Very typical of Apple, using opaque approval procedures. They're acting like bullies because they didn't get what they wanted and because they have the money/power to do so. Apple wanted to buy FlickType but they didn't agree on the price or Eleftheriou didn't want to sell (I doubt it), and so from then onwards started the downhill ride. I fully support Eleftheriou on this just for the principle, but if I were in his place I would have agreed at a very large sum from Apple (even lower from what I had in mind) just so that we could all be happy right now ;-)
> I fully support Eleftheriou on this just for the principle, but if I were in his place I would have agreed at a very large sum from Apple (even lower from what I had in mind) just so that we could all be happy right now ;-)
Seems like Apple has a very anti-competitive position, no?
To me this goes all the way back to the walled garden argument. Apple sat on, what some may consider, a straw man arguing that they couldn't deliver security to their customers without it. Fast forward all these years and Apple's walled garden seems to be failing rather regularly for the trifecta of their: users, developers and the system in general. Users get less choice in the app store when Apple wants to compete directly, developers with good ideas who aren't willing to sell out to Apple will pay the price of their livelihood drying up over night if you don't give Apple what they want and finally we get things like no-click zero days on a routine basis these days.
A watch is now a walled garden? Does Casio have to open its OS?
Either these are not general computing devices or there's no line, a fridge or microwave or a console are general computing as well -- and device makers have no rights to make a product from digital parts as well as mechanical parts without having to make it open to digital fiddling, and secure it dragging in that new threat model.
Half Life was not a walled garden before opening up to modders, and was not a walled garden after. It was just a game opened to modders.
If we get over ourselves, and allow that there's new category of thing, devices made of mechanical and digital parts both, that the maker may or may not selectively open for mods as a legitimate part of their business model they're within their rights to choose, then we'd be less religiously militant in ways that harm innovation and consumers.
I'm convinced this is the essence of the debate that has intensified as parts that move at the speed of light are devouring physical parts.
Switch, transistor, if statement -- a maker should be able to convert one type of part to another type of part without losing their rights, or accidentally triggering a "oh, look, general computing, therefore it's no longer up to you to decide!" flag of some sort.
Ease of reconfiguring electrons shouldn't change right to design and distribute a product with whatever blend of physical and digital one wants, facilitating whatever purpose one wants, and not being forced to facilitate other purposes.
Arguably, there has been. It’s harder to see because the interface is different in those cases. It’s not as public. Developers have been trying to get around game console lock out for as long as it’s existed. Nintendo’s licensing was very restricted with the NES, and it really annoyed a lot of software developers.
Same case with XBox and PS. You can’t willy nilly write a game for either platform.
For some reason the unlicensed cartridge that always comes to mind for me is the powder blue Bible stories game.
I feel like it was far more fair pre-OTA updates. EA for example famously strong armed Sega when they reverse engineered the Genesis allowing them the right to make their own cartridges (which is why EA games look different) and better terms than what they otherwise would have gotten.
These days if a company tried that Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft would just laugh and issue a firmware update "improving system stability" three weeks later bricking any unlicensed games in the process.
There was even a handful of unlicensed titles for PS2/GC.
And this is now also brought to vehicles, TVs and many other devices, more often than not to fix broken business models or extract more revenue or spy on users instead of to fix bugs.
It's a good point, but consoles were single purpose computers. They exist to play games. Now, I'll agree that the line is blurred these days, but they're still generally gaming machines. Nobody is buying an XBox to stream Netflix solely.
I think the difference is that Apple wants people to buy these devices as your primary computing device. Are you OK when Apple locks down the Mac line? What if you couldn't use Brew to install open source software? For a not insignificant portion of their buyers that may be OK.
I agree that consoles have their own anti-competitive issues, but they're not the same. Copy-cat games have always existed. The difference is that Sony's not going to pull a Rockstar game exclusively built for their platform to directly compete. So while I'm trying to see the parallel, it's not quite the same in my opinion.
> Nobody is buying an XBox to stream Netflix solely.
What if I want to? I don't particularly care what the manufacturer thinks, I bought the machine. Why does Microsoft gets a pass to dictate what I can do with the hardware I bought?
See for example people that bought PS3s for operating distributed clusters (because at the time the console WAS open) and then Sony locked down other OSes with an update. Why is this fair?
> How can a wristwatch be a primary computing device?
Oh it's not. But you don't have a choice. Last I checked Apple Watch required being locked into the walled garden [0] via ownership of an iPhone. Apple Watch is a feature, not a standalone product as it stands today.
It's not so much about copycat games per-se but about the ability to run whatever software you want on a device that you own, and in that respect those games consoles are quite good representations of the walled garden concept.
