Apple Bans iPhone App For Competing With Mail.app 464
recoiledsnake writes "Another submission has been rejected from the iPhone App Store, this time for 'duplicating the functionality of the iPhone Mail application.' The author claims that his application allows the user to log into their multiple web email accounts and that Apple seems to be confusing Gmail and Mail.app. This comes on the heels of Apple rejecting an application for competing with iTunes and rejecting other silly but harmless apps as being of 'limited utility.'"
ComputerWorld has an update to the rejected Podcaster app mentioned above. It seems the developer has used Apple's "Ad Hoc" service to begin distributing the software despite the fact that they blocked it from the App Store.
iphone is a police state (Score:4, Insightful)
The Iphone is an orwellian police state where everything you do on it is carefully censored and controlled by Apple. Certainly i would never use one. I wish Google or someone would come out with a phone which is based on a completely open OS like Linux and where people can write their own programs and so on for it. People often fear government as a threat to their freedom, but right here we see with Apple, an obvious violation of peoples rights to use a device that they purchased in a way they wish, and a corporation deciding what people can and cant use it for. This leads in fact to stagnation, a lack of innovation. Many interesting developments and innovations come from innovation and improving and tinkering with an existing platform. A platform that allows a person to develop software provides excellent conditions for new innovations, like new games or mail apps to be developed.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a general-purpose computer that's been DRM-infected to hell.
It's what Trusted Computing would actually be like: capricious, arbitrary and overpriced [today.com].
"Duplicating functionality" (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't duplicating functionality the basis for competition? The 45 different flashlight applications don't exactly support the claim that duplicate functionality is why these applications were rejected.
Seems to me like they're trying to reserve the right to develop their own alternative to any application on the store and pull the third party version. Don't you just love closed platforms?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Microsoft's platform, Microsoft's SDK, and Microsoft's store. Why should they allow any product on the shelf that competes with their own business? Why should they allow useless products? You don't get mad at Best Buy for not selling maps to Circuit City. You don't get mad at Circuit City for not selling empty cardboard boxes for $999. Why should Microsoft's store be any different?
Sound's pretty silly now, doesn't it?
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's pissing people off in a way that's bad PR, firstly to the developers and secondly to the users. There's a reason why so many of the latter have jail-broken their iPhones - Trusted Computing sucks to be bent over for.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:2, Insightful)
And yet I can still slam Apple on online forums and while phoning friends while using an iPhone.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an Apple fan to the highest degree, but this has to be the stupidest analogy I've ever heard. It's one thing for Apple to ban apps that violate privacy, harm the network, or even that go against AT&T's TOS (like the tethering app). But to ban an app that competes with Apple's free included apps? If Best Buy won't sell your software, you can always try getting Circuit City to sell it or if that doesn't work, sell it from your own site and pay for advertising. If Apple won't sell your app on the App Store, you have no alternative. I have a regular old Samsung flip phone on the Sprint network. The included web browser sucks. I went over to Operamini.com. downloaded it, and now I have a great browser. Apple would never allow a competing browser,
They have no reason to change (Score:4, Insightful)
By closing the system up it's more secure and they can guarentee their software remains popular on their system.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sound's pretty silly now, doesn't it?
Nope. Not to Apple Fanbois. kthxbye.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't think of any reason other than Microsoft is a monopoly, and users have next to no choice but to use Windows for many purposes. However, if you're talking about Windows Mobile, or some other MS platform that isn't a monopoly, then it really doesn't sound as silly as you might think it does.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what is expected of Apple fans: Denial. Obviously the iPhone isn't a police state. For one, it isn't a state. That should make it clear that you're looking at an analogy. The programs are the people of that "state", and they are indeed censored and controlled by Apple.
Unfortunately the central authority model is on the rise everywhere: Even Mozilla has its one stop shop which is tightly integrated into Mozilla's products and where developers are at the mercy of the admins (without the DRM though).
Re:It's time to face a simple fact about the iPhon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's time to face a simple fact about the iPhon (Score:4, Insightful)
the grandaprent obviously means that developing on the Iphone is a waste of investment. Most people do that kind of investment with a plan for a small reasonable return and a reasonable hope for great riches if their application happens to hit a sweet spot. With the iphone the situation is that, if you do hit that sweet spot, Apple can, and will just eliminate your application whilst introducing their own one. You end up doing free (or even profitable) R&D for Apple.
