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How Apple Really Screwed Up With New License

18 points by mattculbreth 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
DLWormwood 17y ago
I actually predict that this will be a major problem for Apple in the future, but probably won't impact their bottom line for their mobile platforms. Programmers never forget things. They are notorious for not updating basic knowledge they believe and for spreading myths and rumors about technology for decades. I can actually see a situation building where programmers who maybe wouldn't have worked on an iPhone application would still avoid targeting Apple products simply because of the stories about Apple doing "A Section 331" on them. This. Despite my personally benefitting from the new policy change, (I write Obj-C comfortably and will benefit from the reduced competition,) I think Apple is making a grave mistake trying to extend their review checking process in a manner that can only be done in reality by visiting each and every developer. I'm not convinced Apple's in-house analysis tools will be able to capture violations in a manner consistent with their current license wording. It's just going to degenerate into a cat-and-mouse game with the larger and/or more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to waste resources and R&D money on license enforcement, driving down profits and adding significantly to the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in the last few years. Apple is still living down past quirks and excess of their platforms, like "Cult of Apple evangelism" and "one-button mice," that are no longer true, but hang around their necks like a long decaying albatross. In short, this could help cause Jobs to lose control of his platform's message to the masses if the people able to recommend their hardware and platforms keep sticking "asterisks" to their recommendations.
- lurch_mojoff 17y ago
  I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule. It's meant to be a catchall clause. Most likely App store reviewers will first use some subjective criteria like whether an app feels like a native app or whether it fits certain performance requirements. If an app fails to match the subjective criteria it will be submitted for further inspection. And just then, if it fails to pass that one too, it will be "objectively" rejected for a subjective reason.
  - StrawberryFrog 17y ago
    I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule. Stupid rules are not improved by selective enforcement. The randomness, the unfair application of them makes it worse.
    - lurch_mojoff 17y ago
      I'm not defending the rule or the inconsistent enforcement of it. I'm just pointing out why DLWormwood's apocalyptic prediction of "a cat-and-mouse game with the larger and/or more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to waste resources and R&D money on license enforcement, driving down profits and adding significantly to the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in the last few years" will most likely not come true.
lurch_mojoff 17y ago
Although I am amongst the first to disagree, maybe not necessarily with Apple's goal, but certainly with the language they are resorting to to achieve that goal, I have to object to the following statement: What I believe programmers are truly angry about is that Apple broke their long standing promise of supporting multiple languages when they originally attracted them to the platform. They're really saying: "You told me if I bought a mac, and an iPhone, and an iPad, that you would create LLVM and MacRuby and Python bindings so I can code in my favorite language. You lied!" Nobody is really saying that because neither Apple nor any of their employees have ever told anyone such a thing. On one hand the ban of interpreted code, except for Javascript, has been there since day one, so no sane programmer has had the illusion that they can use Ruby, or Python, or whatever to write iPhone apps. And on the other hand there is absolutely nothing preventing Apple from amending that clause in the license agreement once the technical limitations, e.g. garbage collected Objective-C runtime, behind toll-free, ahead of time compiled wrappers like MacRuby disappear. Especially since MacRuby in particular is an Apple run project.
- anonjon 17y ago
  No, I think the problem is that until now it was a kind of a tacit assumption by developers that no company is really interested in restricting something as arbitrary as the way that you code. I see this as a sort of bizarre breach of social norms on apple's part. I thought that the rule against interpreted code was a little weird from the start. I understand the reasoning behind it (you can't very well allow someone full use of what you sold them, it would be anarchy). But now, you also can't use other non-interpteted languages. From the perspective of anyone who knows anything about computing, compilers, programming etc. It seems completely nuts. The only real difference is that in a better language I have an easier time writing the damn code.
- glhaynes 17y ago
  The ban that was there since the beginning wasn't against all interpreted code, was it? It was against being able to run interpreted code that wasn't originally shipped with the app. So I don't think (before the recent 3.3.1 changes) that Ruby or Python would have been against the rules. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
akadien 17y ago
I can't get the taste out of my mouth about 331. To the point that this is actually making me study other platforms because of the spookiness of Apple's propensity to be arbitrary. I'm two weeks into developing a game I had hoped to port over to Android after releasing for the iPhone. Now, I'm looking harder now at WebKit and Android (and have glanced a little at Windows Phone, gasp).
mjnaus 17y ago
Are we still on this? The curtain has closed; Apple is now evil... move on.
tptacek 17y ago
In this case I think they could be sued or investigated the same way Microsoft was regarding their unfair business practices in licensing. No, they can't, because the predicate for the Microsoft enforcement action was their monopoly position in the desktop market, and the cause of action was their attempt to use that monopoly to create new monopolies. Apple has nothing close to a monopoly on smart phones (they are crushed by RIM). I'm also confused by the thesis of this blog post, which seems to be that there was a bait-and-switch pulled on the Apple dev community writ large. The vast, overwhelming majority of iPhone apps are written in ObjC, and Ruby is no more a second-class citizen on OSX today as it was last year.