In fact, the 'general purpose computer' will historically be seen as some kind of very stupid aberration, who ever thought that giving end users that kind of power was a good idea? /s
Software is not different from hardware. Digital parts aren't magic, bring no magic rights, it's still just boring old parts someone invested in engineering into a product.
Even in digital, beige box server, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS, applications, devices, apps, screens... different waterlines, none of them magic. Which waterline do you have the right to "run whatever you want"? Which waterline is a business ok to say, from here down, it's my product?
Anti-circumvention laws saying DRM means hands off altogether are different from saying a maker must take extra steps to make it easier for you to mod the device they invested R&D in, must allow your mod at potential harm to other mods on the device, or a maker must change their business model to facilitate malware and benevolent app devs alike.
There's a market segment for beige boxes and Raspberry PIs. Not every device with digital parts supporting digital mods, plug-ins, add-ons, cartridges, apps, whatever you call them, has to be forced to be a Raspberry Pi.
You have a right to remove the warning label from your mattress, or root your phone, but Sealy doesn't have to perforate the tag and Samsung doesn't have to give you a toggle.
I don't see this as a "features" problem. I think the correct way to approach this is in terms of "control". By designing their devices that way (non-unlockable bootloaders, signature verification on every app or executable with hardcoded public keys etc) companies have essentially introduced a new paradigm in which the legal owner of the device has less control over it than its manufacturer. That is the issue here.
Yeah. What people are complaining about is cryptography to prevent them from using their thing as they wish. Nobody is demanding API documentation from Sony, people are happy to reverse engineer that. But it doesn't matter because you can't give the machine valid code and have it execute, for no good reason other than that you don't know a magic number.
The problem is that building platforms is expensive and if people can use your thing for whatever they want, that thing that they want is often not giving you money. My conclusion is that there shouldn't even be game consoles. They're just a tax on everyone that wants to play games.
> Are you OK when Apple locks down the Mac line? What if you couldn't use Brew to install open source software?
I’ve wondered about this for a while. After about 2015 when the MBP was steadily losing features and gaining problems I was certain that my next machine couldn’t be a Mac. I was certain that the Mac would be rapidly becoming a glorified iPhone.
The trick is, I don’t know where to draw that line. One thought about jumping ship to Linux full time, but I haven’t been able to trust the setup. I’ve heard Windows with WLS is good, but haven’t tried it.
I've been using Linux as my daily driver since 2004 or so and I haven't looked back. And the only reason I used windows as long as I did was because I had a business that depended on our ability develop a particular windows binary as well as some bookkeeping software. But bookkeeping can be outsourced and that windows application is long gone.
If you don't allow any third-party developers to make apps for your device, you have a closed garden and no anti-competitive conflict. If you allow all third-party developers to make apps for your device, you have an open garden and no anti-competitive conflict. If you allow some third-party developers, but not some others, to make apps for your device, you have a walled garden and a potential anti-competitive conflict.
As long as some developers are allowed to make apps for this device -- be it a watch, a safety needle, or a 60,000 sq ft rack-server center -- barring others is anti-competitive. And barring them just to launch a clone of their product yourself is an anti-competitive super dick move.
It's not about if devices are general computing devices or if the device maker can moderate third-party apps on its platform. Apple invited other developers to sell apps on a market it created and regulates. It also competes with those developers in this market. And in this case, it used its power as the market's regulator to remove a competitor and promote its own app.
Nintendo, Sony, etc also allow other developers to sell apps on markets they created, and they also compete with those developers. If Nintendo ever removes a platforming game for competing with the Mario series, we should also raise our pitchforks and protest against unfair abuse of power.
I'd wager a lot of it has to do with history. Gaming consoles were always proprietary hardware that could only do things approved by the manufacturer, and were purchased with that understanding, unless you did some hacking. Computers were always open platforms that you purchased and then could do what you wanted with, no hacking required. iOS was the first major market computing platform that broke this general understanding.
> iOS was the first major market computing platform that broke this general understanding.
I think the reason this worked, and the reason it’s still sort of confusing to people, is that the iPhone is a phone, and showed up at phone stores. People viewed as a super-powered iPod, not a computer.
Huh? Most console games today aren’t exclusives, developers have the freedom to release them on any platform they want with little restriction, and there is no risk in a console maker refusing to let you sell a game and then they go back and make the game themselves.
Consoles are very different from Apple’s walled garden.
