Mentioning Android Is a No-No In iPhone App Store

donberryman writes "Apple has told a software developer that its application cannot be included in the iPhone App Store if it mentions Google Android. The developer just wanted to mention that the app was a finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge." The developer complied with apparent good humor. Here is their blog post, which includes the text of the iPhone store's not-quite-rejection.

Comments

Android

[d34dluk3]

There's not an app for that.

Re:Android

[thearkitex]

Wait, you... But... Damn, you totally ruined that meme.

Re:Android

[Mister Whirly]

No, but there is a dupe for that.

Re:Android

[strength_of_10_men]

(Steve Jobs waves his hands) Android isn't the word you're looking for.

(Developer) ... These aren't the words I'm looking for.

(Steve Jobs) You can go about your business.

(Developer) ... I'll go about my business.

(Steve Jobs) Move along.

(Developer) ... I'll move along

Re:Android

[tverbeek]

I'm surprised they're allowed to use the word "Flash" in the name of the app.

Re:Android

[w0mprat]

There's an operating system for that.

There, fixed that for you.

We're all mind readers

[SQLz]

Wow the list of magical things you can't do with your iPhone app sure is growing.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ahankinson]

Want an app that mentions Android? There's an app for.... oh, wait. Scratch that.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Goffee71]

So my new game "Android Clone Phone Home" might need a bit of a rewrite then???

Re:We're all mind readers

[Anonymous Coward]

And what kills me is that all of the iPhone limitations are caused by Apple being shitty company. Seriously, Apple, why the fuck can't I sync my iPod Touch on Linux? It's not that nobody is willing to make a program to do it; its that Apple went out of their way to make this impossible. It's the first and last Apple product I'll ever make the mistake of buying.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Tim C]

I was rather irritated to find that my nice, new 16GB iPod Touch, shiny and gorgeous and amazing as it is, does not present as a USB mass storage device, unlike pretty-much every other mp3 player including most iPods to date. Great, so now I need to carry a USB memory stick with me as well? Thanks Apple.

Re:We're all mind readers

[uberjack]

I don't know about you, but this is reassuring. Apple's getting nervous, which means that it's seriously considering Android a threat now.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Buelldozer]

My mother gave my son a 32G iPod touch for Christmas. The iPod itself is a fantastic piece of gear but every time I have to launch iTunes to sync music into it I go on a 15 minute profanity riddled rant. iTunes is buggy, slow, and generally the biggest pile of shit software that I am forced to use. To say that I hate it with the intensity of a thousand burning stars would be an _understatement_.

Why, oh why, won't Apple let me push music to it like every other, non-Apple, media player that we own?

Steve Jobs deserves to be kicked in the DICK for this, hard.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, any company that has tried to introduce artificial limitations like this always ends up defunct soon enough. Apple is just lasting longer than most.

It'll probably start with the developers. They'll get sick and tired of paying $99 a year just to develop goddamn cell phone apps. They'll get sick and tired of Apple's unnecessary censorship and app publication restrictions. They'll move to more open platforms.

It'll continue with the users. Those, such as yourself, who buy Apple products expecting a useful product will become dismayed, never buy another Apple product, and will suggest to other people that they also avoid Apple.

Eventually, the near-religious Apple fanatics will lose interest. Their market is basically made up of those born between 1980 and 1995, the so-called "Hipster" generation. In a few short years, we'll see these people grow up, having faced real-world financial pressure since leaving college. They'll have kids, and won't have money for over-priced Apple designer products.

The next generation, those born after 1995, don't give a fuck about Apple and their products. Hell, I was in the mall last week and overheard a group of teens making fun of Apple products as being for "queerfags". Five years ago, these are the sort of teens who'd be going fucking crazy for iPods.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ircmaxell]

Because it's a selling point for the app. Take "Bump" for example... Simply stating it's compatible with Android and iPhone is a huge selling point (if they charged for the app). Especially as more and more apps are letting you interact with other people, it's definitely a good selling point that you can interact with non iPhone users.

Is this type of advertising hurting Apple? Not in the least. In fact, I'd argue that it's doing the exact opposite. With the rejection of an app because it said "Android" in it, it makes me wonder if there's any commitment on their part to support device interoperability (even if just on the app level)... And that question COULD hurt them on the business end (and the power users who are on the fence)...

Re:We're all mind readers

[Buelldozer]

I know, replying to an AC and all that, but I hate iTunes so bad I'm going to do it anyway.

I like the iPod touch and would like to have one for myself but I absolutely, positively, 100% WILL NOT buy an iPod as long as I'm forced to use iTunes. It's just not going to fucking happen. I am advising my friends and family not to buy them either, based SOLELY on how terrible iTunes is.

Once I'm forced to use iTunes a few more times my hatred will probably reach the level of a holy war.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Lunix Nutcase]

It'll probably start with the developers. They'll get sick and tired of paying $99 a year just to develop goddamn cell phone apps. They'll get sick and tired of Apple's unnecessary censorship and app publication restrictions. They'll move to more open platforms.

That's amusing considering the app developer himself says: "Apple is a wonderful company to work with."

It'll continue with the users. Those, such as yourself, who buy Apple products expecting a useful product will become dismayed, never buy another Apple product, and will suggest to other people that they also avoid Apple.

You widely overestimate the impact of the whining of a bunch of Slashtards on Apple's consumers. Why would they get dismayed when Apple has huge customer satisfaction? The world at large doesn't care what a bunch of DRM-whining neckbeards think, no matter how much you wish it so.

Re:We're all mind readers

[maxume]

I've had it explained to me that it makes much more sense to build the metadata index on a powerful PC, rather than building the functionality into each mp3 player.

My $40 sandisk indexes a couple of gigabytes in about 10 seconds, so I scratched my head too.

Re:We're all mind readers

[KimiDalamori]

I use Open Source to put music on my Ipod. GTKpod, Amarok, etc... And yes, by the way, there are FOSS utilities that will allow you to mount even a non-jailbroken Ipod touch out there. Google IFuse, for example

Re:We're all mind readers

[khellendros1984]

iPod Touch works differently than a regular iPod (it uses a different communication protocol). The only way I know of to sync a Touch/iPhone is to jailbreak it, and use a wireless SSH connection to get at the data.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Duradin]

Perhaps Apple doesn't want to support the ever changing linux environment and is bound by contracts to their media partners that media transfers are done through a controlled channel?

Windows is Windows. OS X is OS X. Linux is ... Suse? Gentoo? Redhat? Slackware? Gnome? Enlightenment? KDE?

Re:We're all mind readers

[Synn]

That's been a known limitation since, well, forever. How did you miss that in your basic research before spending several hundred dollars on a device specifically known on Slashdot to be artificially limited by the manufacturer?

Huh, weird. I'm an apple hater, fully admit that, but I'm also surprised to hear you can't USB mount the iTouch. I'm guessing the iPhone is the same?

I can USB mount my Nexus just fine and copy whatever I want over to it. Still waiting on bluetooth file transfers though.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ArhcAngel]

WOW, insightful comments from AC. Who knew?

I second this. The only reason I even fire up iTunes is to install updates. Although obvious a link is always nice. It's periphery functions are also quite interesting. The ability to quickly search multiple locations (CDDB, Amazon, Amazon UK, etc) to fill in missing information works really well and the DJ mode for using during parties to keep wandering hands from snarking up your settings is a nice touch. It allows plug-ins and there is a healthy community of 3rd party plug-ins available.

Re:We're all mind readers

[retchdog]

Sandisk: it's OK until you use the microsd expansion. My sandisk indexes its native 4 gig in a few seconds, but it takes 6 minutes to do the full 12 gigs. This'd be fine, if the card interface wasn't so touchy that it finds a "new" card every time you drop it or even squeeze it too hard. I wish they'd add a quick hash-check to see if the card had actually changed.

All mp3 players seem to have some crappiness to them.

Re:We're all mind readers

[pcolaman]

That's some pretty harsh punishment for buggy software. LOL

Re:We're all mind readers

[ArhcAngel]

I sync my iPod Touch (1st gen) using MediaMonkey exclusively.

Re:We're all mind readers

[pcolaman]

With the rejection of an app because it said "Android" in it, it makes me wonder if there's any commitment on their part to support device interoperability (even if just on the app level)... And that question COULD hurt them on the business end (and the power users who are on the fence)...

I think the answer is pretty obvious. Apple generally doesn't desire to support device interoperability unless absolutely necessary (i.e.- finally caving in and making a Windows version of iTunes).

Re:We're all mind readers

[mrdoogee]

Devils Advocate here, If you didn't want to get banned from the app store, you'd probably be saying "Apple is a wonderful company to work with." too.

Just sayin'.

Re:We're all mind readers

[maxume]

I guess I win by not having an expansion slot.

Have you experimented with different cards much?

Re:We're all mind readers

[Dancindan84]

Windows is Windows.

Even if you just look at what's still in support you have:
OS:
2000
XP Home/Pro - (And if you don't just look at desktop you have Starter/MCE/Tablet/XP Pro 64-bit link)
Vista and all its sub-editions
7 and all its sub-editions
Ref: link

Then if you consider IE6/7/8 since so many apps these days interact with the browser in some way (even what people wouldn't consider web apps), you get a huge number of possible permutations.

You'd never say "Windows is Windows" if you've ever had to do any kind of development/support for a large, diverse group of Windows users.

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

Yeah, it annoys me that the iPod has niggly faults (no power switch, no reset button, no battery compartment lid, no watchdog timer to resolve 'hanging') that more development would have cured, but instead Apple spent time and money artificially restricting and obfuscating basic functions.

I mean, really, you transfer your mp3 file (lovingly taken from vinyl and hand-finished with the correct spelling and umlauts and everything) to the thing and it RENAMES THE FILE WITHOUT ASKING FOR CONFIRMATION! Nice going, guys. Good data handling procedures there, ALTERING FUCKING USER DATA WITHOUT THE COURTESY OF MAKING A BACKUP. Excuse me while I instead copy the mp3 onto micro-sd ready to be crammed into my phone or car radio.

I could MAYBE put up with all the iPod's deficiencies if it was some POS Kazakhstani device i picked up at Asda for £10. Ludicrously, the crappy £10 music player/usb stick i DID buy from Asda is less crippled.

Re:We're all mind readers

[timeOday]

Please. He hates Apple so much he was willing to spend several hundred dollars on one of their products.

Obviously he didn't hate them until he experienced the product.

After years of disinterest in Apple, I finally bought my wife an iPod because the treadmills at our gym have their crummy prioprietary dock. So I caved, and bought an iPod. And guess what, it still didn't work! Turns out Apple locked down the video output on newer models so they could control the sale of accessories, like $45 video-out cables. So I sold the new iPod on ebay, and bought an older iPod Video that works with the treadmill. It'll be a long time until I buy another Apple product in the absence of further coercion.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

You can. They tried really hard, not just by using proprietary everything but also using ridiculously obfuscated crypto, but we broke it again. No jailbreaking needed.

For those who love magic 16-byte keys, the magic "freedom for Apple music players" number this time around is 618ca10dc7f57fd3b4723e08157463d7 ;)

Re:We're all mind readers

[Duradin]

Or just set in your preferences to not have iTunes manage your library. But where's the uninformed rant in that?

(FYI metadata is where it's at these days. Storing it in the filename is soooo 90's.)

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

You can use libimobiledevice and ifuse to mount your iPod Touch under Linux, if that's all you need. You can use it as a generic mass storage device (no need to jailbreak either) as long as you have these tools.

For what it's worth, I understand Apple's decision on this regard. There is a void in USB regarding smart devices with onboard filesystem drivers which run an OS. Basically, there's no USB File Transfer Protocol, just raw block-device USB Mass Storage (which is useless for devices that run their own OS and can't just expose a block device - not to mention that iPhone OS devices use HFS, not FAT). There's a Picture Transfer Protocol for digital cameras, and Apple does support that, but only for pictures. They made their own protocol for the other stuff. Really, iPod Touch devices aren't music players, they're embedded computers with an OS which you just happen to be able to play music on, and there's no standard "USB file transfer between OSes" protocol.

What is inexcusable is their insistence in trying to cryptographically stop people from syncing their iPods and iPhones with third-party software. But this is one layer above, and it affects the music database. The underlying nonstandard USB protocol was a practical necessity (although, incidentally, their implementation is horrid).

Re:We're all mind readers

[element-o.p.]

Doesn't make sense to me.

Think about it for a second: other versions of the iPod *did* present themselves as USB Mass Storage Devices. Ergo, it can't be a contractual agreement with their media partners that presents the iPod Touch from presenting itself as a USB Mass Storage Device (unless the other versions are grandfathered in...could be, I guess). USB Mass Storage is a standard -- that's the reason it is supported on Windows, Linux and Mac. It's not like every company that makes a USB Mass Storage device has to figure out how they are going to communicate with Win2K, XP, Vista, 7, OS-X, Suse, Gentoo, Redhat, Slackware, Gnome, Enlightenment and KDE (to quote and expand upon your list). I use the same USB thumb drives on my wife's Win2K, XP and Vista machines, on my Gentoo, Slackware, Debian and Ubuntu boxes (all of which run Gnome, except the Slack box, which runs BlackBox) and my OS-X laptop.

Seems to me, it's just Apple trying to establish vendor lock in, which makes me less than thrilled to use their products.

Re:We're all mind readers

[MBGMorden]

Indeed. I've finally had enough of it myself. I'v got a list of all songs in my iTunes library that still had DRM on them from when they did that (for a long time I've been using only Amazon for my purchases now). I've been hitting up P2P networks to download MP3 versions of these songs (I know I could pay $0.30 each to Apple to get the DRM removed, but I have no intention of lining their pockets any further). As I download the replacements it's being added to my Linux system running Banshee instead. As soon as I complete the transition I'll be selling my Mac and iPod Touch (not due to this issue in particular - just due to the path Apple is going down).

Extreme? A bit. But Apple lately has becomes like the exaggerated extreme that you would put into an example to show just how bad things could become. It'd be like if the "Ford cars that take only Ford gasoline" example ACTUALLY HAPPENED. 5 years ago I could honestly see somebody saying "Yeah, it's this now, but how about when a computer company locks things down so that you can only run their approved software and can't even mention their competitors.". People might get the point, but that would be a far out scenario that would never happen - except it has. Mark my words - OS X isn't far behind on having an approved app-only model.

At this point, FUCK Apple. I'm done with them. Hell Microsoft was never this bad. They had more control, but their abuses of that control were minor blips compared to what Apple has shown itself to do when it gets power in any market. Ubuntu is finally pretty snappy on my newest system. Midori and Chrome browse the web like lightning. With VDPAU in place video finally plays as good as on Mac or Windows. WoW was the only PC game I'd played lately and that hasn't been cranked up in several months. At this point Linux's upward path and the the downward path of the others have finally crossed, and I'm jumping sides.

