I am pretty shocked at this. Apple seems to be big on money grabbing from everybody for everything lately.
Apple doesn't primarily run their Music and App stores as a profit center. They exist to add value to their main products, which are hardware.
Apple makes more profit overall about every four months than they have made in total revenue from their 30% cuts in all iTunes stores combined since they first opened. And that's before taking into considerations the costs of running, maintaining, improving, etc., their stores, as well as covering the credit card fees, and licensing patents like Amazon's One-Click patent, and Lodsys's patent (which they are now defending their developers against, for no charge).
This rule change isn't about Apple giving up money, or reversing some sort of "money grabbing" trend, it's about finding a way to keep their product appealing to their customers (the end user) while still encouraging developers to stay aboard. The old rules didn't do the job as well.
Yes, when talking about targeting a platform, you have to include all the reasonable targets. iPod touches and iPads are reasonable targets (and Apple TV is not, even though it's part of the platform).
Windows isn't a mobile OS, it's just an OS, but this isn't an argument I'm not going to get too far into. Pick whichever label you want, but you know what I mean. Of all the "app" OS's, the ones for touch-screen handheld devices, iOS is about double the size of Android in pure installed base, and is the most successful one to develop for.
If you want to stick with the "Windows on notebooks counts" line, then iOS becomes second in units, but Android bumps down to third. As for netbooks, iOS has long since surpassed them.
If you want to look at Windows on mobile devices, look at the success of UMPCs and Windows slates/tablets. It has made incursions into the mobile realm, but not fared very well (to put it kindly).
How so because they both have applications. What apple did was hardly innovation its a windows pda with application shortcuts on the desktop. However, ever since android has come out apple has repeatedly ripped off most of the things that made android unique.
Look at Android before the iPhone and after the iPhone. Android before the iPhone looks like a BlackBerry clone. After the iPhone it looks like an iPhone clone.
I'm not an apple dev or user so I'll blindly agree with the point you make regarding licensing. But you CANNOT tell me straight faced that Apple did not rip off the name & logo.
The name? Of their WiFi sync feature that they called WiFi Sync? The feature that has a logo that combines Apple's own logo for WiFi and iSync? Is that what you are referring to?
You can't really be claiming that Apple didn't come up with these on their own, but merely copied them from this guy, right?
Please, cite even ONE example of me saying "how dare you criticize Apple!" or expressing the equivalent. My sig points out the lack of perspective of the stereotypical slashdot nerd.
I've never told anyone here they couldn't have a negative opinion about Apple. On the contrary, I've made many posts saying there's nothing wrong with that at all. Hate Apple all you want, that's your own business. No one is demanding you like them. But I do try correct false assertions and also point out that the nerd perspective is far from universal (embodied in my current sig).
I think a bigger blocker is trying to sell people on the premise that there's a moral element involved in the first place, or even a practical element in terms of being able to tinker with the source.
I agree that the "M$" attitude doesn't help, but it's not like there aren't other things that are higher up in the list of reasons OSS isn't that big of a deal to most people.
I was syncing my Palm over Infrared since the early 2000s, a later Palm over Bluetooth in the mid-2000s (wifi in PDAs was sort of a new thing back then) and of course moving data over Wifi on my N900 for the last couple of years. Way to innovate, Apple!
Well, no one said this was innovative, but let's take a look...
Newton had IrDA from day one, three years before the Palm Pilot (it wasn't even called that at the time) came out (lacking any wireless capability, BTW). Apple was among the first, if not *the* first, company to use WiFi (before it was even called WiFi), and had it as a standard, internal option from day one on the iBook, moving on to Apple's entire computer line shortly thereafter, while PCs for years still only generally supported WiFi via externally accessed PCMCIA slots. The very first iPhone had WiFi syncing of data right out of the gate, and Apple has had wireless syncing of music in some of their products announced as far back as 2006, including a patent for WiFi syncing of music for the iPod in that very same year.
>> Not if Apple were working on theirs first, which they obviously were
So, let's ignore the facts, and just go with your assumptions which you are sure are solid facts just not yet discovered.
What facts? Like that Apple has had wireless syncing of music in AppleTV before the iPhone was even released? Or that iTunes has had wireless music syncing for a while now? Or that Apple has patents as far back as 2006 covering the idea of wirelessly syncing iPods?
