>FWIW there may not be a public API for what they're trying to do. Of course, I didn't say they'd still be able to accomplish the same thing, after all that's

>FWIW there may not be a public API for what they're trying to do. Of course, I didn't say they'd still be able to accomplish the same thing, after all that's the most common reason one would be interested in using private APIs in the first place. On Mac OS X (as it was back then rather then "OS X") for example at one point there was no good public API for menu bar extras. Apple wanted everyone to use the NSStatusBar API but it was vastly less capable then the private version Apple used, so naturally the latter was rapidly reverse engineered and a whole ecosystem quickly developed. There was actually a bit of an arms race for a while, a preface perhaps to the current iOS situation, because with Jaguar (10.2) Apple added new code specifically to attempt to force the exclusion of all 3rd party menu extras. Apple wised up about that later and just accepted that a bleeding edge would exist, but they were pretty sensitive even very early on to worries that crashing or bugs in 3rd party software that took down soemthing major (like the entire SystemUIServer) would have a major negative effect on perception and adoption of Mac OS X on the whole. Presumably at least some that attitude in turn dates all the way back to the stability horror story that was classic Mac OS in the later years in particular. On the Mac it was futile and pissed off devs and power users, the block was broken before Jaguar was even GM'd, but it's something they've clearly never entirely forgotten and now under iOS they're using their control to enforce it. Even if functionality is only possible with a private API in the present OS release they'd rather an app be forced to use less but be more sure that it'll work at all in the long term.