6 ms·

Unless you are Facebook or Google. Then it's fine and you get a free pass.

threeseed 10y ago
To some extent yes but often no. Apple has close relationships with those companies so it's often a case of them reaching out to the developers rather than just blinding rejecting the app. But any idea that Apple would allow them to run ruff shot over the platform and do whatever they wanted is a bit ridiculous.
- sametmax 10y ago
  It's not ridiculous, they have been doing it for a long time now. E.G: Apple uses private APIs (http://sourcedna.com/blog/20151018/ios-apps-using-private-apis.html http://sourcedna.com/blog/20151018/ios-apps-using-private-ap...) to build some of their software and reject apps doing the same, effectively killing competition. But Google and facebook uses them because they want to create products that can compete with apple's features. E.G: https://daringfireball.net/2008/11/google_mobile_uses_private_iphone_apis https://daringfireball.net/2008/11/google_mobile_uses_privat... Yet they are not rejected, because they are "big enough".
  - jamespo 10y ago
    Do you have examples more recent than 2008?
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Those are not easy to find, it's not really something they advertise and you need somebody to publicly catch them. The only reason I know they do is because some of my friends working on mobile video games regularly complain they can't get some features because they are private while google and facebook do. They analyzed some apps to try to copy said features and realized the unfairness of their situation. Those are lunch chit chats, not hard facts. But they got seldom reasons to lie.
    - froindt 10y ago
      I'm not sure if it's still the case, but I don't think you could record iPad screens at the start, though Apple demonstrated it as a possibility during their live demos. I'm not sure if Apple made it available to other companies privately though.
  - joosters 10y ago
    Of course Apple use private APIs... if they didn't, then these APIs would have no reason to exist in the first place.
  - scarface74 10y ago
    I've never understood why developers criticize OS vendors use of "private APIs". I would go so far as to say there is no such thing as a "private API". The API is a vendors promise to consuming applications that when they call a method, a certain behavior will happen. Whatever they do behind the scenes is an implementation detail that they should be allowed to change anytime without breaking consuming applications. Apple often uses immature frameworks internally - like the extensions framework - to to polish them or to dog food them before making them official.
    - toyg 10y ago
      > why developers criticize OS vendors use of "private APIs" The point is not that these APIs exist; the problem is when vendors actively block others from using them, with hacks and/or policy bans. That's extremely hypocritical and anti-competitive. I can see why unofficial APIs must be discouraged (because let's be honest, developers will bitch and moan when they change -- Microsoft in particular was strong-armed into legacy support for decades by the likes of Adobe and Symantec), but it should never be an excuse to ostracize or tilt the playing field.
      - oneplane 10y ago
        It's not about marketing, economics or other MBA-feuled non-technical ideas. It's about a software vendor saying: this is our platform, here are API's for you to use, don't go outside it. It is perfectly reasonable, and so far, any other interpretation seems to be a skewed view to facilitate some sort of non-compliant piece of software.
        scarface74 10y ago
        And the minute scores of applications break that depend on a third party library that uses an undocumented method, the OS vendor gets blamed for releasing a "buggy OS" or they have to keep buggy work arounds in their code forever like MS does.
    - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
      f.lux strikes me as a good example. f.lux came to the market first with its idea to control screen temperature. Apple decides "No, you're not allowed to do that...but that's a great idea!", kicks f.lux out of the app store, and then adds their own Night Mode into later versions of iOS, using API's only they are allowed to access.
- akmarinov 10y ago
  Except for the time when Facebook did it (and still does). They use private apis to monitor user activity even while the app isn't running and collect all sorts of data that others don't have access to like wi-fi SSID and device MAC address. But what's Apple going to do - not have Facebook on iOS?
  - tomasf 10y ago
    CNCopyCurrentNetworkInfo gives any app network info, including the SSID.
    - wlesieutre 10y ago
      Does this still work? A cursory googling says it was deprecated in iOS 9 betas but may have been re-enabled?
      - larkost 10y ago
        Depreciated is not removed. Apple is usually very conscientious about depreciating things, then waiting a while before removing them. In some cases they have gone to great lengths... for example the now 5 year depreciation of OpenSSL: first they marked it depreciated, which generates a compiler warning, then after a few years they removed the headers from the MacOS SDK so you couldn't compile new software but left the binary in place so that old software would continue to work. The next step will probably be to remove that binary, something I would expect in MacOS 10.13 (sometime this year) or 10.14 (presumably next year).
        wlesieutre 10y ago
        Poor choice of words then, it was deprecated and removed over the course of iOS 9 betas, with the plan to make a new system only available to "captive network apps" that could declare a specific list of SSIDs that they manage. Appears they backtracked though? I didn't see any recent info.
  - Operyl 10y ago
- pjc50 10y ago
  > ruff shot "Rough shod", before we get another mondegreen propagating across the internet.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    To be more precise, the idiom is typically “ride roughshod over” rather than “run ...”, and roughshod is typically written as one word. Roughshod means the horseshoes have their nails sticking out the bottom to help prevent slipping, so you can imagine trampling someone with those could be painful.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Horses are heavy. Being trampled by one is going to be injurious or lethal regardless of whether or how it is shod. (Most horses will go far out of their way to avoid trampling a human, though; cavalry horses had to be carefully trained into it. Treading deliberately on one's foot is another matter, but, like some humans, some horses are just assholes.) The idiom refers more to what a roughshod horse will do to a road or trail surface; the nailheads dig in and scatter surface material every which way, leaving behind a hell of a mess that'll turn to deep slush or sticky mud, depending on the temperature, with the next precipitation.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - cat199 10y ago
    As a case of point - as a matter in fact For all intensive purposes this article peaked my interest because by in large it addressed a deep ceded issue with app updates
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Thank you! As a fellow "Correct Idiom Usage Nazi" that made my day. Have an upvote :)

