

Apple copies rejected app - Gupie
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/apple_copies_rejected_app/

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bradleyland
Hrm. Dan Goodin. I recognize that name. This is the same author who published
an article on _The Register_ with the title "Skype bug gives attackers root
access to Mac OS X", which was factually incorrect. He corrected the headline
after much hoopla, but it strikes me that Mr. Goodin is a professional link-
baiter.

The title has it backwards. Isn't WiFi sync a fairly obvious feature that
Apple has likely had in the works for quite some time?

Based on what I've read, this sync app was only possible because of some low-
level sync frameworks that were already present in iOS. The feature wasn't
ready by _Apple Standards_ , but Apple didn't want a poor implementation of
what should be a system-level feature in the wild. One could argue that the
rejection of his app was an act of protecting the user experience. This is
something Apple does regularly. If you don't want the protection, you should
head over to another platform.

Acting shocked at any of these facts just shows that you haven't been paying
attention.

~~~
brudgers
Every app is based on features of IOS implemented in a way that Apple has not
done yet.

~~~
bradleyland
If you want to look at it as a dichotomy, sure, but can't we agree that
there's a continuum here? Syncing is certainly a "core" feature. Can anyone be
surprised when Apple protects this as something they want to implement?

I think that as an app developer, you have to consider this continuum when you
set out to develop an app. Many "utility" apps would be considered closer to
the core. Apps like a medical x-ray viewer are further from the core. That's
not to say you shouldn't develop a to-do app, but you should A) plan your
product ramp in a way that you recover your investment quickly, and B) not be
surprised when Apple announces a simple, integrated to-do solution.

~~~
brudgers
One could carry the same analogy to level apps, compass apps, music streaming
apps (particularly given the iPod and iCloud), etc.

More relevant to this case, is that Apple rejected an app that (based on the
evidence presented) met every knowable requirement for being included in the
app store and which had a high probability of generating substantial revenue.
Then Apple appropriated the name and icon.

All this makes it hard to consider Apple's actions in this matter to be
ethical in any meaningful sense of the term.

~~~
tobylane
The icon was a mix of the Mac's wifi and sync icons. For all we know Apple
didn't want their icons used by someone else, that's a legit reason that's
been used elsewhere. Also judging by the comments on the TUAW post of this
topic, the app was low quality, and the support was even worse. Apple don't
like that, rightly.

~~~
brudgers
At the time it was submitted, Apple was not purging "low quality" apps - and
as the noted in the _Register_ story, Apple thought enough of its
implementation to call the developer and request his CV. This would be more
consistent with Apple's engineers being impressed by the implementation rather
than it would be consistent with its poor quality being obvious.

Furthermore, given your premise that Apple had something in the works but
could not create an implementation which was good enough, it is clearly
plausible that Apple's technical review of the app provided a roadmap for
improving their implementation to the point where it was good enough.

Finally, it is highly unlikely for poor support to have been a reason for
rejecting the application because it can rarely if ever be determined for new
apps. The infringing icon argument is not backed up by the fact that Apple did
not mention it in their rejection and has not taken legal action in the year
it has been in use for the jailbroken versions.

~~~
scott_s
That something is _plausible_ is not evidence that it _happened_.

~~~
brudgers
Absolutely. That's why I chose "plausible."

I will be the first to recognize that the plausibility of one line of
speculation regarding the course of Apple's actions is no more evidence of an
actual state of affairs than the plausibility of other lines of speculation
within the discussion are evidence that those events indeed occurred.

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peteretep
So to get this straight: the guy who took Apple's icon for syncing and added a
wifi symbol thinks Apple ripped him off taking their icon for syncing and
adding a wifi symbol? Who'd a thunk.

~~~
tmgrhm
Mhm. And the fact that he produced the first public implementation of this
means that Apple isn't allowed to implement their own version — never mind the
fact that such a feature requires lower level control than the App Store
guidelines allows for its apps (meaning it's exactly the kind of feature that
Apple should be implementing themselves, not App Store developers).

~~~
rb2k_
I think that's the main point is that he created an app that was probably
declined because it used private APIs (or required root access?).

Also: he produced the first public implementation of what? A wireless syncing
software? iSync on OSX came a while before that and I'm sure there have been
quite a few before that.

