
Rogue Amoeba responds to Phil Schiller - fpgeek
http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2012/06/08/in-response-to-mr-schiller/
======
stickfigure
Once more, a reminder that we - the hackers - should stop giving Apple our
money. This is not the kind of computing environment we want to encourage.

It's time for someone to re-edit Apple's 1984 commercial and swap the logos.

~~~
Terretta
We, the hackers, can do anything we like with Apple's gear.

At the same time, Apple is under no obligation to make it easy for us to
trample on their licensing deals for technologies that form part of Apple's
unique selling proposition in a consumer's mind. AirPlay is so well
implemented, consumers find it magical. To keep that mystique, Apple has a
right to review and license AirPlay to those vendors that it finds aligned
with its long term goals. If you want Apple to be forced to do something
different, you're not a "hacker", you're on the side of big government and
"Big Brother" demanding to oversee and meddle in a company's right to sell the
product it wants that works in the way that it wants.

Finally, I personally want to encourage the hell out of a computing
environment that makes everyday people find computing approachable and fun.
Just as you don't want a power outlet that needs constant tweaking before you
can plug something in, normals don't want a computer or smartphone that
requires maintenance just to be able to have fun and get things done.

Apple's forced the mainstream computing industry to stop designing for
ourselves, and start thinking about everyone else. This is why computing has
finally gone viral.

Did you use that first Mac? It was never about "open" or "hackable", it was
about appliance computing that gets the computer out of the user's way.

Nothing has changed since Apple's 1984 when Apple adopted the slogan, "The
computer for the rest of us."

~~~
stickfigure
Nobody is suggesting that Apple should be forced to make their devices open.

Nobody is forcing you to buy Apple's products either. The solution is
perfectly laissez-faire: Stop buying them. There are plenty of hacker-friendly
alternatives to Apple products which, while not _quite_ as pretty, are still
fun to use - and often enable "magical" features like the ability to use an
international SIM or free WiFi tethering.

------
pbreit
I'm reluctantly siding with Apple on this one. Rogue's response is pretty
pathetic. Hijacking audio streams is obviously something Apple might have a
problem with.

The hypothesis that it has to do with Apple preparing to bring out a
competitive offering is laughable. Airfoil would not have a gram of impact on
anything Apple does in this realm.

Rogue conspicuously makes no mention of this part: "Apple asked Rogue Amoeba
to update their app to remain in compliance with our terms and conditions."

~~~
pcwalton
"Hijacking audio streams is obviously something Apple might have a problem
with."

But it's not Apple's audio stream, it's the user's audio stream. I don't think
it's particularly unreasonable to expect that user should be able to decrypt
his or her own data (assuming we're talking about data that isn't under DRM;
DRM is another issue).

~~~
spicyj
_assuming we're talking about data that isn't under DRM; DRM is another issue_

Though AirPlay does work on DRM'ed streams, there's little advantage to using
that over simply recording from the audio out from your computer and no
advantage over using something like Audio Hijack Pro (another Rogue Amoeba
product) or Soundflower to record the audio output of your computer.

~~~
officemonkey
The DRM exists to limit rights of unauthorized people to play content, not to
limit the rights of authorized people to play content.

If an authorized user initiates playing the content, DRM shouldn't prevent it
from occurring.

~~~
Karunamon
>The DRM exists to limit rights of unauthorized people to play content, not to
limit the rights of authorized people to play content.

On paper, yes. In practice, "unauthorized people" don't have to deal with it,
and only "authorized people" have to struggle.

------
jasomill
It's plausible that Apple has agreed not to distribute AirPlay client software
_in agreements with AirPlay hardware licensees_ , and (unfortunately) also
plausible that the details of these agreements are under mutual NDA.

In other words, it's (disconcertingly) conceivable that Apple is
_contractually obligated to reject Rogue Amoeba's feature without a good
explanation._

------
majormajor
I don't think they're making the right case in that response. It should be
focused solely on the "this should be allowed by Apple" argument, because
telling users that it's not _illegal_ doesn't matter when it's Apple's store
and Apple's rules, for better or for worse. They say that the encryption
around AirPlay streams appears to primarily be there to prevent third parties
from creating applications that work with AirPlay—so it's easy to assume that
Apple wouldn't approve of something they tried to prevent.

Is releasing something you know will get kicked out the best approach to take
when you can't provide an approved solution? Maybe, if you think the resulting
discussion and PR is your best chance at getting things changed... but then,
again, you need to keep your message perfectly focused. Claiming that they
didn't violate any agreements feels too defensive to me.

