back to article Apple NDA kills Jesus Phone gospels

Apple's clampdown over access to information on the iPhone's Software Development Kit (SDK) has plumbed new depths, forcing a book publisher to withdraw a programmers guide scheduled for December 2008. Pragmatic Bookshelf announced it is pulling Phone SDK Development from its production schedule because Apple's draconian non- …

COMMENTS

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  1. kain preacher

    Can some one explain to me

    Why Apple does not want developers to talk to each other ??? What valid reason is there to bar some from share the tricks that they learned ??

  2. mike panero
    Thumb Up

    Expect an overpriced Apple book?

    $300 entry price to all the script kiddies?

    a) Sell script kiddies Apple Approved (tm) training @ >> $300

    b) Sell shitty mag sized chunks >> $300, see a)

    c) Do nothing and automaticly "attract" non-script kiddies who can feel and know metal, less apps but all the more (as in less is more law)

    d) Write the first of many Linux(tm) based viri and watch the G1 crash & burn?

    e) All of the above?

  3. Solomon Grundy

    I Don't Get It...

    Why can one publisher sell a book but not another one?

  4. Robert Heffernan
    Jobs Horns

    @Solomon

    "Why can one publisher sell a book but not another one?"

    Because the author of the "iPhone Open Application Development" book was never bound by the Apple SDK NDA. He reverse engineered the API before the SDK was available. The other books were written based off the information found in the official SDK and so were bound by the NDA.

  5. The Mighty Spang
    Thumb Down

    eh?

    the publisher doesn't have a contract with apple unless they've bought a produect and agreed to the elua. whats going on?

  6. Chris

    What's going on?

    Simple - Apple is cleverly destroying the lead the iPhone had. It's the sort of thing that happens when CEOs have had delusions of competence for way too long (in Job's case, since he was born/hatched/fissioned it appears) and start getting carried away...

    Nice timing too, given the SatanPhone's recent release.

  7. Ian Damage
    Pirate

    "accidentally" upload them to wikileaks

    that'll screw em.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Mighty Spang

    publisher doesn't have a contract with apple , but the authors who wrote the books that they can not get published.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Surprised?

    I'm more surprised that people are still buying in to this piece of crap.

  10. Nile Heffernan

    History repeating itself

    Is this a rerun of Why The Mac Came Second To The PC?

    As the Mac fans would have it, Apple had a vastly superior product to the IBM PC and its clones, and it's oh-so-unfair that they never made it out of a small niche. As the Wintel users would have it, the all-too-obvious limitations of DOS, Windows and the PC - the interface and the hardware - were tolerated because the PC was - and is - a fairly open spec that anyone and everyone could build hardware for: it was always upgradeable and reconfigurable, both for users who wanted to trade up with bigger drives, expensive high-spec video cards and so on; and for those who wanted desktop computing on a budget from the low-cost manufacturers - a huge new industry that IBM licensed and permitted to build the 'PC-Clones' that dominate computing today.

    As with hardware, so with software: Apple are repeating the same mistake, the same retreat into the proprietary laager that confined the Mac to an uneconomic niche. More outward-looking competitors, some of them with technically-inferior hardware, will reap the benefits of allowing third-party extension and development that will respond to user demand, find the 'killer apps' and address the shortfalls that the 'owner' of the hardware didn't catch or - perhaps - is culturally incapable of acknowledging and addressing.

    Yes, the iPhone is quite good; but not so perfect as to be beyond improvement; and Apple's proprietary instincts will allow their competitors to improve far beyond anything that even the most euphoric Steve Jobs fanboys ever claimed or can imagine that a mobile computer can do.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    dudeskinn

    They're still buying into it because it's impressive. Shiny. People *like* shiny, even people who aren't driven by "mut have the latest and greatest" think the iPhone is shiny enough to be attractive.

    *Developers* are buying into it because the public are. There will be a market for iPhone software. Because iPhones are *shiny*.

    Note: "Ooo! Shiny!" is not a *rational* reaction, but an emotional one.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Over-reactionary

    Yet again, reg readers show their mental age by throwing rocks at a barely tangible target.

    NDAs are nothing new as any professional, experienced developer knows.

    I've been developing iPhone apps since release and couldn't care less about the NDA restrictions - I certainly don't feel stifled in any way, and neither do any of the other devs I work with.

    There's some question of over-indulgent control of what apps are allowable, but this only affects a tiny percentage (let's say 1 in 1000) of developers who don't do their homework, and neglect to call their support agent to get clarification.

    You get FAR more restrictions in other marketplaces and with top-tier publishers which don't want dozens of the same application diluting shelf-space or catalogues.

    Moderation is inevitable. Just watch and wait for the so called "unmoderated" Android marketplace to turn tail. If it doesn't it will severely limit it's appeal.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing better than evolutionary science?

    So....the logic flows that since we don't seem to have the real answer to a question, we'll assume the best guess that's "emerged", (dare I say evolved?) must by default be the answer. That's not science - it's wishful thinking at best and intellectually dishonest at the margin. An inability to explain a thing doesn't warrant positing an answer that is unreasonable. One may be led to believe evolution is sound on based on the scientific method, but under close scrutiny, one always finds that it falls tragically short of the mark unless granted unreasonable assumptions. You may wish to deny God at your own peril, but if you do, you really need to come up with something better to evolution as an alternative. The theory does not hold up under honest methods of scientific assessment.

  14. Scott Swarthout
    Paris Hilton

    @AC 16:58

    I think that comment's taking the term "Jesus Phone" a little too literally, no? Or perhaps you got lost from another article?

    The sad thing is, it took me almost half the comment before I realized that it was severely off-topic.

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