~~~
tmgrhm
Mhm, so I don't understand why he expected anything different or why people
are so outraged it was rejected — that's one of the major benefits of the App
Store: sandboxing and access restrictions of apps.

Yeah, as far as I know it was the first publicly-released wireless syncing
software designed to let you sync iTunes and iOS.

~~~
jarin
I would guess that 99% of the outrage stems from the similarity of the icons.

~~~
maguay
Only problem is, that's about as generic an icon as you could get by mixing
Apple's default iOS icon style with a standard WiFi and Sync icon. Not that
unique...

~~~
jarin
I'm pretty sure that wasn't the "standard" WiFi icon until it showed up in OS
X. I think the original "standard" WiFi icon was either this one or the one
that looks like a person with radio waves coming out of their head:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wifi_logo.jpg>

~~~
alanh
There _was_ no international standard wireless Internet logo for a long, long
time. There still may not be. But this one is indeed Apple’s standard AirPort
icon (they dropped one ring going OS X → iOS due to size contraints).

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sambeau
Does anyone here seriously believe that anyone in the Apple department
responsible for Wifi Syncing will have ever seen this app and its icon?

Apple will have been working on Wifi syncing far longer ago than last May. I
wouldn't be surprised if they had it working when they first launched the
iPhone but held it back for other sensible reasons (not everyone had wifi,
power usage, speed, reliability, no delta updates etc).

Like Authors are warned by their lawyers not to read or accept fan fiction,
Apple's developers will be kept well away from reviewing of apps.

The concept is an obvious one; one that has had much discussion on the
internet and on this site in particular.

The icon is the most obvious and clearest solution you can draw. I spend most
of my day drawing icons and if you had asked me to create an icon for this I
am 100% certain that I would have put a wifi logo into the middle of a sync
logo. It is a completely obvious thing to do looking at the respective shapes
and line thicknesses.

This is a non story.

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pseudonym
I wish I was surprised, but this seems to happen with a lot of OS-extending
apps on the iOS device. I've never heard of a game being banned from the app
store, but as soon as it's something that Apple doesn't already have baked
into the operating system...

It's been said before and it'll be said again: Playing in Apple's walled
garden isn't a safe way to make a living.

~~~
tvon
As a developer it is probably not a good idea to use private APIs to implement
a feature that has obviously been on the roadmap since day 1.

~~~
hullo
well, maybe it's actually all about timing, the article implies he's grossed
in the neighborhood of $500k so far (minus the impact of "sales")

~~~
jarin
Yeah, I mean stories like this shouldn't really discourage developers.

Number one: if you are a developer and you don't plan for something like this
that's just a lack of awareness on your part.

Which leads to number two: don't depend on a single revenue stream. You're
making decent money with your first app? Cool, now pay a couple of interns to
handle support requests and start working on the next one.

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tobiasbischoff
Easily the greatest bullshit i've ever read. This cydia tool was just a hack
that activated functions already in place in iTunes and iOS. Just have a look
at the 1st gen Apple TV wich had wireless syncing to iTunes since 2006.

I guess they considered it to slow and unreliable in the past to activate it
for the iPhone, maybe the iCloud concept, faster processors and wireless
networks led to their decision activate it in iOS5.

~~~
voxmatt
Seriously. It was always obvious Apple would do this eventually. The kid's app
wasn't a novel idea, nor did it have a novel name or icon, it just did
something everyone and their mom knew Apple would implement eventually, but
just hadn't yet. This app was a hacked stop-over gap to put in place obvious
tech. This article is really over the top.

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blownd
Ludicrous link bait headline and tabloid trash article from The Register.

Apple didn't copy the app, it sound like they were maintaining control of
their interests; no one should be surprised by that given Apple's track
record.