EDIT: and it's not just this response... initially they professed something
much closer to ignorance/surprised innocence over the removal, while it now
looks like there wasn't much reason for any surprise.

------
jyap
I was never on Rogue Amoeba's side. Phil Schiller's response totally the
reasoning and response that I felt was correct.

Not letting this issue drop just paints Rogue Amoeba in a bad light and
confirms their immaturity to people like me who already thought they were in
the wrong. Add to the fact that the feature is still in the app (you just need
to upload a plist file) and I won't be surprised if Apple totally bans the app
and takes further action with the developers and suspends their account.

~~~
jrockway
Rogue Amoeba wrote code that implemented a network protocol. Apple pulled
their app because they did not ask Apple to license that network protocol.
Which protocol will Apple claim you need a license for next? HTTP?

The fact that encryption is involved is completely irrelevant.

~~~
jyap
AirPlay is a proprietary protocol stack/suite. Apple chooses to license this
on their terms. This is their technology to for their competitive advantage to
use against companies products such as say your company, Google.

Apple does not want an unlicensed and unauthorized app to use AirPlay on their
app store. Case closed.

AirPlay isn't HTTP so don't compare the 2. Your comment about encryption is
moot.

~~~
jrockway
_AirPlay is a proprietary protocol stack/suite._

It was at one point. But then The Internets figured out how it worked, and now
it's as easy for someone to implement as any other open protocol.

Remember: no particular legal protection applies to protocols. Apple is
kicking Rogue Amoeba out of the app store out of pure malice, not because of
any law that was violated. ("We'd like to sell you this product, but you
figured out how to make it yourself, so you're gone.")

~~~
stonemetal
_store out of pure malice, not because of any law that was violated._

Two things no law broken, no charges filed no lawsuits presented. Pure
maliace, hardly more like appropriate response to broken contract.

------
xsmasher
The talk about the DMCA and reverse engineering is a red herring - Apple is
not taking legal action against Rogue Amoeba.

You're seeing the full power of Apple's control over the app store, though -
they can stop distributing apps they don't like for any reason. The same power
that Barnes & Noble has over the book market, and your cable provider has over
your local TV market.

~~~
tammer
your country has over your internet?

~~~
xsmasher
No. You government has a monopoly on force, and on the ability to regulate.
Apple and B&N do not have monopolies.

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pooriaazimi
Haha..

> "... Reverse engineering is, among other things, largely responsible for the
> PC revolution and the computing landscape we enjoy today. Should we stop
> providing users with products that work together simply because other
> vendors dislike competition?"

We all know Apple _loves_ reverse-engineering of its products, so I'm sure
this kind of reasoning helps your case.

~~~
trobertson
Bear in mind, however, that reverse engineering is also respected at Apple (or
it used to be, a couple years ago). I remember reading a story where Steve
Jobs personally visited and tried to buy Dropbox, because they reverse
engineered Apple's file system, or something like that.

~~~
simcop2387
Don't know why they'd need to do that, what i suspect it could be would be
reverse engineering the kernel interface to add their own. That way they can
do a very much nicer automatic sync with their service that won't have as many
issues. I believe they do it that way on linux with FUSE and with IFS on
windows.

~~~
Xuzz
Dropbox is just a folder — the reverse engineering was to inject themselves
into the Finder for their custom icons and context menus.

------
collypops
Please entertain my crazy analogous thought processes for a minute...

Imagine you were eating out at KFC one night, and using taste alone, you
managed to work out their secret recipe. You then decided you wanted to get
into the fried chicken business, but you didn't want the overhead of renting
commercial space, or buying the kitchen/service equipment you need to run your
own business. So you choose to walk into your local KFC, use their kitchen to
fry your chickens, wrap them up in all the KFC packaging and branding, and
begin to sell them at their counter. This goes unnoticed for a few hours, but
then the manager notices what you're doing, and points you towards the exit.

Surely you'd understand why KFC wouldn't let this behaviour continue. You
didn't steal their recipe; you worked it out on your own. You're perfectly
within your right to sell chicken based on this recipe, but you'd better do it
at your store, and put your own label on it. If KFC don't want you selling
products based on their recipe (however legally you discovered it), you can't
wrap them in KFC packaging, and you certainly can't sell them at KFC.

~~~
shenberg
Note: Just to make things clear, I support Apple's decision here.