Re:We're all mind readers

[russotto]

Perhaps Apple doesn't want to support the ever changing linux environment and is bound by contracts to their media partners that media transfers are done through a controlled channel?

Then they shouldn't have made that diabolical deal.

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

What? There is an option to preserve the filenames in the iPod? So why bother trashing them by default?

Re:We're all mind readers

[liquidsin]

for what it's worth, they make nice computers. i've been using macs for graphics work since os 8.6ish and i've loved every one i've worked on; my macbook is without a doubt the best computer i've ever owned.

with all that said, i agree with you. i'll never buy another ipod (first one was stolen) because i don't like the restrictions. same reason i didn't buy an iphone when i last upgraded phones. same reason i won't buy an ipad (god i wanted that thing to run osx so bad...).

but yeah, they hate us and i hope they don't ever ruin osx like they've ruined what could have been a bunch of really cool mobile devices.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Mister Whirly]

There is a Nexus app called "Bluetooth File Transfer" that may do what you want. I don't have a Nexus (using a G1 Android) so I can't verify though.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Snarf You]

Windows user says
iTunes isn't so good!
Apple punish you!

I'm posting to say
That you missed a syllable
Try harder next time

Re:We're all mind readers

[rxan]

*whoosh*

Re:We're all mind readers

[Eil]

One word: iTunes.

It's the same reason there will never be a good all-in-one podcast manager for the iPhone.

Re:We're all mind readers

[EastCoastSurfer]

You can reset the iPod classics by holding the center button down while also pressing the click wheel up. Takes a few seconds, but the ipod will reboot. I don't know if it works on all ipods that still have that click wheel, but I assume it would. It does. FIRST link that pops up on google, but lets not let that get in the way of a good rant.

You can also set iTunes to not move or rename your files. It'll use the library you point it to where it sits. This is useful if you have a library on external disks that are not always connected.

No power switch? Stop the music and use the button lock slide. At that point the power is as good as off since the ipod isn't doing anything.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Toonol]

So that Apple can store metadata in the filename.

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Sorry, but any potable music with a dedicated reset button screams "I crash a lot". Why waste the hardware to put one in if you're confident about the OS you're running? If your iPod is crashing so often, I suggest you get Apple to replace it, because it's not normal. There is also a power button and it can turn the device completely off if you want to.

As for altering filenames. There is a preference in iTunes for that.

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

You talk about how horrible iTunes is, but you don't even say why.

Re:We're all mind readers

[silent_artichoke]

Are you related to the Chinese food delivery guy in The 5th Element?

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Why, oh why, won't Apple let me push music to it like every other, non-Apple, media player that we own?

Because most people don't want to do it that way and Apple doesn't want to spend the extra time supporting a feature that only a few nerds are going to use.

iTunes works fine for me, BTW.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Lunix Nutcase]

So then how do you explain Trent Reznor? He blasted Apple pretty harshly after an update to his NIN app was rejected. Yet he got his app back on and it's still there today.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Android phones have been able to work around the issue without requiring a new protocol or any specific, non-standard sync application.

They simply expose some partition through USB as a block device, but the partition is unmounted by the embedded OS before being handled to the USB host. From the host point of view, the device is like a removable disk drive, and when the user chooses to switch the partition to the PC side, it's like if someone just inserted a disk in the removable drive.

It's kind of silly that the phone is unable to access the files in the partition while they're being accessed by the PC, but nonetheless, I think it's a cleaner solution.

Re:We're all mind readers

[GweeDo]

My Android phone has no problem supporting both Microsoft's Media Player sync and mounting as a mass storage device...and I happily would consider it more than just a music player too.

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo_ham]

Why is iTunes so horrible? I've used it for years and it's never been a problem. Your friends may like iTunes, even if you find it abhorrent. Get them to at least try iTunes first to see if they can "live with it".

It's really not terrible.

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo_ham]

Uncheck "Keep iTunes media folder organised".

Rant solved.

Re:We're all mind readers

[TobesWSU]

Yeah, it annoys me that the iPod has niggly faults (no power switch, no reset button, no battery compartment lid, no watchdog timer to resolve 'hanging') that more development would have cured, but instead Apple spent time and money artificially restricting and obfuscating basic functions.

I mean, really, you transfer your mp3 file (lovingly taken from vinyl and hand-finished with the correct spelling and umlauts and everything) to the thing and it RENAMES THE FILE WITHOUT ASKING FOR CONFIRMATION! Nice going, guys. Good data handling procedures there, ALTERING FUCKING USER DATA WITHOUT THE COURTESY OF MAKING A BACKUP. Excuse me while I instead copy the mp3 onto micro-sd ready to be crammed into my phone or car radio.

I could MAYBE put up with all the iPod's deficiencies if it was some POS Kazakhstani device i picked up at Asda for £10. Ludicrously, the crappy £10 music player/usb stick i DID buy from Asda is less crippled.

You know you could just NOT HAVE ITUNES ORGANIZE YOUR FILES!! It's a setting it asks you about when you first launch the program. I like having it organize my music so I don't have to give a fuck about what the files are named. If you care for some reason then don't have it organize your music!

Re:We're all mind readers

[Feanturi]

You have to ask? Anybody who has used iTunes knows that it is the very worst example of the type of program it is. Bar none. The interface is the slowest and clunkiest I've ever seen. Did they write it in BASIC or something? That said, I like my iPod Touch, and I like apps, so I need iTunes around to deal with it. And I hate every second I am in that program. The multitude of background services it requires is also laughable, and those stay disabled on my system until I need to make changes. Then they get disabled again immediately afterward. A portion of the apps I use are on the jailbreak side fortunately, so I can use other means to deal with those at least.

Re:We're all mind readers

[VulpesFoxnik]

Linux is Linux Standard Base.

Re:We're all mind readers

[bhebing]

Amarok syncs my iPod nano just fine. Even beter than iTunes, as far as I'm concerned.

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo_ham]

How the hell is this offtopic?

Mods, can I have some of what you're smoking.

Note please, that -1 Offtopic does not mean "I do not agree with this poster"

Re:We're all mind readers

[JonStewartMill]

I'm glad you warned me. I was really lusting for an iPod Touch; I didn't know about that glaring deficiency.

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo_ham]

Send me all your Apple kit. I'll rehome it.

Sorry to see you go.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Internal Modem]

The iTouch/iPhone has a different OS and file system. Why doesn't your computer appear as a USB mass storage device?

The Android can painfully act like a USB mass storage device by unmounting the external SD card.

The Android soution is prone to errors and corruption. That would not be in line with Apple's philosophy.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Internal Modem]

It's like the control-alt-delete button on Windows tablets, a sign of crappy software.

Re:We're all mind readers

[techwrench]

Have you tried DoubleTwist? (http://double-twist.com)

Re:We're all mind readers

[noidentity]

Wow the list of magical things you can't do with your iPhone app sure is growing.

What, there's not an app for that? Probably got rejected...

Re:We're all mind readers

[Internal Modem]

At least you can get something for selling your used Mac.

Re:We're all mind readers

[c]

> To say that I hate it with the intensity of a
> thousand burning stars would be an _understatement_.

I met a guy who hated iTunes so much that he bought a Zune instead of an iPod. Now, that's hate.

c.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Duradin]

If you're using file names on the iPod there is something seriously screwed up with your iPod.

If all the precious umlauts are stored in the song's metadata they'll show back up in the new filename when you drag the song off of iTunes and drop it somewhere. As far as using the iPod as an iPod, the filename should never matter. Using it as a storage device requires third party software anyways so your gripe should be with whatever program isn't properly building the filename from the metadata.

Re:We're all mind readers

[retchdog]

That's a good point. I'm just using the cheapest 8 gig card I could find. I'll keep it in mind when/if I upgrade to 16 gig eventually.

Re:We're all mind readers

[sloth jr]

Yes, actually, I do have to ask, as I don't have a particular problem with iTunes. Now that you've described the reasons you don't like it (Buelldozer?), I still don't see the behavior you describe. It's not a paragon of truth and justice I'd uphold as the Best Program Eva, but it seems functional enough.

Re:We're all mind readers

[MichaelSmith]

"USB file transfer between OSes" protocol.

How about Ethernet over USB? The openmoko supports that.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ratboy666]

No USB protocol for smart devices... Um, no...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Would work just fine for the data that the iPod supports.

So, that's not a good excuse for Apple causing this much pain. MTP could be added in a firmware update. And, the check-file updating could be done on the device if the MTP path is chosen. Yes, MTP users may be disadvantaged (by synching more slowly), but (for me anyway) it would beat having to start Windows XP(tm) in a virtual machines, and then launching iTunes.

Re:We're all mind readers

[MichaelSmith]

All mp3 players seem to have some crappiness to them.

I suppose so. Mine cost 20 aussie bucks at a cheap appliance store. The ear phones I bought elsewhere to use with it cost more. It charges by USB and presents as a USB storage device. I transfer music to it by ye old drag and drop in gnome. The crap part is it won't play ogg.

Re:We're all mind readers

[element-o.p.]

The iTouch/iPhone has a different OS and file system. Why doesn't your computer appear as a USB mass storage device?

Because so far, there has been no advantage in doing so. If you need to transfer files between two computers, rsync, ftp, http, NFS, Samba/CIFS, etc. are much better ways to do so than connecting a USB cable between the two machines and making one of them appear to be a USB Mass Storage device. However, if you insist on treating the i(Touch|Phone) as a full-fledged computer, then just equip it with the OS agnostic tools that already exist to transfer files between two computers.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

And no OS supports it out of the box as far as I know, which negates the advantage. Networking is also more complicated to set up and there is some extra overhead involved. Basically, in its current state, USB networking could never work as seamlessly and universally as USB mass storage, which defeats the purpose.

Actually, iPhones use a really weird TCP-alike-over-USB protocol, which is why I mention their implementation is horrid (especially because it's completely messed up and can't actually be considered a valid networking device, so the host has to use custom APIs to access device services anyway). For all intents and purposes it can be considered a custom stream multiplex protocol, not a real networking device.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Deosyne]

For iTunes, it's letting him off easy.

Re:We're all mind readers

[EndlessNameless]

It's kind of silly that the phone is unable to access the files in the partition while they're being accessed by the PC, but nonetheless, I think it's a cleaner solution.

It's not silly at all. When the PC has block-level access, the OS assumes its file system driver has sole control over that partition. This is, at the very least, true of NTFS (and wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption for most file system drivers).

If they made it so that the phone and the PC could both access the partition, there would have to be provisions for simultaneous changes/writes, syncing issues when both systems load the same file, and many of the other complications you see with network shares.

It's far simpler to lock the partition for whatever system is using it than to deal with all the edge cases where simultaneous use can cause the loss, desyncing, or corruption of data.

Re:We're all mind readers

[MichaelSmith]

Ubuntu tries to bring up the interfaces over the USB device. SHR on the phone handles it okay. At the moment I have to manually mess around with the interface on ubuntu to get it working properly. It could be made transparent. Currently the only service I use is ssh. If you want to use USB Ethernet in place of USB mass storage the phone would have to provide services. Possibly an SMB server or similar.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

MTP isn't a remote filesystem service, it's a much higher level "media transfer protocol" which is an extension of the already high level PTP. Read that page, there are a bunch of restrictions and limitations. Besides, it seems like Microsoft is behind most of it and full support is probably available on Windows thing, so that pretty much destroys any chances of Apple using it.

To replace USB Mass Storage for smart devices, you'd want a simple, file-based protocol that supports the usual filesystem semantics. At least open(), close(), read(), write(), seek(), unlink(), mkdir(), rmdir(), and friends. MTP transfers "media objects", it doesn't really work as a generic FS. It's attacking the issue from the wrong perspective. MTP will probably be good for "smart" media players, but only for the purposes of transfering, well, media. You still can't use it for mass storage, as the OP wants.

Apple still wants to lock people into iTunes, so the chances of them implementing MTP are nil. This iTunes crap (which affects every single iPod ever made; this isn't new) is irrelevant. The OP just wants to be able to mount his device and use it as a general file storage device, like a USB flash drive. MTP won't provide that.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

The way the iPhone is architected this isn't really an option, because they don't hand over the entire data partition to the host (just the Media directory), and yet they need to be able to share free space and there are a few other issues. Not that I'm saying that it couldn't be reworked to work with this kind of scheme, but it's a hack and it doesn't really fit into the way iPhone OS handles user data at the moment.

I'd consider it a design choice - there's an important tradeoff here, and Apple chose one way.

Re:We're all mind readers

[spire3661]

It was NOT a practical necessity. Why is it that EVERYONE ELSE can do it but Apple? My PSP presents as a mass storage device when i set it in usb mode and it has a standalone smart OS too..

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, I do have to ask, because it works fine for me. So well that I have never considered using anything else. But then again, I am running it under OS X.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

Keeping things clean with simultaneous access really isn't hard as long as your API is file-level, not block-level (block-level concurrency is just about impossible without specific filesystems designed for that). Network filesystems have other issues to deal with that can be simplified in this case (e.g. latency).

Of course you have to lock against opening the same file for writes from both sides, but these issues occur in multitasking OSes anyway and they're fairly well understood. For example, iTunes uses lockfiles to prevent these kinds of issues.

The problem is that no such standard file access protocol exists for USB.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

No one can do it. The PSP presents its MemoryStick card to the OS, and in USB mode it can't do anything with it anyway. Android phones do the same thing with an internal partition. There is no standard USB protocol that allows the sharing of a partition between a device and the host OS.

Using existing mass storage protocols requires that whatever storage exists be switched from the embedded OS to the host OS, because they're low-level protocols that are designed for raw storage. This is a significant drawback for multitasking devices (and the iPhone is multitasking - no App Store apps running at once is just a high-level decision imposed by Apple by choice, not a technical limitation). Don't confuse this with all sorts of devices out there, including PSPs and iPods (non-Touch) and tons of cellphones which can go into a dumb passthrough mode where they behave as a glorified card reader or USB storage device.

Apple is evil about lots of things, but this isn't one of them.

Re:We're all mind readers

[PoopMonkey]

I will assume you're joking. The answer to explaining Trent Reznor is... It's Trent Reznor.

Re:We're all mind readers

[bytesex]

Couldn't you expose your filesystem as a block device to another USB host with proper locking ?

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

You'd have to unmount it locally first (and use the same filesystem). You can't "properly lock" things like FAT, only special cluster filesystems can be concurrently accessed. On top of that, Apple uses HFS (which is a proper UNIX filesystem, unlike FAT, and yes they do use UNIX features such as symlinks), so they can't really share it with Windows boxes. They also expose only a subdirectory over USB, which you wouldn't be able to do this way (for example, applications are stored on the data partition, but you can't see them over USB).