1. Consoles are just as much computers as smart watches.
2. There isn't a horde of pitchforks because instead people's efforts with those consoles are focused towards jailbreaking them to run their arbitrary code instead of begging the company to do it - and Microsoft's Developer Mode on Xbox allows running of arbitrary code anyways, so the problems is basically solved there.
I honestly could not tell you, but that's a 'whataboutism' argument, we are not talking about Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo here. But to the extent that they determine what can and can not be shipped on their platform they are - to me - just as much a walled garden.
The line might be able to be drawn between devices which have support, or intend to have support and will accept applications/plans, for 3rd party software and those who don’t. By accepting third party software, the third party now becomes dependent upon (and in this case: a customer to) Apple. In these situations, the device producer has knowledge about and leverage over on-device application competitors which other third parties would not.
I'd agree with you 100% conceptually, if not for the fact I've been personally left to improve the security on every phone and computer I've been offered by the market since my birth.
The original issues with the app weren't opaque at all: Keyboard utilities can't have network access. Then he noted that it can operate without it, but the entitlement can't even exist for any users, even optionally. That is very clearcut.
At least without the App Store reviewers crawling all over everything you do, putting an enormous level of scrutiny over everything you do. And the functionality has to justify it (not that it should operate without it, but with it has to validate why -- is it using some massive cloud resource to guess your next word, etc?)
That he ever got away with it was during confusion over keyboards on the watch where they weren't officially sanctioned and thus policed.
But otherwise he's engaged in building features for someone else's platform. Eventually those features get first party inclusion. This is the surest thing in this industry, and people comparing it to sherlock, etc -- ridiculous. Apple made a larger Apple watch so they decided it's time for a keyboard. That this guy is trying to claim some sort of moral/intellectual ownership over keyboards and/or swype typing is ridiculous, and it's the sort of overreach that is usually criticized viciously on HN.
And if Apple truly made an offer to "buy" his keyboard, it was certainly just to settle bad blood. The likely outcome would have been that they toss his solution and then do exactly what they did, which is build their own.
> The original issues with the app weren't opaque at all: Keyboard utilities can't have network access. Then he noted that it can operate without it, but the entitlement can't even exist for any users, even optionally. That is very clearcut.
Completely wrong. I assume you saw some source online saying that network access was banned across the board for keyboard apps, maybe someone looked at the default restrictions and extrapolated from there. Easy mistake to make. Anyway, see below:
----
> To be clear, Apple’s own developer guidelines specify that “full access” isn’t a problem: the only dispute here is whether the app continues to work if a user turns it off — which it does, says Eleftheriou, if you turn VoiceOver on. “They’d have to try it as a VoiceOver user, something that they don’t seem to bother doing. I’ve had several rejections in the past because the reviewer didn’t know anything about VoiceOver,” Eleftheriou says.[0]
And from Apple's (as far as I can tell, still current) developer documentation:
> By default, a keyboard has no network access and cannot share a container with its containing app. To enable these things, set the value of the RequestsOpenAccess Boolean key in the Info.plist file to YES. Doing this expands the keyboard’s sandbox, as described in Designing for User Trust.[1]
Which then goes on to extensively document how network access can be added to a keyboard utility. Pretty far away from a utility-wide ban.
I wish the plaintiffs luck in court. I remember apples courtroom privateering where they persuaded the justice system they invented rounded corners and got their competitors phones pulled from the market. If only the same standards and rigor of enforcement could actually apply to them.
Once all is said and done I suspect whatever apple has to pay will not meaningfully impact their profitability, and will be seen as a cost of doing business. This is a core reason these companies are so caustic. Penalties need to be harsh enough to make this behavior unprofitable. The board needs to be pissed at their executives.
Apple also managed to cause lasting damage to HTC as a brand when they ventured into the US. I don't HTC ever recovered from that, although it might not have been the only problem they had.
I would rather use an unsupported device that has the ability to do a variety of things than a supported device that doesn't allow various features which is the case with iOS for me. With Apple, it's their way or the highway.
I understand, but in terms of mass market appeal, most people just want to be able to safely take pics and share them and participate in group chats and browse the web and play some games.
Granted, most people would not be able to discern security updates and software updates or maybe even care about them nowadays, but back when the ecosystems and reputations were being established in early 2010s, Android vendors really dropped the ball. Everyone could see their relatives continuing to use iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 a couple more years and getting visibly updated for a couple more years than competing Androids (even from Google themselves!).
The resell value of iPhones was more as well, and I assume many or most people figured out that the probability of iOS devices outlasting competing Android devices was high.
This is so pointless, but I feel like 0-day exploit sellers benefit if everyone is up to date, as it means you need a 0-day to exploit those devices (making those exploits more valuable). But if everyone is running out of date software, who cares if it's a 0-day?
