Inside Apple's iPhone SDK Gag Order 495
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Tom Yager takes a closer look at Apple's iPhone SDK confidentiality agreement, which restricts developers from discussing the SDK or exchanging ideas with others, thereby leaving no room for forums, newsgroups, open source projects, tutorials, magazine articles, users' groups, or books. But because anyone is free to obtain the iPhone SDK by signing up for it, Apple is essentially branding publicly available information as confidential. This 'puzzling contradiction' is the 'antithesis of the developer-friendly Apple Developer Connection' on which the iPhone SDK program is based, Yager contends. 'You'll see arguments from armchair legal analysts that the iPhone developer Agreements won't stand up in court — but those analysts certainly won't stand up in court on your behalf.' Anyone planning to launch an iPhone forum or open source project should have 'a lawyer draft your request for exemption, and make sure that the Apple staffer granting it personally commits to status as authorized to approve exceptions to the iPhone Registered Developer and iPhone SDK Agreements,' Yager warns."
This will have to change... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple hosts public iPhone discussions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:no sale, here, then (Score:2, Informative)
I own an iPod Touch and it is HANDS DOWN the greatest tech device I've ever bought. There is nothing else like it on the market right now.
Of course it's worth is increased exponentially when hacked and jailbroken. Apple charged iPod owners $10 for the 2.0 software update. There is some claim that business law requires them to do this, which is nonsense as Sony routinely give the PSP new features for free. MS released their 2.0 Zune update for free for older Zune's etc... So I'm not sure why Apple is defended in this practice when Sony and MS are possibly two of the most evil companies out there.
As it was, I scored the 2.0 update for free thanks to an Apple fuckup. HAHA!:)
Re:If this is the computing model of the future (Score:5, Informative)
I like Nokia's new advertising platform:
http://www.opentoanything.com/ [opentoanything.com]
At a glance it looks like they've identified Apple's closed stance is a big gripe for developers and hardcore tech-types, and they're going after that market.
Obviously they've also got Google on the other side, but I hope they do well out of this. If they stop spamming out a billion different mobile models a year and focus on getting some nice, neat hardware backed by some good open source, get enough developer support, and they could have something going on.
Re:No browsers, no API, players or background apps (Score:4, Informative)
Apple hasn't made an ADC monitor in several years. ADC was basically a DVI port with extra connectors for USB and power for the monitor. Apple's adapter had to provide power for a monitor that lacked a power supply. I managed to use Apple's computers without running into an ADC monitor. Getting a simple ADC to VGA or DVI block wasn't that expensive or hard either. And most video cards had ADC and a VGA port, so I used the adapters to run dual displays.
It's Apple's playground so you and I don't have to play in it, but I guess you can bitch about it, if that makes you feel better (superior).
Re:Not quite accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Answering my own question... (Score:3, Informative)
Seems it has a TI OMAP 2420, 400Mhz, which has roughly the same graphics system [wikipedia.org] as the iPhone.
Re:no sale, here, then (Score:4, Informative)
No, the parent post is not insightful. Rules change when you hit monopoly status, and the reason is purely so that companies can have a chance to compete against entrenched monopolies in a sector.
You want to allow product tying for non-monopoly players, but disallow it for the monopolies. That's good governance, and talk of "silent promotion" merely attempts to weaken systems like this.
The things that Apple does may be the same as what Microsoft did in the bad old days (although I have yet to hear good examples beyond vague anti-corporate claptrap) but there is nothing wrong with that because Apple has no monopoly in any market.
Even with the iPod, Apple is not a monopoly player in the music space because that's something ruled in a court, and personal opinions count for nothing. I'd say that's the best point to move against Apple, but it's way off-topic (we're talking phones here) and so irrelevant.
Hell, even the whole sue-the-blogger fiasco was grounded in law and perfectly legal for any company, even Microsoft. It may have been odious, but it's perfectly legal to go after people inducing the breaking of NDAs in California. (To the lawyers: I'm going from memory here, please correct me if I've got this wrong).
Lastly, hating a company means that you're defining your reactions by them. It's precisely as valid as loving a company. Neither are logical or even sensible.
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Re:It does not have less memory (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the N8*0 fully supports the SDHC standard. Those 32GB cards out now? If I REALLY wanted (and had the money they're charging for them), I could pop two of them into my N800, for 64GB of storage. I'm currently using two 4GB sticks at the moment, but when I start running low, I can always (and cheaply) upgrade just the storage.
Don't need PirateBay, Apple lets you (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:no sale, here, then (Score:3, Informative)
More accurately, those wanting the latest versions of the Android SDK had to be among the 50 winners of the first round of the ADC, for which they earned $25K and get a chance at another $100-275K, with the aforementioned NDA being one of the qualifications for proceeding.
Rockbox. (Score:3, Informative)
Someone handed me a Sansa e270 they couldn't get to do what they wanted.
I looked around, and found http://www.rockbox.org./ [www.rockbox.org]
From their site:
Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:
* Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
(not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
* Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
* Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
* iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
* Olympus: M:Robe 100
* SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
* Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)
So, in theory, you can have that wicked cool Apple hardware, and the ability to play oggs, flacs, wavs, all sorts of games, video if you have the horsepower, and anything else you want to compile.
I love it.
Re:no sale, here, then (Score:5, Informative)
It is not nonsense just because you are not willing to do any research.
MS accounts for the sale of an item (XP/Zune/360/etc) over (typically) 6 quarters. That means that they can argue that work they do in the meantime is compensated for (under sabarnes oaxley (sic)).
Apple, apart from the iphone and appletv, has typically accounted for profits immediately. S-O laws state that any future features must be accounted for, or else they have to re-file their SEC reports to modify the sales record such that x% of the original sale was in the quarter the new functionality was delivered.
It's a well meaning law which has stupid consequences. From the outside, you would argue that MS is scamming the SEC by accounting for a single xbox sale over 6 quarters, and that apple is doing the RIGHT thing by doing all profits immediately. This is not the case, though, thanks to the law.
The NDA is not the only problem... (Score:2, Informative)
A friend of mine (who loves to hate on the iPhone) sent me a great link that might be of interest:
Gizmodo article on devel limitations [gizmodo.com]
Some of the points raised:
I defend the phone and Apple as much as I can, but I have to admit that these are some pretty good points.
Re:no sale, here, then (Score:3, Informative)
Their software is pretty decent about "open standards". iTunes saves MP3, iMovie works in DV, iPhoto works in JPG, PNG, and the like. Even their Office Suite exports to PDF, Word, RTF, HTML, and plain text - and the very unconventional native format (actually a folder) is nothing but an XML file and a big collection of files that are embedded into the document - not a binary blob. Quicktime itself is open, and it exports to darned near anything. iCal is an open format.
What is your specific complaint?
Re:no sale here either (Score:3, Informative)
The iPod Touch is a computer. It even runs UNIX. Yes, it has music player software, but so do all of my other computers.
Re:no sale here either (Score:3, Informative)
It's a music player.
It also has a heck of a web browser. I've found it incredibly useful for specifically that reason. I can finally enjoy meetings again!
Re:BS (Score:3, Informative)
You have a point. When I used the jailbreak on my iPod, while I had more freedom, stability and quality went out the window. Many things went wrong after that. (Album cover art disappearing, iPod thinking it had no music on it etc...) Before I wiped it clean and upgraded, it had got so bad that keyframes from videos were being inserted as album cover art. It was a total mess.