18 points by mattculbreth 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

I actually predict that this will be a major problem for Apple in the future, but probably won't impact their bottom line for their mobile platforms. Programmers never forget things. They are notorious for not updating basic knowledge they believe and for spreading myths and rumors about technology for decades. I can actually see a situation building where programmers who maybe wouldn't have worked on an iPhone application would still avoid targeting Apple products simply because of the stories about Apple doing "A Section 331" on them. This. Despite my personally benefitting from the new policy change, (I write Obj-C comfortably and will benefit from the reduced competition,) I think Apple is making a grave mistake trying to extend their review checking process in a manner that can only be done in reality by visiting each and every developer. I'm not convinced Apple's in-house analysis tools will be able to capture violations in a manner consistent with their current license wording. It's just going to degenerate into a cat-and-mouse game with the larger and/or more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to waste resources and R&D money on license enforcement, driving down profits and adding significantly to the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in the last few years. Apple is still living down past quirks and excess of their platforms, like "Cult of Apple evangelism" and "one-button mice," that are no longer true, but hang around their necks like a long decaying albatross. In short, this could help cause Jobs to lose control of his platform's message to the masses if the people able to recommend their hardware and platforms keep sticking "asterisks" to their recommendations.

lurch_mojoff 17y ago
I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule. It's meant to be a catchall clause. Most likely App store reviewers will first use some subjective criteria like whether an app feels like a native app or whether it fits certain performance requirements. If an app fails to match the subjective criteria it will be submitted for further inspection. And just then, if it fails to pass that one too, it will be "objectively" rejected for a subjective reason.
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule. Stupid rules are not improved by selective enforcement. The randomness, the unfair application of them makes it worse.
  - lurch_mojoff 17y ago
    I'm not defending the rule or the inconsistent enforcement of it. I'm just pointing out why DLWormwood's apocalyptic prediction of "a cat-and-mouse game with the larger and/or more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to waste resources and R&D money on license enforcement, driving down profits and adding significantly to the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in the last few years" will most likely not come true.

lurch_mojoff 17y ago

Although I am amongst the first to disagree, maybe not necessarily with Apple's goal, but certainly with the language they are resorting to to achieve that goal, I have to object to the following statement: What I believe programmers are truly angry about is that Apple broke their long standing promise of supporting multiple languages when they originally attracted them to the platform. They're really saying: "You told me if I bought a mac, and an iPhone, and an iPad, that you would create LLVM and MacRuby and Python bindings so I can code in my favorite language. You lied!" Nobody is really saying that because neither Apple nor any of their employees have ever told anyone such a thing. On one hand the ban of interpreted code, except for Javascript, has been there since day one, so no sane programmer has had the illusion that they can use Ruby, or Python, or whatever to write iPhone apps. And on the other hand there is absolutely nothing preventing Apple from amending that clause in the license agreement once the technical limitations, e.g. garbage collected Objective-C runtime, behind toll-free, ahead of time compiled wrappers like MacRuby disappear. Especially since MacRuby in particular is an Apple run project.

anonjon 17y ago
No, I think the problem is that until now it was a kind of a tacit assumption by developers that no company is really interested in restricting something as arbitrary as the way that you code. I see this as a sort of bizarre breach of social norms on apple's part. I thought that the rule against interpreted code was a little weird from the start. I understand the reasoning behind it (you can't very well allow someone full use of what you sold them, it would be anarchy). But now, you also can't use other non-interpteted languages. From the perspective of anyone who knows anything about computing, compilers, programming etc. It seems completely nuts. The only real difference is that in a better language I have an easier time writing the damn code.
glhaynes 17y ago
The ban that was there since the beginning wasn't against all interpreted code, was it? It was against being able to run interpreted code that wasn't originally shipped with the app. So I don't think (before the recent 3.3.1 changes) that Ruby or Python would have been against the rules. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

akadien 17y ago

I can't get the taste out of my mouth about 331. To the point that this is actually making me study other platforms because of the spookiness of Apple's propensity to be arbitrary. I'm two weeks into developing a game I had hoped to port over to Android after releasing for the iPhone. Now, I'm looking harder now at WebKit and Android (and have glanced a little at Windows Phone, gasp).

mjnaus 17y ago

Are we still on this? The curtain has closed; Apple is now evil... move on.

tptacek 17y ago

In this case I think they could be sued or investigated the same way Microsoft was regarding their unfair business practices in licensing. No, they can't, because the predicate for the Microsoft enforcement action was their monopoly position in the desktop market, and the cause of action was their attempt to use that monopoly to create new monopolies. Apple has nothing close to a monopoly on smart phones (they are crushed by RIM). I'm also confused by the thesis of this blog post, which seems to be that there was a bait-and-switch pulled on the Apple dev community writ large. The vast, overwhelming majority of iPhone apps are written in ObjC, and Ruby is no more a second-class citizen on OSX today as it was last year.