Re:We're all mind readers

[stewbacca]

You made his point nicely by not giving a single good example of what's bad about iTunes. Background services? What are those to the average user? The interface is slow and clunky? Compared to what? I can shuffle through a thousand album covers in full screen mode as fast as my mouse will let me. Songs change instantly...what is slow? I can burn a CD in a couple of minutes...please tell me, what is slow?

I'll give you an example of a good example of what is slow: iTunes and iPods have become slower than they used to be for syncing and transferring songs. I don't know why and I don't care why, I just know they do. I used to be able to sync my library (or add new songs to the library at a rate of about 3-4 songs per second. It now takes a couple seconds per song. Although this doesn't sound that bad, multiply it by a few hundred songs, and it is annoying. I probably could streamline the process by turning off album art and gapless playback and the thing that evens the sound on every song, but I'm a typical user and either don't have time, or don't care enough.

Re:We're all mind readers

[pigphish]

The iSheep don't care, their Sheppard Steve Jobs knows what is best for them.

Re:We're all mind readers

[thetoadwarrior]

I dislike iTunes and it is indeed slow to start but it's been anything but buggy when I have used it.

Re:We're all mind readers

[stewbacca]

Neckbeards...nice! Hey, if a guy can post a stupid thing about Starbucks, John Mayer and Apple to start this thread off, then I say neckbeards and slashtards are legit.

On a serious note, I've been watching slashdot for a couple of years now and have never (even though I try) been able to understand the "drm-whining neckbeards" and their free-tard mentality--and I have a pretty open mind--and I work at a software company. I've decided to finally chalk them up with the Ron Paul retards...they have their passion, but I'll never understand why they are so interested in shooting down mine.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Jesus_666]

It'll continue with the users. Those, such as yourself, who buy Apple products expecting a useful product will become dismayed, never buy another Apple product, and will suggest to other people that they also avoid Apple.

Except for those Apple users who have actually ever used an Apple product and will probably keep doing so because most Apple products are actually fairly good. As are most Microsoft products, for the record, even if I dislike them.

Yes, my iPod touch doesn't multitask. Doesn't mean it's not still a decent MP3 player with a PDA built in, which I got for a extremely good price (35 EUR through the Back to School rebate offer); multitasking would occasionally be nice but I don't miss it enough to care. Yes, it needs iTunes, which apprently sucks big time on Windows. This doesn't faze me either as iTunes is a pretty good program on Mac OS and I use it anyway.

Yes, Macs are expensive. Until you require a certain feature set (like anything involving FireWire 800) that puts Mac prices on equal footing with those of comparable devices. That might even happen if you're shopping for a decent notebook; the Apple tax is above zero mainly for desktop systems.

It's easy to find things to hate about the company but it's not like they consistently produce useless junk that people pay pay at 500% market value for no reason at all. Most consumers do use their brain when making purchases and they have (often valid) reasons for their decision. Yes, even those who buy products you personally dislike.

Hell, I was in the mall last week and overheard a group of teens making fun of Apple products as being for "queerfags".

Just like Modern Warfare 2, every video game but Modern Warfare 2, Win7, every OS but Win7, rap, every music genre but rap (and especially metal), metal, every music genre but metal (and especially rap), motorcycles, everything but motorcycles... If we assume the failure of everything some teenager has described as "for fags" we are looking at the end of human culture within the next twenty years.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mypalmike]

Saying that Steve Jobs needs to be kicked in the dick is "insightful", but pointing out that he probably had nothing to do with this decision is "flamebait"? Welcome to the new Slashdot.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Kielistic]

Trent Reznor is famous and has lots of hipster cred? Even Apple won't punch a lion in the mouth if it will affect their image.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ircmaxell]

Ummm... I've never seen a control-alt-delete button in my life. Sure, it may exists, but I've never seen / heard of it... And to say that having a "set of inputs" that causes a restart without UI interaction is a sign of crappy software, well I guess just about every device made is crappy (The iPod classic has one, hold the power button and the center of the wheel at the same time for a few seconds)...

Re:We're all mind readers

[HumanEmulator]

The App Store is just a retail catalog. Do you think Target.com would let you mention your product was a Wal-Mart best-seller in your product description? Are geeks that out of touch with business fundamentals that this is surprising? Don't forget: The developer is free to say anything they want on their website. Apple just is cagey about what you can say to the eyeballs they're providing you.

Is this type of advertising hurting Apple? Not in the least. In fact, I'd argue that it's doing the exact opposite. With the rejection of an app because it said "Android" in it, it makes me wonder if there's any commitment on their part to support device interoperability (even if just on the app level)... And that question COULD hurt them on the business end (and the power users who are on the fence)...

Ask Palm how Apple feels about device interoperability. Luckily, app interoperability is really up to the app developers.

Re:We're all mind readers

[colourexpert]

Please. He hates Apple so much he was willing to spend several hundred dollars on one of their products.

After years of disinterest in Apple, I finally bought my wife an iPod because the treadmills at our gym have their crummy prioprietary dock. So I caved, and bought an iPod. And guess what, it still didn't work! Turns out Appl

You need to hack your wife's legs and jailbreak her from the gym. There are a huge range of body media for her to use. They are called footpaths. there could be one outside of your house right now! There is free rich media on each path that can be accessed with no proprietary equipment or software. Good luck!

Re:We're all mind readers

[ErkDemon]

I had a cheap (circa ~GBP 15) Samsung MP3 player that someone gave away as part of a deal. It didn't function as a USB storage device, and had its own special syncing and indexing software that ran on the host computer. Like Apple.

Seems that that's why Samsung had to get rid of the stock by jobbing it out to a company that used them as promotional giveaways. People kept bringing them back to the shops and demanding refunds, on the grounds that a fifteen quid USB MP3 player wasn't fit for sale if it didn't show up as a standard storage device when you plugged it into a USB port.
Samsung them brought out a firmware update that let you ignore its expensive proprietary synching and indexing software and just dump folders of music onto it, and people were happy (other than the Samsung engineers, who still seemed convinced that their approach was better, and a little put out by the threats of physical violence from aggrieved customers).

Re:We're all mind readers

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I actually like iTunes. Its one of the few media library/player programs with a "remember last playback position" option. I use it a lot because I have a library of The Opie And Anthony Show and Ron and Fez's show, which are 3 to 4 hours each of radio each day.

Its nice to have the remember playback option, and ipods support it as well. Windows Media player doesnt have this option...

I find itunes to be pretty nice actually, despite its performance issues and closed format support. I'd rather it support ALL formats, including MKV and FLAC.. but hey... Its Apple, and as long as we continue to let them to get away with shit governments sue microsoft for.... I guess we'll just have to put up with it.

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo42]

no power switch

Press and hold the 'power on button' at the top left for several seconds. Slide the slider to turn it off.

no reset button

Press the 'power on button' and 'home' button until reset.

Re:We're all mind readers

[adolf]

I have. Around 1992, or so.

There was a button on the keyboard labeled something like "Reset," which when pressed, would perform control-alt-delete.

I forgot, a long time ago, who made it.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ircmaxell]

There's actually a huge difference between the target analogy and the apple situation. The fact of the matter is that you can choose with no lost cost between Walmart and Target. You cannot do that with the App store. Once you own an Apple (iPod/iPhone), you're locked into using their store. So you could say that this is advertising for competing products (will result in lost sales of iPhones), but that's fooey too, since they already have made the sale before you even see this advert. Sure, it cost them customers in the end (users leaving after contracts are up), but banning the discussion or mention of the names of these companies is surely a recipe for disaster (Look up when KROCK sued Howard Stern for talking about on air his going to Sirius after his contract was up in 06... Not only did Howard win the suit, but KROCK is dead).

Show that your product is better... Don't ban the mention of the competing product... It's childish, and shows one thing. Fear...

Re:We're all mind readers

[jackbird]

you mean getsharepod.com

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

Will this preserve filenames on the iPod? So when I pull them off the iPod the filenames will be ok?

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

Granted, I did not state the model, but this one has no power on button on the top left. It is a 4th generation 40GB one.

I just googled and it appears this one needs to be on charge to reset it. This is a bit lame but better than no reset at all. When the iPod hung I was nowhere near a pc or power ( or i wouldn't need the iPod ) and was quite cross that i didn't have a power switch or a reset switch ( not even a poke-a-paperclip-through-a-hole type) and I couldn't even pop the batteries out. The experience may have scarred me.

Re:We're all mind readers

[indiechild]

Jesus, why support a company whose practices you hate? Does your wife really need to watch video that badly when training at the gym?

Re:We're all mind readers

[jo_ham]

Nope, it will (probably) not. The iPod's directory structure was never designed to be human readable, but a pseudo-mirror of the iTunes database (ie, you sync your other machines to the iTunes database rather than the iPod).

I haven't looked at the iPod directory structure since about the 3G iPod, so I do not know how it handles it if you choose to manually manage your library.

I do know that having that option unchecked, you can organise your files however you wish, and dragging to iTunes merely makes an alias to the file path in the DB, rather than copying the file in and putting it in a managed, computer-chosen location.

I have never managed my music this way (at least, not since I left Winamp and my old W2K box). I do know a guy who manages about 2TB of music (all legal) across multiple iTunes on multiple machines this way and it works fine for him. I'll have to ask him how iTunes deals with the iPod in this situation - I suspect it will assign its own filename for the iPod track, since Apple is very big on using the metadata for all information display.

Re:We're all mind readers

[indiechild]

There's your reason. iTunes runs a lot better under OS X. I think the whole application is much more "OS X-like" and that's one of the reasons why it confounds a lot of Windows users. Other reasons are that the Windows version feels slow and clunky.

I hesitate to recommend iPods/iPhones to people running Windows machines.

Re:We're all mind readers

[indiechild]

Agreed on the folks who automatically start spewing stuff about "Apple fanbois", they're the ones who are the real nutters.

Re:We're all mind readers

[indiechild]

I doubt Apple are bound by contracts to keep their devices off Linux... it's just a simple business decision. There's very few Linux users compared to Windows and Mac users, so to Apple it's not worth expending the resources it would take to make things work (and keep things working) on the various Linux distros.

Re:We're all mind readers

[indiechild]

It was a stupid decision to reject the app based on that, but I doubt this is an official Apple rule. More likely some overzealous App Store Reviewer, and the decision will get overturned in the near future.

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

Will I then be able to pull the files off the iPod and the filenames will be ok?

Re:We're all mind readers

[timeOday]

You need to hack your wife's legs and jailbreak her from the gym. There are a huge range of body media for her to use. They are called footpaths.

Yes, we used to run all through the winter, in the dark, in the wind, on the ice, until we realized, "why"? On Winter mornings the gym is nicer.

In the summer, what we like about the gym is the outdoor swimming pool. Fun for the whole family (which is harder than it sounds).

Re:We're all mind readers

[theolein]

At the company where I work, we have mostly Macs (around 40) and some PCs (4 CAD and 10 Lenovo Laptops). The consultants have free use of their machines and can install software if they ok it with me. One thing I always have to do is warn them about using iTunes on Windows. iTunes on the Mac is fine, obviously, and doesn't intrude on resources when people are working, but on Windows, it is an abomination. It manages to slow the most powerful laptop down to a crawl. It is that bad. It launches many background services which grab resources and add to the general feeling of sloth. I used to hate Microsoft with a passion (I'm writing this on my Mac Pro) but I have Windows 7 running on my lenovo laptop, and while it isn't quite up there with OS X yet, dual booting that with Ubuntu makes me feel happier these days.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

Don't be an idiot. Take the memory stick out of a PSP - it still works. Remove the data partition from an iPhone and it won't boot.

The PSP isn't a smartphone. It's a console bundled with a media player. It doesn't give a damn if you yank out its memory stick - all that happens is you won't be playing music or storing savegames. And it doesn't multitask.

Since you have a PSP, I'm going to assume you pirate games as it seems to be the only reason people have a PSP these days. Start a game from the MS. Now try to copy some music onto the memory stick using a computer. You can't. Put the PSP into USB mode. Now try to boot a game. You can't without stopping USB mode. THIS is what the iPhone can do - actively access data from its data partition (e.g. applications and their data) while communicating with a PC over USB. This is completely, utterly impossible to do with current standard (commonly implemented) USB protocols except for the specific case of media using MTP. The closest thing we have is USB networking plus some form of network file system, but it isn't ubiquitous or plug&play.

The design decision is to not cripple the device by making internal use of storage mutually exclusive with USB access. This is a perfectly rational design decision. Once you've established that, it turns out you can't do it using existing standards. When a perfectly rational, desirable design decision can not be implemented using existing standards, it means we need new standards, not that the company is actively trying to screw people over. You can blame them for not developing a standard and publishing it for others to use, but this isn't necessarily their responsibility.

The fact of the matter is that USB Mass Storage can only do what a USB memory card reader, memory cards, and a memory card-using device can do. You can bundle the reader and card (flash drives), or you can bundle the reader and the device (the PSP, most cellphones/players), or you can bundle all three (Android phones with internal storage, newer PSPs), but at the end of the day you're still swapping the card, physical or virtual, between the reader and the embedded device.

Re:We're all mind readers

[rdnetto]

They simply expose some partition through USB as a block device, but the partition is unmounted by the embedded OS before being handled to the USB host. From the host point of view, the device is like a removable disk drive, and when the user chooses to switch the partition to the PC side, it's like if someone just inserted a disk in the removable drive.

FWIW, Maemo does the same thing as well. It was actually a little confusing at first, until I thought of looking at the output of mount.

Re:We're all mind readers

[rdnetto]

Why, oh why, won't Apple let me push music to it like every other, non-Apple, media player that we own?

Because most people don't want to do it that way and Apple doesn't want to spend the extra time supporting a feature that only a few nerds are going to use.

iTunes works fine for me, BTW.

The issue isn't that Apple's not willing to support it, the issue is that Apple is going out of their way to force people to use iTunes . It's this kind of behaviour that makes me fervently anti-Apple.

Re:We're all mind readers

[rdnetto]

Once I'm forced to use iTunes a few more times my hatred will probably reach the level of a holy war.

That actually sounds likes a decent idea for a game. If anyone wants to write it, I'm guessing there would be quite popular here.

Re:We're all mind readers

[zmollusc]

Thanks for the clarification, maybe it is just an attitude thing. I have a file over here and i want it over there on the iPod, I want to copy it but instead I have to fire up an app and ponce around to do it, then I find that instead of copying the file, it has altered it.
While I am installing iTunes I don't rename all the iTunes executable files to suit myself and I don't expect an app to mess with data files when it is supposed to be copying them.

