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> I’m just an indie developer trying to make good products. Apple should separate Rambo's software development from his reporting rather than retaliate against

> I’m just an indie developer trying to make good products. Apple should separate Rambo's software development from his reporting rather than retaliate against him, if that is indeed what is happening, but it is a little disingenuous for him to make the above claim. Rambo reverse engineers Apple products and publishes findings on 9to5Mac.com, in particular future product references that have slipped prematurely into releases. (To be clear I have no problem with this, but it likely violates the terms of the Apple Developer Agreement.) Recently, Rambo published an article where he got early access to Apple Arcade, which I think may have crossed a line: https://9to5mac.com/2019/08/17/apple-running-early-access-program-for-apple-arcade-heres-what-it-looks-like/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/08/17/apple-running-early-access-pr... In a later post from a collaborating author, they described how they gained access to the unannounced service through their own Apple account, rather than a leak from an employee, which could easily be argued was unauthorized access.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I imagine he crossed some terms of service with obvious legal clarity... so, I guess I’m not sure Apple should separate his “official” and “unofficial” actions. IDK. Maybe I’m just big into personal responsibility and knowing that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you. He did a thing, and now pays a price. I guess I don’t see a lot of gray area. Could you make the argument that Apple’s walled garden has issues, sure. But this guy clearly broke his contract so why would he or I be surprised when he was kicked out?
- deogeo 7y ago
  Lets not conflate 'personal responsibility' with slavishly obeying terms of one-sided contracts. Neither is it the 'hand that feeds you'. 'The hand that has placed itself in control of your market' is more apt.
- izacus 7y ago
  I know you didn't think it through directly, but you're now basically supporting the ability of a multi-billionare corporation to financially attack a developer and disable their device over criticism. Just how chilling effect is that? Not being able to criticise and freely talk about a corporation and its product due to fear of having your company financially destroyed or even your personal Apple ID killed over saying something bad over a corporate product. Are you sure you're defending that?
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    "My house (or in this case, walled garden) , my rules." As people are fond of pointing out, Apple is not a monopoly therefore he has plenty of other places to sell his software.
    - wool_gather 7y ago
      This is like saying that if your neighbors are awful you should simply take your house and put it somewhere else. Completely ignoring the cost of porting software written for one platform to another.
      - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
        Invalid analogy, since it's Apple's house, not his. Nobody forced him to write software for Apple's platform and nobody forced him to agree to the developer agreement Apple requires. He did it of his own free will.
        izacus 7y ago
        Except that this is not a single persons house, but a mega corporation with monetary power of states. It's not "a person throwing you out of his house", it's "your governor forcing you to leave your state because you dared critcize him". Power makes a difference.
        marcus_holmes 7y ago
        No, because you have to live somewhere, but you don't have to write apps. Another analogy: it's like someone having a big "please wipe your shoes" sign on their front door, and you walk in with muddy boots and track mud everywhere. They'd be entitled to be annoyed and ask you to leave because you broke the terms of their invitation.
        Steko 7y ago
        No it's more like taking a dump in the middle of wal-mart and then being shocked when asked to leave.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Not sure if I agree or disagree. But if it's so clear cut, why wouldn't Apple just tell him the reason?
atonse 7y ago
Said it better than I could've – there are some pretty obvious reasons why Rambo's account could've been suspended, the clear violation of NDAs being the main one, with him publishing information about unreleased products. I'm honestly kind of surprised they let him keep his Developer account all this time. My bigger issue here is the complete lack of transparency or visibility into the process. It's this kind of stuff is why I strongly support some government action to change the current state of affairs with regards to the App Store being the only way to get apps on iOS. These companies have been notoriously opaque in how they make such decisions (and sometimes inconsistent), and the fact that their stores are monopolies on their platforms makes this much worse.
- mortenjorck 7y ago
  > My bigger issue here is the complete lack of transparency or visibility into the process. This is indeed the core of the problem. If Apple provided a clear citation, e.g. “the following protected information was shared under your name at this URL on this date, which violates section xyz of your developer agreement,” it would still be unfortunate, but it would be miles ahead of Apple’s maddening “for more information please reread” stance.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    This is an issue with a lot of companies and industries. It's getting really old, and I really hope we see it happen to actual senators so we can see some damn change over it. I'd love to read about how Paypal shutdown some senators account or campaign donation account or whatever, maybe then we will see congress start to turn tables. If you're going to discontinue service with a client then provide proper background into why that is. It's a damn courtesy.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      Unfortunately, the official internal policy seems to be to shut down accounts and then if someone turns out to be well connected or is able to get some press coverage, then they get unblocked. So senators will never need to worry.
reimertz 7y ago
I have no clue about what terms we sign when we sign up to the developer account but I assume there is some clause about about what they did. I’d assume they know this might be the cause and by leaving that out of the blog post, I feel like it’s a bit dishonest. Just tell it how it is. “I caused a bunch of bad PR for Apple back in the days, wonder if that could be the reason for my account being shadow-banned?” Not saying apple is doing the right thing here though. They should be honest too!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rmsaksida 7y ago
Even if that's all true, and even if Apple has good reasons to lock his account, why not just tell him the reason? I don't understand why tech companies have this passive aggressive attitude when users violate their rules of witholding information and giving some vague canned responses when asked about what's going on. Just tell him what happened in detail.
- TylerE 7y ago
  Because that’s opsec 101. If you tell a bad actor how you caught them, you’re just telling them how to do better (sneakier) next time.
  - klohto 7y ago
    You don’t have to tell them how you caught them but what rules they violated.
  - nmeofthestate 7y ago
    Here's an idea for a term for falling victim to this kind of thing: Kafka-banned. It's a bit like being hell-banned in that you don't know what's happening, but probably more baffling and stressful.
  - parliament32 7y ago
