The rumor mill is churning out reports that the US Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice are planning an antitrust probe, in response to Apple’s decision to restrict iPhone app development to certain languages, and locking out translation tools.
You know you screwed up somewhere when two US government organizations are fighting over the right to anal probe you.
Source: Ars Technica
I’ll admit that this one’s grey area, but Apple posts data (about apps on the iPhone) on the public Internet. A user may wish to use that data in a more efficient manner, so they install an app to do it for them.
Oh, wait, they can’t, because that app is banned, because it uses that data that Apple has posted on the public Internet.
As the App Rejections blog points out, this is kinda screwy. Apple can’t stop screen scraping on the public Internet (robots.txt is voluntary, too,) but they own the iPhone platform, and can control anything that goes on on it.
Screen scraping is a valuable tool for getting at data when a site gives it to you in a form that’s not really usable to filter on that data. Sure, it’s sometimes abused, but in this case, it can only benefit users, and can’t harm Apple.
Source: App Rejections
I’ve already mentioned Apple’s insane censorship before, but I’ll mention it again.
It seems to me that Steve Jobs wants to be the moral police of the app store, not allowing anything remotely titillating (unless it’s from major, reputable sources that make Apple a lot of money, of course) on the iPhone.
To his credit, he did suggest going to Android to view porn on a phone, but still.
The thing is, there’s parental controls on the iPhone. So, use them to lock the porn away from those who you don’t want to see it – don’t block porn altogether.
Source: Wired
This isn’t news either, but I’m posting it anyway.
Many have made the argument that it’s OK if Apple makes a walled garden, because there’s always other choices.
The problem is when Apple’s walled garden is wildly successful, competing platforms may switch to a walled garden model. And, Microsoft, which is quite often accused of copying Apple at every opportunity, well, they’re copying Apple on this one.
Windows Phone 7 will be a walled garden, too. Sure, there’s some Windows Mobile 6.5 devices out there, and they’ll continue past Windows Phone 7’s release, but let’s face it – 6.5 is crap.
And, AT&T’s first Android device, the Motorola Backflip, requires some hacking to get apps from outside of the Android Market installed. Granted, they didn’t do a good job of securing it, but they did try.
Arguably, this is more of a “why Microsoft and AT&T evil,” but this points out why Apple’s walled garden is dangerous for everyone, even if you’re not an Apple customer.
Source: Engadget
Never mind that you can get to this sort of thing on Safari… apparently political cartoons aren’t allowed on the iPhone.
Ridiculing public figures being defamatory? What ever happened to parody? Also, being public figures, IIRC, the level for whether the speech is defamatory is higher.
Now, one thing I’ll say… this would be a non-issue, of Apple deciding they don’t want to distribute it, if Apple allowed external software. But, Apple has control over what runs on the iPhone completely.
Yes, they are reversing their decision on this app, but only because of the public backlash. This is actually a good sign – public backlash against their actions, such as this series of blog entries, makes them respond. But, they’re obviously willing to do something if they think they can get away with it.
Source: Slashdot
Today’s “Why Apple is evil” entry deals with something that’s not quite news, but I wanted to cover it.
Apple is requiring that applications originally be developed in Objective-C, C++, C, or JavaScript (executed by Safari’s JS engine.)
This is intentionally used as a way to prevent certain companies from making tools for the iPhone platform.
Despite what you might think about Adobe (honestly, my opinion is that they’re the vile scum of the Internet, and Flash is worse than IE6, because at least there’s alternatives to IE6,) this is still rather troubling – the market should push Adobe out with superior solutions, not anticompetitive actions, especially when those anti-competitive actions have collateral damage, and severely negatively affect developers. Apple is now mandating the development process, not just what the program does.
Of course, in classic Apple fashion, they’re doing things horribly inconsistently – other development frameworks that clearly violate the agreement are being explicitly allowed, showing just how anticompetitive this is.
Waging a personal war is one thing. Waging a personal war using your developers and users as pawns is another.
Source: many, but I decided to post about this today because of The Register
I’m going to start a regular series, hopefully daily, inspired by this article on OSnews.
My goal is to, every day, post a piece of bad PR, ideally sourced externally, about Apple. I intend to post other things on this blog as well – this will be in addition to my normal infrequent posting.
Let’s start this out with an app rejection. (A lot of these will be app rejections.)
Apple has rejected an app, “You Are Hot,” for containing objectionable content. Problem is, at the time of review, it didn’t contain any content. It allowed users to submit content, and that content was moderated to make sure it WASN’T objectionable.
So, by that logic, Apple should ban Safari from the iPhone. After all, it might potentially show a breast. And, by their logic, you wouldn’t even be able to slap WebSense in front of the internet connection to prevent that breast from showing – if it can show user-generated content, it’s objectionable, apparently.
Isn’t this what parental controls are for, if you’re using the walled garden app model?
Source: App Rejections
What they used to stand for: Clever hacks, exploration, creativity, making stuff, freedom, designed to benefit the hacker and the user
What they stand for today: Consumerism, restriction, walled gardens, control, designed to benefit the content producer
Best symbolism of the former? The Apple II. The lid isn’t even screwed down, just pops right off. BASIC, and in some versions (depending on available space,) an assembler and disassembler in ROM. Manuals with schematics and source code.
Best symbolism of the latter? The iPad. Sealed tight, Apple doesn’t even swap the battery, they replace the entire unit. Programming is only if you pay to play, and even then, your code has to be approved by Apple. Allegedly, DRM baked straight into the CPU, so Apple can in theory control every single piece of code that you run on it.
Which would you prefer?
You’re probably thinking, “what? How can that be? Android has to be the most open, it’s open source, right?”
And you’d be right… until you get into actual Android devices that are for sale. Other than the Google Dev Phone 1 (which has some other restrictions,) all of the devices are locked down at least somewhat.
There is one exception to my point – in one or two ways, Palm OS is more open than Windows Mobile. However, Palm OS is irrelevant nowadays, but I’ll include it in the comparison anyway. Continue reading “Scary thought of the day: Windows Mobile is the most open smartphone operating system.”