My grotty usb/mp3 stick works better for me. I can plug it into most ( ie recent )computers and it shows up as storage. I don't need a special app, I just copy files to it and later the music player finds them and shows the filenames on its little screen. If the battery goes flat, I can put a new (possibly recharged, possibly borrowed from the tv remote) one in, and if i find myself near a pc with better speakers, I can plug in and play my music through that. All without the internet and without carrying cables, chargers, install cds and crap around the prehistoric swamp that I seem to inhabit.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

Jesus, why support a company whose practices you hate?

Er, as he said - "Obviously he didn't hate them until he experienced the product."

Some people here are well aware of Apple's limitations, and buy elsewhere (I love my Sansa Clip+, it's as cheap as an Ipod Shuffle, with more memory, and takes expandable memory via microSD on top of that, and you get a visual UI and controls, rather than the non-visual custom headphones thing). But some people are actually, you know, Apple customers who are then disappointed.

It certainly throws doubt on that Apple claim of "But 100% of Apple customers love Apple!"

And nice to see the classic Apple pleading - "But why do you really need that feature...?"

Next time there's a Microsoft bashing article, I do hope you'll be criticising people by saying that they shouldn't have bought Microsoft if they "hate" them so much.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

Indeed. Both my Sansa Clip+, and my 5800, automatically mount themselves as a USB drive (the 5800 also does bluetooth file transfer ... I thought this was bog standard on most phones now?)

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

I don't have these problems on my Sansa Clip+, so maybe they improved it if you have an older model by any chance? (And to be fair, the microSD is a plus in the sense that the Ipods, and most mp3 players, don't have that option at all - which I find surprising, given that every other kind of portable device has memory cards as standard, and surely music is the one you're most likely to want it...)

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

Next time someone complains about Windows, I'll be sure to claim that "most people don't want to do it that way", and only a "few nerds" are going to use that. After all, if we're equating market share with desired specific features, it works for all companies.

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

They're not going out of their way, they're simply not offering an alternative. They see the iPod and iTunes as part of the same package and design it that way. It's not like they're forcing people to use iPods with their computers. It's this kind of product integration that makes me fervently pro-Apple ;)

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Out of curiosity, do you know how the Windows version of Safari does compared to the Windows version of iTunes?

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, most of them probably wouldn't want to do it the Windows way if they had a chance to get used to a Mac ;)

Re:We're all mind readers

[Tim C]

Obviously he didn't hate them until he experienced the product.

Actually I don't hate them at all, and I'm surprised to see that expressing disappointment in an artificial limitation of a product (when previous models had no such limitation) constitutes hatred of the company.

I would say that I'm surprised to see that anyone would hate a company based purely on the products they produce, but I'm tired of pointing out to people that (as my UID implies) no, I am not new here... ;)

Re:We're all mind readers

[Internal Modem]

You've never heard of it? Lock your windows desktop computer running Vista and read the message to unloack it.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

Actually I'd say that much of Apple's support is among geeks - with the exception of the mp3 player market, most people don't use Apple products, and it's just places like Slashdot where they are loved as the Best Ever.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

But a commercial company is going to be far more worried about the risks of spending months of development on something, only to have it delayed or refused permission by Apple.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

I found it annoying that there didn't seem to be a way to update/refresh files when mp3 tags were updated, without reimporting the entire libary? And however good it is, the fundamental issue is if you're forced to use it, rather than Just Working with your choice of media player, as well as the option to just mount as an external drive.

Re:We're all mind readers

[mdwh2]

Then don't support it. That doesn't address what the OP was talking about.

Most places don't support Windows 2000 anymore, but it'll still work often enough unless it needs a newer feature. Or unless they've artificially blocked it, which is also stupid.

Re:We're all mind readers

[retchdog]

I'm sure Sandisk owning most of the patents on microSD influences things a bit. Also, it's totally against the iPod "simplicity" design (or more cynically, the "buy a new iPod every other year" design).

Re:We're all mind readers

[retchdog]

Sansa Fuze (what I have) plays ogg and flac and I think the non-DRM Windows format whatever that is, in case you're looking for one. It has USB-device and MTP modes. It's about US$60 for the 8 gig version, and falling.

Another annoying thing is that neither Amarok nor Rhythmbox (linux) can make playlists. There's a hack using Easytag and specifying the directories right, but it's just too much bother.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Rexdude]

I recently bought a Canon Powershot A1100IS 12.1mp digital camera. When I plugged it in, Win XP instantly detected it as a camera,
and now I can just browse to it via Windows Explorer and copy off the photos I took. No need for any third party software (even though a CD was provided with some Canon software), thanks to the camera supporting PTP.
I found myself marveling that an almost decade old operating system could still work with a fairly new piece of hardware like this one, thanks to support for common standards in hardware.
The same way, my Nokia N82 supports MTP as well as mass storage mode, so since I already use Winamp, I can use it to manage music on it. For copying larger files, like movies (I got a16 GB microSD card recently), I can set it to USB mass storage mode for faster transfer.
And finally, I have a Creative Zen Vision W 60GB media player, which can play Divx/Xvid/mpeg and supports MTP. So again, I can manage music with Winamp or Media Monkey or even Windows Media Player. If I want to share songs or movies with someone, they plug it in and thanks to MTP in Windows, it shows up without requiring any further drivers.
Both the Zen and the N82 also support TV out using standard cables, so I've used that to show photos/movies when I visit a friend's place.

THIS, for me, is the real advantage of open standards for hardware. If I lose the accessories, I can easily use another miniUSB/microUSB/TV out cable, and transfer stuff between computers or share files with others. A vanilla iP[od|hone] is all about proprietary hardware and interfaces, and you simply cannot get this kind of flexibility and convenience.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Rexdude]

Here's one solution, if you like Apple hardware but can't stand the software lockin - RockBox. Opensource firmware for iPods and other mp3 players, that adds many more features than normal.

Re:We're all mind readers

[toddestan]

Why not? Typically when someone complains about the DRM on the iPod, all the Apple fanboys fall all over themselves pointing out how you can sync your iPod in Linux and pull the music off of it, etc. And they always completely fail to mention that this does not work on the Touch.

Re:We're all mind readers

[marcansoft]

There are several issues here.

• PTP. PTP is a USB standard specific for picture transfer. iPhone OS devices support PTP just fine; this is a non-issue.
• MTP. MTP is a newer USB standard specific for media transfer. Apple insists on locking users into iTunes and will never support MTP. They deserve any and all criticism for this. This isn't new, though - it has been Apple policy ever since the first iPod.
• What the OP wants: to use iPhone OS devices for generic mass storage. There is no non-hacky way to accomplish this with current standards and a device like the iPhone. This is what I've been talking about. Apple isn't at fault here.
• Other Apple lock-in tactics such as cryptographically authenticating -get this- video cables. This is ridiculous and they deserve to be bashed for it.

As I said, Apple is often evil (iTunes, cable auth) but not always (no mass storage). I just want people to get it straight when they are and aren't.

Re:We're all mind readers

[rdnetto]

The going out of their way part would be the crypto. In order to use the iPhone with non Apple software, you literally have to break the crypto used to hash the database. A simple CRC would have been sufficient if they just wanted to prevent corruption, but they're actively investing time and effort into working against people who are developing iTunes alternatives. There's plenty of info here.

Re:We're all mind readers

[Rexdude]

But when you buy an Apple product, by definition you are buying into a locked ecosystem, unlike the situations I outlined before.
So it pays to be well informed beforehand-are you willing to give up this flexibility in exchange for the looks/ease of use/hipness factor ?
I make it a point to mention these things to anyone going in for an iPod.(iPhone's a total flop here in India)

Re:We're all mind readers

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

But are they trying to stop other manufacturers from making iTunes-like software that works with their own or other non-Apple devices?

Re:We're all mind readers

[rdnetto]

But are they trying to stop other manufacturers from making iTunes-like software that works with their own or other non-Apple devices?

Yes, for with Apple devices. That would be the crypto.

Re:We're all mind readers

[ploxiln]

"Background services? What are those to the average user?"

What are the opinions of average users to me, as a user? They probably just think "I have a slow computer" even though its multiple times faster than $3000 computers were 6 years ago.

Maybe iTunes is pretty fast for you. But I have an ultraportable with a 1GHz core 2 duo and 1GiB of RAM, 2lbs, 8 hours battery life, good screen. And my computer is very snappy! But I had to put a custom stripped down ubuntu on it to get it that way.

So... typical users don't know and don't care... but that doesn't mean I can't complain about my use cases, which are satisfied by reasonable software, including rockbox firmware on my (old) ipod.

Re:We're all mind readers

[spire3661]

I actually lost my day one PSP that was cracked so i considered it Karma, bought a new one when PS3 remote play became avaialable. SO yes my PSP was cracked in he past, but not anymore. NOw back to the argument. They COULD have put a custodial amount of flash on the device for the OS and then added a memory stick port for additional media storage. It was a design decision to always deny USB mass storage access. By the way, my Windows mobile smartphone can present itself as mass storage with some software, how is the iphone different again?

The wording of Apple's reply

[shutdown -p now]

The wording of Apple's reply is a gem in and of itself:

While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!” from the Application Description.

Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.

That's a nice app you have there; would be a shame if anything happened to it...

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[TehZorroness]

(mods) This is not funny, it's the truth.

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[solevita]

According to TFA, Apple apparently replied with "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable". Harsh but fair.

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[tftp]

would you have preferred them to have rejected the app outright instead?

An outright, written rejection on the grounds of mentioning the competition may be seen by lawyers as grounds for a lawsuit.

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[Shoe Puppet]

For your convinience:

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fflash-of-genius.com%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D8

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[Have Blue]

This is a vast improvement over the old policy of any hiccup in your approval instantly pushing you to the back of the month-long line.

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[spire3661]

It still might. Apple is treading into dirty water here.

Re:The wording of Apple's reply

[jo42]

"Finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge!"

Change the wording to "Finalist in Evil-Privacy-Invading-Corporation's Humanoid-form-Robot Developer's Challenge!"

David or Goliath, Which One Today?

[eldavojohn]

So how is this developer's desire to port something from Android to the iPhone and advertise it different from Apple's desire to have Windows applications running on OSX and actively advertise it?

Oh, now I get it. You push the little guys around when you're the big man on campus. Certainly is interesting I can find literature about Symbian on your site. Tell me, if a very popular Symbian or Blackberry app was ported to the iPhone, would you allow the developer to advertise it? Because I'm betting you would.

Re:David or Goliath, Which One Today?

[mrdoogee]

But the publisher of Boot Camp is Apple. So you're still using Apple Software to run windows.

Welcome to detention.

Re:David or Goliath, Which One Today?

[BitZtream]

Apple's desire to have Windows applications running on OSX [apple.com]

Except ... the link ... is to run Windows on your Mac, not Windows apps in Mac OS X.

You push the little guys around [wikipedia.org] when you're the big man on campus

So in 4 years, they've come from no device on the market, to essentially owning the market ... They couldn't have used their 'monopoly' to do it since they couldn't have had one being the new comer. Maybe they actually have a better product or maybe they don't, but they have a marketing system that actually gets customers the info that makes them buy a product.

Either way, I'm fairly sure that Apple is far better selling products than Google, the guy who submitted the story, and yourself. It might be time to pay attention and figure out WHY they are kicking the shit out of everyone else rather than sit around and whine about it while making up bullshit excuses for the most trivial problems you can find.

When is this ever false?

[QuoteMstr]

Even if beginning with the best of intentions, a censor will always, eventually, come to use his power to censor to benefit himself.

Re:When is this ever false?

[bhartman34]

Except, in this case, Apple didn't even start with the best of intentions.

Re:When is this ever false?

[RPoet]

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." -- Judge Aaron Satie

Re:When is this ever false?

[trickyD1ck]

A company wants to have competitive advantage and make profit. News at eleven. The only censor we should be concerned of is the government.

Re:When is this ever false?

[QuoteMstr]

Why? If an organization can stifle me, and does so, what difference does it make whether that organization is a company or a government?

Re:When is this ever false?

[Haxzaw]

Because the government is the government and a company is a company. The US government is required by the constitution to allow freedom of speech, a company is not. A company intends to turn a profit, and if what you say may harm that potential, they don't have to publish it.

Re:When is this ever false?

[nmb3000]

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." -- Judge Aaron Satie
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.

The quote in your message body and the quote in your .sig seem to go together in an oddly remarkable way. It's almost like some kind of Möbius strip of quotations.

Nice job :)

Re:When is this ever false?

[nsayer]

The quote in your message body and the quote in your .sig seem to go together in an oddly remarkable way.

Not really. The quote in the .sig is ironic, but you probably have to know who Montgomery Burns is to get it.

Re:When is this ever false?

[nsayer]

Satie is a fictional character, of course, but it's likely that he was speaking about government censorship. Until and unless Apple can put people in jail (or worse), I'd say that such implied comparisons are at best overblown.

And if anyone makes a "there's an app for that" joke about jail, they probably should be sent to one immediately.

Re:When is this ever false?

[nsayer]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Censorship is bad when the government does it or requires it. A merchant is within his rights to decide what he wishes or does not wish to stock in his store (modulo anti-trust concerns, which do not even come close to applying here). Calling an exercise of that right "censorship" is an insult to censors.

Re:When is this ever false?

[geekoid]

No let me know when Apple is censoring speech, and we will tlak.

Guess what? If I ran coffee shop and you came in and started yelling, I'd toss you out. That wouldn't be wrong at all. I also wouldn't serve a product called "You can get a 2.99 breakfast and Denny's" I guess would be forging the chains of censorship for choosing which products I want to sell.

This is a Decision by Apple for there product sales. IT's a bad one, will reflect poorly, and it shows they haven't been paying attention to most of the complaints about the iPad. But it isn't a link in a chain that mean none of us will be able to speak are opinions.

Or it was one person with a hair up there but abusing their power to deny apps. I think we have all seen that sort of thing happen before.

For those playing the home game ""Judge Aaron Sati" is a fictional character from Star Trek and the context of the quote is completely out of place.

Of all the actual relevant quotes that exist, the fact you choose a fictional one is really sad.

Re:When is this ever false?

[geekoid]

And you need to know who Judge Aaron Satie is.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Aaron_Satie

I wonder if the poster will every become educated enough to quote real people?

Re:When is this ever false?

[geekoid]

know one know. It was a line created for Picard for a debate. A debate he won NOT because of the quote, or making a logical point. He won because the person he was against turned into a raving lunatic. That person was also the grand daughter(?) of Satie.

typical TV - Your hero wins by default, not because of anything they really did. It's right up there with the Chalie's angles method of investigation. Ask everyone until someone tries to kill you, then get away when the criminal is suddenly raving about their plan

Re:When is this ever false?

[Mark19960]

I would argue against that because in their early days this sort of behavior would not be allowed, period.
This is the behavior they bucked up against.. they wanted tinkerers and innovators.
Now, they want your hard earned cash, and they want to nickel and dime it out of you.

