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Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple
- batteryhorse 8y agoIf I were you I'd send them a cease and desist letter
- geoah 8y agoWhy? Just out of pure hate or dislike for apple? A request to show a link to the website under the image would be better imo. He could always play dirty and just print the website on the bottom of the image but I don't see how this or the c&d will help his site.
- fredley 8y agoI don't see why putting your url on your own content is 'playing dirty', but displaying someone's stuff without telling them you're doing it or even attributing it sure is.
- clintonc 8y agoThis is as though Apple were hotlinking his images -- they are being consistently used in a setting besides that which was originally intended, without permission (or even attribution).
- simonh 8y agoThat's assuming he wants them to cease and desist. Apparently he doesn't and thinks it's really cool. Just because you can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that one must do that thing.
- fredley 8y agoIt's cool that Apple's using your stuff, it's not cool they're not giving you attribution. I'd add a JGuitar url and copyright notice to all your images, so that this is displayed in Apple's results, and also call a lawyer.
- geoah 8y agoI really don't get why people suggest lawyers and c&d letters as step 1. Yes apple could have done this better and they should -- but why not just have a chat with apple before you go nuclear?
- hiergiltdiestfu 8y ago"For exposure......." Well they are placing an increased load onto the side and get nice resources for free, not even doing the cheapest form of flattery: attribution. That's happening a million times on the internet each day, where pictures and other copyrighted materials are redistributed without consent or attribution, and it's ridiculous that the currently most valuable company on earth feels the need to be a cheapskate about that, too. People lost their mind when Google did something like that in their image search, and unlike Apple, they provided attribution and a prime backlink. If Apple likes the service so much, they could just have bought it entirely and it wouldn't even show up in their balance, so proper attribution, and maybe ask the provider if he/she can handle the additional load, or even provide some support to handle the load, would just have been fair, don't you think?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fredley 8y agoI agree, I'm not saying they should engage in litigation, just that talking to a lawyer to understand exactly where the law stands on such behavior is probably going to be useful when it comes to talking to Apple, particularly if they don't respond.
- aequitas 8y agoI think a lot of people feel that if it was the other way around (people using Apple copyrighted material) they would get a lawyer on their ass in no time. However it is debatable since Apple is 'only' providing a template/example which the user must actively turn into a 'shortcut' to have this functionality. Or at least that's how I understand this feature works. Then again, I think Apple surely could do a better job in attribution toward the sources. Maybe a standard for website owners to provide meta info with a fallback to the website URL.
- amelius 8y agoIsn't this what Google has been doing all along, creating "mini" integrations with all of our websites? I don't see the big difference.
- GrumpyNl 8y agoI dont get it, he should be extremely happy by what they did. Free advertising, free traffic, its like getting a nr 1 result Google. All i read here is, get a lawyer. He should be celebrating.
- Sujan 8y agoHe actually seems happy - the decriers just live here in the comments. As usual...
- anotheryou 8y agoFree advertising for what? No attribution, the user won't see it comes from him. Free traffic for what? He will have to foot the bill for image hosting + generation. No other part of the website can be discovered, let a lone an advertisement or donate button displayed. The only thing he got was being able to write this blogpost about how apple uses his service.
- rrobukef 8y agoThe only reference to his site is hidden behind 3 screens in a URL. All ads are stripped, his brand is stripped. I don't think he must celebrate (though he seems happy).
- dwighttk 8y ago>All ads are stripped... What ads?
- 8y ago
- jacobush 8y agoI am baffled that Apple would dare do such a thing, not only from an attribution stand point only, but also for offering a service to their customers, they can't rely on being there, or its quality, or anything really. It's really, really weird.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoAs others have pointed out (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18038182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18038182) the Shortcuts app is a slightly rebranded version of the Workflow app that was acquihired by Apple early 2017. Looks like they launched Shortcuts without vetting their content.
- pelario 8y agoIn which sense does this fact make it better ? Not only weird, but to me this feels a careless attitude...
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoAbsolutely. I didn't want to sound like an apologist! Just wanted to shed some light on how it might have made it into production.
- atticmanatee 8y agoShortcuts/Workflow is just a out systems-like programming tool to interact with the web. That just like saying "how can Apple allow Xcode to download link from the internet."
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoIt turns out that corporations are not people, but are instead made up of people, and some of those people - especially when working together with lots of other people on projects - are prone to making stupid mistakes that make the corporation itself look stupid even though knowledge of what was being done might not have been purposefully present anywhere among the people responsible for the error. I mean I've worked on projects where somebody got in some content and I said - hey you should probably vet that content and they said oh, oh I think it's okay because of X, and I said well are you sure because, well ok I'll check I asked and they said they think X is fine. Ok well whatever, I'm sure not going to fight over this thing for the next two weeks just to end up looking like a jerk at the end.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoThe Shortcuts devs seems to have taken the "act now, apologize later" approach. Another funny solution is how they implemented the "Add to Home screen" functionality: when you select "Add to Home screen" in the Shortcuts app, it opens a data:// URL in Safari, and you have to add it from there :D
- saagarjha 8y ago> Another funny solution is how they implemented the "Add to Home screen" functionality: when you select "Add to Home screen" in the Shortcuts app, it opens a data:// URL in Safari, and you have to add it from there :D Because, presumably, they do not have access to the private API to bypass this step yet–for third party apps the only way to add things to the homescreen is through Safari.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoBut Shortcuts is a first-party app. The developer is listed as "Apple" in the AppStore. It used to be a third-party app called Workflow, but Apple acquired them early 2017. They had plenty of time to replace the Safari workaround with the proper private API.