You're ignoring the fact that according to your analogy, our hypothetical KFC
is already allowing people to make and sell different sorts of food with KFC
branding from within their store (as long as you give them some of the
proceeds and pay an annual fee, which was the case). In fact, a lot of people
come to KFC precisely because they have an unmatched breadth of delicious and
affordable dishes, and many people want to sell their wares at KFC because of
their large clientele - KFC has successfully transformed into a food-court.

The hero of your post devised a delicious dish that would lose its flavor
without the KFC secret sauce, but unfortunately for him, KFC only allows
condiment manufacturers to use their secret sauce, and then only after a
certification process to make sure they get the unique taste just right. Of
course, they could, say, taste the delicious dish, realize that it's providing
them with direct revenue, as well as satisfying consumers and increasing the
odds they'll return to the food-court and spend more money.

Analogies aside, I understand why Apple does these sorts of things - first of
all, they want consistency in UX since there really was no certification
process. Also, keeping the ecosystem tightly under their control is much
easier when you're very consistent about being draconian from the moment the
platform was created (you go to the app-store, you play by their rules).

As a side-note, I'm surprised that there's so much support for Apple with
these sorts of things when 15-20 years ago the same crowd would have been up
in arms if Microsoft were to, say, send cease & desists to Samba or Wine (and
still is criticizing Microsoft for disallowing other OSes in WinRT ARM
devices).

~~~
collypops
I thought hard about the point you raised when I was putting together my
original post. I tried to think about the hero as someone standing on the same
footing as condiment/drinks manufacturers, who unlike the hero, play by the
rules. They can sell their wares in KFC without needing to know the secret
recipe. Airfoil used the secret recipe, and was punished for it.

Perhaps I got a bit lost when I chose to have the hero sneaking around, using
equipment and service counters without the knowledge of the management, as
that doesn't exactly parallel the App Store approval process. Although, seeing
as Apple regularly approve apps only to pull them at a later date because of
undetected features/activities, our hero's actions aren't too far-fetched.

P.S. I love that you played along with the analogy. In hindsight, KFC was a
terrible choice, but I'm glad it opened up a bit of discussion.

------
surferbayarea
would this guy be ok if someone 'reverse engineered' his email password. Every
product wants to protect its IP in some sense...google won't like if someone
reverse engineered their search ranking, apple won't obviously like if someone
hacked the iphone to run android, intel won't like if someone was able to
reverse engineer the chip design and then sell it for a tenth of the
cost..heck would these guys like if I was able to hack their app and bypass
the license check?

Certain internal software API's are as much intellectual property as is the
physical hardware design.

------
gonzo
My only problem with with RA is that they keep claiming to have reverse-
engineered AirPlay when that work was already done.

They may have re-implemented that work, but they did not reverse-engineer.

------
Gring
Phil Schiller clearly has egg on his face.

Until Apple stops their stupid policies and starts communicating openly, they
will embarrass themselves again and again.

------
henrymazza
The thing is encrypted! It says it all: don't mess with me! Sure they are
wrong here! This "reverse engineering is not crime" is BS.

------
taligent
I don't understand where Rogue Amoeba is coming from here.

They don't have a "right" to be on the App Store. It's Apple's store ergo
their rules. And everybody knows that the rules are more guidelines and Apple
can and will change their mind about them at any time. Especially if you try
and undermine them e.g. by using their private encryption key.

Does it suck. Absolutely. Is it unfair. Probably. But this has been the game
for the last 3 years and Rogue Amoeba should not act surprised.

~~~
kevingadd
Removing an app from the store is one thing. Bending the truth or outright
lying to your own customers in order to deflect blame for a decision that _you
made_ arbitrarily is entirely another. The fact that this nonsense is coming
from a high-level Apple employee and not some customer service rep who can
claim not to have known the truth makes it worse.

~~~
lloeki
> _Bending the truth or outright lying to your own customers in order to
> deflect blame for a decision that you made arbitrarily is entirely another._

This entire sentence applies to Rogue Amoeba. The Airplay protocol has been
reverse engineered years ago: it's basically RTSP with an encrypted stream.
Creating an AirPlay audio receiver is currently subject to a license, and
requires a private key. This key has been extracted from a dumped AirPort
Express ROM. Rogue Amoeba can say what they want about reimplementing the
whole AirPlay protocol on their own, the _clef-de-voûte_ is this private key,
only available through licensing. When Schiller mentions private APIs, I
believe he is not talking about an iPhone private API (which I'm positively
sure Rogue Amoeba took great care of not using) but the remote AirPlay API,
which they have no right to use without licensing.

The key point here is that there's a key virtually locking the API. I think
it's perfectly apt to say now that — thanks to the Google/Oracle case —
implementing an API is licit, but you would subsequently have to use your own
public/private keys. Yet existing AirPlay sources encrypt the stream with
Apple's public key, hence the content is at the sole destination of Apple's
private key.

Compare this to the following situation: you publish you PGP public key and
someone writes you an email and encrypts it with your public key. If someone
steals your private key, that does not entitle him to decrypt and read the
message whose sole intended recipient is you. This is, I believe, the crux of
Apple's AirPlay licensing.

I generally don't like Apple's silent hammer, and I really like Rogue Amoeba
and their software (which I bought multiple times), but — since I knew what
was in play technically — when reading the last status report of Rogue Amoeba,
it was obvious to me that they were concealing information with the goal of
bending the truth to support their side of the argument.