Or should we just go with your assumption, that Apple, the largest technology company in the world, never even considered the idea of wirelessly syncing an iPhone (even though it had some wireless data syncing capabilities from day one) until this guy submitted an app?
It's the fanbois like you I will never use any Apple product.
Wait, what? You won't use a product because some people like it? Does that even make sense? Or is it just that some people have personality traits that you don't like, such as using terms like "fanboi"?
Do you know what "anticompetitive" means? It does *not* mean, "controls their own product". That would be strange way to define it.
In what way do any of Apple's iProducts hinder the ability of other companies to engage in free trade of their own, competing products? Last I checked, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Creative, iRiver, Sony, Dell, HP, etc., have all been allowed to offer their own competing products for sale.
You're allowed to have a monopoly over your own product.
As for being the sole source for applications for your device, look up Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft. Also, this was common for cell phones (and still is).
He goes on to say that they specifically told him that the Apple dev team looked at his app and were impressed.
Being "impressed" doesn't change the terms for the App Store. You can't duplicate core functionality. Syncing the music storage is core functionality.
Last I checked, that would make this a derivative work.
Yes, it's a derivative work of iOS 4. Music syncing has been a part of iOS from day one. So has wireless syncing. Both have been expanded and updated over the years, and now iOS has (or will shortly have) the two integrated together.
To be a derivative work, the work has to be based off of something else. iOS 5's wireless syncing is not based off of this guy's work.
Remind me again why anyone would invest their own time developing new iPhone apps?
Because iOS is by far the most successful mobile OS to develop for.
But even then, they can and do pull apps after they've been in the app store for a while. And then a similar app comes out later, with no acknowledgement (or royalties) to the original designer.
Funny, your sig is applicable here. [citation needed] indeed! This isn't an app, it's core functionality. Apple has always maintained themselves responsible for providing core functionality. It's part of the developer terms.
Wireless syncing has been in iOS since the original iPhone. Over the years, they've increased its scope and functionality. This is a natural progression of that.
It's the music industry's model all over again. They pick a few successes to support and hold up before the rest of us as an incentive, and stick us with one-sided "take it or leave it" contracts that give most of the profits to the distributor, with only pennies per sale to the actual innovator.
Wait, what? Apple takes a single, simple, well-defined cut. There's no music industry model. No one goes into debt to Apple by making an app. No one gets fronted money to produce an app by Apple, only to find after production, promotion, manufacturing, and distribution, they are now penniless.
> FWIW, silly policy rejecting apps that duplicate iOS function, but it is in the rules. I am not surprised the app was rejected.
I think you missed the point. The function is not available in iOS.
Syncing is what is duplicated. Apple maintains themselves as being solely responsible for core functionality. This is what makes iOS consistent and reliable. It may violate some age-old nerd tradition of being able to tinker with every little detail, but most people tend to prefer things to work well. And complain all you want, but Slashdot contains just a vocal ultra-minority. iOS gives people what they want and is wildly successful for it.
in this age of corporate hypocrisy, it amazes me how any company has fanboys at all.
Are you serious? A vocal swath of buffoons here on Slashdot simply define anyone who says anything positive about Apple as a "fanboy".
In this case, the story is completely distorted. Apple has *always* maintained control over how iOS syncs. It's not like they rejected the app, thinking "hey, nice ideal, we'll reject your app so we can take it!" They rejected it because it violated Apple's terms. Now they are updating iOS and iTunes (and iCloud), adding the same feature. Again, as syncing method which they control.
But, since I don't think this is some horrible thing, I'm obviously a "fanboy"...
Crypto-nerds seem to think security is some sort of absolute thing. It's not. Availability doesn't mean shit if your data is on your drive in your home. If the data is something so horrible that the government wants it, they know where to find you.
Anything less, and there's no way they are going to crack 128bit AES with a moderately strong passphrase.
And, really, even the very worst file anybody is likely to have is not going to be worth the effort. What is the government going to do, learn your bank account, or your twitter password?
128bit AES with a strong passphrase. If it's something so horrible that the government will come at you with a lead pipe to get they key, they'll just raid your house and take your drive anyway.
So, basically people roughly 35 and under took a test with that question (assuming 1994 is an accurate date), and people over 35 did not (assuming the same). While I'd be interested in actual stats, that sounds like less than half of all NY drivers will have been reasonably *assumed* to be aware of this law.
