Apple blocks Pragmatic Programmers' release of iPhone book for developers

http://www.pragprog.com/news/ubuntu-kung-fu-shippingpodcast-iphone-news

by nickb • 18 years ago

79 75 18 years ago

immad• 18 years ago

Ridiculous

wayne2• 18 years ago

I don't get how this helps Apple. They don't want Android copying their API or something? Guess it doesn't matter as long as the iPhone remains super popular.

And man, it sucks to spend all that time writing a book, find a happy publisher, and then not be able to release it cause of this.

adamc• 18 years ago

Definitely a cautionary tale about getting involved with Apple technologies.

jcromartie• 18 years ago

The NDA was in place when they started writing it. I don't know why they assumed the NDA would be lifted with the release of the iPhone 2.0. It would have been great if it were lifted, but it wasn't. They knew the risk they were running.

jfarmer2• 18 years ago

Lots of companies have pre-release NDAs. That part is normal.

The abnormal part is not lifting the NDA even after the launch of the second major version of your product.

raganwald6• 18 years ago

it sucks to spend all that time writing a book, find a happy publisher, and then not be able to release it cause of this

Seriously? You get some technology, sign an NDA saying you an't publish a book, write a book any ways, and then it sucks that nothing has changed? What exactly sucks other than the business plan of investing time and energy in the hope that someone else changes their mind about an agreement you signed?

bp0013• 18 years ago

The author did take a risk here, but the risk looked to be minimal upfront. It is amazing to that Apple continues to take this stance with their NDA.

Any artificial barrier that cuts down on developer freedom and productivity will keep developers away from a platform.

Yes, the author made the assumption that Apple understood that a level of openness is required take a platform's popularity to the next level.

markbao• 18 years ago

Is it just me, or is it sounding like Apple is coming out with their own line of iPhone manuals or something...?

mroman6• 18 years ago

This is outrageous.

That's it, I am going to refrain from purchasing any and all Apple products from here on, am going to encourage others to do the same, and will also refrain from recommending their products to anyone.

wayne2• 18 years ago

Serious? That's hard core. This might discourage me from developing for the iPhone, but it's not going to make me buy a Zune over an iPod. :)

aston2• 18 years ago

The new Zune stuff is looking really good right now. Like better than iPod + iTunes good.

mroman6• 18 years ago

Yes, serious, I am getting a Creative Zen Stone Plus right soon . . . Zunes suck :)

I believe in talking with my wallet when it comes to companies.

Buying responsibly is one of the things we can all do.

rbanffy3• 18 years ago

That's more or less what I do. Many of my toys are Apple, but I buy my more important stuff elsewhere. As much as I would love to be able to use a Mac for my work, OSX is just not Unix-ish enough for me.

iamdave2• 18 years ago

I was planning on buying an iPod next month with a pay raise, but after all of this stuff from Apple, I'm really starting to lose my admiration for the company. I miss when Apple was fringe.

ashu2• 18 years ago

Relax! People are just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. And it is easy to get worked up by reading (intentional and unintentional) inflammatory remarks. If you like the product and think it makes sense for you, buy it.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

I really dig my Creative players, FWIW.

pavelludiq2• 18 years ago

Sometimes it feels lonely being an open source advocate, but reading this, there was a smirk on my face, and my first thought was "Told them so". I love it when people suffer for trusting big companies, its like their own fault, big co's are evil by definition, you should know better than to trust them. You con use their products, but trusting them, or even worse, to love them? In the expression "common sense", people tend to hear only the "common" part, the "sense" part is more important!

sovande3• 18 years ago

idiot

jon_dahl3• 18 years ago

I wouldn't go as far as what you're saying, but having only been an Apple user for 4 years (and a wannabe iPhone developer for 6 months), this was an eye-opening experience to me. I assumed that Microsoft was "evil" and Apple was "good". But it's far more complex than that. If this is how Apple treats developers, they deserve to lose them.

axod11• 18 years ago

Because they have an NDA? Call me mad but maybe you're over-reacting a smidgin.

mroman6• 18 years ago

Because they are systematically violating the spirit of many freedoms they have benefited from, the Mach Kernel being a good example of freedom they continue to benefit from.

lux• 18 years ago

It doesn't sound like Apple actually blocked it, just that since they haven't lifted the NDA this can't be published yet, and since they don't seem to be concerned with lifting the NDA they probably won't publish it anytime soon.

Additional developer resources, esp. a book from these guys, would be very welcome though...

axod11• 18 years ago

Woah don't post the truth, this is apparently all about posting as many stories as possible that could be misinterpreted to show that Apple is evil.

Harkins• 18 years ago

Your subtle distinction comes down to: it's not that they blocked it, it's that they haven't stopped blocking it.

I don't see a reason to treat that significantly differently.

raganwald6• 18 years ago

There's no reason to treat them differently, I agree.

The question I have is why we're still talking about old news? I'm searching this story in vain for some aditional bit of information that is actionable in any way.

jdg• 18 years ago

Key phrase: "which affects all publishers regarding this material". It's not just pragprog. There isn't any real news here other than they're taking it off their docket.