Others have compared this with Windows, but actually it's very similar. Microsoft has shown a willingness to kill any partner which gets too big for it's boots by competing against them. E.g. look at Borland which was wiped out by microsoft's compiler suite; look at Netscape; look even at Oracle: they were only saved because they had other platforms. Even so Oracle is in a much worse position because of MSSql than it would be otherwise.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why doesn't McDonalds sell the Whopper? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
The Iphone...
iPhone. See my earlier post.
Melodramatic much?
Certainly i would never use one.
You and millions of other people. Some for the same reason and others for a variety of other reasons. That's just the market exercising their right to choose. Congrats.
I wish Google or someone would come out with a phone which is based on a completely open OS like Linux and where people can write their own programs and so on for it.
You must be new here. Android. Look it up.
People often fear government as a threat to their freedom, but right here we see with Apple, an obvious violation of peoples rights to use a device that they purchased in a way they wish, and a corporation deciding what people can and cant use it for.
Ok, first, comparing Apple's controlling what apps are available for use on the iPhone with governments infringing people's freedoms? Seriously? I don't know if "melodramatic much" is adequate for that...
Second, iPhone purchasers can use the device however they want. They don't need to follow Apple's path. Just this week, iirc, it was announced that 2.1 was hacked allowing iPhone owners to install whatever apps they want. And when the next iPhone OS comes out, within a week or two, it'll be hacked as well. And so on and so on. iPhone owners can use the device however they want.
This leads in fact to stagnation, a lack of innovation.
Actually, the issue at hand is that the program in question mimicked Mail too closely without any notable differences. _THAT_ is stagnation and lack of innovation and it has nothing to do with Apple not approving applications. Had the app in question been a mail program with features that differentiated it from Mail, it surely would have been approved. But more on this later.
Many interesting developments and innovations come from innovation and improving and tinkering with an existing platform.
You mean like the efforts of the iPhone hacking team (sorry, I don't know if the team has an official name)? You mean like the efforts of the many, many, many iPhone app developers who have made some truly excellent apps already (check out Trism as but one example of a spectacular and innovative app that takes full use of the iPhone's abilities). Interesting developments and innovations surround the iPhone. And more will come as people push the limits of it's capabilities.
A platform that allows a person to develop software provides excellent conditions for new innovations, like new games or mail apps to be developed.
Um, people can develop apps for the iPhone. Apple doesn't need to approve all those apps (as they make clear in their documentation for developers), but people can develop apps for the device. There are already plenty of apps on the iPhone. Over a million have been downloaded already. Your point is a non-issue.
It sounds like the app was not approved because it was basically a carbon copy of Mail - same functions with no additional, differentiating features. So, if they approved it, people would buy the app, download it, realize they got duped into buying something that comes with the iPhone OS, get pissed and complain - the later two being things Apple wants to avoid. Rather than go that route, they did not approve the app. Had the developer actually developed something - spent some time and effort adding additional features that made the app different (and probably better) than Mail - Apple almost certainly would have approved it.
How posts like yours get modded up are beyond me. Melodramatic drivel alongside false information. Normally Slashdot reviewers get it right but sometimes they just miss the boat...
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet I can still slam Apple on online forums and while phoning friends while using an iPhone.
Except for Apples forums, they can't handle criticism even if its just an attempt to resolve a problem.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
It's Apple's product and if they are able to, there is nothing wrong with controlling what apps there are in the app store.
They exert excessive and unnecessary control over the thing. There is something wrong with it, I don't care if its their phone, i don't care if its their app store. They absolutely should not be allowed to exclude applications from the thing simply because it might threaten their business model, EVEN IF they have used to SDK license to exclude those things. It's ridiculous and i hope they get sued.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, while I resent and dislike this scenario for all the same reasons most people here do, I have to think about this from the other side of it. My CEO loves his MacBook pro. He loves it so much, last year, he got Macs for the whole family and bought every Apple device to support it -- airports and the like -- and went full-bore Apple at home and didn't look back. It was total commitment. It was part experiment and part disgust and frustration with the misery that Windows brings.
Apple works to keep confusion out of the Apple world. They do this by controlling the environment carefully. It is imperfect in areas; faults and holes are found and closed. And it is speculative to say that Apple excludes things for anti-competitive reasons, but it is unquestionable that they do work to control the environment. But for many people, the results of this provides exactly the experience people are seeking out of Apple.
And I think the fact that Apple's philosophy exists in the form it does is useful if for no reason than to observe the practices and the results they yield.
