That's it, I am going to refrain from purchasing any and all Apple products from here on, am going to encourage others to do the same, and will also refrain from recommending their products to anyone.
Sometimes it feels lonely being an open source advocate, but reading this, there was a smirk on my face, and my first thought was "Told them so". I love it when people suffer for trusting big companies, its like their own fault, big co's are evil by definition, you should know better than to trust them. You con use their products, but trusting them, or even worse, to love them? In the expression "common sense", people tend to hear only the "common" part, the "sense" part is more important!
I wouldn't go as far as what you're saying, but having only been an Apple user for 4 years (and a wannabe iPhone developer for 6 months), this was an eye-opening experience to me. I assumed that Microsoft was "evil" and Apple was "good". But it's far more complex than that. If this is how Apple treats developers, they deserve to lose them.
I assume that you couldn't find anything wrong with my post, so you attacked my personality instead.Your point is valid thou, surrounded by all the smart people in HN i feel kind of dumb. But my mental abilities are off topic.
I was planning on buying an iPod next month with a pay raise, but after all of this stuff from Apple, I'm really starting to lose my admiration for the company. I miss when Apple was fringe.
Relax! People are just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. And it is easy to get worked up by reading (intentional and unintentional) inflammatory remarks. If you like the product and think it makes sense for you, buy it.
It has nothing to do with people rehashing the same details over and over. It's has everything to do with Apple's actions with the things people are talking about. I don't like their tactics, and I don't like Apple putting their foot in developer's mouths by saying "we're going to make the decision on whether or not someone gets confused by our application versus yours" and then trying to silence anyone who says "I disagree".
The confusing part for me, is "What bit was unexpected?"
If you develop for a controlled platform which has an approval process, you have risks. End of story. You don't call any shots, the owner of the platform - Apple - does.
As an Apple consumer, I just don't care, and I'm sure the vast majority are the same. When Apple starts degrading the users experience, people will care.
It certainly is getting very boring to read. Essentially 2 stories have been posted umpteen times now.
Usually, when a company makes a consumer device, they either market it as an "experience" or as a "platform".
When a company is trying to sell a device as an "experience", it finds other large companies to partner with, and makes them all sign NDAs. The partner companies make legal agreements ahead of time so that both parties know what will be developed/accepted. Due to the cost and limited number of partners, only a few applications are made for the device, but they are high quality. This is the model used by game consoles and some mobile devices.
On the other hand, when a company tries to market a device as a "platform", it courts as many developers as it can, from big companies to hobbyists. Usually, the development tools and documentation are free. There are no NDAs to sign, no vetting process; developers create with the assurance that end-users will have access to their product, regardless of how crappy it is. This is the model used by personal computers and some mobile devices.
What is unusual is that Apple is pursuing neither strategy. They want developers to work without prior approval, but they also want to arbitrarily block distribution. They want developers to work on their own, but they also want to keep them from talking to each other.
This approach is unexpected from a device manufacturer. It was not unreasonable of the book authors to expect that Apple would have dropped the NDA by now, as it serves no purpose other than as a barrier of entry to development.
Well, this was the final straw for me . . . it wasn't just this, this is now a pattern on their part, and I am taking my business elsewhere because of it.
Just because apple sux there's no reason to go to microsoft. That's even worse. There are linux players that are pretty good.
I think what's changing is that apple has always been as evil as microsoft. Only with much better PR. They are slipping now because there are new demands for openness which they fail to handle.
That's more or less what I do. Many of my toys are Apple, but I buy my more important stuff elsewhere. As much as I would love to be able to use a Mac for my work, OSX is just not Unix-ish enough for me.
First, there is this weird thing of programs in the */bin folders versus application structures in .app directories. The next problem is the Terminal - Even xterm is more comfortable to work with, specially when you have a three-button mouse. Then there is the less than stellar X support (I always had lots of problems piping X clients from a beefier computer to my Mac). I also dislike the fact many settings are stored not in files under /etc, but in a database. And, finally, there is no package manager (but that's not a non-Unix thing, it's more a non-Linux thing).
For those reasons, I prefer a Debian-based OS. I keep reading OpenSolaris has a nice package manager that can do rollbacks and may consider it in the future. As for OSX, it's not for me.
Because they are systematically violating the spirit of many freedoms they have benefited from, the Mach Kernel being a good example of freedom they continue to benefit from.
"They're acting in their own, and their customers best interests"
I can´t see how the NDA helps their customers. While this Apple-hate thing has been blown out of proportion, the NDA thing is more than a little bit stupid.
The NDA is irrelevant to customers. I can't see how a customer would decide to buy based on wether the company uses NDA's for certain documents.
I suppose you could argue that using an NDA might put off developers which would mean a lack of apps for the store, but customers don't care about what apps may have been rejected, they care about the apps they can use.
I don't think this is an overreaction. The NDA means that an iPhone developer can't legally blog about developing iPhone apps. That's a bit wild, isn't it?
I agree. "Evil" is silly language to use here. Unfortunately, "evil" is often used to describe Apple's biggest competitor, so we developers are used to misusing that term.
Let's take a step back and speak more clearly: what Apple is doing is harmful to its developer ecosystem. Not evil, and maybe not stupid (time will tell).
Hate fest? Personally, I have simply expressed the decision I have made as a consumer in reaction to actions I find offensive by a company.
I am also acting in my own best interests, as I have no interest in purchasing products from a company that engages in the sort of tactics we have been seeing lately.
Please do elaborate on how their tactics are safeguarding the best interests of their customers, I truly fail to see how.
Now, as far as this being blown out of proportion, well, going by that standard, hey, what's an EULA by MSFT? They are just "acting in their own, and their customers best interests", right?
That's it, I am going to refrain from purchasing any and all Apple products from here on, am going to encourage others to do the same, and will also refrain from recommending their products to anyone.