In a woefully atrocious piece of online waffling, Daniel Eran Dilger over at the aptly named Roughly Drafted goes out on a pretty thin limb to defend Apple’s much derided App Store policies. John Gruber over at daring Fireball has already taken him to task over completely misrepresenting the central point of his argument, that the Podcaster rejection should have come as no surprise because it violates section 3.3.3 of the SDK agreement.
He takes a piece from the agreement that basically says that you can’t distribute Apps except through iTunes, and that you can’t do trial versions (so basically any revenue generated has to go through Apple) and tries to make it out that this piece of text in the agreement specifically forbids what Podcaster is doing. Which it doesn’t.
But it gets worse. He claims that:
“Podcaster quite obviously serves to unlock a feature using a distribution mechanism outside the iTunes Store. This limitation would also include apps that are designed to install other apps independent of iTunes (such as the Cydia jailbreak app – it’s not in the Apps Store either), or any other app that distributes song, TV, or movie downloads or podcasts.”
Except that’s bullshit because there are plenty of Apps that allow access to songs, tv and movies. By his reckoning all of the Radio apps would be in violation, the Trailers App would be in Violation.
He also claims that
Apple is an expert merchandizer, and spends a lot of thought about how to market items. Just as the iPod and iPhone create a halo over its other products, a sloppy, ugly product would create a negative cloud over other products it sells.
Have you seen some of the crap on the App store? Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of great Apps on there, but 95% of it is pure rubbish, so If Apple is protecting it’s halo how come there’s far more pointless apps on there than useful ones. (This doesn’t bother me – I’m not complaining about the App store per se, but you can’t say that they did this to keep the rubbish out when that’s clearly not the case) I’m so sick of this default fall back defense of the mac zealots out there. Listen, I am a pretty big Apple fan, but I’m not so fundamental that I can’t see when the company does some less than ethical things, but using the “Apple knows best” get out of jail card all the time is getting a little old. It’s right up there with the “If you don’t play by Apple’s rules, you’re not welcome in our clubhouse” defense.
I find it hilarious too that whenever Apple enters a new market suddenly everyone else in that market becomes the enemy for the uber fanboys. First it was Microsoft, then when Apple started making iPods 7 years ago, Sony became the enemy overnight because they made walkmans. Lately it’s Sony Ericsson, Palm and Google now that Apple are making Phones. The competition becomes the insult to hurl at people who dare question the words of the mother-ship. Complaining about the App Store Policies, then you must be a Google Android Lover.
The thing about all this is that Diliger and all those who are defending Apple over this clearly can’t grasp what people are complaining actually about. It’s not that Apple is rejecting Applications. It’s that Apple is not giving any guidelines as to what it might reject, and won’t tell you that it’s going to reject your app until after you’ve potentially spent months developing it. This is what is freaking developers out. Many of these guys are not kids doing it in their spare time, they are full time serious developers and pretty smart guys, and they can’t afford to devote large amounts of time developing an App only to have it pulled for some arbitrary reason.
This has nothing to do with Apple “protecting it’s users from viruses” either. That’s another blanket defense for anyone complaining about this issue, that somehow Apple is doing this to protect its users. Eh, not it’s not. They said exactly why they rejected this App, and the only one Apple is protecting is Apple. (It’s not even like Apple needs protecting.)
But what I find particularly disgusting about Diliger’s rant is this little gem:
“This is a particularly shameful thing for developers in the SDK program to misrepresent, because the restrictions are covered in the program’s SDK are are not supposed to be published publicly.”
Which is precisely what he just did by copying and pasting a bunch of it into his post. And it’s diliger that’s misrepresenting the SDK restrictions, not the developers. He then goes on to say…
“That makes it particularly unfair to create a myth about “Apple persecution” when the developers should have known from the start that the app wouldn’t be accepted, and that they should have obtained “prior written approval” before starting any work.”
Which is exactly one of the things the developers have been asking for. He gives out to them for complaining that there’s no way to get an app pre-approved by saying that they should of obtained prior approval. What the F@$k ?
Give me a break.