    It's not about the "how", just listing which rule/clause in the agreement he broke is pretty essential. Imagine being sent to jail and not being told what the offence was.
  - vageli 7y ago
    Imagine if we applied the same mentality to the law.
    - therealmarv 7y ago
      that is law and common practice on money fraud. Banks never tell the reason why your account got blocked because that would give bad players clues on how to prevent it.
arbitcoin 7y ago
Perhaps Rambo did violate Apple's terms, I don't know. However, this is still a major problem. Apple has currently locked me out of my account due to their new authentication process in at attempt to force me to buy an apple device for authentication purposes.
- cmcd 7y ago
  OS X and iOS development both require Apple hardware anyways, so shouldn't you have that as a developer?
  - yepthatsreality 7y ago
    Unless you hackintosh...
    - Operyl 7y ago
      At that point, you can still authenticate with a Hackintosh anyway. But hey, would you look at that, the person is still _technically_ violating the rules!
      - arbitcoin 7y ago
        Sorry, I refuse to be bullied into buying exorbitantly overpriced shit hardware.
        Operyl 7y ago
        So we're going to break the law instead, great defense for how Apple is evil when you are, in fact, pirating their software. Haha.....
        abjKT26nO8 7y ago
        And pirating software is the ultimate evil. Haha.....
ajross 7y ago
> rather than retaliate against him, if that is indeed what is happening, Right, but isn't that the important point here? I mean, 9to5mac publishes good content that most of us read. There's little argument that what they do is valuable in some existential sense, and you aren't trying to convince anyone that what they do is wrong. The question is if whether Apple is retaliating against aggressive journalists and their sources, right? You seem to agree that this would be bad, but then sweep what seems to be the core issue away with "if that is indeed what is happening" before engaging with the spin in the article. I mean... if the article is spun, I guess that's bad too, but frankly I don't care much. If Apple is retaliating for valuable journalism, I care very much and want to hear about that.
- dev_tty01 7y ago
  Whether or not the content is interesting is completely irrelevant. If the journalist signs a Terms of Service agreement and then violates the agreement they are breaking the contract and Apple has every right to end the Service. If he legally acquired and published info without signing a TOS then the info is fair game. Retaliation would be suing him for the disclosures. Ending the Service is just standard operating procedure. I enjoy the writing and he seems like a really nice and capable guy. Nonetheless, he promised not to do something and then appears to have done it anyway. We don't yet know if his account is suspended because of this, but if so, it happened due to his own choices. Also, the reason his content is widely read and is interesting is not because he has some unique ability. There are lots of people who could do the kind of system/app spelunking he does. However, other people follow the TOS associated with the access. It would appear that he has chosen to violate the agreements and that has enabled him to produce content that is unique. Frankly, Apple has been very patient so far. I feel for him on a personal level, but if he violated the TOS then there is no controversy here. Every developer access agreement I have ever seen from many different companies has clear TOS relating to non-disclosure of proprietary info. Another interesting angle is that if he is violating the TOS, he may have also jeopardized his employer's access to Apple developer programs. On the other hand, maybe this is all just a snafu...
  - saagarjha 7y ago
Causality1 7y ago
Seems very foolish to break the developer agreement without keeping yourself anonymous. It's his own fault that Apple was able to connect his account with an individual breaking their terms of service.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  To my knowledge, Apple has not gone after people doing this in the past.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Yes they have. It is routine for people who breaks the terms and conditions to have their account revoked.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Not for taking screenshots of developer betas.
      - Operyl 7y ago
        That's not all of what he did, though. He'd data mine it like crazy, and would get into areas he really shouldn't have been in (Apple Arcade before launch, etc). The fact that this is all Apple did to him (killing his developer account) is pretty amazing.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Based on the kinds of things he showed, I am fairly certain that an employee was providing him some sort of access to an internal carry build, which is entirely outside of the developer program agreement (and possibly into an actual courtroom.)
asabjorn 7y ago
If we are to trust Apple on the claim that they are a platform and not a publisher, removing for an editorial reason like this put their claim in doubt and I don't think they have the leeway you describe here as a platform. If Apple is now a publisher with editorial control, why would anyone trust them as a middleman to their customer base? Seems risky.
- Despegar 7y ago
  What claim? Apple has not ever disclaimed that they have complete editorial control over what happens on their platform, in fact they've advertised that fact repeatedly over the years. Being "curated" has been a central part of the App Store selling proposition.
  - asabjorn 7y ago
    They rely on Section 230 [1] protection, which only applies to platforms, to not be liable for what is published on their platform. If they have editorial control they are liable like newspapers are liable. [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  This platform/publisher meme has always been a misunderstanding of the law. I guess now it's even being shoved into situations that have absolutely nothing to do with it?
  - asabjorn 7y ago
    How is that a misunderstanding of the requirements to be a platform to be protected from liability under section 230 [1]? [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
    - IAmEveryone 7y ago
      Section 230 explicitly says that making editorial judgements does not make you liable for the content you publish: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"
at-fates-hands 7y ago
My initial response being out of the loop on Rambo's work was indeed to think he was just an indie dev trying to make good products for users. Then I started digging around and found out a lot of the stuff he writes about either lands in a grey area, or could be interpreted as crossing the agreement devs sign when they want to use their app store. While I have sympathy for him, I agree with you, it's incumbent on both sides to keep his dev work separated from his gossip site. Knowing how competitive it is to break Apple news early (as they one of, if not THE hardest company to get early product information) and get that out to the masses.
mirimir 7y ago
So why didn't he use a different persona on 9to5Mac.com? I do understand why Edward Snowden used his real name for his leak. It gave him credibility. But why do that for stuff like this? I mean, did his reputation on 9to5Mac.com increase sales of his apps? Or get him speaking engagements? Or was it just bragging?
briandear 7y ago
So he clearly and unambiguously violates the NDA and he wonders why he is in trouble? The NDA is pretty specific. How he thinks he can write an article about a product he has access to because he is in the developer program is beyond me. Want to be in the Apple Dev program? Don’t violate NDAs by publishing what they expressway say you can’t publish.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