So, I do believe that Apple started with the best intentions.... they got greedy just like anyone else will when you start to give them fast, expensive cars, mansions, swimming pools full of women, etc.

I think Steve just wants to be the next Bill Gates, tbh.

Re:When is this ever false?

[Roxton]

There is a fundamental difference between entities who acquired the power to control the scope of your life through use of guns and entities who have done so through economic power. That doesn't make it suck less.

"I'm a Libertarian, and I lost the game fair and square, possibly before I was even born, so I'm just going to stick my torso in this barrel, take it up the ass, and call it freedom. WHOO!"

Re:When is this ever false?

[sabt-pestnu]

That you are correct makes me more concerned about "company censorship", rather than less.

Re:When is this ever false?

[BitZtream]

Remember the time ... when people didn't just use the word censor to garner attention? You know back when it was actually used for real issues, not trivial marketing BS that could easily be explained off by the simple fact that the statement in reference is irrelevant to all those looking at it, and potentially confusing the less sophisticated users of what was designed to be a consumer device, not techie toy?

When you use that word this way, you do nothing but lower its impact and make yourself sound irrational.

Re:When is this ever false?

[bhartman34]

I see what you're saying. I should've been more specific.

What I meant was that the censorship (of apps in the App Store), didn't start with the best of intentions.

Re:When is this ever false?

[bill_mcgonigle]

what difference does it make whether that organization is a company or a government?

Because a company won't come to your house and beat and/or kill you and/or your family and/or pets if it feels that you've been disobedient to their demands.

At least not yet.

Re:When is this ever false?

[drinkypoo]

Remember the time ... when people didn't just use the word censor to garner attention?

Let's just refer to the dictionary.

censor
-noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.

-verb (used with object)
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.

Origin:
1525-35;

"censor." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 05 Feb. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censor>.

Remember that time when people used words as they are presented in the dictionary, mindful of their actual meanings? Me neither. But the GP is certainly doing so.

Re:When is this ever false?

[nugneant]

It's within my "rights" to call you a simpering faggot with a Napolean complex, but that doesn't necessarily make doing so the right (and/or moral) thing to do.

Maybe you should quit jerking off over these purely semantic notions you seem to have acquired, pull your head out of your ass, take a good long look around you, and form a spontaneous conclusion or two, based not upon "given Deeply Held Value x and stimulus of situation y ergo z", but rather "situation y is bullshit, pure and simple, ergo it is wrong, and if Deeply Held Value x contradicts this basic notion, then Deeply Held Value x must itself be less than fully correct, full-stop, end of sentence, end of chapter".

Re:When is this ever false?

[nugneant]

What euphemism would you rather people use, milady?

(Remember the time when people didn't automatically assume they were qualified to speculate as to others' motivations, and found better things to do than bicker over semantics?)

Re:When is this ever false?

[nsayer]

Can you say "ad hominem?"

I thought not.

Remember a time..

[pablo_max]

Does anyone remember way back when anti-competitive behavior was illegal? I guess it just depends on which company does it.

Re:Remember a time..

[bsDaemon]

Yes, it does depend on what company does it. Anti-competitive behavior is legal until you're a monopoly, then its not. Doing things to undermine the competition is perfectly competitive until you're in a position where there is no more serious competition left in the market. Also, please be advised that the app store isn't the whole of "the market," the app store is apple's contribution to the market.

Re:Remember a time..

[Shatrat]

It's not really illegal until you've actually eliminated or prevented competition through it.
As it is hopefully the backlash from their North Korea style platform management should be enough to handle it.
I know I certainly wouldn't have an iPhone at any price.

Re:Remember a time..

[castironpigeon]

It's not really illegal until you've actually eliminated or prevented competition through it.

It's not even illegal then if the government sanctions your monopoly.

Re:Remember a time..

[zlogic]

IPhone's app market definetly has a larger marketshare than Android. They're using this to silence developers mentioning other platforms, basically that's like Microsoft telling an app vendor that their app will be erased from all Windows users' PCs if the app's packaging contains a "compatible with Mac" logo. And a "best Mac app of the year" award.

Re:Remember a time..

[Dog-Cow]

The latter, of course.

Apple could have come out with a phone that could not have any apps added to it at all. This would have been perfectly legal. Silly, perhaps, but legal.

Taking this same phone that can't have apps added to it and allowing apps to be added from Apple's site is no more illegal than the previous situation.

IOW, you are an idiot.

Re:Remember a time..

[neoform]

No one is forcing this guy to develop for the iPhone. He does develop for the iPhone, because iPhone apps make way more money than android apps.

Re:Remember a time..

[dzfoo]

Not quite. Windows users are free to install any application from any vendor they like, irrespective of Microsoft's wishes. By contrast, iPhone owners can only download applications available in the App Store.

Microsoft could decide to change this, and force every one to use their own Microsoft Software Store to purchase applications approved by Microsoft. I don't think they would because it would alienate most of their partners and clients. But the fact is that the can.

The difference here is that when Steve Jobs does it, people still find the devices compelling enough to continue to buy from Apple. As they say, Microsoft's mileage may vary.

        -dZ.

Re:Remember a time..

[AndrewNeo]

Apple could have come out with a phone that could not have any apps added to it at all.

Er.. you do know that the iPhone didn't support apps at first.. right? (And it was very silly, given all the now obviously visible potential) It wasn't until it was jailbroken did they come up with the App Store.

Re:Remember a time..

[geekoid]

It's not anti-competitive to choose not to sell a product in your store.

Re:Remember a time..

[DragonWriter]

Yes, it does depend on what company does it. Anti-competitive behavior is legal until you're a monopoly, then its not.

Under US federal law, certain types of anticompetitive behavior are only illegal when they are leveraging an existing monopoly to monopolize some other area (just about any type of behavior which does that is illegal), and other types of anticompetitive behavior are illegal in and of themselves. Other jurisdictions may or may not follow this pattern.

Of course, being illegal doesn't stop things from being done, it just means that there might be some consequences down the road when they are done.

Re:Remember a time..

[KillShill]

Anti-competitive is evil no matter who does it.

Evil always trumps illegal in my book.

Re:Remember a time..

[jo_ham]

Windows users, yes. Mac OS X users, yes.

Xbox 360 users: no, iPhone users: no

At least compare apples to apples, so to speak.

Re:Remember a time..

[BitZtream]

basically that's like Microsoft telling an app vendor that their app will be erased from all Windows users' PCs if the app's packaging contains a "compatible with Mac" logo.

No, it would be like Microsoft telling you can't put the App on Windows Marketplace for saying '2010 award that no one knows about for Macs!' on software that was only going to work on Windows.

The store doesn't sell Android apps, the blurb could most certainly confuse people who have no idea what Android is, which is most of the iPhone users of the world.

Its not like you're buying a app from the AppStore that will run on Android, it won't. And its unlikely that an iPhone user will have an Android device, highly unlikely. Even so they'd have to buy another copy from somewhere else. You won't find a Windows only boxed application that says compatible with Mac. You won't see 'compatible with mac' on the box for Office 2007, even though you can buy Office 2008 for a Mac.

Re:Remember a time..

[stewbacca]

At my software company, we're not in the business of giving free advertising to our competitors by mentioning them as our competitors in our documentation or our user manuals.

I would posit that removing the name of your competition from the liner notes of your product would be the epitome of competitive behavior, not anti-competitive.

Re:Remember a time..

[martas]

that's like saying "if you open a restaurant, and don't allow anyone to eat there, that's legal. so if you open a restaurant, and only allow white people to eat there, that should be legal too." now, you may or may not be right about apple's practices being legal, but your argument is, IMHO, invalid, as i tried to demonstrate through that analogy.

(btw, "idiot" is one of those pesky little words that, when used in an argument to attack the opponent, says much more about the person that said it than anyone else)

Re:Remember a time..

[indiechild]

Wow, that's one of the most nonsensical analogies I've read here.

Well considering Steve is a god....

[arcite]

I wouldn't take bets.

Re:Well considering Steve is a god....

[Scragglykat]

Or a devil... people worship them too.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[cohensh]

Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?

They would mention a book is a national best seller, even if the majority of the books were sold on Amazon. He's not promoting Android, he's promoting the fact that he was a finalist in a competition, which just happened to be hosted for Android apps.

It's my app store, and I'll censor if I want to...

[Trip6]

Apple is certainly clear on what they want control over. Flash on the iPhone anyone? NOT!

Makes sense

[Flavio]

Apple can't have Android inside Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[OverlordQ]

Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?

Yes?

"Hey they book got good reviews, it must be good, let me buy it."

Impulse purchasing ftw.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[MikeBabcock]

Lots of books have their review list, etc. shown on the back. Do you think the Washington Post wouldn't review a book that has "#4 NYT Best Seller" on the cover?

Was it your flash of stupidity you meant?

[ciroknight]

Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?

No, but I see all the time people with stickers on their book covers indicating their position on the New York Times Best Sellers list, or the Oprah Bookclub.

You can't expect to place ads for a competing store's award in another retail store.

This isn't that. This is advertising that you won a Fields Metal at a Nobel Consortium (with an enormous pinch of salt).

Re:Was it your flash of stupidity you meant?

[dzfoo]

>> This isn't that. This is advertising that you won a Fields Metal at a Nobel Consortium (with an enormous pinch of salt).

Not quite. It is advertising that a different version of your application, compiled for different platform won an award.

How is that relevant to the description blurb on another platform?

      -dZ.

Re:Was it your flash of stupidity you meant?

[DaveV1.0]

No, but I see all the time people with stickers on their book covers indicating their position on the New York Times Best Sellers list, or the Oprah Bookclub.

Neither the NY Times nor Oprah sell books directly to the public; Amazon, Borders, and Books-A-Million do. That is why Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Borders, and Books-A-Million will put those "NYT Best Seller" and "Oprah Bookclub" sticker on books but not "#3 best seller at " stickers. Google competes directly against Apple in that space.

This is advertising that you won a Fields Metal at a Nobel Consortium (with an enormous pinch of salt).

No, it isn't because the Nobel Consortium is an independent body who does not compete against others. This is saying one won a competition hosted by it's direct competitor. Here, let me fix your analogy so it is more appropriate:

This is advertising that you won a Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Nobel Committee is not a general book seller. This is very different saying one won "#1 favorite read as voted on by the customers of Amazon". That is a sticker you won't see on a book at B&N, Borders, etc.

Your post is nothing but a red herring.

Re:Was it your flash of stupidity you meant?

[vijayiyer]

The rub is that The New York Times and Oprah Book Club don't sell books.

Uuuuh wrong?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I think everyone's going to dogpile on Apple for this, but I think they're missing the point, the point of the removal isn't the word Android, or Google, but the whole phrase of Google Android Developer Contest. They want to be disassociated with that contest. Given that Apple hasn't delisted apps that claim compatibility with other phones, and they even list a whole crap load of Android podcasts and other Android content in the iTunes store, I don't think Apple's paranoid about just the Apple or Google part.

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[Attila Dimedici]

Right, they don't want their devlopers to realize that Google encourages and rewards outstanding developers.

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[shutdown -p now]

the point of the removal isn't the word Android, or Google, but the whole phrase of Google Android Developer Contest.

That's not what Apple's response says at all:

we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections ... Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store.

So, yes, this is about Android as a whole, not just the contest.

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[onefriedrice]

Oh the irony. It doesn't seem like you realize that Apple has been encouraging and rewarding outstanding developers for longer than Google has been a company. Check out the Apple Design Awards. Regardless, the point is to disassociate Apple with this particular contest, since in fact Apple didn't have anything to do with it. In my opinion, it's overly paranoid, but it certainly isn't anticompetitive unless you believe competing grocery stores should be able to plaster their ads on their competitor's store.

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[glop]

Or that the app was available on Android first? I mean that's not really a cool message for the leading platform...

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[hkmwbz]

Actually, it seems to be about irrelevant information. Android just happens to be irrelevant to the iPhone App Store.

Re:Uuuuh wrong?

[supernes]

Which is incidentally the only feasible way to get rewarded on the Android Market, if Google chooses to grant you an excellence award once every year.

Advertising... or not?

[Mark19960]

I don't see this guy mentioning that his application was a finalist in a developer challenge as such.
If anything it makes it stand out...

Gee, how did Apple find out in the sea of 5,000 applications that turn your phone into a flashlight?
They probably search for 'android' and snuff the mention of it out.

It is their store.... they can do what they want and for that reason I don't buy from it.
I have seen tons of apps on the android store that mention iPhone or the fact that the same application was written for it.
We don't see Google snuffing those out....
This Apple has worms in it.

Re:Advertising... or not?

[Mark19960]

Why thank you!
But I did not buy an iWidget.. I guess you have a few of them?

Re:Advertising... or not?

[Internal Modem]

It seems like you didn't RTFA or the summary either.

Re:Makes Sense

[Locke2005]

Even if one moron downloads it thinking that it will work on their Andriod [sic] phone, it's one person too many. Just as soon as somebody publishes an Android app that allows you to download software from the Apple App store to your Android, that comment might actually make start making sense.

Re:AppStoreRejections.slashdot.org

[maxume]

You clicked through and made 2 root level comments. That doesn't speak to you trying to ignore it.

Re:Makes sense

[Lumpy]

Of course not. It causes a ripple in the field bubble and will start a cascading collapse killing everyone inside or transporting pieces of them to random locations. We would have arms and other body parts fused to buildings all across Cupertino and that would be a big Faux Pas in social circles.

To avoid being embarrassed at the next dinner party keep all things android at least 20 feet from your apple iPhone or iTouch.

New app submission

[ArhcAngel]

I wonder how a game where an archer (who just happens to look like a certain Android) shoots an Apple (that just happens to have a bite taken out of it) off of it's pedestal would be received? Hrmmmm...

Re:Makes Sense

[whisper_jeff]

You know that an iTunes App Store application won't work on an Android phone. I know that. Do you think every single "average" user knows that?

And thanks for highlighting my typo. Good on ya.

Re:AppStoreRejections.slashdot.org

[brkello]

Good catch. I think an apple fanboy got his feathers ruffled a bit. Blind loyalty is blind.

Censorship - of course

[walt77]

We shouldn't be too surprised as censorship is among the usual tools of choice for dictatorial governments. Who expected benevolence?

Re:Censorship - of course

[shutdown -p now]

Since when Apple is a government?

Re:AppStoreRejections.slashdot.org

[maxume]

When he is around, he usually posts (at least) 2 root level comments to every story.

It sort of seems like spamming, but not quite. It is mostly just odd. I don't think it is driven by Apple lovin'.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that an iTunes App Store application won't work on an Android phone. I know that. Do you think every single "average" user knows that?

Of course they don't, but that's irrelevant. There's no physical way for the user to try to put an iPhone app on their Android phone. Likely, they'd try to search for it in the Android Market, and they'd find... the Android version.

