

iBooks and private APIs - twampss
http://www.marco.org/500743718

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thought_alarm
Every public API starts its life as a private API written for some specific
application, and goes through many iterations before its finally carved in
stone and added to the public API.

If Cocoa Touch doesn't do something you need it to, Apple's framework
engineers want to know about it. File a bug.

Nobody, not even Apple, can develop a perfectly designed API by simply waving
a magic wand. It takes a lot of time and careful consideration, and involves
feedback from developers because they're the ones who have to work with it.
Otherwise you end up with an inconsistent mess that's a pain to use.

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lurch_mojoff
Apple's own applications have been using APIs and have had capabilities
unavailable to third parties since day one. The only difference with iBooks is
that the app is distributed through the store, but that is completely
orthogonal to the issue of private APIs. I cannot make myself get outraged
about this.

~~~
boucher
There's a fairly substantial difference, in that all Apple apps that used
private APIs came installed with the device. They weren't competing for a
share of the app store market.

Apple is now directly competing for the same dollars as everyone else on the
app store, but they're doing so using tools that nobody else is allowed to
use.

~~~
protomyth
I think the situation is probably as described by tienshiao a few posts down
(ran late, only US)

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martythemaniak
I've always thought of regular iPhone developers as 3rd class citizens of the
platform. First class is reserved by Apple, who get to do anything they wish.
Second class is large/well-known/well-connected companies which get exempted
from some of the limitations and finally Joe Developer with every limitation
and app-approval thrown at him.

I know this doesn't bother 95% of iphone developers, but it really does irk
me.

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aidenn0
There are a lot of comments about how private APIs is normal, and this is
true. The big difference between the iPad and windows though, is that
developers could (and did) leverage the private APIs on windows.

This had it's upsides and downsides:

Upside: cool functionality in 3rd party apps

Downside: Either MS had to bend over backwards to support APIs that were never
public, or older apps would break on newer versions of windows. MS would be
blamed for this breakage, not the developers that used an undocumented API

Obviously Apple is doing this to prevent the downside, but it does mean that
3rd party apps are more worse off then they were in the windows world, where
they could at least reverse engineer and release.

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rimantas
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd97us27eSg>

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thibaut_barrere
I don't think it translates a will to be unfair, but rather, a side-effect
that once an API is public, you have to support it publicly (and that's a lot,
lot of work and money on the long run).

If the API is only "public internally", that means a lot less friction if they
need to improve it.

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nickpp
Wasn't this exact kind of behavior the reason Microsoft faced company break-up
at some point?

When is Apple going to be investigated by the US government for anti-
competitive behavior?

Or maybe this rule only applies to monopolies?

~~~
roc
Microsoft was also bundling. E.g. Internet Explorer. To its (very slight)
credit, Apple doesn't ship the iPad with iBooks installed by default.

Their control of the App Store is perhaps more-problematic (Microsoft couldn't
actually _stop_ competitors from using those undocumented APIs, once
discovered). But at the same time, Apple doesn't dominate the mobile market
like what Microsoft had on the desktop. (Similarly --obligatory bad-car-
analogy-- auto companies exercise far more control over their dealership
networks than Microsoft ever did over its resellers. But the FTC/EU took issue
with Microsoft because of its monopoly status.)

Also, there's always the inconsistent treatment of game consoles to consider.
The FTC has never investigated a dominant console supplier for not allowing
any app from any developer onto their console. And Apple's App Store is _wide
open_ when viewed through the lens of that market.

~~~
jkincaid
They don't have it pre-installed, but as soon as you open the App Store for
the first time you get a system alert message prompting you to download
iBooks.

~~~
tienshiao
Seems like maybe iBooks was intended to be a "first class" app but they
couldn't make the schedule to make the OS image, so they decided to distribute
it over iTunes.

~~~
basil
Another plausible explanation is that they can issue updates via the App Store
rather than having to release an OS-level update.

~~~
cmelbye
I would sure want the luxury of instantly pushing out a minor update to all
users of the app rather than having to wait months if I was internally
developing a first party app.

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AndrewWarner
This doesn't change the premise of your argument, but Stanza found a
workaround to let it change the brightness.

I think what they do is let users change the font and background color.

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hackermom
This article threw me off for a while before I figured out that the guy wasn't
talking about iBooks (pl. iBook), but an app named iBooks.

~~~
jolan
Former iBook G3/G4 owner? :)

Remember, they've been called MacBooks 3+ years now.

