Rogue Amoeba Retreats from iPhone Development Over App Store Policies

[guet]

They are licensed for use on a mac, not for distribution to a client machine be it an iphone, Blackberry or Android.

Please give us a link to the license specific to those images from that API, and point out where it states they are licensed only for use on a Mac. You can't because there isn't one. It's a grey area, however what RA were doing is not unexpected, and indeed, it's exactly what the remote app does from Apple.

Quite apart from that, it's pointless to argue over trivial licensing issues. Apple can probably get away with this in a strict legal sense; I'm sure they have some get-out clause saying they can reject any app they please for any reason. No one needs to play the apologist for Apple - if they want to play hardball, they will, and the only thing developers and users can do about it is publicise their complaint and move to other platforms.

The argument is not over whether they *can* do this and get away with it, it's whether they should. If they continue to make life incredibly difficult for developers, large potential partners will start to look elsewhere, and with them the users will follow. They've already lost Google due to their foolish intransigence, and will see less innovation in their maps app as a result.

 

[cmaier]

Well that might a the case in your situation but it this case Rogue Amoeba is using Apple's own copyright images in a client server application where the API on OS X does not confer the right to use those images on other devices by third party developers.

You're missing the point. Yes, Apple, as the copyright holder, can define the extent of its license (assuming they haven't already waived the right to do so, which they may have, and assuming it isn't fair use, which it almost certainly is), and, yes, they can decide what goes into the app store, making the extent of the copyright license moot.

But it doesn't make sense for them to do so! Integration between iphone and mac would only sell more of each. They don't lose money on this sort of use of the icons - it's not like they offer a paid license for those images.

There is no duty to police copyrights to avoid losing them.

And, there is no rational alternative to using those icons (despite your repeated "all they had to do is create their own icons" argument) because Apple is likely to turn around and assert trademark/trade dress.

So all you can do is use words, or images unrelated to the appearance of the machines being represented. If the words say "Macbook Pro," e.g., APple can turn around and say you can't do THAT, either, because that's a trademark. If your handmade image looks too much like a mac, that's trademark infringement too (according to Apple). So you have to make it NOT look like the thing it represents. That totally defeats the POINT of the images in this use.

It's like having to write an article in a newspaper reviewing a concert without mentioning the name of the band or the names of any of the band members.

And Apple is doing it for absolutely no good reason.

 

[rhett7660]

You're talking about some hardcore Apple supporters, well known in the community, jumping ship. It ain't a good sign.

It just says they are jumping ship from the iPhone... For some reason, 3 people jumping ship don't really stir the pot for me. For some reason I have a feeling there will be many behind them to take their place.

 

[jz1492]

I don't see Apple as the client. After all, they didn't ask for the app. They didn't provide any kind of spec, or put out an RFP, or specify any guidelines as to what it should do. To me they are more of an unwanted kibbutzer looking over my shoulder. On more than one occasion I've had Apple reject updates that did things my customers really wanted, for dumb reasons (usually reasons that they could have asserted for the 20 updates I did prior to that point).

It's no different than Walmart, Sears, PepBoys, etc choosing their suppliers from what becomes available and is proposed to them. Some of it is necessary and they look for it, like produce or clothes or spare parts, or when Apple courted some big software developers and seeded them with unreleased tools. But the majority is from suppliers courting the distributors.

You may invent the next "green thing" and then what? Time to beat the path to the distributors, convince them and sign some thick contracts accepting every single condition they've put in place.

It's not your store. They set the terms and conditions. Want to sell it by yourself in your own store? Sure you can, but most people would actually rather shop at Walmart.

 

[cmaier]

It's no different than Walmart, Sears, PepBoys, etc choosing their suppliers from what becomes available and is proposed to them. Some of it is necessary and they look for it, like produce or clothes or spare parts, or when Apple courted some big software developers and seeded them with unreleased tools. But the majority is from suppliers courting the distributors.

You may invent the next "green thing" and then what? Time to beat the path to the distributors, convince them and sign some thick contracts accepting every single condition they've put in place.

It's not your store. They set the terms and conditions. Want to sell it by yourself in your own store? Sure you can, but most people would actually rather shop at Walmart.

Ah, but Apple won't let us sell it in our own store!

 

[aristotle]

You're missing the point. Yes, Apple, as the copyright holder, can define the extent of its license (assuming they haven't already waived the right to do so, which they may have, and assuming it isn't fair use, which it almost certainly is), and, yes, they can decide what goes into the app store, making the extent of the copyright license moot.