Apple isn't in 100% control though. Apple HAS to allow Microsoft to behave like assholes in their world. By that, I am specifically talking about the difficulty of setting up Entourage to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server using SSL without getting the invalid certificate error. It's a Microsoft app and a Microsoft server. You'd think they would be able to get it right but for whatever reason, Microsoft hasn't fixed it. If Apple had their way, they would exclude Microsoft entirely from their environment... it just wouldn't be a wise business decision. Microsoft applies other limitations and broken behaviors in its products for Apple as well. This is not something that Apple easily tolerates... but they will from Microsoft and probably from Adobe as well.
Other opinions aside, I find it interesting to observe the various dynamics surrounding Apple's philosophies applied.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the mainframe mentality expressed on a global level. And yes, it's unnerving, particularly for someone like me who was there thirty-odd years ago when the personal computer was born, and has long since been accustomed to doing whatever the hell I want with my systems.
Re:They have no reason to change (Score:4, Insightful)
No. This is pure profit motive, that's all.
And how much profit does Apple make on Mail.app?
If Apple allowed a competing mail app, this would encourage more people to buy the iPhone (more money for Apple), and I'm sure they get a cut of sales through the App Store (even more money for Apple).
No one has built an effective Mail client for Mac OS X.
Thunderbird isn't effective?
No one has built a good replacement for ANY of the Mac OS X's system tools, BECAUSE Apple closes their system effectively.
Or maybe because there's really not a market for someone to duplicate the functionality of, say, Disk Utility. And there's really not a lot you can do on top of Disk Utility.
True Microsoft is the T-Rex, but they don't compete in markets like system tools, mail clients, etc.
WTF? Can it be you don't know about Outlook?
Sure, they don't ban these other markets, but it's not as though they don't attempt to compete.
Re:Why should Apple open up? (Score:2, Insightful)
That from a guy who said "I wasn't about to ask permission from Microsoft to use something that I bought and paid for. [slashdot.org]"
Seriously dude, your fanboism reeks.
Re:They have no reason to change (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what I love about Google as a company: they get it. Look at 3 of the 4 main points that are right smack in your face on that webpage:
Open
All applications are equal
Fast & easy development
This is what a developer wants. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that Android is going to be a success.
Re:"Duplicating functionality" (Score:2, Insightful)
As for me, I don't want to live in random application wasteland. On issue with MS, for example, is that there are a million applications to do anyone thing, none of them very good, but nothing free and easy to do something as simple, as, for example, print to PDF. The application in question adds nothing. It is a essentially a clone of mail.app, which can already automatically add a google, aol, yahoo, etc account. We already have the store littered with a million bible applications, some with the gall to charge money for distributing the word, do we need a million mail application. Can't someone do some original work?
Perhaps the google phone will be a better formula. Perhaps no one will mind that their calls and internet activity is being mined for advertising goodness and everything they do is being stored in a personally identifiable format for at least a year. Perhaps that is a better tradeoff than limitation of apps. Perhaps openmoko is the ideal, where everyone rolls their own and then shares. I myself am just happy to be able to browse over the cell network when I have no other computer or internet access.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:1, Insightful)
And another one bites the RDF.
(1) The iPhone heavily features transitions to make the UI look sexy. Try focusing on real usability issues such as the lack of tactile feedback for typing and, you know, dialing.
(2) "Level" is a simple application of the iPhone's accelerometer; you're an idiot if you try to use it for any applications which require accuracy to 1/10th of a degree.
(3) Shazam has been available through the Java app ShazamiD [shazam.com] (hint: click "phone compatibility) for ages. As a fallback, dial 2580 (in the UK).
(4) "And it's an iPod". An iPod is an MP3 player. So are most phones. What sets the iPod apart is the click wheel. The iPhone doesn't have one.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
When was a device built by Apple a democratic system?
Oh I don't know, the entire Mac range?
I can run any software I please on my MacBook Pro, even format and install Windows or Linux if I want. On an iPhone, I can only run Apple-approved software, unless the phone is jailbroken.
24 years after their iconic '1984' ad, Apple look like hypocrites with their complete about-face on the iPhone.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
No, your examples are not DRM.
Your examples restrict the permissions of a service, or of closed information.
DRM is an attempt to restrict permissions of software or information on the system of a user who otherwise has complete control because it's their system.
To give an analogy, permissions restrict normal users because normal users don't have an expectation of control. DRM attempts to restrict root.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't mod you troll, but I do think you're full of it.