I imagine he crossed some terms of service with obvious legal clarity... so, I guess I’m not sure Apple should separate his “official” and “unofficial” actions. IDK. Maybe I’m just big into personal responsibility and knowing that you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you. He did a thing, and now pays a price. I guess I don’t see a lot of gray area. Could you make the argument that Apple’s walled garden has issues, sure. But this guy clearly broke his contract so why would he or I be surprised when he was kicked out?

deogeo 7y ago
Lets not conflate 'personal responsibility' with slavishly obeying terms of one-sided contracts. Neither is it the 'hand that feeds you'. 'The hand that has placed itself in control of your market' is more apt.
izacus 7y ago
I know you didn't think it through directly, but you're now basically supporting the ability of a multi-billionare corporation to financially attack a developer and disable their device over criticism. Just how chilling effect is that? Not being able to criticise and freely talk about a corporation and its product due to fear of having your company financially destroyed or even your personal Apple ID killed over saying something bad over a corporate product. Are you sure you're defending that?
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  "My house (or in this case, walled garden) , my rules." As people are fond of pointing out, Apple is not a monopoly therefore he has plenty of other places to sell his software.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    This is like saying that if your neighbors are awful you should simply take your house and put it somewhere else. Completely ignoring the cost of porting software written for one platform to another.
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      Invalid analogy, since it's Apple's house, not his. Nobody forced him to write software for Apple's platform and nobody forced him to agree to the developer agreement Apple requires. He did it of his own free will.
      - izacus 7y ago
        Except that this is not a single persons house, but a mega corporation with monetary power of states. It's not "a person throwing you out of his house", it's "your governor forcing you to leave your state because you dared critcize him". Power makes a difference.
        marcus_holmes 7y ago
        No, because you have to live somewhere, but you don't have to write apps. Another analogy: it's like someone having a big "please wipe your shoes" sign on their front door, and you walk in with muddy boots and track mud everywhere. They'd be entitled to be annoyed and ask you to leave because you broke the terms of their invitation.
        Steko 7y ago
        No it's more like taking a dump in the middle of wal-mart and then being shocked when asked to leave.
wool_gather 7y ago
Not sure if I agree or disagree. But if it's so clear cut, why wouldn't Apple just tell him the reason?

