Slashdot Mirror
Apple Removes Wi-Fi Finders From App Store
jasonbrown writes "Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi. Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder."
I just ran a search for WiFi in the app store, and plenty of free finders appeared.
Was there something about these specific apps, or is this just about those apps using reserved (ie subject to change) frameworks?
In short - let's not panic just yet, hm?
First they remove the pron apps, then the wifi steal- er, "borrowing" apps... What use do these "iPhone" devices have anymore, anyway?
Whatever it is, it's notablog.
It appears Apple's problem with the apps isn't with what they do but with how they do it; namely, using non-public frameworks. There probably isn't a way to do it using public frameworks, though (on Mac OS X, you need to use the private Apple80211.framework, not sure about iPhone OS X).
Is Apple actively trying to destroy any developer relationship that they had, and are they trying to show the community that they are not up to the challenge of hosting an app store?
As a software developer that owns an iPhone 3GS owner, and a first generation iPod touch, I feel like I am reminded every day as to why I do not drop $100 and write an application for my own phone.
What does Apple gain by removing these things?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm so glad you make all the hard decisions for me! Would you like to cast my next vote for me?? Oh yeah, when I actually succumb to mobile devices they will be open. This is like Microsoft telling you what software you can install on Windows! Is this the future? Twenty years from now Mac's will only be able to get applications from Apple's approved store? Yeah, I'm not gonna help with that.
Shh.
All I can say is get a real phone with options you like eg android, nokia 9x ect.
Apple makes a great OS, some great hardware.
Just stay away from the DRM junk and itoys.
Or help port a real OS to it.
As amazon showed with 1984, MS with win 7 mobile and now Apple shows, your just a consumer renting space on their their vision of the world.
Time to disconnect Apple and buy or use/write a real mobile OS.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If big companies are not spared what about the individual developers?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they aren't spared either.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Apple has NEVER permitted the use of private frameworks in iPhone apps. My company had to rewrite an app we were trying to deploy because we were using some undocumented features for still frame capture from the camera device. We almost made it through the authorization process, then Apple shot us down at the last second because of it. We had to wait a few more minor releases before the functionality we needed was exposed through an approved interface. It had nothing to do with our application, but rather, the way it was implemented.
In general, the use of undocumented APIs is frowned upon throughout the industry, as it makes for flaky application and reverse-vendor-lockin, when an extremely popular application relies on undocumented APIs, the APIs change, then people come bitching to the platform manufacturer for "breaking" their applications. There's nothing weird about this, whatsoever. Chill out, folks.
This is great news !! This is the only way developers and users will learn never to trust a closed platform. Hopefully this starts pissing people off enough to go towards Android, or preferably the only truly open smartphone OS : Maemo / Meego. So I say, please Apple, remove more useful apps !!
Ah yes, greater variety in fart generator applications is really high on my list of features I want from a phone.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Hey, I know!
Since nobody on Slashdot knows a single thing about this action by Apple -- at this moment -- why don't we just post a bunch of shit that has absolutely no merit?! Hey, we can even call ourselves "journalists"!
If you refer to his novels, 'Kafkaesque' would most likely denote the endless pain and futility of dealing with an organization where the participant has no idea what hoops to jump through until they are prevented without achieving them.
Kafka used the individual's ignorance of the system as a weapon that is used to dis-empower him. Even the most crazily elaborate set of obstacles can be overcome with planning and diligence if you're aware of them, but in Kafka's novels, there was always a new challenge to overcome whenever the previous one was achieved. This ultimate futility was the driving theme of many of his stories.
Dictionary quote:
adjective
Complex or illogical in a bizarre, surreal, or nightmarish manner.
In either case, the original poster of the phrase miss-appropriated it into their post to express what would be best served just dropping the word and leaving the sentence in tact without "active enforcement of ever-shifting, secret rules against applications" would have served just fine.
Bye!
Increased Volume != Increased Options.
Android already has a far greater variety of software then the Iphone due to the locked nature of the application delivery and development system. The Iphone simply has more of the same applications then Android or as everyone points out, 100 times the number of fart applications but no third party mail clients.
So with the Iphone, you have more software but fewer options.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You're probably right. I bought a MacBook last year (having used Debian for the last 9 years), and while I don't dislike it, I'm not keen to buy more Apple products given dumb shenanigans like this. So they are alienating some users.
