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Apple Bans iFixit Repair App From App Store After Apple TV Teardown
alphadogg writes: iFixit, the fix-it-yourself advocate for users of Apple, Google and other gear, has had its repair manual app banned from Apple's App Store after it conducted an unauthorized teardown of Apple TV and Siri remote. iFixit blogged "we're a teardown and repair company; teardowns are in our DNA -- and nothing makes us happier than figuring out what makes these gadgets tick. We weighed the risks, blithely tossed those risks over our shoulder, and tore down the Apple TV anyway." iFixit does still have Windows and Android apps, and has no immediate plans to rewrite its Apple app to attempt being reinstated.
They very publicly break the NDA for personal profit and expect no action? They're lucky the actions by Apple weren't more sever honestly.
The fact that this phrase even exists is a testament to how fucked up things have gotten.
bad link to the iFixit blog link
here's the correct one
http://ifixit.org/blog/7401/if...
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
It will be a very cold day in HELL before I buy any of your crap products.
OMG! Apple is scared now!
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Oh, unless they do things that we don't like. Then we ban them.
Seriously, I am speaking from ignorance about the specifics, but aren't the products in question, on the market?
No, they are not. At the moment you can only buy one if you are a registered developer and are willing to sign an NDA.
#DeleteChrome
Apple devices do NOT "just work". The bluetooth on my new ipod touch didn't work correctly. WTF they can't get bluetooth to work correctly? All my android devices worked with the same bluetooth devices. Just a quick google search and you will find others with flaky bluetooth.
No, they are not. At the moment you can only buy one if you are a registered developer and are willing to sign an NDA.
Not even that. They held a lottery for registered developers and gave the winning developers a developer kit. As a registered developer who was not selected for the lottery, I cannot even buy an early-access unit.
iFixIt signed up for that lottery and was picked to receive a developer kit. I remember when I signed up for the same kit, I did a very cursory skimming of the NDA and it was pretty explicitly stated that I wasn't allowed to publicly publish pictures or even publicly discuss the unit/software.
In the article it clearly says the Apple TV they dismantled was a "developer" unit as it is not yet available for public sale. While this is scant information, I would assume that under these circumstances, any company would not like to you disassemble their product without explicit permission if you got a developer smart phone, game console, etc,
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The summary is pretty bad on this one.
Right after the Apple TV 4 (ATV4) was officially announced, Apple put a form on their Developer's site to give some of them away to developers. These are pre-release units, and the packaging on them even says "Developer's Edition" or something on it. There was a (since pulled) eBay auction showing the packaging.
Part of the agreement in getting this unit was an NDA which stipulated, amongst other things, that you can't take it apart.
iFixit got an ATV4 as part of the giveaway and decided to violate the NDA and get an exclusive article in the process. Since the developer program was what they used to get the ATV4, the developer program is what they were kicked out of. As a result their iOS app got yanked as well.
Several people have noted that their iOS app hadn't been updated in years (may still have been on the 3.5" screen) and so the app itself isn't much of a loss. The summary says something about being "rewritten" but that doesn't make any sense - if iFixit were to get another developer account they could just put the same app up again from the same source code. The content of the app is not what was offensive to Apple, it was the NDA violation. It may need to be upgraded for modern phones (i.e., be adaptive to the iPhone 6/6+ screen sizes) but it doesn't need to be rewritten in order to adhere to Apple's policies.
iFixit entered into an agreement with Apple that had consequences. It violated that agreement and so it's suffering the consequences. Which it knew would happen and it didn't care about. And since it's an old app that's being pulled it's not much of a loss to them, not compared to the exclusive early article and coverage this stunt's consequences has given them.
But to clarify for everyone, this wasn't a review unit, it wasn't on loan, it was a unit Apple gave them and other developers in order to develop for it early before the actual thing is released. And really, a number of developers didn't get these units and so to some extent the idea that iFixit got one not intending to write an app for it but instead just want to tear it down for page clicks and ad impressions is sort of offensive. If they had waited for the thing to be in stores and bought one retail and then tore it apart they would be in the clear.