Re:Makes Sense

[SquirrelCrack]

While I'm sure many will eagerly jump forward to proclaim, yet again, how evil Apple has become, to me, this just makes sense. Mentioning that the app was a finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge implies that the app is compatible with an Android system. Even if one moron downloads it thinking that it will work on their Andriod phone, it's one person too many. Makes sense to me.

Really Mods?! Who was he trolling? morons? To top it off, he actually has a valid point.

No, but...

[KingSkippus]

Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?

No, but then Barnes and Noble isn't the only place you can sell your book. If you don't like their policies, you can also put it up for sale on Amazon, Books-A-Million, any number of local bookstores, and probably even stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc.

On the other hand, Apple's app store is the only place to offer applications for iPhones, iTouches, and now iPads. The author of this application can't simply go through some alternate means of distributing his application without asking people to jailbreak their device, something that is at best iffy to do if they want to maintain service.

If Apple would let developers put their apps up for download from their own web site or alternate app stores, then I wouldn't complain. Apple has the right to accept, deny, or place any conditions on apps in its app store that they want. However, that's only half the story. My problem with their attitude is that they have set themselves up so that their store is the only store in town; they have a monopoly over distribution of iDevice applications. They have final authority over what I can and can't run on a device that I own, and as this story illustrates, they are grossly misusing that authority.

Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to by an iPad, given that it is going to maintain this paradigm. With phones, people are somewhat used to this. With the iPad pushing into the netbook and ultraportable laptop market, though, it is completely unacceptable. Imagine if you bought, for example, an HP laptop, and they told you the following: "Congratulations on your new HP laptop! To obtain applications, visit apps.hp.com. Oh, and we're sorry if it causes any inconvenience, but that is the only way you may install applications on this new laptop. Everything else is blocked, and if we find out that you're trying to install apps from anywhere except hp.com, your laptop could be deactivated. Congratulations again!" Well, that's Apple, and it boggles my mind that anyone would tolerate it.

These shenanigans are precisely why I, as a developer, got a refund on my developer program application and told them that I will be not be developing for the iDevices. It's also why I, who used to be an advocate for Apple devices, am strongly urging people to not buy their products these days.

Re:No, but...

[DaveV1.0]

I was going to mod the parent, but decided to correct you instead.

No, but then Barnes and Noble isn't the only place you can sell your book. If you don't like their policies, you can also put it up for sale on Amazon, Books-A-Million, any number of local bookstores, and probably even stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc.

Here, let me fix that for you:

No, but then iPhone App Store isn't the only place you can sell your software. If you don't like their policies, you can also put it up for sale in the Android Market, on the internet, any number of websites, and probably even stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc.

That the software can not be sold on Apple's proprietary web site if it's description mentions Apple's competitor does not prevent the author from selling it for use on non-Apple devices.

If HP did as you state, people would not buy the HP device. Instead they would buy from someone else. HP does not make the processor, motherboard, BIOS, or operating system. WinTel components are a commodity. Apple hardware and the Apple OSes are not commodity.

People tolerate it because they see value in Apple's name, reputation, and price. They want to play in Apple's sandbox.

If you don't want to play by Apple's rules, don't play in Apple's sandbox. Don't whine about it like the little bitch your
post makes you out to be.

Re:No, but...

[Mark19960]

'WinTel components are a commodity. Apple hardware and the Apple OSes are not commodity.'
Last time I checked Apple was *tel also.
So, yeah.... where is the special hardware there?
What is in a dell I have laying around here is also in that shiny Mac as well.

One problem with the Apple sandbox is that they rip people off on hardware.
The second problem is they ripped Microsoft for doing EXACTLY what they are doing now.
Pot... Kettle.. Black?

Re:No, but...

[Internal Modem]

Apple isn't the only place one can sell software...or software for mobile phones...or Flash of Genius for mobile phones.

Re:No, but...

[Internal Modem]

Funny, I have an HP Pavilion at work with the same processor running at the same speed and the same GPU as my MacBook Pro.

The FSB is faster on the Pavilion than on the MacBook, yet the MacBook beats it in real world performance and benchmarks.

This is true if I boot into OS X or Windows.

Also, the Pavilion's build quality is horrible, and it has a bunch of flashy eye candy that looked dated a day later.

Re:No, but...

[DaveV1.0]

Check again, and get back to me.

Apple uses Intel processors with proprietary BIOS and OS. Some of what is in a Dell will be found in a Mac, but several important parts won't be. That is why you can't go to the Apple store and buy a copy of OS X and install it on a Dell. If you don't believe me, give it a try.

Re:No, but...

[prockcore]

The FSB is faster on the Pavilion than on the MacBook, yet the MacBook beats it in real world performance and benchmarks.

So either you believe Apple sprinkles magic fairy dust into their machines that make them run faster than the exact same hardware elsewhere, or you fucked up your tests.

Re:No, but...

[zzsmirkzz]

Isn't their some sort of AntiTrust law that prevents a company from leveraging their dominant position (i.e. monopoly) in one market (Hardware device) to gain dominance over another market (software). It boggles my mind that state AG's haven't joined together to bring this in front of the DoJ and all sue the pants off of Apple for doing this especially the states that really need the money. I see it as no better than Microsoft bundling IE with Windows, even though on Windows you could install another browser of your choice very easily.

Re:No, but...

[itsdapead]

No, but then Barnes and Noble isn't the only place you can sell your book. If you don't like their policies, you can also put it up for sale on Amazon, Books-A-Million, any number of local bookstores, and probably even stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc.

...because major bookstore chains and stores like Walmart are so very well known for being friendly and accommodating to small, independent book producers and self-publishing writers, and don't favor the big publishers or cherry pick a few best-selling authors at all. In fact, you'd be lucky to get in the door unless you're signed up with a major publisher and distributor: good luck getting your rights back if you don't like the way they are distributing your book.

Imagine if you bought, for example, an HP laptop, and they told you the following: "Congratulations on your new HP laptop! To obtain applications, visit apps.hp.com.

Trouble is, if apps.hp.com offered thousands of apps, with some minimum level of quality control and assurance that they'll run on your hardware, a reduced danger that you'll get clobbered with virii malware or see your machine clogged up with pointless startup services - then a hell of a lot of customers would feel it was a great improvement on the status quo.

The question is, would HP let you register as a developer for pocket money? (How much does it cost to register as an XBox or PS3 developer?)

Re:No, but...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I agree. The problem is, is that we let them slide because they're products are pretty and cool.

Its like getting a speeding ticket. If you're a fat ugly girl... you're getting a ticket. If you're a skinny hot blonde chick with big tits.... You can get away with murder.

Re:No, but...

[Internal Modem]

It's not as if I am the only one reporting this.

Re:Makes Sense

[delinear]

How is that different to the situation in the mobile phone app market for the last decade? You're lucky if you can find an app that works reliably over more than a handful of current generation phones, start branching out with something older or something cutting edge and your chances drop still further, and the requirements for these things tend to be incredibly confusing to the end user (who generally doesn't even know what OS their phone is running).

Clicking on the blog link...

[Somebody Is Using My]

It amused me that when I clicked on the link to the blog, I was returned a "503: Service Not Available" page.

I guess they are being hammered by Slashdot traffic right now, but I thought it also was a curiously coincidental comment on Apple's own response to their app.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[rickb928]

The flash of supidity is thinking visitors to the iPhone App Store have any significant interest in Android apps.

Unless they also have an Android phone, in which case they are going over to the Market for those apps.

More Apple paintywaists, and more=less. Not a real big deal, but I wonder how Apple would react to a developer who mentioned their app was a finalist for a Nokia or Microsoft competition.

And the dev has a sense of humor. So they don't seem to need the mentions to achieve their goals. Good for them.

Apple can bite ME.

Just reword it to

[cstdenis]

"Winner of the Google developer challenge for (competing app Apple forbids the name of)"

Re:Just reword it to

[Qubit]

for (competing app Apple forbids the name of)

Wouldn't that be competing platform ?

Creativity, so long as we approve of it

[Moheeheeko]

HEIL JOBS!

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[Skreems]

And they wouldn't refuse to carry the book if the manufacturer shipped it with a sticker on it saying "Voted Best New Author In Amazon.com Awards" or something, which seems like a pretty decent analogy to this case.

Re:Makes Sense

[bhartman34]

You know that an iTunes App Store application won't work on an Android phone. I know that. Do you think every single "average" user knows that?

Android has its own app store, prominently displayed on its phones. Are you seriously suggesting that someone would ignore the app store on their phones, and try to run software never intended for their phone, despite the well-publicized link between iTunes and the iPhone, and the fact that even the most cursory explanation of features (for a true newbie) from the salesperson would explain to them where to get apps from?

If people such as that exist, I highly doubt they're capable of dialing phones, let alone using smartphones.

Re:Makes Sense

[Skreems]

Exactly how do think an "average" user would plan to get the application from the iPhone where they made the purchase over to the Android (since, like all average users, they own 2 cell phones)? I'm pretty sure the "average" user is familiar with the "buy it on this phone, use it on this phone" pattern, which eliminates all of the potential confusion right there.

Hmmm

[Lunix Nutcase]

You know it's rather funny to see all the whining and bitching and demonizing of Apple over this when the app developer himself says:

I suppose it’s logical, and I’m not complaining; Apple is a wonderful company to work with. I took out the offending bit from the description.

Re:Hmmm

[jack2000]

This apple has made it's worms squirm in fear and obedience. It's sad really.

Re:Hmmm

[vtavares]

Sure, of course he'll say that. He needs to sell his app. Would you say bad things about someone who just threatened you?

Re:Hmmm

[Lunix Nutcase]

Sure, of course he'll say that. He needs to sell his app.

If that were true Trent Reznor wouldn't still have his app on the app store after blasting Apple pretty hard after they rejected one of the updates a while back.

Would you say bad things about someone who just threatened you?

How was he threatened? They said his app was accepted but they would like him to remove something from his description.

Re:Hmmm

[Overzeetop]

Thank you sir, may I have another!

Re:Hmmm

[vtavares]

Read between the lines. Why should he remove the reference to Android? Just because Apple said so? Why doesn't Apple remove all references to Windows from its site, then? Stupid argument, huh?

Apple's polite request to remove the reference to the Android content is a subtle threat. Look, the dude has a niche app that nobody would probably ever notice. Most apps suck balls. His app maybe doesn't suck as bad because some people who use the Android version thought it was decent enough to recognize. That's probably the only praise he'll ever get for it. So, if he wants to sell the Apple version, why not mention that other people didn't think it totally sucked. It just so happens that the other people use the Android version. Is that considered advertising the competitive platform? Or is he just trying to market his app with third-party recognition. Why would he be trying to sell the Apple version if he was pumping Android? Duh....

See http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1538920&cid=31035778 above.

Re:Hmmm

[Rennt]

I know its difficult when its written down, but you really didn't notice the slightest trace of sarcasm?

Re:Hmmm

[Stormy Dragon]

And obviously he was perfectly sincere. He couldn't possibly be just saying that to avoid further trouble with a company that's already shown itself to be irrational, petty, and vindictive.

Re:Hmmm

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The nazi's would clothe and feed you too as long as wore the uniform and killed for them.

Re:Hmmm

[Mr2001]

If that were true Trent Reznor wouldn't still have his app on the app store after blasting Apple pretty hard after they rejected one of the updates a while back.

You think every random developer has the same clout Trent Reznor has?

Let's See if I understand

[CheshireCatCO]

Apple doesn't want to list an app that mentions a competitor. (And in a fairly irrelevant way, too. The fact that another version of the app won an award doesn't necessary have any bearing on the iPhone incarnation, does it?) So, in effect, they don't want to advertise for the competition on their own system.

OK, maybe it seems a bit petty, but this isn't really censorship. It seems more like intelligent business practice.

Re:Let's See if I understand

[vtavares]

You are missing the point. The comment about Android is not to promote Android. It's to declare that the app doesn't suck since the Android version won an award. It's like saying that a book is a NY Times Best Seller. Does that mean go buy the NY Times? No. It means that the book probably doesn't suck.

Re:Let's See if I understand

[CheshireCatCO]

But the book is the book, regardless of what newspaper I see review it. The app may not be the same app on a different platform. As much as I dislike MS Office on Windows, it's much worse on a Mac. Platform does matter.

And I'll wager that competing papers don't quote each other's book reviews, in any case. That would be promoting the other paper by both discussing it ("no such thing as bad publicity") and suggesting it's reviews are a good source of information.

Shame on Apple for taking this route

[StuartHankins]

Jeez, Apple, what were you thinking when you did this? You come across as a bully. As a Mac user I'm disappointed.

1999 iMac DV SE, 200? eMac, multiple iPod shuffles, 2.4 duo 15" MacBook Pro, iPod Touch 2G, iPhone 3GS

Re:Shame on Apple for taking this route

[Lunix Nutcase]

I suppose it’s logical, and I’m not complaining; Apple is a wonderful company to work with.

From the horses mouth.

Re:Shame on Apple for taking this route

[idontgno]

City 17 is a great place. After all, "It's safer here."

I was told to leave all my luggage at the rail station. I suppose it's logical, and I'm not complaining; Civil Protection is a wonderful security force to work with.

I'm looking forward to the next JobsCast.

Re:Shame on Apple for taking this route

[jack2000]

You should come to Nova Prospekt it's wonderful here, even the name, New prospects for all! You can come down here and start on your job right away! A simple body enhancement and you can start on your new job, shooting combine balls...

Re:Shame on Apple for taking this route

[MemoryDragon]

Wake up apple has been like that for several years now and it becomes worse and worse every year.
One of the reasons why I went for an android phone instead, still buy macs, but they are on the edge...

Old and new wordings in app description

[noidentity]

Old wording: Finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge!

New wording: Finalist in Large Internet Search Company's Human-Looking Robot Developer's Challenge!

At least he was able to preserve the basic meaning in the reworded version.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[Skreems]

There are already 3rd party app stores for the Android. Not sure how reputable they are, but they do exist. To release a package you still need a $25 developer certificate from Google so the phone can verify the source of the application, but once the jar is built you can install it from any source you like.

Attention

[lluBdeR]

Android is now an un-word

Chink in the armor?

[oldhack]

Stevie boy is finally cracking up? This sounds like the (lost) battle with Microsoft back in the 80s.

We don't serve their kind here!

[xleeko]

Your droids ... They'll have to wait outside.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[shutdown -p now]

Because, 1) none their competitors do not have similar restrictions in place, and 2) they do not provide any venue for installing applications on one's iPhone apart from the App Store, so censoring that is effectively censoring the entire platform.

Also, Apple does not "subsidize" anything here. The developer wrote application for their own money, and a cut of any sales of the app go to Apple, part of which is used for store maintenance. It is a very large stretch to call that "subsidizing" in any way.

