
Private - naish
http://daringfireball.net/2008/12/private
======
tlrobinson
While I'm not necessarily against using private/unpublished APIs, you should
know what the hell you're doing if you do.

It's downright irresponsible to recommend such things in a _book_ on
developing for the _official_ SDK. The people reading the book are likely
people who don't understand the system well enough to safely use
private/unpublished APIs like Gruber outlines.

That said, Apple should open up most of these APIs (CoverFlow, prox sensor,
etc).

~~~
clint
To be fair the reader is warned thusly:

"Some of the nicest bits of iPhone programming are included in the public
iPhone frameworks but not in the SDK. Apple's unofficial policy on this is
clear: You can use these items in your programs, but you do so at your own
risk. Your code may break at each firmware release. Striking the balance
between risk and reward if up to you."

~~~
ObieJazz
+1 for "thusly"

edit: I guess I'm still getting the hang of HN etiquette. I was impressed by
the clint's usage of an unusual word and got downmodded for expressing that
concisely. So, next time do I use a complete sentence to express my
admiration, or do I avoid any discussion of word choice / writing style?

~~~
allenbrunson
the rule is: if you're not adding something to the conversation, then don't
post. "+1", "lol", and other "attaboy" type comments, including yours, should
be expressed with an upvote.

~~~
tlrobinson
He brings up a good point though. I'm guessing if he posted something along
the lines of "I am impressed with your usage of the word "thusly"" rather than
"+1 for "thusly"" he would not have been downvoted, even though they're
approximately equivalent and neither adds much to the conversation.

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taylan
Good article, but making headlines more descriptive like "Private iPhone APIs"
can save people reading through RSS few clicks.

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invisible
Perhaps it would be wise of Apple to introduce versions into the App Store. I
think using private APIs should be fine, but maybe after an update the
developer should have to go in and select that it works with the new version.

This is what Mozilla does for plugins and it works pretty well.

~~~
jjburka
The difference is that very few if any plugins are sold and it is somewhat
easy to downgrade to an older version of Firefox. Could you imagine what would
happen if iPhone OS 2.3 came out and 10% of the apps in the itunes store
stopped working? It would be a PR nightmare for Apple.

~~~
invisible
Well, another big point is that Mozilla pre-releases it's software. I'm not
100% aware, but I don't think Apple provides the same convenience to
developers.

Wouldn't you like three days to see if your software is going to run smoothly
after the update?

------
ObieJazz
If there's a header file for an API, does that mean that it's public? Or does
it have to be in XCode's documentation? I'm wondering specifically about
AVAudioFoundation / AVAudioPlayer.

~~~
boucher
Anything that's "public" is documented on developer.apple.com (and in the
Xcode documentation window). Everything else is "off limits."