Which speaks to one my points, that just because it was on the test, even for 17 years, that doesn't mean most drivers on the street are aware of, let alone actually have knowingly agreed to, this abridgment of their constitutional rights.
And completely ignores the point of whether states can, or should be able to, take away people's constitutional rights as a requirement for something as fundamental to Americans' lives as driving.
Encryption would only make the data safe if you're reading it back from The Cloud, processing it, and sending updates back to The Cloud. Which would seem an odd way to do things unless you want to have access to the same data from multiple sites around the world.
It's not and odd way to do things. It's very rational. If you use your own encryption, it works just like any other encrypted file. The server can't read it, because you never give it the key.
And you don't need to have to want access from around the world. You can simply want access from more than one computer or device. Even in the same home, you might want to have a file that you can open from any computer. And even if you only have one computer, the cloud makes for a good backup.
Your post fails to consider the completely reasonable choice of not handing your data off to a third party in the first place. ..
Your post fails to consider the value in having the "best of both worlds".
The cloud provides a real value. Staying away from it unnecessarily doesn't seem very rational. Encryption addresses the specific issue being brought up here.
That last part is a bit off topic, but I'll explain why they did that (since there is no Slashdot story about it yet).
The reason for the clause was never about anti-competitiveness (i.e., blocking other services, or making them charge more). It was about making it so iOS users can trust the In-App system, and not have to hop out of an app to register, or hunt around for better pricing, etc.
There were absolutely NO legal issues here. No one was suing Apple, and there were no grounds to do so. You can't make someone carry your product in their store, nor can you force them to offer pricing plans that fit your model.
The reason they changed it is because they were getting feedback (from actual developers, not internet forum posters) that this wasn't going to work for them. So Apple altered the rules to still try and keep the same goal, which is to make the app experience for the user as trustworthy and simple as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they do that? They want people to use web apps. Apple is at the forefront of HTML5.
I am pretty shocked at this. Apple seems to be big on money grabbing from everybody for everything lately.
Apple doesn't primarily run their Music and App stores as a profit center. They exist to add value to their main products, which are hardware.
Apple makes more profit overall about every four months than they have made in total revenue from their 30% cuts in all iTunes stores combined since they first opened. And that's before taking into considerations the costs of running, maintaining, improving, etc., their stores, as well as covering the credit card fees, and licensing patents like Amazon's One-Click patent, and Lodsys's patent (which they are now defending their developers against, for no charge).
This rule change isn't about Apple giving up money, or reversing some sort of "money grabbing" trend, it's about finding a way to keep their product appealing to their customers (the end user) while still encouraging developers to stay aboard. The old rules didn't do the job as well.
Yes, when talking about targeting a platform, you have to include all the reasonable targets. iPod touches and iPads are reasonable targets (and Apple TV is not, even though it's part of the platform).
Windows isn't a mobile OS, it's just an OS, but this isn't an argument I'm not going to get too far into. Pick whichever label you want, but you know what I mean. Of all the "app" OS's, the ones for touch-screen handheld devices, iOS is about double the size of Android in pure installed base, and is the most successful one to develop for.
If you want to stick with the "Windows on notebooks counts" line, then iOS becomes second in units, but Android bumps down to third. As for netbooks, iOS has long since surpassed them.
If you want to look at Windows on mobile devices, look at the success of UMPCs and Windows slates/tablets. It has made incursions into the mobile realm, but not fared very well (to put it kindly).
Just recently, Android has reached 100 million units. Also, just recently, iOS has reached 200 million.
Did you even read the first paragraph of your citation? It only compares Android to iPhone, and it only compares them in the US!
You asked how Android was a copy of iPhone.
How so because they both have applications. What apple did was hardly innovation its a windows pda with application shortcuts on the desktop. However, ever since android has come out apple has repeatedly ripped off most of the things that made android unique.
Look at Android before the iPhone and after the iPhone. Android before the iPhone looks like a BlackBerry clone. After the iPhone it looks like an iPhone clone.
I'm not an apple dev or user so I'll blindly agree with the point you make regarding licensing. But you CANNOT tell me straight faced that Apple did not rip off the name & logo.
The name? Of their WiFi sync feature that they called WiFi Sync? The feature that has a logo that combines Apple's own logo for WiFi and iSync? Is that what you are referring to?