Well, I guess you're one of those guys who think that kicking people with t-shirts mentioning companies competing with Olympic sponsors out of Olympic venues was a grand idea. After all, the logic is exactly the same.

Re:Makes Sense

[whisper_jeff]

Could you please explain to me exactly how I'm trolling. No - really - I know when I'm being a bit dickish and that certainly wasn't even remotely dickish so please enlighten me as to how I was being a troll.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[Dog-Cow]

It works perfectly for users. Apple doesn't care about the developers. It never has.

Users have a simple App to access the store. All the apps are tested for compatibility, and the store won't let or will warn if you try to purchase an app that is not compatible with your device. The apps are tested to ensure they follow basic UI guidelines and that they fail gracefully when connectivity is limited or unavailable. Purely as a user, what's not to like?

Re:Objectively speaking...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Why is Apple demonized for not willing to subsidize their competitors advertising?

See, I read this the opposite way.

It's easy for Apple to point at this and say: "The iPhone is so big/successful/important that the award-winning apps for other platforms inevitably end up ported to the iPhone. The iPhone gives you all these great iPhone-exclusive apps, AND all the best apps from any other platform!"

Mod parent up

[Comboman]

Last time I checked, Android apps couldn't run on an iPhone (and vise-versa). The Android version of the app may have won a prize but that doesn't apply to the iPhone version. Ask anyone who has ever played the "same" game on XBox360, PS3, Wii and PC; just because they have the same name, doesn't make them the same app.

Re:Mod parent up

[MaximKat]

Are you saying that if the game won some award for pc version, they can't write that on the xbox version cover?

The why are the other things there?

[SuperKendall]

Hey, let's actually highlight the actual reason instead of cherry-picking words that support your thesis:

inappropriate or irrelevant platform information

How is saying an app won an Android Developer Contest not irrelevant to the iPhone platform? That strikes me as the very definition of irrelevancy, because it's not the same platform.

Furthermore, the original poster is pointing out that many apps in the app store today mention Android. Well you just totally blew by that one, didn't you? How do you mesh you assertion that Android is verboten when plainly it's not by the presence of counter-examples?

Re:The why are the other things there?

[shutdown -p now]

How is saying an app won an Android Developer Contest not irrelevant to the iPhone platform? That strikes me as the very definition of irrelevancy, because it's not the same platform.

It's an application doing the same thing, and written by the same people. Yes, I think that's relevant. You know those stickers they often place on movies - e.g. "Avatar, from the director of Titanic"?

As a side note, you yourself have cherry-picked one particular highlight, and ignored the other two, which plainly state that "platform compatibility" and "general platform references are not relevant" - which, to me, unambiguously says that even mentioning that there is an Android version of the same app would already break this rule.

Furthermore, the original poster is pointing out that many apps in the app store today mention Android. Well you just totally blew by that one, didn't you? How do you mesh you assertion that Android is verboten when plainly it's not by the presence of counter-examples?

It's very well documented that Apple review process is extremely inconsistent, and one application can pass, while another one can be blocked, both featuring the exact same thing. We've also seen cases of an application being allowed, but a subsequent version being blocked, because of something that was present in the original version. There have been a slew of /. stories on this - I'm too lazy to look them up, so JFGI.

So, I'm not at all surprised that some applications got away with mentioning Android, while others did not.

Re:The why are the other things there?

[Draek]

How is saying an app won an Android Developer Contest not irrelevant to the iPhone platform? That strikes me as the very definition of irrelevancy, because it's not the same platform.

Err, what? as the name says it's not a platform, it's a *contest*. Contests which your product has won are relevant for selling said product, that's Marketing 101. C'mon, I know the RDF is strong and all but it's not rocket science.

Should Direct2Drive remove Rome: Total Waras well for mentioning they got a Best Strategy Game 2004 award from Gamespot, and Crysis Warhead for using the GOTY award Crysis got from PC Gamer as well?

Furthermore, the original poster is pointing out that many apps in the app store today mention Android. Well you just totally blew by that one, didn't you? How do you mesh you assertion that Android is verboten when plainly it's not by the presence of counter-examples?

By asserting that the Apple censors are on crack and may reject you once then accept you once you resubmit the exact same app, simply because you got a different result on the Rejection Roulette. There's enough precedent for that, and it's also the easiest way to explain *your* assertion that mentioning a competing platform is enough grounds to reject an app, given the very same counter-examples.

Re:The why are the other things there?

[SuperKendall]

platform compatibility" and "general platform references are not relevant" - which, to me, unambiguously says that even mentioning that there is an Android version of the same app would already break this rule.

I get exactly the opposite reading from that but then I only have to follow these rules instead of thinking about them only from a theoretical standpoint.

Avatar, from the director of Titanic

Well that's showing just how movie analogies can be even worse than car analogies in the world of computers. Originating from a whole different platform, with different competition, it's more like saying "Avatar, from some guy who made super 8 movies in his basement". It says nothing really about how it will function on the iPhone nor to my mind does it really speak to the utility of the application very much.

It's very well documented that Apple review process is extremely inconsistent

I would say that is very poorly documented, basically we have just a bunch of speculation from a handful of bloggers. The day to day reality of the iPhone developer shows far less variance than you seem to assume, especially in the past year (yes at first is was more variable).

But then I've never been stupid enough to simply try to re-submit something Apple finds wrong (like a crash), I fix and resubmit. Imagine that, someone not attempting to work around the rules finds them consistent.

You can't argue the RULES are inconsistent when to date it's been the attempted enforcement that has been less so.

MM DOES sync iPod touch... kinda

[Asmor]

I use Media Monkey and it does sync the iPod Touch... kind of.

First, it only syncs music, not apps. (duh)

More importantly, though, it seems like the sync is buggy as hell. I don't even try to use my iPod Touch to play music anymore, because it rarely goes more than three or four tracks without locking up and becoming unresponsive for a good minute or so, before finally failing to play the next song and giving up. Basically all I use the iPod Touch for now is as an authenticator for WoW and occasionally to listen to podcasts in the car.

Also worth mentioning that for MM to sync the iPod Touch, you need to have iTunes installed... And a very, very specific version of iTunes at that.

Re:It's my app store, and I'll censor if I want to

[Again]

Apple is certainly clear on what they want control over. Flash on the iPhone anyone? NOT!

I like it this way. Of course, I don't own any Apple devices but Apple is a large enough company to throw some weight around and if this helps kill flash forever it will make me happy. If Apple can accomplish this, then I nominate them for a noble prize.

I will forgive any and all tyrannical behavior from Apple if this end is achieved.

Re:Makes Sense

[khellendros1984]

You could grab the file out of your iTunes directory and try to copy it over to an Android phone. It's not a "physical way"...but then again, I'm not even sure what that would mean anyhow.

they warn only afterwards

[osssmkatz]

They warn only when syncing. Although it was a free app, so maybe they only warn when it's a paid app. --Sam

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[LostCluster]

Nah, they'd slap a "30% Off! Members save even more!" sticker over that.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[Phizzle]

Apple is Subsidizing, it is naive to say otherwise, the traffic to their site is drawn by their brand they paid for that, just like they pay for the bandwidth, they paid to make the site, they pay people to upkeep the site, etc... In the real world these things have a tangible cost and sub sequentially a tangible value, and Apple should not have to provide advertising space and opportunities for anyone but themselves. I am not saying its right or wrong but its business.

Lim (Apple - Microsoft) = 1

[waTR]

I have been an apple user and STRONG proponent since the 6400 days. Though, these days I am no longer a proponent, simply a happy user of the hardware I purchased previously. However, even this is changing, as with every update to the OS, more and more of the sky is being blocked out with the OS becoming more and more closed. This seems like a direct attack at the heart of *nix, which has been the poster-child of openness (Linux/BSD). Microsoft is already on life-support, but the family is selfish and unwilling to let go, and simply pull the plug. Apple seems to be racing with great zeal for the same fate.

The way apple has been making their system more and more closed (ever since they closed-sourced the OSX kernel), has been a steady decline into a place where apple will no longer be the "Alternative".

It seems they are terrified of the prospect of losing their main revenue stream: hardware. However, they changed their business model ever since the old iMac (colored) came out. Where they are no longer just hardware, they are a user experience. On the other hand, they still seem to be terrified of the prospect of a repeat of what happened in the early 90s when they opened their hardware to other non-apple producers and almost went out of business due to cheaper supply of apple hardware from non-apple producers. Sadly, they don't want to accept the new business model as being a solution to this problem. It seems as though they have one leg in the past and one racing for the future. If they don't be careful, this may rip their company apart.

To Apple:
Openness != lower profits. However, openness is the future, I think this is an established business reality at this point. Stop waging war on this, you will lose, and we the people WILL win in the end. So while you may win a few battles with release of some neat things (iPad), you will lose the war, because those you depend on most dearly will abandon you...and they are not the consumer, as you may think... this will begin with the fall of your King. Who has lost his path, perhaps even led astray by those advisors he trusts most. Because they know he is short on time. They know there will be strife. So they are trying to shut all the exits from the outside, so those inside will have no way out. The momentum in the wrong direction is so great at this point, that sadly, there is very little chance the company will be able to stear clear of the rocks ahead.

"Here lays the broken spirit of Apple - April 1, 1976 - January 27, 201X"

Re:Appstore model is broken

[Belial6]

You don't even need the $25 developer certificate. All the user has to do is click the checkbox that they want to install from unverified sources.

Re:Makes Sense

[vtavares]

Really? I take it mean that it's a good app. But then again, I don't drink the Apple Kool-Aid.

Re:It's my app store, and I'll censor if I want to

[prockcore]

Of course, I don't own any Apple devices but Apple is a large enough company to throw some weight around and if this helps kill flash forever it will make me happy.

The iPhone has not supported flash for 3 years now, and flash hasn't been hurt in the slightest. Apple can't kill flash unless they have a viable alternative... and html5 isn't it as long as IE rules the web.

Soy Nuts and Anger

[Anonymous Coward]

A giant customized Starbucks in Cupertino California where lattes and no soy skim macchiatos are given out free to all employees. The background music involves a playlist of Nora Jones, David Matthews, John Mayer, and Bono on loop from an Ipod docked somewhere in the Apple/Starbucks facility. Hours are long but morale is surprising high as developers, hardware and software, are given 30 minute breaks to masturbate to the new itunes interface.

All developers sit at cafe type tables with a Mac Book Pro while their lord and master Steve Jobs stands deskless in his predictable attire of a turtleneck and jeans. In fact, this is the preferred (mandatory) dress code at Apple. Jobs walks around to each and every department, separated by latte and vegan preferences, and checks on the performance and efficiency of his developers. At any given point in the day one may see Mr Jobs yelling at a programmer for not implementing a button in the perfect shade of corn flower blue (#6495ED) and immediately sends him to the apple punitive chamber, consisting of a HP Compaq running Vista Basic.

There are 2 software development departments and 2 hardware development sections in Apple. For software there is the Apple core team, Apple Open Source team. In hardware there is the Apple systems and management team and the iDevice team. Since the OSX kernel consists of a BSD darwin kernel there is no real need for low level programmers and as such the entirety of the Apple core team consists of UI designers and photoshop junkies. All software churned out from the core team is designed in a program strikingly similar to Visual Studio's form designer but with Cocoa Objective C generated instead. The 16 hour day (Jobs demands 16 hour days since he himself never sleeps) of a core dev involves lining up the right shade of chrome with the latest photoshopped graphite button and maintaining the correct color scheme, not an easy job at all.

The Apple open source team involves a little bit more coding, which is mandated to be done in TextEdit or the option of a $80 third party mac text editor. The Apple open source team doesn't actually create much code but searches the internet for interesting BSD licensed software and modifies it as it's own through obfuscation and conversion to objective C. Many of the items a mac user sees comes from the open source world stamped by apple such as the ability to play music taken from 67 different originally linux based players, CD burning, and the overall ability to click a mouse. Apple's legal department has no qualms about this practice and has assured many that since most of the code is BSD and if any is GPLed many Linux hippies should be grateful that Apple fostered WebKit by using KHTML and adding some Gecko bloat. Perhaps one of the most important items that the open source team has done to date is use parts of the FreeBSD to keep the kernel up to date.

There's not much to say about the Apple systems and management team. I suppose they can be classified in to desktop and laptop systems. Because hardware work is beneath Apple in general and thought of being only worthy of Windows Users and as such can be found working on these beauties in the starbucks bathroom. Desktops are currently made by buying dell machines and putting them in Lian Li cases, where the majority of the costs goes to buying titanium Apple emblems to paste on the sides. Laptops consists of the rebranding of only the most silver and black Sony Viaos but talk has been going around about rebranding Asus EeePCs for a new Apple netbook but you didn't hear that from me, for fear of my life.

The iDevice team's job is to develop for the ipod, iphone, itouch, and many other portable electronics apple may release in the future. Their jobs are very interconnected with the open source team as well as the core dev team. Using firmware from random samsung devices and giving it an OSX skin the ipod stands as a shining example that infringement only applies to greasy file sharers and that the music player remains the best in market

Re:Soy Nuts and Anger

[indiechild]

That was brilliant!

Apple has issues

[Ukab the Great]

with Apps involving sex, Hitler's Mein Kampf, and Android.

So much for my dream of making a game where you fight Nazi hooker androids.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[prockcore]

It works perfectly for users.

Except it doesn't. If it did work perfectly for the users, I would have google voice and latitude on my iphone.

Instead I am forced to use inferior web versions of those two apps.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[prockcore]

Why is Apple demonized for not willing to subsidize their competitors advertising?

How are they subsidizing anything? Is Apple paying people to write iPhone Apps now?

Did *anyone* actually RTFA?

[jrothwell97]

True, the App Store model is monopolistic and overall has rather nasty side effects, but the rejected description stated that the app had been a finalist in Android's developer challenge.

This information was simply irrelevant, because the Android app is a completely different beast to the iPhone OS one. It's like Microsoft advertising Office 2007 by saying that Office 5.1a for the Mac won an award, somewhere. True, it was probably inadvertent, but if I was browsing the synaptic repositories and came across the Skype package, I wouldn't want to know about how well it runs on AmigaOS.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[dzfoo]

>> Instead I am forced to use inferior web versions of those two apps.

Or use the phone that comes with the iPhone, which work perfectly for the general user.

      -dZ.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[DaveV1.0]

You are using a false analogy.

The Washington Post does not sell the book, only it's reviewer's opinion of the book. At no time does the Washington Post have to mention the NYT or it's best seller list and Post's customers never see the competitor's name in the Post's review.

In this case, the description of the product in the App store mentions Android and the Android contest. Android and Google is in direct competition with Apple and its devices.