- planb 8y agoApple did not create this. It originates in the "Workflow Gallery", which Apple rebranded when taking over the service. I think the question is: Are these downloadable workflows an integral part of the Apple software or are they just merely "Sample Code"? In this case the gallery is curated only by Apple (I think), but if we go down this path, what prevents DCMA takedown requests for GitHub repos that contain sample code which accesses services like this?
- justtopost 8y agoIf apple cannot make the products they aquire conform to their own ecosystem, how can they expect users to?
- 0x0 8y agoMaybe he could detect the "Shortcuts/" User-Agent HTTP header, and add a watermark to the generated images ("powered by JGuitar.com"?
- clon 8y agoI would just sniff the UserAgent and replace the images with a miniature version of the graphic and a big "Visit JGuitar.com for the proper experience".
- dcow 8y ago> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more. Is everyone missing the fact that the author seems quite happy about the exposure and reaches out to Apple at the bottom of the post offering collaboration? I'm sure they can handle themselves. It feels borderline patronizing to read all the comments about involving lawyers because Apple is being so abusive. When you publish something on the internet, people can link to it. That's how the internet works.
- cwingrav 8y agoAgain, this. When you publish work on the Internet, others can link and use it, no problem. For best results, have clear attribution (which they clearly show the link). I think people are too quick to anger here. This guy was already providing all this information and content. Looking at the site, I don't see advertising, so it's not like Apple is going around that. This guy is happy and with a quick addition of a JGuitar logo or copyright (if he wants) on those images then everyone is happy.
- gonmf 8y agoIn this case the author is happy, but the point stands that he wasn't asked. And most people would be angry at receiving no attribution or warning.
- skc 8y agoOnly Apple can have someone effusively thanking them for what effectively amounts to abuse. Unbelievable.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoFor the real artist, most important thing is to know that people use your work and they like it or it's useful for them.
- skc 8y agoPerhaps, but I have a strong suspicion that if this had been a Google or a Microsoft the response by the author would have been very different.
- Sgt_Apone 8y agoThat's an absurd statement. There are plenty of "real artists" that want to make a living with their work. You can't pay your bills with exposure.
- inerte 8y agoNot OP, but I saw the sarcasm miles away.
- dx87 8y agoI wouldn't be so sure. When Valve had their failed attempt at a marketplace for paid Skyrim mods, one of the common complaints from other modders was that you should only make mods out of passion for the game, and any modders who put paid mods on the Valve store were sellouts that the community shouldn't work with anymore.
- EugeneOZ 8y agoNo sarcasm intended.
- 8y ago
- DoctorPenguin 8y agoJust a few years ago this would have sparked an outcry about apple / google / microsoft using his website / assets / whatever without asking for consent. But today it's cool when some billion dollar company uses someone elses creations without paying because you should be happy they didn't shut your service down with some vague patent bullshit.
- hyperman1 8y agoIsn't this exactly the kind of situation that the European Copyright article 11 'Link tax' tries to remedy? A big company takes content from a small one without attribution, remuneration or anything?
- z3t4 8y agoSomewhat relevant: Whatever Happened to the Semantic Web? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18023408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18023408
- piyush_soni 8y agoNow only if Google had done it, the feel of the article might have been a little different ...
- tlrobinson 8y agoApple is lucky they didn’t do this to Jamie Zawinski (Every link to https://www.jwz.org/blog/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/ from HN shows a NSFWish image, based on referer header)
- sudhirj 8y agoGiven that this is a gallery of possible shortcut ideas, what’s the big fuss about? How is different from suddenly making the front page of HN/Reddit or Google? The suggestion to hotlink directly to an image is slightly problematic, but a copyright watermark makes sense whether it was Apple doing this or not. The shortcuts app lets you connect to any site on the internet - if a rock star made this Shortcut and chose to tweet it the result would be exactly the same - why would it matter who made the sample and whether it was bundled or not? Apple isn’t claiming ownership, nor have they asked the owner not to add a notice.
- ctvo 8y agoWhat's stopping the website owner from returning any image he wants in this case. Advertising, political messages, pornography? Doing things like this without the consent of the website owner feels very dangerous. It looks bad on Apple they haven't thought this through and are a disgruntle owner away from a major incident.
- ricardobeat 8y agoThis is what the web was built for. Good job everyone!
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoYes, so "good job" to Apple because they're freely sharing all their IPR online too?