So don't use those products you have to put up with these shenanigans. I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro, when I replace it the replacement will probably another MBP or its replacement, and if Apple were to release a bigger iPad (say 17") that runs the full OS X like my MBP does I may get one. I might also get a Mac Pro, but I do not plan on getting an iPhone or iPod.
Actually I plan on setting up my MBP to dualboot, OS X and Ubuntu, and if I were to get a Mac Pro I'd do the same with it. Now if Apple were to get as restrictive with Macs as they are with iPhones and iPads I'd move over to Linux compleatly.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So what it really comes down to is whether one really wants (in this case) a WiFi finder. I certainly won't miss such apps.
A little melodramatic, maybe, but still somewhat apt I think. Apple has shown they have no qualms about removing entire categories of applications for the iPhone, all without provocation, explanation, or compensation. Anyone who depends on (develops for or uses) the iPhone in a serious business or financial sense is crazy.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Dictionary quote:
adjective
Complex or illogical in a bizarre, surreal, or nightmarish manner.
Which describes Apple's actions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
no shit?
rewriting history since 2109
Yet there are many many applications which perform well on all android hardware.
.net, DirectX and so forth. No wait...
You logic explains why Windows is not the most popular development platform, because you never know what hardware you're going to get, nor which version of Windows,
Android, much like Windows provides a consistent framework across multiple devices. For simple applications this is very simple, for difficult applications this is difficult, the same as in Windows and there are games and applications out there so poorly coded and tested that require a very specific version of DirectX just to run, you don't think they exist because no-body buys them. Only bad developers have these problems.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Unfortunately, what you say isn't quite true. If it were, the problem would be self-correcting.
In order for app development to be financially viable, it has to possess a risk/reward ratio that compares favorably to other possible investments. Apple's trigger-happy tendencies raise the risk; but their install base and user willingness to shell out keeps the reward high. The real risk is not that they'll drive out app developers; but that they'll manage to preferentially drive out the good app developers.
If I am running some cookie-cutter app sweatshop, churning out masses of crap under one or more company names that are little more than reskins of one another, with slightly different content packs(here's an app with twenty fart noises, here's another one with the same noises that we had the intern spend ten minutes tweaking with audacity and the buttons reskinned to look more like mucus blotches! Here's 50 pictures from the cheapest softcore porn back-catalog that we were able to licence. Hey, here's the same app with 50 different pictures! And so on and so forth), all I need to do is make money on average. If some of my apps never get approved, some get sacked 18 months in, some do OK, some prove PT Barnum right yet again, I'll come out just fine. By making so many crap apps, each one representing a small investment, I spread my risk out substantially(and, since the iPhone is the hot thing among well-heeled and app-happy cellphone users, getting merely average results will probably be satisfactory, particularly if I'm paying offshore rates for my dev time).
On the other hand, some classic Mac indie dev house, pouring their heart and soul into one or two apps at a time, faces a very different situation. Their apps are substantially less likely to get shitcanned for sucking or for being tasteless; but their costs per app are comparatively huge. If an important patch update gets stuck in review hell for three weeks, while they rack up negative reviews, they are sunk. If their brilliant little gem happens to be a little too close to something Apple has planned for iPhone OS v. 4, it'll simply be murdered in the cradle without useful comment. Those odds are considerably less compelling.
1. Actually, The Trial is what gave birth to the term "Kafkaesque" and definitely has to do with an organisation. It is a very famous book.
2. The movie The Fly has nothing to do with Kafka. It's about a guy and a teleportation device.
That does it. I need to find a cockroach costume for the Apple Developer Conference this year.
Ah yes, greater variety in fart generator applications is really high on my list of features I want from a phone.
Out of curiosity, did Final Fantasy make it to Android?
Yes. Every NES, SNES (I think), and Genesis game is on Android via emulators. Here's a review of a NES emulator: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/26/quick-review-nesoid-nes-emulator-for-android/
I guess it's not legal, but if you're willing to go the emulator route you pay only $2 for thousands of NES games instead of the $9 I just spent on Final Fantasy on the iPhone.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Very mature.
Apple's corporate nannyism is indeed a pain, and it's what keeps me away from iPhone. But I can't say I like Android any better. It's the usual disorganized Google product, where every product is viewed as emergent from a lot of independent programmers each doing their own thing. So there's no central vision to the product. You have a total mess of a platform that isn't even a single platform, since every Android hardware implementation is different from every other.