No, they are not. DRM is when you give the key and the content to someone, and expect them to only be able to view that content under certain circumstances.
If I password-protect something, then I have two choices: (a) give you the password, (b) don't give you the password. If (a), you can't access the content at all. If (b), you can do anything with the content you want. Period. DRM is the foolish attempt to do both.
If a chmod a file, I have two choices: (a) give you read access, (b) don't give you read access. If (a), you can do anything with that content you want. You can read it, you can copy it, you can run it on another machine, whatever. If (b), you can't do anything with the content. You can't read it, you can't copy it, you can't run it on another machine. Again, DRM is the idea that you can have your cake and eat it too.
This is either trolling or completely misunderstanding the issue. I will be generous and assume the latter.
This falls perfectly in line with the other two categories above. I have two choices with my SSN: (a) I can tell you what it is, (b) I can keep it secret from you. If (a), you have full access to my SSN and can copy it, tell others about it, post it on the interwebs, etc. If (b), then you can't do anything with it, you can't copy it, you can't use it to screw over my credit rating, etc. DRM is the idea that you can, given enough technology, tell someone what your SSN is and, at the same time, prevent them from doing anything bad with it. I hope it is obvious to you why this is impossible.
You might think that DRM would be a good thing in some cases if it were technologically feasible, such as being able to give people your SSN and ensuring that they can't do anything bad with it. But DRM is not anything like passwords or chmod or "normal" access restrictions that do not give people access to the content and then expect to control it.
Dlugar
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:2, Insightful)
24 years after their iconic '1984' ad, Apple look like hypocrites with their complete about-face on the iPhone.
This line really should be used in the ad for every other phone out there that lets users run abitrary apps.
Unfortunately, I just ran out of mod points.
Reality Check (Score:2, Insightful)
Every week I come across this sort of ranting on various mailing lists. I have worked as a J2ME developer for over 4 years, and I have dipped my toes into the console world as well. Currently I work on iPhone, and it is a dream. I don't like the paranoia and bullshit, but the cellphone / console world is basically just as bad.
Please don't rant about "police state" mentality or make silly analogies. You already live in that world if you own a console. Don't rant about anti-trust lawsuits, the console makers have been doing it for decades, it is totally legal.
You cannot even get dev tools for consoles such as PSP or Wii. The companies won't even talk to you. It doesn't matter how many stores carry PS3 games, you won't ever have a chance to make one without the backing of the right company.
In the J2ME world, most of the sales are on carrier sell decks. To get on those decks, you have to get the attention of corporate behemoths such as AT&T or Sprint. Cell phone development companies hire people whose entire job it to manage "carrier relations". That 70/30 split people complain about is better than any deal you will get from a carrier, assuming they even deign to talk to you.
J2ME - dev tools are free, but you have to deal with literally hundreds of different devices, all with their own unique undocumented bugs, not to mention radically different implementations of the J2ME spec. The only plus is that you can theoretically set up your own e-commerce system and bypass the carrier decks. Last I checked, some carriers were requiring apps to be digitally signed, and limited the APIs you could access.
BREW - The apps have DRM in them; I believe you have to go through a propriety system developed by Qualcom to sell anything
Symbian - none of the 4 companies I've worked for have ever given a shit about this platform, so don't even mention it.
Android - Maybe it will be great, at this point it is vapor ware
Consoles - you need an expensive and difficult to obtain developer box. Every piece of documentation is under NDA. The companies have total control over which games get approved for sale, and the experience of getting final approval is time consuming and stressful.
I wasn't an "Apple fanboi" until about 3 months ago, when I went all in with a Macbook pro (in fact, I once vowed to never use Macs again after bad experiences developing on them in the mid 90s).
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to know what a general purpose PC which can only reliably run software blessed by a central authority looks like, go install Debian, then try and install a program that isn't included in the repositories. It'll probably make jailbreaking an iPhone look like a stroll through a grassy meadow.
Oh, you mean like I how I've built and run supertux, wesnoth, frozen-bubble and conky out of svn? Or like how I installed Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo with wine? Or how I install the wine packages from winehq instead of from Debian?
Or how I've installed vethd from a source tarball? Or how I've installed several emacs mode by downloading some random .el of the web? Or do you perhaps means the tons of scripts in my ~/bin that just keep on working and I only change because I learn something new about shell scripting?
Besides, that's missing the point a bit. The real point is that Apple is deliberately and actively making some pieces of software hard to install for the explicit purpose of preventing their users from running it. No such thing happens with Debian.