To some extent yes but often no. Apple has close relationships with those companies so it's often a case of them reaching out to the developers rather than just blinding rejecting the app. But any idea that Apple would allow them to run ruff shot over the platform and do whatever they wanted is a bit ridiculous.

sametmax 10y ago
It's not ridiculous, they have been doing it for a long time now. E.G: Apple uses private APIs (http://sourcedna.com/blog/20151018/ios-apps-using-private-apis.html http://sourcedna.com/blog/20151018/ios-apps-using-private-ap...) to build some of their software and reject apps doing the same, effectively killing competition. But Google and facebook uses them because they want to create products that can compete with apple's features. E.G: https://daringfireball.net/2008/11/google_mobile_uses_private_iphone_apis https://daringfireball.net/2008/11/google_mobile_uses_privat... Yet they are not rejected, because they are "big enough".
- jamespo 10y ago
  Do you have examples more recent than 2008?
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Those are not easy to find, it's not really something they advertise and you need somebody to publicly catch them. The only reason I know they do is because some of my friends working on mobile video games regularly complain they can't get some features because they are private while google and facebook do. They analyzed some apps to try to copy said features and realized the unfairness of their situation. Those are lunch chit chats, not hard facts. But they got seldom reasons to lie.
  - froindt 10y ago
    I'm not sure if it's still the case, but I don't think you could record iPad screens at the start, though Apple demonstrated it as a possibility during their live demos. I'm not sure if Apple made it available to other companies privately though.
- joosters 10y ago
  Of course Apple use private APIs... if they didn't, then these APIs would have no reason to exist in the first place.
- scarface74 10y ago
  I've never understood why developers criticize OS vendors use of "private APIs". I would go so far as to say there is no such thing as a "private API". The API is a vendors promise to consuming applications that when they call a method, a certain behavior will happen. Whatever they do behind the scenes is an implementation detail that they should be allowed to change anytime without breaking consuming applications. Apple often uses immature frameworks internally - like the extensions framework - to to polish them or to dog food them before making them official.
  - toyg 10y ago
    > why developers criticize OS vendors use of "private APIs" The point is not that these APIs exist; the problem is when vendors actively block others from using them, with hacks and/or policy bans. That's extremely hypocritical and anti-competitive. I can see why unofficial APIs must be discouraged (because let's be honest, developers will bitch and moan when they change -- Microsoft in particular was strong-armed into legacy support for decades by the likes of Adobe and Symantec), but it should never be an excuse to ostracize or tilt the playing field.
    - oneplane 10y ago
      It's not about marketing, economics or other MBA-feuled non-technical ideas. It's about a software vendor saying: this is our platform, here are API's for you to use, don't go outside it. It is perfectly reasonable, and so far, any other interpretation seems to be a skewed view to facilitate some sort of non-compliant piece of software.
      - scarface74 10y ago
        And the minute scores of applications break that depend on a third party library that uses an undocumented method, the OS vendor gets blamed for releasing a "buggy OS" or they have to keep buggy work arounds in their code forever like MS does.
  - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
    f.lux strikes me as a good example. f.lux came to the market first with its idea to control screen temperature. Apple decides "No, you're not allowed to do that...but that's a great idea!", kicks f.lux out of the app store, and then adds their own Night Mode into later versions of iOS, using API's only they are allowed to access.
akmarinov 10y ago
Except for the time when Facebook did it (and still does). They use private apis to monitor user activity even while the app isn't running and collect all sorts of data that others don't have access to like wi-fi SSID and device MAC address. But what's Apple going to do - not have Facebook on iOS?
- tomasf 10y ago
  CNCopyCurrentNetworkInfo gives any app network info, including the SSID.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    Does this still work? A cursory googling says it was deprecated in iOS 9 betas but may have been re-enabled?
    - larkost 10y ago
      Depreciated is not removed. Apple is usually very conscientious about depreciating things, then waiting a while before removing them. In some cases they have gone to great lengths... for example the now 5 year depreciation of OpenSSL: first they marked it depreciated, which generates a compiler warning, then after a few years they removed the headers from the MacOS SDK so you couldn't compile new software but left the binary in place so that old software would continue to work. The next step will probably be to remove that binary, something I would expect in MacOS 10.13 (sometime this year) or 10.14 (presumably next year).
      - wlesieutre 10y ago
        Poor choice of words then, it was deprecated and removed over the course of iOS 9 betas, with the plan to make a new system only available to "captive network apps" that could declare a specific list of SSIDs that they manage. Appears they backtracked though? I didn't see any recent info.
- Operyl 10y ago
pjc50 10y ago
> ruff shot "Rough shod", before we get another mondegreen propagating across the internet.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobolus 10y ago
  To be more precise, the idiom is typically “ride roughshod over” rather than “run ...”, and roughshod is typically written as one word. Roughshod means the horseshoes have their nails sticking out the bottom to help prevent slipping, so you can imagine trampling someone with those could be painful.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Horses are heavy. Being trampled by one is going to be injurious or lethal regardless of whether or how it is shod. (Most horses will go far out of their way to avoid trampling a human, though; cavalry horses had to be carefully trained into it. Treading deliberately on one's foot is another matter, but, like some humans, some horses are just assholes.) The idiom refers more to what a roughshod horse will do to a road or trail surface; the nailheads dig in and scatter surface material every which way, leaving behind a hell of a mess that'll turn to deep slush or sticky mud, depending on the temperature, with the next precipitation.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- cat199 10y ago
  As a case of point - as a matter in fact For all intensive purposes this article peaked my interest because by in large it addressed a deep ceded issue with app updates
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Thank you! As a fellow "Correct Idiom Usage Nazi" that made my day. Have an upvote :)