You can't really be claiming that Apple didn't come up with these on their own, but merely copied them from this guy, right?
Please, cite even ONE example of me saying "how dare you criticize Apple!" or expressing the equivalent. My sig points out the lack of perspective of the stereotypical slashdot nerd.
I've never told anyone here they couldn't have a negative opinion about Apple. On the contrary, I've made many posts saying there's nothing wrong with that at all. Hate Apple all you want, that's your own business. No one is demanding you like them. But I do try correct false assertions and also point out that the nerd perspective is far from universal (embodied in my current sig).
I think a bigger blocker is trying to sell people on the premise that there's a moral element involved in the first place, or even a practical element in terms of being able to tinker with the source.
I agree that the "M$" attitude doesn't help, but it's not like there aren't other things that are higher up in the list of reasons OSS isn't that big of a deal to most people.
I was syncing my Palm over Infrared since the early 2000s, a later Palm over Bluetooth in the mid-2000s (wifi in PDAs was sort of a new thing back then) and of course moving data over Wifi on my N900 for the last couple of years. Way to innovate, Apple!
Well, no one said this was innovative, but let's take a look...
Newton had IrDA from day one, three years before the Palm Pilot (it wasn't even called that at the time) came out (lacking any wireless capability, BTW). Apple was among the first, if not *the* first, company to use WiFi (before it was even called WiFi), and had it as a standard, internal option from day one on the iBook, moving on to Apple's entire computer line shortly thereafter, while PCs for years still only generally supported WiFi via externally accessed PCMCIA slots. The very first iPhone had WiFi syncing of data right out of the gate, and Apple has had wireless syncing of music in some of their products announced as far back as 2006, including a patent for WiFi syncing of music for the iPod in that very same year.
So um, what were you saying again?
>> Not if Apple were working on theirs first, which they obviously were
So, let's ignore the facts, and just go with your assumptions which you are sure are solid facts just not yet discovered.
What facts? Like that Apple has had wireless syncing of music in AppleTV before the iPhone was even released? Or that iTunes has had wireless music syncing for a while now? Or that Apple has patents as far back as 2006 covering the idea of wirelessly syncing iPods?
Or should we just go with your assumption, that Apple, the largest technology company in the world, never even considered the idea of wirelessly syncing an iPhone (even though it had some wireless data syncing capabilities from day one) until this guy submitted an app?
It's the fanbois like you I will never use any Apple product.
Wait, what? You won't use a product because some people like it? Does that even make sense? Or is it just that some people have personality traits that you don't like, such as using terms like "fanboi"?
Yeah, the reason Linux hasn't taken off is because some people deliberately misspell Windows and Microsoft...
Not that I'm disagreeing about it being childish, just that it isn't some major thing holding OSS back.
Do you know what "anticompetitive" means? It does *not* mean, "controls their own product". That would be strange way to define it.
In what way do any of Apple's iProducts hinder the ability of other companies to engage in free trade of their own, competing products? Last I checked, HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Creative, iRiver, Sony, Dell, HP, etc., have all been allowed to offer their own competing products for sale.
You're allowed to have a monopoly over your own product.
As for being the sole source for applications for your device, look up Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft. Also, this was common for cell phones (and still is).
PalmOS? You mean that cheap Newton clone?
He goes on to say that they specifically told him that the Apple dev team looked at his app and were impressed.
Being "impressed" doesn't change the terms for the App Store. You can't duplicate core functionality. Syncing the music storage is core functionality.
Last I checked, that would make this a derivative work.
Yes, it's a derivative work of iOS 4. Music syncing has been a part of iOS from day one. So has wireless syncing. Both have been expanded and updated over the years, and now iOS has (or will shortly have) the two integrated together.
To be a derivative work, the work has to be based off of something else. iOS 5's wireless syncing is not based off of this guy's work.
Remind me again why anyone would invest their own time developing new iPhone apps?
Because iOS is by far the most successful mobile OS to develop for.
But even then, they can and do pull apps after they've been in the app store for a while. And then a similar app comes out later, with no acknowledgement (or royalties) to the original designer.
Funny, your sig is applicable here. [citation needed] indeed! This isn't an app, it's core functionality. Apple has always maintained themselves responsible for providing core functionality. It's part of the developer terms.
