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Apple Rips Off Rejected App, Says Wireless Sync Developer
Haedrian writes "Apple is famous for going to absurd lengths to enforce its patents and trademarks. It recently sued Amazon for calling its app store Appstore. And it has publicly lectured competitors to 'create their own original technology, not steal ours.' Last year, UK developer Greg Hughes submitted an app for wirelessly syncing iPhones with iTunes libraries, which was rejected from the official App Store. Fast forward to Monday, when Apple unveiled a set of new features for the upcoming iOS 5, including the same wireless-syncing functionality. Cupertino wasn't even subtle about the appropriation, using the precise name and a near-identical logo to market the technology."
From what I understood of his app when I took a look at it on Cydia, it writes to system files that the Apple T&Cs do not allow you to do. This is why it got rejected by apple for 'security concerns' (because it's writing to areas it shoudn't). Whether this is done by undocumented APIs or standard iOS APIs I do not know.
As for the name/logo. It's syncing over wifi. There are two very obvious names: "Wifi Sync" and "Sync Wifi" for this. And the logo is the most obvious choice for a logo: The composition of the wifi logo and the sync logo. If you'd have asked me to come up with a name/logo for this I would have come up with exactly the same thing. I do not think that Apple ripped him off - he's just trying to make noise.
And yes, Apple should have put wireless synching in with iOS 1...