atonse 7y ago

Said it better than I could've – there are some pretty obvious reasons why Rambo's account could've been suspended, the clear violation of NDAs being the main one, with him publishing information about unreleased products. I'm honestly kind of surprised they let him keep his Developer account all this time. My bigger issue here is the complete lack of transparency or visibility into the process. It's this kind of stuff is why I strongly support some government action to change the current state of affairs with regards to the App Store being the only way to get apps on iOS. These companies have been notoriously opaque in how they make such decisions (and sometimes inconsistent), and the fact that their stores are monopolies on their platforms makes this much worse.

mortenjorck 7y ago
> My bigger issue here is the complete lack of transparency or visibility into the process. This is indeed the core of the problem. If Apple provided a clear citation, e.g. “the following protected information was shared under your name at this URL on this date, which violates section xyz of your developer agreement,” it would still be unfortunate, but it would be miles ahead of Apple’s maddening “for more information please reread” stance.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  This is an issue with a lot of companies and industries. It's getting really old, and I really hope we see it happen to actual senators so we can see some damn change over it. I'd love to read about how Paypal shutdown some senators account or campaign donation account or whatever, maybe then we will see congress start to turn tables. If you're going to discontinue service with a client then provide proper background into why that is. It's a damn courtesy.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Unfortunately, the official internal policy seems to be to shut down accounts and then if someone turns out to be well connected or is able to get some press coverage, then they get unblocked. So senators will never need to worry.

reimertz 7y ago

I have no clue about what terms we sign when we sign up to the developer account but I assume there is some clause about about what they did. I’d assume they know this might be the cause and by leaving that out of the blog post, I feel like it’s a bit dishonest. Just tell it how it is. “I caused a bunch of bad PR for Apple back in the days, wonder if that could be the reason for my account being shadow-banned?” Not saying apple is doing the right thing here though. They should be honest too!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rmsaksida 7y ago

Even if that's all true, and even if Apple has good reasons to lock his account, why not just tell him the reason? I don't understand why tech companies have this passive aggressive attitude when users violate their rules of witholding information and giving some vague canned responses when asked about what's going on. Just tell him what happened in detail.

TylerE 7y ago
Because that’s opsec 101. If you tell a bad actor how you caught them, you’re just telling them how to do better (sneakier) next time.
- klohto 7y ago
  You don’t have to tell them how you caught them but what rules they violated.
- nmeofthestate 7y ago
  Here's an idea for a term for falling victim to this kind of thing: Kafka-banned. It's a bit like being hell-banned in that you don't know what's happening, but probably more baffling and stressful.
- parliament32 7y ago
  It's not about the "how", just listing which rule/clause in the agreement he broke is pretty essential. Imagine being sent to jail and not being told what the offence was.
- vageli 7y ago
  Imagine if we applied the same mentality to the law.
  - therealmarv 7y ago
    that is law and common practice on money fraud. Banks never tell the reason why your account got blocked because that would give bad players clues on how to prevent it.

arbitcoin 7y ago

Perhaps Rambo did violate Apple's terms, I don't know. However, this is still a major problem. Apple has currently locked me out of my account due to their new authentication process in at attempt to force me to buy an apple device for authentication purposes.

cmcd 7y ago
OS X and iOS development both require Apple hardware anyways, so shouldn't you have that as a developer?
- yepthatsreality 7y ago
  Unless you hackintosh...
  - Operyl 7y ago
    At that point, you can still authenticate with a Hackintosh anyway. But hey, would you look at that, the person is still _technically_ violating the rules!
    - arbitcoin 7y ago
      Sorry, I refuse to be bullied into buying exorbitantly overpriced shit hardware.
      - Operyl 7y ago
        So we're going to break the law instead, great defense for how Apple is evil when you are, in fact, pirating their software. Haha.....
        abjKT26nO8 7y ago
        And pirating software is the ultimate evil. Haha.....