But it doesn't make sense for them to do so! Integration between iphone and mac would only sell more of each. They don't lose money on this sort of use of the icons - it's not like they offer a paid license for those images.

There is no duty to police copyrights to avoid losing them.

And, there is no rational alternative to using those icons (despite your repeated "all they had to do is create their own icons" argument) because Apple is likely to turn around and assert trademark/trade dress.

So all you can do is use words, or images unrelated to the appearance of the machines being represented. If the words say "Macbook Pro," e.g., APple can turn around and say you can't do THAT, either, because that's a trademark. If your handmade image looks too much like a mac, that's trademark infringement too (according to Apple). So you have to make it NOT look like the thing it represents. That totally defeats the POINT of the images in this use.

It's like having to write an article in a newspaper reviewing a concert without mentioning the name of the band or the names of any of the band members.

And Apple is doing it for absolutely no good reason.

I'm not missing the point. You are. They have a right to determine how their trademarks are to be used and if they did not vigourously defend them, you would see MSFT stealing even icons from OS X.

Apple is a company with a responsibility to shareholders. They are not your friends. Google is not your friend either.

The purpose of the image use is on a mac. You are also not looking at it from Apple's point of view that Apple wants to have the iPhone be a success regardless of whether the server used in a client server environment is running OS X, linux, some other unix or windows. If they were to allow some of their third party developer running OS X based services use their icons, the real client server developers running in the cloud would complain about favouritism. They have to keep third party developers under the same rules regardless of whether the app uses a mac based service or not.

 

[cmaier]

I'm not missing the point. You are. They have a right to determine how their trademarks are to be used and if they did not vigourously defend them, you would see MSFT stealing even icons from OS X.

Apple is a company with a responsibility to shareholders. They are not your friends. Google is not your friend either.

The purpose of the image use is on a mac. You are also not looking at it from Apple's point of view that Apple wants to have the iPhone be a success regardless of whether the server used in a client server environment is running OS X, linux, some other unix or windows. If they were to allow some of their third party developer running OS X based services use their icons, the real client server developers running in the cloud would complain about favouritism. They have to keep third party developers under the same rules regardless of whether the app uses a mac based service or not.

You say you're not missing the point, but your response immediately jumped back to "they have a right."

yes, we know. We aren't arguing what they have a right to do.

We are arguing about how stupid and arbitrary it is to enforce that right.

And your argument about the icons in the last paragraph makes no sense - why would someone want to use an image of a mac to represent a non-OS X box?

And, you still haven't addressed the fact that there is no solution for the developer other than making their software significantly worse - they can't use their own icons that depict the machine being connected to, they can't necessarily use the NAME of the machine being connected to - what is it they are supposed to do? List the machines by ip address?

 

[inkswamp]

Why does Apple think it's okay to continually alienate and turn away developers?? Why do fanboys continue to excuse such incidences? Why aren't people SICK of this kind of behavior from Apple?

I guess I would turn that around to you and ask why are people making such a huge deal out of a handful of incidents in a pool of 100K+ apps? It's bound to happen, especially considering that this is a whole new approach to delivering apps to a device and there are bound to be misunderstandings and missteps along the way.

Obviously, I think this is a ridiculous situation and I hope someone higher-up at Apple gets involved and smoothes this over and ensures it doesn't happen again. However, attitudes like yours are basically advocating throwing the baby out with the bath-water.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Aplenty needs to clean up their act here.
Rogue isn't a small homegrown company, they deserve to be respected. With policies like this, the App Store might just eventually die.

I hope it dies. It's an abomination among software development.

 

[jz1492]

Ah, but Apple won't let us sell it in our own store!

I guess you could say "There's a droid for that", but following my analogy it would be just like a swap meet with a big seller taking up the central aisles.

But that doesn't mean that now you can reach everyone. The Android swap meet excludes BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian, WinMo and Apple customers. You end up with a smaller customer base, with such a diverse set of user needs that you end up pulling your hair out trying to meet every Android phone manufacturer's device specs.