25 years ago, that was still the hacker ethos. Linux stood no chance against the commercial operating systems of the day, and Microsoft was in the process of accretion to a similar position Apple is in today. Yet, against all odds, David sprouted wings and Goliath kneeled.
The sad thing is that I've seen numerous comments here saying (of this and other situations), "Well, Apple offered him/them some money for it. They should have just taken the money", and that, to them, completely justifies it.
When you're facing big tech giants it's very difficult to judge the best course of actions. They have the advantage, money, influence and usually the advantage in similar situations. I'm not saying the sell out (especially at a ridiculous price) is ok and should always be accepted, but most of the times it's the wiser thing to do. Anyhow, isn't this one of the purposes of most app developers/startups, to have a software/service that one of the big companies out there will want to acquire and give you cash and time to work on your "brain child" the way you want it?
That's not only Apple, other companies (like Microsoft) were eating their customers, who were providing service that followed their business line.
On the one hand, this is not pretty, on the other hand, this was happening, happens and will happen, so anyone starting business should think of this - that's one more risk to take into account. I think there was a good post on this by Joel Spolsky - if you create app that improves someone else product, the owner of the product soon or later will come after you.
Apple probably is not going to extend iOS with capabilities useful for plumbers, so one is safe building app for plumbers, however I would hesitate to build app for runners, as Apple is clearly looking on the health & sports sector.
It's because of this kind of stuff that I wanted the Epic case about anticompetitive behavior to be successful. Unfortunately, they blew past this whole issue and focused solely on the issue of the store tax and payment processing. So we're stuck with crap like this.
Personally, I doubt the blocking of app updates is due to failed acquisition. Yes, let’s admit the facts are Apple tried to buy FlickType, the attempt failed, FlickType is blocked from issuing updates, and Apple released keyboard for Watch 7. But let’s think from a different angle, Apple is a large corporation, all these steps were performed by different teams under different organizations.
I can image when acquisition happens, the keyboard team under software org will need to have some sort of requests to M&A(?) org, and then let them negotiate the details like price and make decisions. And app store review team is not involved in this discussion process.
For the M&A (I don’t know the actual name) org, IMO there is no incentive to block an app update due to a failed acquisition, they handle acquisitions every day and turned down offers are normal to them.
For the keyboard team, do they really want to block the app updates for a revenge? It’s possible but I think unlikely, they’re not competing with FlickType. Yes, they sherlocked the FlickType, but they don’t have the pressure to increase adoption because the native keyboard will have better experience (may not fair to developers if no API provided), and only available on watch 7.
Let’s say the keyboard team do want a revenge. Then some manager under keyboard team, which is a few levels down the tree of software org, needs to talk with another manager in app review team, which is also a few levels down of marketing org, for the blocking of updates for a specific app. Why would the manger of app review team accept such request? Imaging you’re that app store review manager, someone down the line of another org ask you to do something not only hurt the reputation of the company, but also yourself either externally or internally. Will you accept that request?
To be clear, this is my guess, and I don’t know what’s really going there, I could be wrong, and this is indeed a revenge. But my point is things may not connected as they look like.
> Apple wanted to buy FlickType but they didn't agree on the price or Eleftheriou didn't want to sell (I doubt it)
Man, these Apple threads are always so full of open speculation.
Edit: I find it very interesting that after multiple downvotes, suddenly I'm getting downvotes on lots of older comments of mine also. Are folks just going into comment histories to go on a downvote rampage?
> In one blatant example, Eleftheriou said he was approached by Apple’s head of mobile keyboard technology, Randy Marsden. The latter (who created the Swype keyboard) wanted to buy FlickType to add a native QWERTY for the Apple Watch and improve typing on the device. When Eleftheriou rejected Apple, it refused to remove copycat and scam apps from the App Store.
hitechglitz.com is one of those spam blogs that copies articles from other sites and changes a couple of the words around. The original article from PhoneArena also contains the lawsuit filing:
Blocking the app was probably just a dick move and revenge in response to the rejection. The two softwares aren't actually competing, one now comes with the OS whether you want it or not.
If Apple now bans the use of an alternative keyboard despite it not breaking the rules then that's the real issue: they'd be arbitrarily choosing when to apply or ignore the stated terms of use of the store. Reinstating the app later on once the damage is done is a small price to pay from Apple's perspective.
On the other hand if your product is actually just a feature for someone else's product you're always exposing yourself to a situation where the product developer just builds that feature in.
Think of other fields where you may offer an aftermarket solution like a car seat heating cover but the market evaporates the moment the manufacturer starts offering that as standard.