- ricardobeat 8y agoIn the same way every company today wouldn't be able to run without MIT-licensed software, with absolutely zero guarantee of giving anything back, the spirit is that you don't care what others do or not do, all you care about is that content is open by default. And speaking of that, you can definitely use the same workflow automation to extract anything from Apple's own websites.
- Ws32ok 8y agoThis sets a bad precedent. I’m not convinced this is good for anyone regardless of how innocuous it seems. Apple wouldn’t tolerate this if it was done to them. It would be like Disney complaining about copyright infringement while infringing someone else’s copyright...
- nathancahill 8y agoThere's a lot of misunderstanding here. As someone that has been in a similar situation: 1. It's not Apple, it was Workflows that wrote the tool. 2. It's not an integration, it's an example of how to use Shortcuts. 3. The biggest pain point won't be bandwidth (OP seems to know what they're doing with caching) but fielding user requests/complaints/spam without the upside of the web traffic. iOS 12 has only been up for a few days and he's already getting a ukulele request. Tip of the iceberg. > We can work together to make this experience even better. This isn't "working together". This is someone at Workflows finding a neat, unauthenticated API endpoint and using it in a demo. I doubt Apple knows about it.
- rhplus 8y ago1. It's not Apple, it was Workflows that wrote the tool... I doubt Apple knows about it. The app is "developed by Apple". They bought Workflow last year. Nothing in the gallery view suggests that this shortcut is provided by a third-party.
- alfredmuffin 8y agowrong
- softawre 8y agoWell argued. (which point is wrong?)
- heinrichhartman 8y agoImagine if s/o "integrated" Apple Maps into their site and showed maps rendered by Apple on their app without any form attribution. I highly doubt that Apple would be thrilled.
- heinrichhartman 8y agoThis is the first time I understand the point of the new EU copyright legislation or the "Leistungsschutzrecht" in Germany. - It's NOT OK to integrate s/o else's content into a website. - It's OK to link to it. As a content creator, how are you going to profit from such an integration? EITHER license the content for integration OR only link to the original sources. Not saying that the laws were good or that I understand them well, but AFAIK they are aiming in this direction.
- badprose 8y ago> Firstly, I would have used an https url instead of http and secondly, I would have made it look for images with a width & height greater than 200px rather than equal to 200px. I didn't know Shortcuts were powerful enough to pull images of specific sizes from webpages. That's really useful. Creating a Shortcut to scrape these guitar tabs doesn't seem that different from writing a Bash script that does the same thing. The main issue is that most users would grab the Shortcut from the gallery, find the guitar tabs they need, and never know where it came from. Maybe Apple could automatically provide attribution in their Gallery? Like "This shortcut is powered by Google.com and JGuitar.com".
- briandear 8y agoSo just a few days ago a good number of HNers were lamenting copyrights. One commenter even going so far as to say that he never respects copyright. Other suggesting that copyright owners should lose copyright when they’ve made enough money. Just ridiculous nonsense. And today, because the “bad guy” was Apple, suddenly everyone cares about copyright. A forum where people have no problem discussing torrents which are used frequently to violate copyrights — and now they are outraged about Apple using chord finder in a gallery example for Shortcuts? And the owner of the content is actually happy about it! Hypocrites.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoMost actual complaints I see here are about moral rights. These are adjacent to copyright, but represent a distinct set of concerns related to the author's reputation rather than exploitation of the work per se.
- asaph 8y agoAuthor here. Thanks everyone for your thoughtful feedback. I intentionally wanted to strike a cooperative tone in putting this story out there. When the largest company in the world features your side hustle in their brand new product, it's an opportunity, not a reason to "lawyer up". You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Would I have preferred attribution and a heads up? Sure. But I'm frankly more interested in how I can help improve the user experience and further incorporate my software into Apple products. If anyone from Apple is reading this, let's talk. You can reach me here: https://jguitar.com/contactus.jsp?subject=Guitar+Chord+Finder+Shortcut https://jguitar.com/contactus.jsp?subject=Guitar+Chord+Finde... And those concerned about JGuitar.com's scaling or bandwidth costs need not worry. JGuitar.com serves several million pageviews/year, and is well optimized to handle the traffic coming from these shortcuts.
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoI don’t think this is an Apple app. The app info says the publisher is DeskConnect, Inc. The subheading says Apple, but when clicked to see all apps by “Apple”, it only shows this one. Looks shady.
- belltyler 8y agoIt is a legit Apple app, released alongside iOS 12. Apple bought the app called Workflow which they've made their own, rebranding it to Shortcuts.
- omneity 8y ago(slightly OT) It is not clear if the author is earning something out of the situation (more traffic I suppose?). However, it seems to me if Shortcuts really takes off among the average iOS user, there could be a massive business building cloud services exposed via these low-code programming environments. Killer App for FaaS? At the same time Microsoft's TouchDevelop tried in the past to bootstrap the lack of apps on Windows Phone, but didn't succeed and had virtually no impact. I am curious if (and hopeful) Apple will be different here.