 

[vannote]

Let me quote Gruber on this very issue:
"Point 1 is simply wrong; the Airfoil Speakers Touch iPhone app does not contain any of these images. It contains no pictures of Apple computers. It contains no icons of Apple applications. It displays these images after they are sent across the network by Airfoil for Mac. Airfoil for Mac reads these images using public official Mac OS X APIs. I.e. Airfoil Speakers Touch can only show a picture of the Mac it is connected to because the image is sent from the Mac it is connected to."
http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/airfoil_touch_situation

As a professional developer, I do need to point a couple of items out…

The link that DARING FIREBALL points to (mentioned earlier in this thread) sighting "Public APIs" is not an ADC documentation site.

One of the Desktop APIs being used (sited via the Public API link) is being used in a manner that is specifically reaching into "/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources", this is a very large red flag… Your reaching
into someone else's bundle here.

The other Desktop API is requesting the icon of a document type - I would sure be peeved if I found someone else's Desktop application broadcasting one of *MY* hand made graphics or icons out to their iPhone application.

Regardless, Both of the API being used to obtain the graphics/icons are being called are from the Mac OS X Desktop SDK, not from the iPhone SDK. In addition, the result is being broadcast out to another machine (the phone), an image they don't hold rights to.

Just because you can get hold of an arbitrary image (including a users document) via a "Public" API, doesn't give you the right to use it without permission.

 

[ChrisA]

Why does Apple think it's okay to continually alienate and turn away developers?? Why do fanboys continue to excuse such incidences? Why aren't people SICK of this kind of behavior from Apple?

This will continue until the Google Android threatens the iPhone. Then Apple will change their policy. Right now Apple simply does not have to care.

 

[Balooba]

Grow up, both Apple and Rogue Amoeba

Rogue Amoeba, stop behaving like grumpy children. We love your apps and need updates and continued development! Change the graphics and get over it.

Apple, what are you thinking? It is not like RA were using an Apple logo for an app on the Palm Pre, they used iMac pictures as part of the UI in a clever way that made sense from a user's perspective. You cannot keep doing this to smart and Apple-loving companies that make wonderful apps clearly in the spirit of your policies. If your lawyers object, change your lawyers.

 

[aristotle]

As a professional developer, I do need to point a couple of items out…

The link that DARING FIREBALL points to (mentioned earlier in this thread) sighting "Public APIs" is not an ADC documentation site.

One of the Desktop APIs being used (sited via the Public API link) is being used in a manner that is specifically reaching into "/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources", this is a very large red flag… Your reaching
into someone else's bundle here.

The other Desktop API is requesting the icon of a document type - I would sure be peeved if I found someone else's Desktop application broadcasting one of *MY* hand made graphics or icons out to their iPhone application.

Regardless, Both of the API being used to obtain the graphics/icons are being called are from the Mac OS X Desktop SDK, not from the iPhone SDK. In addition, the result is being broadcast out to another machine (the phone), an image they don't hold rights to.

Just because you can get hold of an arbitrary image (including a users document) via a "Public" API, doesn't give you the right to use it without permission.

Thank you. You said it better that I could right now as I'm trying to fight off a cold.

I'm also a professional developer for that other platform with a monopoly in the desktop market (windows client/server). I've only dabbled with OS X but the general principles are the same regardless of whether you are using OS X APIs or Win32. Just because an API can give you access to an image, it does not mean that you can use it wherever however you wish.

If I was an icon artist, I might be upset if my icons were being used on an iPhone app which were only licensed for use in a specific desktop app whether directly or indirectly because it was set as the default icon for a data type on the server.

 

[dejo]

And Jeff LaMarche has responded to Daring Fireball's response:

Some More Thoughts on the Airfoil Situation

Disclaimer: I provide this clearly for informational purposes and not to support any particular position.

 

[175170]

This will continue until the Google Android threatens the iPhone. Then Apple will change their policy. Right now Apple simply does not have to care.

You have an excellent point there.

 

[rowlands]

This will continue until the Google Android threatens the iPhone. Then Apple will change their policy. Right now Apple simply does not have to care.

I agree, as much as I prefer Apple products over others, this app store rejection malarky seems to be getting funkier and funkier. I can understand it from both sides. However it ain't gonna change until it has to change.

I'm confident that given time Apple will change their policy. At least RA understand why their software was rejected. A website rejected one of our Mac products, we received a "your app was rejected because of one of these reasons". Then it listed 8 reasons, almost all were in bad Chinglish!

 

[aristotle]

This will continue until the Google Android threatens the iPhone. Then Apple will change their policy. Right now Apple simply does not have to care.