~~~
imjoel
Exactly. Despite Apple's schizophrenic application of their guidelines, Rogue
Amoeba simply needs to take responsibility for everything you pointed out
here. To continue to do otherwise is unprofessional and only hurts them in the
end. Apple will continue to make billions.

P.S. Who else had to Google clef-de-voûte? FYI: It basically means "most
important component" or "key element." (via bab.la)

~~~
jguimont
Clef de voûte is the polygonal piece at the center top of a voute (big wall
opening in cathedrals for example).

Without it everything falls appart.

~~~
gonzo
Keystone in English

------
yesyes
This is going to backfire on Apple. It is absurd the lengths they are going
to. Imagine if when you bought a car the manufacturer tried to control what
stereo you could install. "We made this car, and you have to play by our
rules." Insane.

~~~
majormajor
Well, car manufacturers have certainly not been very aftermarket-friendly with
their center stack over the past decade. It might actually be fairly similar
after all:

Want a custom stereo in your new car with a fancy center stack setup with a
non-standard-size stereo and possibly even integrated AC/heater controls?
You're going to have to jump through a lot of hoops. Want software with more
functionality than Apple exposes to developers? There's always jailbreaking...

In neither case has there been a substantial consumer backlash.

~~~
yesyes
What hoops? If the purchaser wants to install a stereo he can choose to do it
himself or take the car to a shop that installs stereos. What's happening in
this case is, roughly, by analogy, the car manufacturer is trying to exercise
control over a shop that is selling stereos that can be installed in the car.
Is that overreaching? Would consumers complain if a car manufacturer actually
tried to do that? The factory installed stereo better be very good.

~~~
majormajor
Go look at a car from the 90s with a DIN or double-DIN stereo, then go look at
one from the past five years, where the prevalence of nonstandard sized
stereos has gone way up, as has the complexity of how tightly coupled they are
to the rest of the car. Those are the hoops. I don't think the manufacturers
are upset at all that one of the side effects of this trend has been to make
aftermarket head unit installs a lot less convenient.

And I don't know any manufacturer that will sell you someone else's head unit
as an aftermarket piece. It's up to you to find out how to take everything
apart and fit something else in there on your own, or to find someone who
knows—basically, jailbreaking your dashboard. Except you generally lose stuff
(like steering wheel controls), while I hear jailbreaking is pretty painless
these days.

Edit: Apple's app store isn't some third party stereo store, it's a store
owned by the manufacturer itself. And car manufacturers are _famous_ for
having highly priced proprietary replacement parts, especially when it comes
to electronics like stereos, if you aren't willing to deal with an outside
store/brand. I really don't see any way Apple's less flexible with the iPhone
than a car manufacturer is with their cars.

~~~
yesyes
Agreed. I simply wanted to point out that the car manufacturer does not
actively try to prevent the car owner or the installation shop from installing
a stereo. However Apple does this with their devices. Everything must pass
through Apple even after the sale is complete and the user owns the device,
and that is just absurd. I can't imagine what older Macs that we used for
audio applications would have been like if all software had to be approved by
Apple. Apple does not have the expertise to write all that software. When I
say Apple's strategy will backfire I mean that the more tightly they try to
exercise control, the easier jailbreaking is going to get. The auto
manufacturers may have made it very difficult to do stereo installations on
newer models but they are not actively trying to interfere with stereo makers
and installers after the car is sold. And why should they? The buyer made his
choice when he bought the car whether he wanted any factory installed audio
options or not. If after the sale the buyer wants to buy parts, or get service
from an authorized dealer, she can do so. But the manufacturer does not try to
interfere with her choice to get service (e.g. stereo installation) elsewhere.
Imagine if every car stereo maker had to get approval from car manufacturers
and could only sell their products in the manufacturer's distribution centers.