That's not to say Apple haven't copied others apps, they've positively
trampled on a slew of third party apps with enhancements in Lion and IOS 5,
but that's all part of the game at this point.

~~~
metageek
So, once someone has a track record of being evil, any further evil they do is
not worth covering?

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alanh
1\. The idea of wireless sync is so obvious that customers have been asking
for it since, oh, half a decade ago when iPhone was introduced.

2\. The icon, while similar in concept, is literally nothing more than Apple’s
standard “sync” icon plus Apple’s standard AirPort (Wifi) icon.

3\. (Bonus) After rejecting the app, which _did_ perform activities not
allowed in the SDK, Apple expressed interest in hiring the kid anyway.

Manufactured controversy. Snore.

~~~
ugh
People have been asking for wireless sync for the last decade. Does nobody
remember the immortal “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”?

That was written in 2001 about the first iPod. (The actual introduction of
wireless sync nearly a decade later has been pretty anticlimactic. Apple took
so long that no one is anymore very impressed or surprised. I think that it
was about 2006 when everyone started believing that wireless sync would be the
next big thing for iPods but then came the iPhone.)

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yardie
I tried this app in the past. It was very....slow.

Which is why I think Apple rejected it. Their syncing protocol, even over USB,
was painfully slow. Over wifi it was dreadful. Apple has a, "do it right or
don't do it at all", philosophy.

They seemed to have fixed USB syncing in 4.3 because it takes me less time
than before. I'm fairly confident that if he submitted his app after 4.3 was
released it probably would have passed, but now that iOS 5 is on the horizon
and contains the same functionality it has made his app irrelevant.

~~~
tmgrhm
I think it's far more likely it was rejected because it uses private APIs and
takes lower-level access than App Store guidelines allow.

~~~
yardie
From what I remember it used the published APIs which Apple then unpublished
and rejected his app. This is why the story got so much traction in the first
place. If it was another developer doing cool things with unpublished APIs it
would have been sold through one of the other appstores and that would have
been the end of it.

It was rejected because Apple changed the rules mid-game

~~~
tmgrhm
That certainly does change the angle of my story — have you got a source for
that?

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xedarius
I think the more interesting story is quite how much money you can make via
the jail-broken phone market place.

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nphase
This seems silly to me. Apple knows its own product roadmap, so why wouldnt
they reject an app that implements a half-baked version of a product line
they're releasing themselves?

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shinratdr
As a purchaser of Wi-Fi Sync, fuck him. He's an extremely unprofessional
developer who provides terrible customer service. Don't buy his app, even at
$2.99.

He dropped off the map after promising a Windows beta for WiFi Sync 2, he
won't refund purchases for any reason, and he used misleading language that he
refuses to own up to when promising sync over 3G.

Apple's implementation will be way better anyways. It's already much faster
and it syncs in the background over USB.

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nhannah
Apple is setting themselves up for a Microsoft style lawsuit in the future.
Everyone here seems very defensive of apple, and while I think a review policy
does help a lot at keeping bad apps out, a move like this could easily be
brought to court with a huge settlement having to come from apple. Actually
trying to hire the guy could look pretty bad on them as it could be construed
as trying to avoid a possible suit.

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bengl3rt
Happened to me as well... over a year, when iAd first came out, a friend and I
built an iAd gallery app. Rejected.

A few months ago I saw on Techcrunch that Apple had released their own iAd
gallery that looked practically identical. Oh well.

~~~
alanh
I bet the difference is that if you use Apple’s, no advertisers are forced to
pay for what are essentially fraudulent views.

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scelerat
I'm not saying Apple _didn't_ blatantly rip off this guy's work. But. I'm
having a hard time believing someone at Apple saw this submitted to the App
Store in May and rushed to get it into the iOS 5 spec a month (or less) later.
More likely the app was rejected because the feature was already planned. The
rejection response was a cover lie.

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Osiris
In cases like this, do developers have any legal grounds to sue? Would the
developer had to have patented some of the technology to gain a legal basis
for a suit? If Apple can claim it was a clean-room implementation copying the
same functionality, I assume he's just out of luck?

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dbaugh
There is nothing like free contract work. This is no different than the way
Microsoft treated developers before the anti-trust hammer was brought down
upon them.

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allan_
gaahh, all this apple shit, so 2009