Schnapple
"The developer unit we disassembled was sent to us by Apple. Evidently, they didn’t intend for us to take it apart. But we’re a teardown and repair company; teardowns are in our DNA—and nothing makes us happier than figuring out what makes these gadgets tick. We weighed the risks, blithely tossed those risks over our shoulder, and tore down the Apple TV anyway."
iFixit knew that Apple would not be happy with them disassembling it but did it anyway.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
What is wrong with you people? Do you not even causally glance at the summary? This has nothing to do with monopoly, Steve Jobs, Republicans or Global Warming. It's not even Bush's fault.
It's just contract law. iFixit signed a valid, legal document. iFixit broke the terms agreed to on the document. Apple 'punishes' iFixit for doing same - in a fairly benign fashion. Apple could certainly afford to take iFixit to court and bury them in legal cowpies for the next millennium, but they didn't.
Jeez guys.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Or maybe follow adult type, agreed upon rules. It's a walled garden, not a playground.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The part you're getting tripped up on is that while the unit in question is being called "Apple TV" (and will still be called that when it's released later this month) and the units you can currently buy in stores are also called "Apple TV", the two devices are fundamentally different.
Specifically, the thing you can go buy today in stores for $69 is a third generation Apple TV (usually referred to in shorthand as ATV3). It came out a few years back and hasn't seen an update in a while. And really it hasn't needed to - it has little storage and it outputs 1080p. Short of wanting to do something fundamentally different it's all you would need it to do.
The unit coming out later this month, which is going to start at $149, runs games and apps, and is what the iFixit guys took apart, is a fourth generation Apple TV (ATV4). It looks very similar to the ATV3 but, as has been noted, it's a little taller/thicker due to the extra parts inside to handle the 3D graphics, storage, etc. It also has that motion sensitive touch remote (ATV3 came with this tiny little silver remote that just had some buttons on it).
So while the name is the same they're making a pretty big departure from the older model, features-wise, with this one. Apple has some lines of products where they increment the name on every release and some where they don't. For example you don't see a MacBook Pro 24 on the market, it's just the MacBook Pro and you just have to figure out what model it is based on year and model number (i.e., A1234). The iPod did the same thing. The iPhone doesn't, it's iPhone 4, iPhone 5S, etc. They tried to drop the number with the iPad so they could do more frequent releases (i.e., the iPad 2 came out then what would have been the iPad 3 came out as "the new iPad" and then six months later "iPad 4" came out) but that went over like a fart in church so they went back to a naming scheme (i.e., iPad Air, iPad Air 2, etc.).
For bonus trivia points, the ATV2 only did 720p and was only on the market a couple of years but it was the model that introduced the concept of the small hockey puck design and almost no storage, favoring streaming almost entirely. The ATV1 was a very different unit - it resembled today's Mac minis and had a hard drive. The idea behind it was that it would download/mirror a lot of your iTunes library. Specifically the things you bought on iTunes. It didn't have things like Netflix streaming on it because it predated all of that. It was seen as a Steve Jobs hobby project and it wasn't really successful but the second chance they gave it with the ATV2 and ATV3 was a huge hit.
Schnapple
The article never mentions a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and it never said iFixit was referring to the the developer NDA when they referred to Apple's "intent".
So yeah, whole arguments develop over conjecture.
The only thing for sure is that iFixit knew that Apple might not like it. They knew Apple might take action, and they were OK with that.
Puts Apple in a bad position for coming down hard on people for doing exactly what they usually do.
Refusing to bend over to fascist corporate rules is a holy endeavour. YOU'RE A FUCeeKINV SHEEP
So, you think Apple is alone in having people sign NDAs when they get Pre-Release materials?
How do you think all those equipment and software Reviews get published on the very DAY that a new tech Product is RELEASED?
In the Publishing world, they are called "Embargoed" stories. Same thing.
It's not corporate fascism. It is a compromise that works to both party's benefit. And to the Public's too. Or would you rather wait for a month or two before the first Review for a Product you were interested in was available for you to read?