tempted to buy one, knowing what sort of assholes Apple are. Although the older units that can run Rockbox tempt a bit on the grounds that eBay should be able to supply replacement hardware for a few years.
Democrat delenda est