
Reversing Apple80211 - 2510c39011c5
http://newosxbook.com/articles/11208ellpA.html
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wolfgke
It is interesting that in the 90s there was a large shitstorm against
Microsoft for having lots of private, undocumented APIs. The fact that Apple
does the same thing in OS X doesn't seem to bother anybody - at least there is
no such outcry.

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kelnos
I think part of the outrage was that MS was using those private APIs in
software like Office that would allow it to do things that competing office
software couldn't do. That's theoretically true of Apple as well, but either
they haven't done that, or no one has looked closely enough to find out.

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FireBeyond
I seem to recall - though I definitely can't think of any specific examples -
of there being plenty of things "only Apple apps" can do, be it on OS X or
iOS. Seems like anything around security, limitations on extensions and such
(though many of those are policy, not API-based).

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kelnos
I don't think those sorts of things are quite as objectionable, though. AFAIK,
most of the things only Apple apps are allowed to do are more "system level"
things that 3rd-party apps in general don't need to do. Sure, there are
exceptions, but I think "Apple can bundle a wifi scanner app with the OS and I
can't build a 3rd-party scanner" is a lot different from "Microsoft can _sell_
an office suite that does things I can't do in my office suite because of
private APIs".

... the key difference being that MS was using their private APIs to crush
competition.

Also one could argue that Apple is more of a hardware company, to a certain
extent. They give away most of their software for free. Microsoft was using
their OS monopoly to beat competitor's apps that run on top of Windows.