Well yeah, duh, they literally cannot compete. They were kicked off. The fact that you defend banning an app from the store as childish retribution for not taking a lowball offer is telling.
> Blocking the app was probably just a dick move and revenge in response to the rejection. The two softwares aren't actually competing, one now comes with the OS whether you want it or not.
You have to remember that to companies like Apple everything is competition and financially related. Apple sells widgets based on product release cycles. Those cycles generally focus on features, whether those are hardware or software. Keep in mind that not everyone knows about FlickType. So in that case Apple may choose to release a FlickType clone as part of a new Apple Watch series, exclusive to that version and above. This helps sell more product for Apple. More new features that resonate with their buyers == more profit. Also you can't stand on the stage for 10 minutes and talk about a keyboard that your buyers go to the App store to get, now can you?
It's not speculation, Apple for sure wanted to buy and had invited over Kostas to demo FlickType. Kostas for sure wanted to sell, since he went over at Apple to showcase his very good and usable watch keyboard. They didn't agree on a price and thus parted ways.
This took vouching to be able to reply. People, if what the commenter said were all that wrong, it should be pretty fucking easy to post a coherent and convincing rebuttal. Just downvoting in stead shows that it's the downvoter, not the downvoted, who lacks good grounds for their opinion.
And the retroactive downvote sprees of other comments -- which I've also seen before, so don't even try to deny their existence -- are just beyond despicable. Shame, shame on anyone who is enough of an asshole to do shit like that.
Meh. The problem is FlickType requires network access during use. The App store licensing is ok with keyboards, it's not ok with keyboards that get network access. This, Apple perceives as a major privacy issue-- one for the possibility of keylogging, but also for the broader possibility of the always-on logging that the weather apps are infamous for.
You’ll be surprised to know that Apple is quite fine with keyboards using network access. That is literally why the “Full Access” switch exists. Without it, the keyboard is fully sandboxed. It can receive input from the container app, but nothing can get out. It is surprisingly a user choice, something Apple will rarely give up on iOS.
The rejection was only because the app existed on the Apple Watch, and it was only rejected after the reviewer knew the new Apple watch would include the same feature (Note, you can’t use this feature on < 2021 apple watches, you have to pay to play.)
The rejection was because Apple never allowed keyboard apps on the watch. The idea of bringing a full keyboard to the watch isn't exactly the groundbreaking innovation many people here are acting like it is. Do people really think Apple stole the idea from this guy?
As with all things on the internet, and especially people complaining loudly about something, there's obviously more to the story. The guy complaining isn't going to tell us the entire unfettered truth and explain why his app needs this network access, and Apple isn't going to say anything because they literally do not care what a bunch of techie people think. The whole story stank of BS from the beginning, but people online love supporting the person who portrays themselves as an underdog battling the big evil company, so they set their critical thinking skills aside and jump on the bandwagon.
Go read your link carefully. Page 23 not only does not disallow network access, it specifically allows logging it and stipulates what can be done with that data.
“ keystroke logging done by any such extension must be clearly disclosed to the end-user prior to any such data being sent from an iOS Product, and notwithstanding anything else in Section 3.3.9, such data may be used only for purposes of providing or improving the keyboard functionality of Your Application (e.g., not for serving advertising);”
Does the author stand a chance against the army of ivy league lawyers of a trillion dollar megacorp?
I guess it would help if he's also American (don't know where he's from) so he could fight Apple on home turf and use the jury system on his side like "Evil megacorp steals from the little guy" (does it even work like this in the US or did I watch too many movies?), but I'm more curious how a lawsuit would go if he'd be in a jurisdiction different than the US.
Like, if for example, the author would be Russian, could he sue Apple's Russian legal entity and they would just shrug it off as "Yeah, that's not us who screwed you, go to the US and sue the Apple US HQ."?
As a non-lawyer I'm really curious how the legal system works for such disputes.
Legally I’m not sure the small developer has a chance. Not because the courts are unjust, it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here. It’s not to say they didn’t, it just doesn’t seem like there’s any slam dunk legal argument about wrongdoing (despite who this might feel morally).
>it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here
Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?
IIRC the Winklevoss twins got paid handsomely as a settlement for Zuckerberg stealing their idea for Facebook. Granted, they were very rich and well connected so that helped.
Ideas are not worth much, and there is no law against executing someone else’s idea. Winklevoss twins (or Connect U rather) got paid to shut up and go away at a time when it was obvious $65M was going to be pocket change for Facebook and their lawsuit was going to cost more in time for people at Facebook than $65M.