Wireless syncing has been in iOS since the original iPhone. Over the years, they've increased its scope and functionality. This is a natural progression of that.
It's the music industry's model all over again. They pick a few successes to support and hold up before the rest of us as an incentive, and stick us with one-sided "take it or leave it" contracts that give most of the profits to the distributor, with only pennies per sale to the actual innovator.
Wait, what? Apple takes a single, simple, well-defined cut. There's no music industry model. No one goes into debt to Apple by making an app. No one gets fronted money to produce an app by Apple, only to find after production, promotion, manufacturing, and distribution, they are now penniless.
> FWIW, silly policy rejecting apps that duplicate iOS function, but it is in the rules. I am not surprised the app was rejected.
I think you missed the point. The function is not available in iOS.
Syncing is what is duplicated. Apple maintains themselves as being solely responsible for core functionality. This is what makes iOS consistent and reliable. It may violate some age-old nerd tradition of being able to tinker with every little detail, but most people tend to prefer things to work well. And complain all you want, but Slashdot contains just a vocal ultra-minority. iOS gives people what they want and is wildly successful for it.
in this age of corporate hypocrisy, it amazes me how any company has fanboys at all.
Are you serious? A vocal swath of buffoons here on Slashdot simply define anyone who says anything positive about Apple as a "fanboy".
In this case, the story is completely distorted. Apple has *always* maintained control over how iOS syncs. It's not like they rejected the app, thinking "hey, nice ideal, we'll reject your app so we can take it!" They rejected it because it violated Apple's terms. Now they are updating iOS and iTunes (and iCloud), adding the same feature. Again, as syncing method which they control.
But, since I don't think this is some horrible thing, I'm obviously a "fanboy"...
Crypto-nerds seem to think security is some sort of absolute thing. It's not. Availability doesn't mean shit if your data is on your drive in your home. If the data is something so horrible that the government wants it, they know where to find you.
Anything less, and there's no way they are going to crack 128bit AES with a moderately strong passphrase.
And, really, even the very worst file anybody is likely to have is not going to be worth the effort. What is the government going to do, learn your bank account, or your twitter password?
128bit AES with a strong passphrase. If it's something so horrible that the government will come at you with a lead pipe to get they key, they'll just raid your house and take your drive anyway.
Anything short of that, and you're fine.
So, basically people roughly 35 and under took a test with that question (assuming 1994 is an accurate date), and people over 35 did not (assuming the same). While I'd be interested in actual stats, that sounds like less than half of all NY drivers will have been reasonably *assumed* to be aware of this law.
Which speaks to one my points, that just because it was on the test, even for 17 years, that doesn't mean most drivers on the street are aware of, let alone actually have knowingly agreed to, this abridgment of their constitutional rights.
And completely ignores the point of whether states can, or should be able to, take away people's constitutional rights as a requirement for something as fundamental to Americans' lives as driving.
Encryption would only make the data safe if you're reading it back from The Cloud, processing it, and sending updates back to The Cloud. Which would seem an odd way to do things unless you want to have access to the same data from multiple sites around the world.
It's not and odd way to do things. It's very rational. If you use your own encryption, it works just like any other encrypted file. The server can't read it, because you never give it the key.
And you don't need to have to want access from around the world. You can simply want access from more than one computer or device. Even in the same home, you might want to have a file that you can open from any computer. And even if you only have one computer, the cloud makes for a good backup.
Your post fails to consider the completely reasonable choice of not handing your data off to a third party in the first place. . .
Your post fails to consider the value in having the "best of both worlds".
The cloud provides a real value. Staying away from it unnecessarily doesn't seem very rational. Encryption addresses the specific issue being brought up here.
That last part is a bit off topic, but I'll explain why they did that (since there is no Slashdot story about it yet).
The reason for the clause was never about anti-competitiveness (i.e., blocking other services, or making them charge more). It was about making it so iOS users can trust the In-App system, and not have to hop out of an app to register, or hunt around for better pricing, etc.
There were absolutely NO legal issues here. No one was suing Apple, and there were no grounds to do so. You can't make someone carry your product in their store, nor can you force them to offer pricing plans that fit your model.
The reason they changed it is because they were getting feedback (from actual developers, not internet forum posters) that this wasn't going to work for them. So Apple altered the rules to still try and keep the same goal, which is to make the app experience for the user as trustworthy and simple as possible.