The mac macs out there can shout to the high heavens about the nasty developers ganging up on the poor defenseless Apple all they want but without developers there is no platform. So unless you want nothing but poker games, ambient noise Apps, and a whole bunch of clocks, I suggest you stop trying to tick off every major developer out there by claiming that they’re perpetrating myths. It’s this kind of crap that gives the majority of Apple customers a bad name and perpetuates the myth that All Apple users are religious fanboys.
Dilger calling it a “Sham Controversy” clearly demonstrates that he either believes that facts are irrelevant to any argument when someone dares to chastise Apple, or that somehow, waffling for paragraph after paragraph the reader will get so bored they’ll just agree with you. The only sham here is a disgraceful attempt to discredit a developer for daring to have a quite legitimate grievance against Apple.
I’m with John Gruber on this one. In the words of the Daring Fireball Author:
“This is such bullshit it hurts my head.”
[Updated to fix some typos]
No related posts.
Subscribe To RSS feed
Bollocks!
Daniel Eran was right, and you were wrong. Here’s why…
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/09/16/banned-iphone-apps-and-the-john-gruber-podcaster-defense/
He he.
Actually, Dan is still talking out his Ass.
That clause he continually refers to is specifically there to prevent trial versions of Apps. It has absolutely nothing to do with Downloading content onto the phone. Daniel Saying it is doesn’t make it so.
In fact this post is even more full of crap then his first one.
Oh, and how do I know that’s what the clause refers to?
I asked.
Come on. Think about it carefully and I’m sure you’ll see that Dan is right on this one.
Look if Apple allows Podcaster on the iPhone then its essentially means that anyone can just actually download any old podcast onto the iphone. Not just stream it but actually download the file and run it.
Even though I don’t have an iPhone, I’m pretty sure none of the radio apps, utube, movie app, etc allow you to download the actual music or movie file onto the iPhone. Streaming yes… download no.
Allowing something like Podcaster onto the iPhone means that you are allowing something like a p2p client onto the iPhone. Bypassing iTunes and providing competition to Apple is one thing but it also means that all someone needs to illegally share music or any other file for that matter, is to put it up online as a podcast and it gets downloaded via Podcaster onto your iPhone.
Look Apple doesn’t store all podcasts on the itunes server. You subscribe to podcasts from thousands of websites all over the internet. Allowing podcaster on the iPhone is like opening pandora’s box. Think Napster ver 1.
Do you think that any of the music labels or movie studios for that matter will allow any of their content onto iTunes if this happens???
I beg to differ.
And what do you have to say about the bandwidth issue?
If that was the case then Apple would have said that they believed it to be a security risk. They didn’t. They specifically said that they weren’t allowing it because it duplicated iTunes functionality. Everyone trying to come up with legitimate reasons why this App might be banned from the store are ignoring the fact that Apple said why it was banned, and it was nothing to do with protecting users from viruses, or over bandwidth concerns, it was because they don’t want it competing with iTunes. Apple’s own words. Do you not think that if there was a less contentious reason they would have given that instead
And even then it still doesn’t hide the fact that A, This has nothing to do with the clause in the SDK agreement that dan says it does. If it did Apple would say so. Why would they want to stir this hornets nest when all they would have had to say is this violates the agreement.
and B, He’s implying that developers are out to somehow screw apple and thats just complete bullshit.
And C. He keeps going on about the “prior written agreement” when that is one of the things people want to be able to do and one of the core fundamental points of the arguments that all the developers have been arguing about.
Developers don’t have it in for Apple. They want to be able to develop for the store as much as anyone but no full time developer is going to put months of work into developing an App when it might get pulled at the last minute by Apple for a completely arbitrary reason. It’s a completely fair and legitimate argument and Dilger has gone out of his way to portray the developers as the villains and Apple as the victim, while at the same time contradicting himself and saying that Apple is a business and you have to expect business tactics. It’s a straw man argument and it’s complete bull.
Apple is a multi billion dollar company. The idea that they need defending is bullshit. The idea that everything they do is solely for the good of their customers is nonsense. The idea that when they come out and do something in plain sight that is questionable that they must have a secret hidden noble reason for doing it is nonsense. Apple has to compete in the world like every other company and they’ll do whatever it takes. Sometimes the simplest explanations are the right ones, in fact that’s usually the case.