Do you think you would see "#4 best seller on Amazon.com" on a book sold at Borders or Barnes and Nobles?

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[DaveV1.0]

And the next time the customer decides to buy a book, he goes to Amazon, orders it on-line, and B&N loses at least one sale.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[dtml-try MyNick]

Purely as a user, what's not to like?

The idea that apple is trying it's hardest to keep quality developers away from the iphone os platform?

With such ridiculous and arbitrary rules I'm willing to bet there are a lot of serious companies and/or developers that would like to develop for the iphone but are afraid to invest the time and money because of the insane approval process.

I'm willing to bet that if apple would make the approval rules a lot more transparent and less strict we would see much more quality apps being developed.

Here's a guess

[langelgjm]

It would probably be rejected, and you'd be sued for copyright and trademark infringement by both Google and Apple.

Re:Here's a guess

[Dhalka226]

Then somebody with a bit of money to play with should definitely do it, since they would almost surely get their asses handed to them on that lawsuit.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[dzfoo]

Sure, they could advertise as such. But is the fact that they declined to do so a reason to demonise them?

        -dZ.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[geekoid]

"Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon"

Ironically, I've seen similiar signs in many BANs.

Also, it isn't uncommon for a retail outlet to let you know where else to buy a product. It's called 'customer service'

Hell you can even learn how to compete with BaN at BaN:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Home-Based-Bookstore/Steve-Weber/e/9780977240609/?itm=1&USRI=amazon

Oh poor them

[HenryKoren]

This rejection must have hurt them dearly. I mean, getting front page coverage on Slashdot must have really damaged their app sales. I weep for them.

The new smash hit Apple TV commercial...

[dskoll]

Announcer: Buy an iPhone and see why 2010 will be like "1984"

Re:Makes Sense

[DragonWriter]

You know that an iTunes App Store application won't work on an Android phone. I know that. Do you think every single "average" user knows that?

The "average" user doesn't both:
(a) use the iTunes App Store, and
(b) have an Android phone.

The average user that meets both of those requirements (without which this is a non-issue), I would imagine, is quite aware of that.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[DragonWriter]

The apps are tested to ensure they follow basic UI guidelines and that they fail gracefully when connectivity is limited or unavailable. Purely as a user, what's not to like?

The way Apple demands that popular applications be "updated" to remove basic functionality (e.g., most recently, USB-based transfers for GoodReader and Stanza.)

Too closed for me

[El Fantasmo]

Imagine how popular Intel motherboards would be if you had to specially write programs for them without mentioning brand interoperability or non Intel accolades. e.g.: Intel "We'd appreciate it if you'd not mention you program works on AMD chips or we'll hurt you financially." Oh wait... Another thing, given this, how come Apple lets Mac format software get sold on the same disk or in the same package as Windows and/or Linux software? Why don't I have to go through itunes to get it? I hope Apple loosens up a bit or goes the way of soldered ram...

Re:Too closed for me

[BitZtream]

Uhm, you realize they try to do this all the time right? With their own unique, not willing to license to anyone else extensions to the x86 architecture?

You realize the 'pentium' name was EXACTLY that? You realize that switching to a 'slotted' CPU sockets was done entirely to make it so you couldn't have an AMD processor drop into a intel motherboard?

Intel 64 bit extensions, latest SSE revisions, virtualization specs, all of that stuff doesn't just work on an AMD processor. AMD has its own stuff to do basically the same thing, only its a little different and uses different op codes. An OS written entirely based on an intel reference for 64 bit, SSE or virtualization will hard fault on an AMD processor if it tries to use these features. Every OS that supports them just uses different code to accomplish the same things between the processors because they are basically close enough from a high level, even if the op codes and registers are different.

Drop an AMD processor into an intel motherboard.

Go ahead, I'll wait for you to tell me how well it works. Please send me the pictures after you get it into the socket, we'll go from there on how well it works since you've already run into incompatibilities since they want even share sockets.

You could not have picked a better example of a company intentionally making things incompatible to hurt its competition.

Apple is protecting users

[commodoresloat]

You guys have it all wrong. This is a good thing. Apple isn't competing with Google. They are just trying to protect users from malware apps that turn users into evil androids! Have you people not seen Blade Runner?

Re:Apple is protecting users

[Duradin]

I don't recall anyone turning into a replicant in Blade Runner. People turning out to be replicants, yes. People turning into replicants, no.

Re:Apple is protecting users

[drkim]

You mean 'Nexus One?'

Annoying

[jweller13]

I love my ipod but when Apple does things like this, which it seems they do every other month, it really chaps my ass.

Good for Apple.

[BitZtream]

I'm sick of seeing app descriptions like the one used for this app before the change.

Telling people that its great for Android is of no value what so ever to an iPhone user.

Its just a wasted fluff piece that takes up space for what should be a real app description.

Listing off the reasons why other people think your app is awesome BEFORE you actually tell anyone what your app does is fucking annoying for those of us looking for apps.

Most of us don't give a shit what awards you've one, awards are generally politically based and rarely a direct relation to how good something is, regardless of the award.

I don't want to read about 10 different awards you got, I want to know what the app does and what features its got that make it worth my money and/or time.

Everyone here is bitching about Apple being so controlling and 'censoring' and you guys STILL DON'T GET IT. You keep going on about how Apple is wrong all the while ignoring that they have a growth rate thats off the charts.

I appreciate that Apple wants this pointless bit of information removed from the description, it does nothing useful to me. I don't use android, and if I'm buying a flashcard app for my iPhone I'm probably not also going to carry it around on my Android phone since having both would be retarded in and of itself.

You might be wise to listen to their marketing department. They've always been the smaller company that could. People like Apple (outside of the fanboys of geekdom, we all have our own things that we love, we don't count) for a reason, maybe its cause they are trendy, but I think its more than that, and this is an example of one of those reasons.

When you go to the store and buy a boxed application that runs on OS X and Windows, and it says so on the box, its because it runs on both. They don't put the OSX version in the box and advertise that you can go buy a Windows version if you want also. Nor do Windows only versions of software tell you about the Mac version. This App is sold in a store for software that when you buy/download it, it will only work on the iPhone (barring some hacked device that runs iPhone OS or a vm or simulator), so theres no reason to mention Android, it will just confuse all the people who have NO FREAKING IDEA what Android is, which is pretty much everyone outside this community. They may know that Google has the Nexus One, or that you can buy a Droid, but they have no clue what Android OS is.

Re:Good for Apple.

[Al Dimond]

You don't like the way the developer advertises his app. I don't like the fact that Apple decides for him how he can do it.

Why do people that don't own iPhones care? Because we don't want to own iPhones. We would rather that closed ecosystems lose mindshare and fail so we aren't economically compelled to write software for them.

Re:Makes Sense

[vtavares]

uh...replied to the wrong parent....getting my coat....

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[adamdoyle]

Do you think you would see "#4 best seller on Amazon.com" on a book sold at Borders or Barnes and Nobles?

Well they certainly aren't censoring the keyword "amazon.com" from their website or store...

Besides, do they really think the kind of person who would be buying an iPhone or an iPod touch wouldn't already know what Android is anyways? Not to mention the fact that if someone is already browsing the app store, then they probably already own one. It's a bad move if you ask me...

Doesn't seem to be stopping this App

[spinspin]

It's called BrokeAndroid. It lets you smash up an android phone on your iPhone. I guess it's ok if you're ripping on Android http://itunes.com/Apps/BrokeAndroid

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[DaveV1.0]

That is irrelevant, because the could do so. They could refuse to carry those book. And, you will notice those are the titles of books specifically about or directly related to Amazon.com. The app in question is not directly related to Android or Google, but the app's description mentions Android directly.

Your comparison is apples and grapes.

I see you think everyone's life revolves around technology. Many people by an iPhone because it is Apple and cool. Many people buy an iPod because iPods are popular. They are not buying technology, they are buying fashion accessories that have a particular function.

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[adamdoyle]

I think you're missing the point. They threatened rejection because they didn't want users to hear the name "Android." But dropping the banhammer on the word "Android" in the appstore only prevents people who already own an iPhone from finding out android exists.

What are they afraid is going to happen? Are they afraid iPhone users will drop their contract (pay an enormous cancellation fee) and switch to an android-based phone?

Your point was that "people by (sic) an iPhone because it is Apple and cool..." If that's the case, are you suggesting that "Android" will be cool (and thus a threat) because of the usage of its name in the appstore?

Apple joining the Borg

[ecorona]

Now, don't get me wrong because I love that Windows has some competition. Still, I can't shake the feeling that we look the other way too much when Apple does some evil authoritarian tactic to boost its sells. I for one, will vote with my wallet in the future and avoid the iPhone.

I always thought it was the record labels' fault

[Rob Y.]

Ipods used to sync easily in Linux until Apple encrypted the song database file. At the time I had some sympathy for them. The whole reason they were 'allowed' to sell digital music was that they agreed to not allow ipods to do certain things. The primary restriction was that you couldn't copy songs off of an ipod. So you caould copy songs from your friend's computer to your ipod, but you couldn't copy them from your ipod to your friend's computer. That seemed like a reasonable compromise (and still allowed for some small amount of theft).

Well every linux ipod loader in the old days could also unload songs. So much for that. I'm not saying I didn't take advantage of that capability too. Anyway, now that iTunes downloads aren't DRM'd, and have some kind of personal tracking id embedded, that's probably not the problem any more - if it ever was. But I wouldn't be so quick to assign purely evil motives to Apple's actions. This 'no mention of Android at the app store' bit sounds plain petty. Not quite rising to the level of evil.

Of course an iTunes version for Linux would put to rest any notion that they are trying to use the iPod to somehow stifle competition between Linux and OS/X. Again, I assume it's cheapness/laziness more than evil there.

Apples Advantages

[Geert Jalink]

I see it as an advantage that Apple has control over applications being distributed to consumers, because of quality control. Hope that Apple will not get demonized for just telling a developer that certain things are not allowed.

Correcting false advertising is not evil.

[drewm1980]

It was the ~android version of the app won an award. For these tiny applications, the GUI practically ~is the application. Claiming that the iPhone version of the app won an award is simply false advertising, so Apple tactfully asked them to fix the language.

Apple. Think Different...

[Snufu]

Think Evil.

Re:Makes sense

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apple can't have Android inside Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

The iPad fisco shows that the field is no longer in effect. I suspect this proves it was actually generated by his original liver.

hugh

[MemoryDragon]

Steve has spoken lets worship our savior and führer...

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[DaveV1.0]

What are they afraid is going to happen? Are they afraid iPhone users will drop their contract (pay an enormous cancellation fee) and switch to an android-based phone? "

Or, their customer might do what many people do, switch companies after their contract is up to get a new or different phone.

Your point was that "people by (sic) an iPhone because it is Apple and cool..." If that's the case, are you suggesting that "Android" will be cool (and thus a threat) because of the usage of its name in the appstore?

No, and it is interesting that you are trying to put words in my mouth by selectively quoting me. Shows that you can't support your arguments honestly. What it will do is raise awareness of Android and Android based products in the minds of Apple appstore customers. It is basically an advertisement for a competitor on Apple's site.

The people missing the point is you and the people like you who are bashing Apple for behaving in its own best interest. Do you think any company wants any information about a competitor on its own website? No company wants their customers to be able to go to their own website and have those customers see their competitor's name or product referenced.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[stewbacca]

they do not provide any venue for installing applications on one's iPhone apart from the App Store,

Yes because Apple should spend billions of dollars in developing hundreds of different ways for customers to get their products SO THAT ONE RANDOM SLASHDOT NERD can get his the way he wants.

Re:Objectively speaking...

[shutdown -p now]

Yes because Apple should spend billions of dollars in developing hundreds of different ways for customers to get their products SO THAT ONE RANDOM SLASHDOT NERD can get his the way he wants.

Apple doesn't need to spend a cent on that.

Instead, it should avoid spending billions of dollars on finding ways to lock down their products to prevent customers from installing applications on them by means other than App Store.

Good to know I was right...

[AlgorithMan]

I like Apples products somehow - OS-X is a decent Unix and has many of the strengths of Linux. They are pretty and have some impressive features (like timemachine)

still I never bought any of their products, because I always thought that they'd just become the next Microsoft (or the third IBM if you want), if they become big enough in a market... and here we are - Apple suppressing competition...

I should buy a crystal ball or so...

Duh

[commodoresloat]

Of course not. That movie was made before the iPhone. :P

Re:Makes sense

[YourExperiment]

Exactly - that would be like having Marvin on board the Heart of Gold.

Apple = A bunch of whining Pussies

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Apple is afraid of words now?

Google should just remove Apple and all Apple App related sites from its search index. Maybe that will teach Apple not to be such a bunch of whining pussies.

APPLE IS JUST AS EVIL AS MICROSOFT. We just like to ignore that fact because they're pretty.

Re:Apple = A bunch of whining Pussies

[Shados]

Unfortunately it would make Google a major bullseye for anti-trust regulators. The world would be a better place without all of Apple's BS (not without their product, because while I loathe them, competition is good)

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[pigphish]

Steve Jobs is so lucky to have so many sheep like you, I mean users.

Lol AppleSoft Fan Club

[theolein]

Please. You expect way too much sense from an Apple hater.

A tip to the GP: Displaying your ignorance and stupidity to the world does not actually reflect poorly on Apple.

People using the word "haters" usually brings to mind some over-defensive Microsoft fan ranting at the criticism of his favourite OS. When does the same thing, only in a far more deeply paranoid manner that smacks of hysterical terror going on at Apple, the Apple goons trump out the very same phrasing.

Sad, very sad, and I say this as I write this post on my Mac Pro (early 2008)

Re:Appstore model is broken

[Skreems]

Sure, although to really be a "first class" app store, that doesn't get looked at with distrust, I suspect it's worth the cash. Especially since it's per publisher and can be reused on every app you release.

Re:Appstore model is broken

[Mr2001]

Purely as a user, what's not to like?

How about the fact that because of the restrictions Apple places on developers, you either can't get some of the popular apps that are available on other smartphones, or can only get less-functional versions?

"You want to listen to personalized music streams while you're checking your email? Sorry, there's no app for that. You want to automatically set the ringer to silent when you get within 100 feet of your office? Sorry, no app for that either. Can I interest you in fart sounds instead?"

Dupe

[whyde]

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=26362097

Re:Flash of stupidity...

[MikeBabcock]

You're confused in that most apps on the appstore have the same author and publisher. There's no requirement for this to be the case, any more than its required for a publisher to write up your back cover on a novel. That said, book publishing's an old business and software is still young, so there are a lot more self-published authors in the latter.

Point being, your use of the terms "author" and "publisher" are interchangeable inasmuch as they could be the same person but don't have to be.

Re:AppStoreRejections.slashdot.org

[socceroos]

Without absolutes, everyone is blind - no matter their opinion.