Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
http://www.navizon.com/Microsoft_selects_navizon_for_geoloca...
Navizon was able to develop a huge database of geolocated WiFi transmitters by having people run their application on iPhones. They got people to run their app by offering actual cash for number of WiFi transmitters you located
Is Apple now just pissed that its hardware was used to create a valid business for another company?
So what if Navizon created that database, and so what if MS purchased that database. What has that got to do with Apple??
GPS can take minutes (or never come back with a location if you are inside) and tower triangulation has never lived up to the accuracy claims that they made.
I have no proof that it does, but I have an anecdote. The first time I plugged in my WiFi point at a new address, the phone connected and thought I was at the old address - until 5 minutes later when if shot me across the country. Never happened again.
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Well if they are using private APIs as the quote suggests, there's the rule they're breaking right there. If so, this isn't news, move on.
The reviewers rapidly figured out I was using them, told me about their displeasure, and let me know they'd not be approving any updates. They just only now (more than a year later!) got around to removing the other applications using the same APIs. Until now, they were just denying updates but leaving the applications in the store. And occasionally, a new application using the same APIs would squeak through a foreign app review site (I'm looking at you, Japan!).
Overall, though, at least this is a set of rules they're trying to be clear on and are finally consistently enforcing. If only they had the ability to, oh, I don't know, check if the submissions were linking against dlopen() instead of expecting the reviewers to guess if private APIs are in use! If only we had the technology... owait...
I'm curious: Does Apple sell any apps of its own in the App Store? And, if so, do they reject other apps for being similar?
(Being able to deny OpenOffice access to the Windows platform because it duplicates functionality in Notepad is the kind of power Microsoft can only dream of...)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/texas-holdem/id284602850?mt=8
it seems like they are for the most part playing fair: apple's apps don't use private apis, they are required to compete against other apps the same as the rest of us, and so on. if there have been any violations of that "gentleman's agreement," i haven't heard about them, and i pay a lot of attention to the blogosphere on this subject.
it seems to be only the apps that are installed by default on the device that get special treatment.
So Apple told them the removal is due to the use of private frameworks, but they don't know what rule they're breaking?
Take the recent removal of adult-themed apps for instance - they in no way violated Apple's developer terms, but were banned anyways. Apple is well within their rights to do it - you're on their platform, but IMHO this sort of thing will encourage developer flight if it continues.
If history is any indication, the best cause of dissent and rebellion is inconsistent governance - people may tough it out if there's a 100%-effective way to keep the gestapo from raiding your home at night, but if you introduce enough uncertainty they will run and/or fight. By encouraging this sort of seemingly arbitrary banning, Apple is risking the long-term health of the App Store.
But now even those have vanished as Apple decided
they were using a "private framework", and has
pulled them off the shelves without explanation
or apology.
Using private frameworks / unpublished / not-locked-down APIs is a ticking time-bomb from a stability standpoint. What if it changes?
Apple never lets the market decide. It hasn't since Steve Jobs came back from NeXT. "The market" is incredibly bad at spurring the kind of innovation Apple wants on its own. Because "the market" is largely composed of people who have no fucking clue what they actually want from technology. They couldn't tell you what they really want unless you trained them. Even then, they might not be able to.
"The market deciding" is what we've had pre-iPhone with the incredibly conservative and stunted market behind smartphones. Everyone—and I mean everyone in the mobile space—had the technology to create the iPhone. No one did. Why? Because the HTC Crapfest and the Blackberry Eyebleacher sold plenty well. Because instead of taking bold risks and trying for real innovation, companies like Palm and RIM crawled forward with a constant eye towards this quarter's revenue. It's a malaise that has infected so much of the world's business.
Apple's approach is frustrating and inconsistent, which is repugnant to the News.Y crowd (myself included). But it's allowed them to continue to shape the AppStore into something they want and something that moves product. It's the foundation for future products as well. So don't ask, "Why not let the market decide," because we all already know the answer. What Apple is doing may be a slipperly slope, it may be doomed to fail long–term and it may be infuriating and alienating to its developer base. But undeniably it's a business strategy that is at the heart of the ascendancy of their products onto a worldwide market.
Heck, I remember arguments on the .NET framework team when 1.1 was shipping about how to handle third-party applications that had used Reflection to access private members of class instances and whether the data could be changed. In several cases, it was going to break a few widely-used or mission-critical apps.
I personally didn't even think twice and just went ahead and used private APIs, especially since they were literally direct copies of entry points available on OS X, just missing headers & an import lib.
They call all class interfaces and view hierarchies "private apis" and forbid access to those APIs by developers. If you use them and apple figures it out, no app store for you.
There is really little difference between the private and public APIs other than the fact Apple has or hasn't blessed them for use.
Plus, they're duplicating functionality, which they've been rather explicit in the past about not allowing.
And while Apple has been "explicit" about not allowing "duplicate" functionality, that standard is incredibly vague in practice and incredibly arbitrary in enforcement.
In this case, one of what I presume is the banned apps (the article doesn't mention any, grr!) supported some non-duplicative features for war driving assistance, as well as a "radar" view. So yes, some features are duplicated, just like Pandora duplicates some features (playing, pausing music) that iTunes does.
WiFiFoFum's product review/description page on MacWorld, with 1,549 reviews: http://bit.ly/bF4gMP
But its purpose is not to lower suckiness for developers, it's to lower suckiness for consumers. They're merely being consistent in that goal.
The review process was changed a month or two back; from something along the lines of "Will the app crash? Does it look like its doing anything evil?" to something closer to `automatically scans for private api usage` + "does the app crash doing basic tasks within the app".
The review process now takes a lot less than 2 weeks (or 2 months, at worst). I've heard stories of approvals for updates within an hour recently.
For whatever this anecdote is worth: Within the past week I encountered this in the wild. I saw that an update for an app was available and immediately installed it. Later the same day, I saw another update was available for the same app.
Am I suggesting Apple should do this? Not really. I don't actually see that much value in it. What I do think is interesting is that people often try to justify Apple's ridiculous, lengthy, and arbitrary review process by implying that the review process is someone keeping iPhone users safe from viruses or other malevolent programs. But clearly that's not the case. If the App Store approval process isn't sophisticated enough to identify apps that are using private API's before those apps are approved and released on the market, then clearly the approval process isn't going to identify malware of any reasonable level of sophistication.
iPhone development was in the pipeline -- not any more.
All apps using a technology called PlaceEngine to estimate location via wifi signals have been banned. Supposedly there's a statement on PlaceEngine's Japanese site (http://www.koozyt.com/?lang=ja) saying that Apple changed their policy regarding the way apps access Wi-Fi devices. I don't read Japanese, so I can't verify what it says. Does anything care to translate?