Same situation as before with their last blog post about the [redacted] SDK NDA.

ashu2• 18 years ago

That's a bad flamebait-ish headline. There is no news here. Everybody knows the NDA is still very much active. And, as bad as that is, it means the book was not going to be published, and it isn't.

axod11• 18 years ago

It's a shame this sort of thing is consistently being voted up here recently.

russ• 18 years ago

fuckingnda.com

utnick• 18 years ago

Has the iphone nda actually been enforced yet or even threatened to be enforced by apple?

Or is this an issue like the chrome license that says goog owns everything you type, but obviously they aren't going around taking my words?

ash• 18 years ago

Google Chrome license was updated several weeks ago. See e.g. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/update-to-google-chro...

Extract:

  11. Content license from you
  11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already
  hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or 
  through, the Services.

wmf2• 18 years ago

The difference is that Google changed their license after people complained.

Presumably developers aren't pushing the boundaries of the NDA because they fear being banned for life, so there's nothing for Apple to enforce.

silencio2• 18 years ago

Exactly. Podcaster's adhoc distribution being blocked is a fantastic example. Netshare being banned from the app store is another. At this moment, unless you are a well known developer bitching a ton about this that Apple can't lash out at you without completely and utterly (and possibly irreversibly) screwing themselves over in the eyes of the Mac/iPhone dev community (i.e. Wil Shipley, Craig Hockenberry), you don't want to because this insanity is preferable to nothing at all because some cretin at Apple was like "woah, this person went overboard with the criticism..blacklisted".

drawkbox• 18 years ago

You can only block technology progress from developers for so long before they find another platform.

axod11• 18 years ago

Which would probably be good for both parties in this case.

boredguy8• 18 years ago

Where is Fake Steve Jobs when you need him?

wmf2• 18 years ago

Maybe Real Steve Jobs hired him to run iPhone developer relations.

axod11• 18 years ago

Summary: Apple has NDA, people wrote book ignoring the NDA, now shock horror they can't publish it. Some conclude Apple is evil.

jrockway2• 18 years ago

Summary: Information exists in the Universe. Apple claims that gathering it and telling others about it is illegal.

froo• 18 years ago

As soon as I saw this headline I thought that the comments would be instantly split into 3 views.

- The Apple Fanboys who say it isn't such a big deal

- The haters looking for any excuse to heap ire upon Apple

- The rest of us who are still confused as to why Apple hasn't released the NDA and the fallout that is happening as a result of it.

Glad to see this submission delivers as originally thought.

lallysingh• 18 years ago

I'm #3, but my guess is that nobody @ Apple with a clue's responsible for the app dev program. The NDA & the app store absurdity are unusually dumb for apple. Whomever (is anyone?) is at top-level control of all this is seriously screwing up the potential for the next big platform.

But they probably think it's irrelevant b/c the iPhone sales are still doing fine.

raganwald6• 18 years ago

Apple builds a plantation. Sharecroppers move in, deciding of their own free will that life working for "Massa" is good. A sign at the front gate says, "The first rule of the Apple Plantation is that Sharecroppers do not talk about the Apple Plantation."

So the sign is still up and the Pragamatic Programmers are waiting untilt he sign comes down. Interesting, but not a single bit of new information. Must be a slow news day for this to get so many votes.

It would be news if the sign came down, or if Apple blessed the Pragmatic Programmers and said, "the sign doesn't apply to you."

sovande3• 18 years ago

Hi Ragnwald didn't you plan on taking a break :)

raganwald6• 18 years ago

http://weblog.raganwald.com

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

I've been using Macs my whole computing life, and I thought of them as Good until the first iPod worked with Windows. "But that's just business," you say, but in fact that represented a huge shift for Apple, and I recognized it immediately: Taking care of Mac customers was no longer Apple's chief concern, nor was creating great computers. Profit was the new obsession at company built by obsessions.

I watched 2002's July Keynote (MacWorld) from my local, brand-spankin'-new Apple store, and only a handful of us [all Mac geeks in attendance] were excited about the iPod. We came to see about OSX 10.1, and whatever cool software Apple might be brewing up, and this threw us for a loop.

Then next-gen iPods were available for Windows. Then I couldn't use FireWire with new iPods, even to charge them! And things have really deteriorated for us old-school MacAddicts since then. For one, MacAddict became MacLife (lame). Jobs killed off the "Sad Mac" and took all of the color and life out of the company. OSX 10.0-3 were great, 10.4 was OK, and Leopard is a goddamn trainwreck, relatively speaking.

From that point on, it was all about the Benjamins in Cupertino. I was disgusted that Apple would so quickly switch to Intel processors after years of persuading us (proving, in my opinion) that PowerPC was the superior architecture. Having followed Apple for quite some time, I predicted back then that Apple would eventually just sell software, iPods, and other gizmos: Moving away from PowerPC would be the death-knell for Mac-exclusive software (specifically catering to Mac users), be it at the hands of Apple or Psystar. I could care less.

perezd• 18 years ago

Apple's approach to this whole development platform is really starting to bother me. I won't be investing in it until I can learn more about it from some of the most trusted authors in the biz.

Apple blocks Pragmatic Programmers' release of iPhone book for developers

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