Thanks for clarifying, although $65M for Apple is pocket change they can scrape from between the couch cushions in Cupertino so they could get the author to shut up immediately if they wanted to.
A lawsuit about equity while a company is on the road to the biggest IPO in history in 2009 is different circumstances than a guy arguing against an established company in 2021.
Apple could pay this guy off, but apparently their executives have decided he is not a sufficient PR problem or time expense to merit a payoff yet.
> there is no law against executing someone else’s idea
Are you sure about that? Obviously, you mean outside of the patent framework and the concept of infringement, so never mind that.
There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.
What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.
>There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.
What is this law? I am pretty sure flying cars, underwater cities, space travel, etc are ideas that someone else has had, but no US court is going to stop you from executing an idea just because someone else fantasized about it.
>What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.
The theft itself would be a crime, but an entity not involved in the theft would be able to take advantage of the trade secret without any legal liability. That is the tradeoff for not registering a patent to gain exclusivity for 20 years via legal mechanisms.
Short answer is no, unless a patent or copyright is stolen. I believe the Winklevoss allegations stemmed from a belief that there was some sort of agreement or contract that was violated.
Winklevoss twins won because MZ was actively telling them he was working on the app in order to prevent direct competition from them while he worked on his own version (in the movie at least, who knows what's really real). If he had just told them to f-k off and ripped them off from the start, everything would have been fine legally. There's tons of prior art for social networks and domain restricted logins before FB came around.
Connect U obviously did not have proper documents stating Zuckerberg was working for them, or a non compete or anything since they were willing to settle. Hence it seems like a he said she said situation where Connect U got lucky that Facebook was going to be so huge that their agreed upon settlement amount was inconsequential to Facebook.
> Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?
This makes the assumption that apple hasn’t been putting deep thought into the keyboard design since before the first watch was physically built. I think it’s safe to assume there’s a 30 slide keynote filled with different designs and user study results.
A lawsuit will result in the "discovery" process, and very well might show that Apple had wanted to do this thing for a very long time and at some point they realized that a 3rd party had just introduced something similar to what they wanted to do. And people inside Apple proposed buying the company to save time and money. But when he said no, Apple just decided to continue on their plan.
Or the discovery may uncover evidence of poor behavior. You just don't know.
Seriously folks, consumer devices are being used internally for a long time before they become known to the public. UI improvement ideas are being thrown around constantly and are logged, discussed, prioritized, etc. Just because something isn't there on launch day, or v2, v3 or v4 of the software, doesn't mean they didn't think of it or didn't plan to do it.
I’d be surprised if it was that nefarious. Apple is releasing a free OS update that has this feature. What do they stand to gain by removing a third-party app users need to learn about and install? Absent some explanation about an advantage Apple gains I’m willing to believe this has something to do with app store policies than something else.
One thing recent history has taught us is that Ivy Leagues are very good at pumping out individuals that know how to win at all costs, with 0 regard for actual expertise or moral compass.
Ivy Leagues serve the purpose of giving individuals the minimal artifacts of knowledge and virtue to get ahead, without its actual substance.
The admissions process is a filter that selects for this. They also build class cohorts to include hierarchy climbers with people who were born at the top of the hierarchy — children of billionaires, politicians, etc. that perpetuate those hierarchies (and their accompanying morality).
Ivy League schools are designed to be a filter for people who would make good amoral agents of capital, not an educational system in the classical sense.
influential people's children who couldn't hack it in the traditional test based university admissions process in their own home countries love the ivies, i.e asian countries. There are a ton of brilliant people who go to ivies on their own merit but we can't deny that ivies do play a part in keeping the elite power structure intact (as you said). It is the same old game of capital vs labor, capital always seems to win out.
If you're Russian you can still sue Apple US. As a consumer you can usually do that in a court in your own country, as a business it depends (most contracts specify which court to use, but you can appeal to a local court that that's an undue burden, especially if it's a terms-of-service instead of a negotiated contract). Of course if a Russian court rules against Apple US the court has a harder time enforcing the ruling, but that's probably not a problem against a company like Apple who want to continue selling there.
I think no, but that army matches on quite a large load of cash, so they’ll likely offer him a settlement agreement which means he “losses” but gets paid.
Not fair by any account, but I think that’s what is likely to happen.
I hate that he has to take on apple legal team by himself. I wish someone would put together a indie dev crowd-funded legal team on retainer to fight together in such incidents.
This is the key problem when a market-maker is also a market participant. When the same entity setting the market rules, deciding who is violating them, and collecting the market data is also an active competitor against everyone else in that market.