What [Trusted Computing] does do is let you run software on some arbitrary system and get that software into a provably secure state,
Say, like an OS that's locked down with DRM and refuses to run applications not signed by ${COMPANY} who sells signatures only to non-competing software? Oh right, but it doesn't allow third party control of what software you run. I see...
If I'm totally wrong, care to give a reference proving me wrong? I'd like to learn something new.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Microsoft uses its monopoly to destroy other options and force you into a position where their choice is the only choice. That's what the embrace and extend philosophy is all about.
In the iPhone's case, you're perfectly able to buy a different phone that does not have these restrictions. In fact, it's easier to buy another phone, because the iPhone is only available for one carrier, ostensibly. (Mine's jailbroken, and over on T-Mobile, but I knew what I was getting into when I got it.)
Should Apple be banning apps like this mail program or the podcasting app? No, I don't think so. Can they? Yes, at their peril. They have the opportunity to choose whether they want to discourage serious developers and users, and the punishment for their crime will quite appropriately be levied against their bottom line and marketshare, if they continue on this road.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying you can only run Apple-approved software but there are cases where you can opt to run software Apple hasn't or doesn't approved?
That's like saying I always tell the truth except when I'm lying.
I run software Apple hasn't approved right now on my iPhone. No jailbreaking required.
fancy screen transition (Score:3, Insightful)
"...i mean, how does a fancy screen transition improve usability in any way?"
You may think they're "just" eye-candy, but they contribute to the UI in a major way. Sliding screens back and forth, zooming from an icon to a screen and back, minimizing to an icon or trash can at the bottom of the screen, super-smooth list scrolling, "inertia", and more, all contribute to a sense of place. Yes, they're "sexy", but they also provide significant visual cues that help tell you what just happened, where the document or object went or where it came from, or where you're currently located or positioned within a document or a process.
It's far, far more than just looks. So, in answer to: "does it improve efficiency or make the software more intuitive?"
Yes.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you describing a type of computer technology, or a police state?
Those are quickly becoming one and the same.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
Debian is a poor analogy because their release is all non-proprietary, but installing non-proprietary software is extremely easy. Try running "apt-cache search nvidia" on a fresh Debian install, without having updated the sources.list.
Even if it was at all difficult to install any proprietary software in Debian, the whole point is flawed. Debian doesn't want to ship with proprietary software IN their OS on install. There is no restrictions on actual use or development. You don't have to get into their official package repository to develop software that will install flawlessly with their release.
There are no awkward technical hoops to jump though. If some software requires newer libraries, clearly it's development objective wasn't to install for the stable release; something that the developers should be well aware of at every step of the process. Getting the software running is still possible of course, usually through instructions provided by the developers or on the Debian community support site.
All of these completely moot your DRM comparison, and I could go on and on. If anything, the two are opposite approaches to a platform release that has conditionals on what can come with it on install. Open and closed, it's beyond a stretch to say they have the same restricting effect.
Smarten up, Apple... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one is going to use a third party mail app, or music app, or other app that competes with your offerings, unless it is substantially better. Compete on your merits.
I'm a big Mac fan; switched to a MacBook and there's no going back. I love OS X, the hardware, the general approach and leadership of Jobs.
But this app store stuff is ridiculous. It's reminiscent of MS in the early days. "We encourage your development on our platform, until we get into the space." Just like MS started picking off app areas one by one, killing third party vendors supporting their platform (Spreadsheet, Word Processors, even TCP/IP stacks), Apple is going to cannibalize themselves if they keep this approach up. Even as a Mac Fanboi, I'm thinking this is outrageous and has to stop.
I'm also a developer, and was seriously considering dedicating myself to iPhone apps, but am putting that on hold until I see some change in policies. (Or at least more visibility as to the policy.)
Re:Props to (relatively) open platforms (Score:3, Insightful)
And they are calling the people buying an iPhone "fanbois".
Quick logic lesson for ya; the existence of google fanbois does not disprove the existence of iPhone fanbois.
Re:iphone is a police state (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondarily, allowing users to install apps from any source they please would be the first major step in making application piracy that much more likely. And, effectively, the end of all of those cheap $1 and $2 applications. Prices would jump to the $10 and $20 mark seen on other platforms and stores (Handago), which is something that benefits neither honest users nor developers.
You have it backwards. If piracy really does happen (you said that, not me), the $1-$2 apps are the least likely to be affected.