Really, our choices suck. Maemo (or whatever it's called now) will never achieve critical mass. Windows Moblle is, well, Windows. Symbian is showing its age. Blackberry is designed for somebody who texts a lot more than I do.
I'm sort of flirting with getting a WebOS phone, except I don't trust Palm not to screw this product up, the way they've screwed up every other product. Also, a phone plan that supports it properly costs $60/month (3G data rates in the U.S. are totally out of hand), and while I like having the Internet in my pocket, I'm not sure I like it that much.
What I should really do is go back to having a separate phone and PDA, and put up with the hassle of sharing data between them manually. (With a PAYG plan, I'd probably save $50/month.) Except nobody makes a decent PDA any more...
I dont think you understand Android development at all.
I'm not having a go at you but you seem to miss important points which are massive flaws in your arguments.
Android much like Windows has certain minimum hardware requirements (pointing device, x number of physical buttons, display device with minimum resolution). Much like Windows I can have additional or disparate hardware (D-pad vs trackball, higher res screen) but the API's are still meant to interpret the minimum standards of input so text from a soft keyboard is treated the same as text from a physical keyboard, the d-pad on a Droid/Milestone acts the same as the trackball on my Dream/G1 from the perspective of the application as that input is coming from the OS (HAL) not the HW directly.
Your issue hinges on a program which require specific hardware to be present, if a developer has this requirement then they've made a conscious decision to use a specific platform and has to deal with the problems that arise from that. This is a conscious decision on the part of the developer, not a flaw in the OS.
A program like APNDroid will work the same on all models as it was developed to use Android API not vendor specific hardware. The same as in Windows where a game (Half Life 2 for example) will work on a Logitek keyboard as well as it would on a Microsoft keyboard because it uses the Windows API for input, not hardware specific vendor drivers.
The problem you describe is exactly the problem Operating Systems, or more specifically the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) were made to solve. It's a 25 yr old problem, with a 24 yr old solution.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Microsoft and the Linux community seem to have worked that bit out.
I'm not sure Slashdot is the best place to advocate for fewer hardware choices.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Totally.
Actually, it brings Camus' working of the Sisyphus story to mind. Running around doing a meaningless activity over and over and over and...
yet never quite getting there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If their brilliant little gem happens to be a little too close to something Apple has planned for iPhone OS v. 4, it'll simply be murdered in the cradle without useful comment.
It is the sheer nastiness of Apple's extreme highhanded policies and litigious corporate mindset that makes Apple platforms less and less attractive to me as time goes by. I have (and actually quite like) a MacBook, and the iPod is by far the best mp3 player around, but hardly a day goes by without Apple or sometimes Steve Jobs personally fucking someone over.
I'll be voting with my wallet next time any of my devices need replacing. I've been using Linux on my desktop machines for over 15 years, and there's nothing stopping me using it on my next laptop. And I will not be buying an iPhone.
I'm not sure why anyone would develop for the iPhone, apparently you not only face a capricious approval process, but they may revoke that approval on a whim.
Just make sure your app complies with all current and future rules and does not compete against any apps Apple plans to introduce down the line, and you'll be fine.
Want to invest in my iPhone dev business?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If the issue is that the Apps used a private API, how did they get approved in the first place?
Because over time Apple gets better about figuring out who is using private API's.
In the early days it was the most egregious violations that visually screamed out "hey look, I am using a private API" - like Coverflow.
So then that died down, and for a while people got away with undocumented framework and system calls.
But recently Apple has started basically using a symbol analyses tool looking for calls to specific system stuff. I can imagine it was only recently they thought to look at super low level network stuff.
Apple even has been pretty nice about it generally, most developers just get a warning saying "you are using a private API, fix that before your next update please". I guess whatever this framework was using was a little more undesirable than most calls.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Happens every time and even though the intelligent users of slashdot are more than aware of this, they can't seem to fight the compulsion to re-re-re-re-state their position/perception/opinion on the matter.
Apple strong on consistent user experience. (by this I mean consistent with apple's ever-changing idea of what the user experience should be.)
Android strong on openness and flexibility. (except for where the carriers object and attempt to control it... but even then, not so much.)