It's not a fair playing field. Apple knows that, but pretends that it is.
I say it's a problem, but I don't have a solution. It's hard to say "Apple can't make apps for the iPhone". Or "Amazon can't sell stuff on Amazon". Or "Google can't by ad space on Google Ads".
There clearly needs to be some sort of laws to restrict these kinds of behaviours, to encourage a diverse and open economy rather than rigged games.
One solution would be to force Apple to break up into seperate firms. So you have Apple App Store, and Apple app maker as seperate firms, and Apple app maker is required to be treated as any other app developer in the app store.
No, there's a huge difference between locking out competitors entirely from offering the same kind of app Apple is and, say, removing an app for being adware.
Anticompetitive behavior is more subjecting third party apps to rules that their own apps aren't subject to. Or arbitrarily changing the rules to suit their own apps. Any number of behaviors really that affect competitors and prevent them from competing with Apple's apps.
>This is the key problem when a market-maker is also a market participant.
Yes! During the last US election cycle I thought Elizabeth Warren was smart to make a point of this about Amazon... I don't think this issue gets enough attention and very few people seem to care.
There are numerous ways this is an unfair practice, and the problem gets worse as the marketplace owner continues to grow and devour competitors.
What made me leave the iPhone ecosystem, many years ago, was when they pulled all the podcatchers off the app store because they were going to be adding podcast support to iTunes soon. Not only that but getting podcasts from iTunes at the time meant plugging your iPhone into your computer running iTunes, much less convenient than having your phone download things over WiFi. Especially since I was using Linux and didn't have a computer that could run iTunes.
Thanks. Apple has arbitrarily banned so many apps that I guess I just forgot about this one.
It's hard to imagine a time when iPhones couldn't download podcasts over the air. I can understand why banning Podcaster would have made OP sour on Apple.
I was using an iPhone 3GS so it would have been 2009 or 2010. I might very well have been mistaken about podcast support in iTunes being new given that I didn't use iTunes.
I paid for and use FlickType on the watch. It’s clever, but it always sucked it was a stand-alone app. It was a very limited and cumbersome workaround for an obviously missing OS feature. Copy and paste isn’t even a thing on the watch, so text was mostly trapped in the app. Everyone that used the app knew it would vastly better if a keyboard were supported natively by Apple across the whole OS. It was mostly a tantalizing proof of concept. I feel sorry for the Sherlocked developer, but this is a huge improvement.
I recall Apple had previously said they tested and abandoned an on-screen watch keyboard for the Series 0, as the screen was too small. And yesterday they said the screen was finally large enough for a keyboard. I think Flicktype proved it was viable on a smaller screen, and Apple is being crappy limiting availability to the new watch.
I don’t know if Apple legally or morally owes the developer anything. I doubt it, but I’m all for them sorting it out in court.
It seems the letter from Apple that the dev posted on Twitter (which was cropped, excluding the date) was actually from 2019 and not sent recently -- it was his initial rejection before the app was finally approved. A bit misleading, whether intentional or not -- if it was intentional, it cleverly fanned the flames. Props to the dev for gorilla marketing skill.
>"The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or obviates third-party software is so well known that being Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community"
Flux was sherlocked, to be sure, but sherlocked has been around as a term since 2002 or so, while f.lux was a much more recent victim, from 2015 or so.
Not really since the developer has no way to compete on merits. Sherlocked used to mean that, yes, there's a builtin version now but your app could at least try and compete. Not so much in this case.
In a lot of the cases (not necessarily this one) it's a welcome addition to build some useful app directly into the OS - the flashlight or flux are two examples I can think of.
Alfred has a lot more features. For example I constantly use the clipboard manager in Alfred and as far as I know, Spotlight has no such functionality.
Of course, Alfred was always designed to work alongside Spotlight since all the actual indexing relies on Spotlight.
So here is how I see it for these big tech companies(I know it’s terrible but I believe that’s just how it is sadly).
Medical professionals have malpractice insurance / budget where if a doctor was to make a mistake and was sued for it then it is used to settle. Similarly companies like Apple seem to feel like they keep doing what is right for their own personal interests and profits while at the same time set aside money to settle such cases and see it as collateral damage. Even if you were to get a tough judge in a case like this you’d still as Apple at best get a slap on the wrist with a few hundred thousand or a million in fines to some individual developer. The only difference between medical professionals and big tech is that once a medical professionals licence is pulled he can’t practice medicine again. I wonder what similar punishment big tech should get for pulling such stunts.
Unless they can establish theft of IP, I don’t think that Eleftheriou has any chance to win on the grounds of monopolistic behavior. Apple can claim that they were developing for years the feature and did not release it for UX reasons. Apple also does not charge for the app, so consumers were not harmed.