ajross 7y ago

> rather than retaliate against him, if that is indeed what is happening, Right, but isn't that the important point here? I mean, 9to5mac publishes good content that most of us read. There's little argument that what they do is valuable in some existential sense, and you aren't trying to convince anyone that what they do is wrong. The question is if whether Apple is retaliating against aggressive journalists and their sources, right? You seem to agree that this would be bad, but then sweep what seems to be the core issue away with "if that is indeed what is happening" before engaging with the spin in the article. I mean... if the article is spun, I guess that's bad too, but frankly I don't care much. If Apple is retaliating for valuable journalism, I care very much and want to hear about that.

dev_tty01 7y ago
Whether or not the content is interesting is completely irrelevant. If the journalist signs a Terms of Service agreement and then violates the agreement they are breaking the contract and Apple has every right to end the Service. If he legally acquired and published info without signing a TOS then the info is fair game. Retaliation would be suing him for the disclosures. Ending the Service is just standard operating procedure. I enjoy the writing and he seems like a really nice and capable guy. Nonetheless, he promised not to do something and then appears to have done it anyway. We don't yet know if his account is suspended because of this, but if so, it happened due to his own choices. Also, the reason his content is widely read and is interesting is not because he has some unique ability. There are lots of people who could do the kind of system/app spelunking he does. However, other people follow the TOS associated with the access. It would appear that he has chosen to violate the agreements and that has enabled him to produce content that is unique. Frankly, Apple has been very patient so far. I feel for him on a personal level, but if he violated the TOS then there is no controversy here. Every developer access agreement I have ever seen from many different companies has clear TOS relating to non-disclosure of proprietary info. Another interesting angle is that if he is violating the TOS, he may have also jeopardized his employer's access to Apple developer programs. On the other hand, maybe this is all just a snafu...
- saagarjha 7y ago

Causality1 7y ago

Seems very foolish to break the developer agreement without keeping yourself anonymous. It's his own fault that Apple was able to connect his account with an individual breaking their terms of service.

saagarjha 7y ago
To my knowledge, Apple has not gone after people doing this in the past.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Yes they have. It is routine for people who breaks the terms and conditions to have their account revoked.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Not for taking screenshots of developer betas.
    - Operyl 7y ago
      That's not all of what he did, though. He'd data mine it like crazy, and would get into areas he really shouldn't have been in (Apple Arcade before launch, etc). The fact that this is all Apple did to him (killing his developer account) is pretty amazing.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Based on the kinds of things he showed, I am fairly certain that an employee was providing him some sort of access to an internal carry build, which is entirely outside of the developer program agreement (and possibly into an actual courtroom.)

asabjorn 7y ago

If we are to trust Apple on the claim that they are a platform and not a publisher, removing for an editorial reason like this put their claim in doubt and I don't think they have the leeway you describe here as a platform. If Apple is now a publisher with editorial control, why would anyone trust them as a middleman to their customer base? Seems risky.

Despegar 7y ago
What claim? Apple has not ever disclaimed that they have complete editorial control over what happens on their platform, in fact they've advertised that fact repeatedly over the years. Being "curated" has been a central part of the App Store selling proposition.
- asabjorn 7y ago
  They rely on Section 230 [1] protection, which only applies to platforms, to not be liable for what is published on their platform. If they have editorial control they are liable like newspapers are liable. [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
IAmEveryone 7y ago
This platform/publisher meme has always been a misunderstanding of the law. I guess now it's even being shoved into situations that have absolutely nothing to do with it?
- asabjorn 7y ago
  How is that a misunderstanding of the requirements to be a platform to be protected from liability under section 230 [1]? [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
  - IAmEveryone 7y ago
    Section 230 explicitly says that making editorial judgements does not make you liable for the content you publish: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable"

at-fates-hands 7y ago

My initial response being out of the loop on Rambo's work was indeed to think he was just an indie dev trying to make good products for users. Then I started digging around and found out a lot of the stuff he writes about either lands in a grey area, or could be interpreted as crossing the agreement devs sign when they want to use their app store. While I have sympathy for him, I agree with you, it's incumbent on both sides to keep his dev work separated from his gossip site. Knowing how competitive it is to break Apple news early (as they one of, if not THE hardest company to get early product information) and get that out to the masses.

mirimir 7y ago

So why didn't he use a different persona on 9to5Mac.com? I do understand why Edward Snowden used his real name for his leak. It gave him credibility. But why do that for stuff like this? I mean, did his reputation on 9to5Mac.com increase sales of his apps? Or get him speaking engagements? Or was it just bragging?

briandear 7y ago

So he clearly and unambiguously violates the NDA and he wonders why he is in trouble? The NDA is pretty specific. How he thinks he can write an article about a product he has access to because he is in the developer program is beyond me. Want to be in the Apple Dev program? Don’t violate NDAs by publishing what they expressway say you can’t publish.