Do you believe that Google Android apps are a free for all and that apps are never rejected? Do you believe that Google is any different than any other company when comes to protecting their IP? Google maps API for example, cannot be used in third party applications that offer turn by turn navigation. If you believe that Google is different, then I have a bridge to sell you and that gullible is not listed anywhere in the dictionary.

I have no problem with laymen expressing their opinions but I am getting a little bit annoyed by noobs like wOOmaster telling people who earn a living developing software that they are wrong about copyright and how software development works.

 

[cmaier]

Do you believe that Google Android apps are a free for all and that apps are never rejected? Do you believe that Google is any different than any other company when comes to protecting their IP? Google maps API for example, cannot be used in third party applications that offer turn by turn navigation.

To be fair, that's quite possibly a limitation imposed on them by navteq/teleatlas.

 

[aristotle]

To be fair, that's quite possibly a limitation imposed on them by navteq/teleatlas.

That is irrelevant. It is still someone's IP and Google is bound by law to honour their license agreement with that other company. It is also possible that Apple could be bound by an agreement for their system icons. Not likely but it is possible. I know that icon factory created a lot of the XP and Vista icons for MSFT.

I have no problem with people using fair use for justifying their own personal use but publishing apps on the app store whether for free or for profit crosses that line where fair use cannot be used as an argument. These apps are not a commentary or piece of journalism but rather a product offered to promote a commercial product called Airfoil which is available for the mac and windows.

Are you trying to tell us that you promote ripping off icons from other people? Is it only ok if they are stealing from other companies? What if someone has a custom icon set installed? Did they creator of that icon set consent to this iPhone/iPod Touch app having access to those icons?

 

[cmaier]

Are you trying to tell us that you promote ripping off icons from other people? Is it only ok if they are stealing from other companies? What if someone has a custom icon set installed? Did they creator of that icon set consent to this iPhone/iPod Touch app having access to those icons?

Have you even read a single thing I've said? You are defaming me - I'm an intellectual property attorney and don't advocate stealing anyone's intellectual property. So let me repeat what I've said multiple times, this time using small words:

1) Apple has every RIGHT (taking into account waiver, exhaustion/first sale doctrine, and fair use) to use its copyright to limit the license to the icons

2) Apple has every RIGHT to decide what goes into the app store

3) Apple is being stupid in exercising these rights in this case.

 

[macbeta]

sad, as the app store is 99% junk

sad, as the app store is 99% junk.

 

[jaw04005]

sad, as the app store is 99% junk.

You’re right there. And what’s sad is Apple is chasing off (in this case) one of its best developers. Rogue Amoeba makes great software, and comes highly recommended from many people in the Mac community — AirFoil, Audio Hijack Pro, Fission, etc.

You know what’s interesting is while browsing around with my iDisk app on the iPhone, I noticed the iDisk app displays Adobe’s Photoshop icon for PSD files. I wonder if Adobe gave Apple explicit permission to use their Photoshop file icon in the iDisk app?

 

[CapturedDarknes]

Plus 1

99% of these are in a huff self important 'tempest in a teapot' stories;
its not required-nay not even helpful to be a fanboy to point this out-just 2 good eyes and a brain;
Alway been complainers, always will be;
If the rules are clearly spelled out and they dont follow them-then they shouldnt be crybabies in public
simple
CAREFULLY read APPLEs developers rules
follow them
dont try to breach them

Amen! You are on the dot! Everyone (including developers) complain about their app not getting approved for one reason or another, and yet it's always because they breached the Developers Guide for the App Store. Just f*cking get a printer and print the damn pdf out. Then, step two, READ it. Then, before you go and submit the app, use it yourself and see if it follows the guidelines.

It's like high school, when the teacher gives you a RUBRIC to FOLLOW, when you FAIL, it's because you didn't follow it. So shut up, or nut up. And build a better app. Hopefully one that doesn't say "that's what she says".

 

[cmaier]

Amen! You are on the dot! Everyone (including developers) complain about their app not getting approved for one reason or another, and yet it's always because they breached the Developers Guide for the App Store. Just f*cking get a printer and print the damn pdf out. Then, step two, READ it. Then, before you go and submit the app, use it yourself and see if it follows the guidelines.

It's like high school, when the teacher gives you a RUBRIC to FOLLOW, when you FAIL, it's because you didn't follow it. So shut up, or nut up. And build a better app. Hopefully one that doesn't say "that's what she says".

Most of the complaints, including this one, are about when Apple rejects an app for something that is NOT in the developer's guide.