When the iPhone came out with a battery that couldn't be replaced by the user, I wrote it off. To me, that was the primary show-stopper. It's a privacy and security concern. It's a battery life/conservation concern. It's even a safety concern.
Android, on the other hand is interesting in that it is yet another high profile Linux based product that has elements of traditional Linux failure all over it. I don't mean this to sound as bad as it sounds, but I can think of no better way to put it. The game isn't over yet and perhaps the people steering Android will see the failures and find some solutions, but what traditional failures am I talking about? Simple: "Being strong on consistent user experience" among other things.
Previous articles on slashdot came close to describing problems by talking about the wide variety of android phones and how software for one does not work for all. (it's not a problem for normal Linux hackers... we know all about tarballs, DEBs and RPMS, i386/i586/i686/x86_64/PPC and other divisions based on which version of glibc it was compiled for.) But there is more. The apps themselves are "more free" and therefore have less consistent delivery of look and feel. When this happens, a solid device starts to feel like a handful of marbles. At some level of consciousness, we all perceive problems when we are presented with things that don't match up well. Whether or not it's an actual problem is irrelevant to the feelings of the user (which, by the way is foremost on the minds at Apple) which is where the real success or failure of a project lies. "Better things" fail all the time at the hands of better marketing of lesser things. If people feel one thing is better than another or more reliable or will last longer or be supported longer or will have better backing, the truth doesn't matter so much as their feelings.
As a Linux optimist, I see this as an opportunity for Linux to gain recognition and public favor. We all know that Linux is a kernel and that it's in a LOT of stuff everywhere that most people never see or think about. We also know that because it's just a kernel, the REAL problems are in how it's packaged with other things... with or without a GUI, which GUI, what package management, etc. But there's more. Look and feel has never really been stressed. KDE users will probably disagree with me on this because KDE does, in fact, push more in favor of a consistent look and feel. But they are an exception.
But even if the Android project pulls itself together and actually does build a very successful consumer implementation of a Linux based OS, it can't quite be said "It's good because it's Linux." It would still be more accurate to say "It's good in spite of being Linux" because at the moment, a successful consumer Linux OS doesn't fix all the others that we know and love.
, but then again the iPhone ecosystem is a fairly new model for software.
NEW? lets see Atari Nintendo Playstation Xbox Sega .... All these systems required every piece of software to meet the system makers requirements and limitations. This is not new.
The oddness here is that these apps were ever approved to begin with.
No - the oddness here is that people can't see beyond the end of their nose. The issue is not that a specific class of applications has been pulled but that any application is pulled. I am not going to argue with Apple's right to choose what happens on their App Store but I do question a geeks's choice when he supports a closed system over an open one. When others are making the decisions the function he takes for granted in the form that he deems pleasing is eventually going to be eroded. The market will decide whether this is a good thing for Apple's bottom line but for a geek to be an Apple apologist now just seems plain weird.
Because we simply don't care? People here get so stressed about some of the most pedantic things. I use the WiFi outside my home once in a blue moon. It's just not that important since my data plan is unlimited. 3G is perfectly suitable for the occasional internet need while I'm at the doctors office, or sitting eating lunch and reading slashdot or some random news tidbit.
Standard Apple rule - if the Iphone has it, it's great (3G, unlimited dataplan). If not, it's "Why would I need that" or "Why care?" The great thing about this rule is that you can even change when new features are out - e.g., the Iphone had 3G years after other phones, before then it was "Why would I need that?"
but it's almost like there's a complete disconnect between the geeks and the typical user in here.
Yes, in that Apple phones are far more popular here than in the general public, judging by market share.
This whole Apple/Droid thing reminds me of the old Windows/Apple wars.
More like BeOS versus OS/2.
Every iPhone topic turns into how Apple is evil (+1 insightful, yeah baby), and how we should despise them (+1 underrated), or their the new 'Microsoft' (+1 fanboi),
Generally, anything pro-Apple is instant mod points, and any criticism usually gets modded down, unless you're careful or lucky.
The very folks saying we're mindless drones just want us to become mindless droids.
Oh right, because it's called a droid, this means people buying it are "droids".
Personally I Think Different by not buying Apple.
South Park is comedy, it's not actually based on reality. Their goth story was as much of a straw man as your argument against Droid users.
Really? And what about the iPod Touch users? We don't have a data plan, we depend on WiFi.
This is PURE EAU DE TROLLETTE
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0