As for the bandwith issue, if that were the case, as gruber pointed out they would have requested he limit it to wifi. Pelenty of other developers have recieved “notes” from Apple requesting things to be changed before re-submitting. Podcaster got a flat out rejection.
I would also like to point out that two of the things dilger said about that are complete bull. First of all podcasts are not multi-gigabyte. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one over a gig. The largest I’ve seen is the Apple keynote which is 700mb.
He also clams that podcaster cues multiple large files and downloads away in the background, but this is bull because it’s simply not possible with the SDK. once you quit out of it any downloading would be stopped.
Again, Apple said why they rejected it. Why people have to make a conspiracy out of this is beyond me.
Anyway, I’ve said my piece. I think he’s wrong and I think his conclusions are unfair to the developer community. And I’m sure John Gruber is going to answer this more
Well technically you can say that its a security issue. I fully agree with that. However one can also say that this bypasses itunes and duplicates its downloading of podcasts functionality and one would also have to agree. Maybe Apple just wanted to keep it simple and picked the answer closest to 3.3.3 of the sdk.
Maybe if Apple had said that it was a security risk then you would see ‘Apple says the iPhone is insecure’ all over the blogosphere today.
Whatever it may be I can understand why they would do something like this.
As for the bandwidth and cuing of downloads you can check out how podcaster works here :
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/podcaster_developer_uses_little_known_ad_hoc_to_distribute_banned_app.php
re: Juliant
I just feel I have address one “reason” that those seeking to defend Apple’s already explained action have raised to defend the indefensible, and that is that Podcaster somehow opens up a pandora’s box of piracy.
How, as what am I to do with the track once it’s downloaded? Play it? I can’t transfer it, I can’t sync it back to iTunes, I can do nothing with it, so can you explain how this is some backdoor to Napster v1 (as you put it) when it would be a whole lot easier to enter said URL into iTunes or Safari and download the file into an infrastructure I could actually distribute through, ie email, FTP, BT, whatever on a proper computer?
This loophole to so-called Napster 1 Armageddon exists now, on a helluva lot more devices (ie computers) than the at most <10million iPhones, and I’ve yet to hear of any burgeoning Podcast piracy rings.
Also if you are looking for an approved App that does store content (not just streaming as the apologists plead) and content that does make apple revenue ie Music, unlike Podcasts, look no further than one of the poster boys of the iTunes App Store, – Tap Tap Revenge, thanks to the “legitimate” version not being able to use your iTunes library, like the more compelling jailbreak version did, this App allows you to download your choice of tracks from their server.
Free music – stored on my iPhone!!
re: Mcadoodle
Well piracy issues is just one example. Of course not the uploading with the iPhone as you mentioned. Its the downloading to the iphone functionality which to me is the issue at hand. Essentially anything that allows you to download unverified files from the internet onto the iPhone Apple will most definitely not allow.
Look at it this way if you only use itunes to load files onto your iPhone when anything goes wrong who do you call? Apple of course.
But if you use 10 different apps to download files onto your iPhone and you get a virus who are you going to call then? Gostbusters???
Hmmm, not sure where or whom to reply too here. I have read DED for some time now and also many of his pundits.
“I find it hilarious too that whenever Apple enters a new market suddenly everyone else in that market becomes the enemy ….”
The enemy?? Do you just dislike Apple or does this comment apply to any company selling a product??
The ” that Diliger and all those who are defending Apple over this clearly can’t grasp what people are complaining actually about. It’s not that Apple is rejecting Applications. It’s that Apple is not giving any guidelines as to what it might reject”
Er, it is Apples store, right. ??? And while I appreciate that anyone can have an opinion, that does not mean the store owner needs to kiss your *ss, does it. ??
Now I read the iPad article , I believe it was this site… and thought that it came from an open and objective mind. But this article seems to be upset that Apple is not running its business to suit the author.
Just a thought,
en
PS, I do not always like what Apple does…. but overall, I like them much more than I do .. say Microsoft.