I think that spotify has a much stronger case, given the fact that apple is selling a directly competing service with an obvious price and bundling / integration advantage
> Apple also does not charge for the app, so consumers were not harmed.
As far as I understand, those two things are unrelated. Lack of competition by itself is considered to hurt consumers. Assuming that Apple's choice was based on monopolistic behavior (which is for the courts to decide), whether they got money while doing it is not relevant.
They have been doing this since Cydia marketplace. The whole pull-down drawer concept was on a jailbroken app and now it's on both iOS and Android. There's too many of those to list.
As they've hired many other developers in similar circumstances. That would seem to demonstrate "caring about" developers, in my mind at least, but many seem to disagree. :)
They've done this so many times there is a word for it, it's no secret how they treat their developer community. Yet you still keep building apps on their platform.
It seems there might have been a personal problem between a founder and an ex-founder - now Exec. They're from a different generation but the same domain.
We don't know why Apple's offer was rejected. But in a case like this, it is conceivable that it was felt the Swype founder had demeaned his successor's achievements.
That this exec alone was singled out by name suggests that the negotiation's breakdown might have been triggered by a clash of personalities.
If so - despite having already delivered their fait accompli - in the interest of fairness Apple should remake its previous offer. This time with heightened sensitivity to the pair of egos.
Why should Apple be concerned about anti trust in USA when they just won a case they should very obviously have lost and it's clear American regulators have been asleep at the wheel for decades?
> In sum, given the totality of the record, and its underdeveloped state, while the Court can conclude that Apple exercises market power in the mobile gaming market, the Court cannot conclude that Apple’s market power reaches the status of monopoly power in the mobile gaming market. That said, the evidence does suggest that Apple is near the precipice of substantial market power, or monopoly power, with its considerable market share. Apple is only saved by the fact that its share is not higher, that competitors from related submarkets are making inroads into the mobile gaming submarket, and, perhaps, because plaintiff did not focus on this topic.
I didn't say anything about "monopoly". One of the most common fallacies when discussing this topic is that anti trust only applies to monopolies. This is dead wrong.
What? I didn't say anti trust only applies to monopolies. According to the judge Apple is violating anti trust and walking right up to the line of being a monopoly. It's interesting. My quote is taken straight from the ~180 page ruling.
I have the new Weather app in iOS 15 which is the replacement for Dark Sky and they made it better. This was surprising to me.
I can't set custom alerts anymore for e.g., umbrella or UV, but the automatic alerts are exactly how I wanted them anyway... and it's nice that the app changes which data is shown based on the current conditions: if it's going to rain, the map shows weather radar instead of temperature
I thought the reason why iOS blocked both SMS apps and Keyboard apps is because they wanted to ensure rogue app developers aren't invading your privacy and/or spamming (e.g. key loggers or sending SMS you didn't compose).
Yes. Because it was. And it was, and remains, a good reason.
I get why the developer might be ticked, in this case, but I still think it's a stretch to speak of "cloning" a very very basic QWERTY keyboard, and the breathtakingly-original concept of putting a keyboard onto a touchscreen. /s
As if that is some kind of grand-scale theft of intellectual property. Please.
"Limited Vision.
FlickType is designed to be as accessible as possible, featuring large keys, highly readable visual announcements, high-contrast color themes, and much more.
Type With Your Ears.
FlickType can speak back to you when you type or edit, enabling a completely eyes-free writing experience. People who are blind write millions of words every month using it, typing just as fast as everyone else.
Comfortably Smart.
Say goodbye to painfully slow editing operations. Delete and change entire words with a single flick of your finger. Control the cursor directly from the keyboard. When typing, don't slow down and try to be accurate. Simply tap-type where it feels right and FlickType's unique algorithm will find the correct word from the pattern of your taps."
That dismissive argument could be used for virtually any app on the App Store. Developers are limited in nature by the APIs Apple expose, so there is very little chance of anything breathtakingly original appearing on the platform.
At the end of the day the Apple App Store leadership needs to clearly make clear in the terms of service that there is a possibility Product people who internally take credit for most of these features may copy the app features and set the expectations really really low. No more handwringing on AppStore bans and copying features. Just come out and say we do it, so 3rd party developers are not glimmery eyed.
Why do I feel like we're heading to a future where all consumer facing SW, tech, entertainment is just walled gardens controlled by the handful of trillion dollar megacorps and as a developer or content creator on their platform (or gig worker as you call them) you will basically have the choice of putting up with their bullying/abuse with no chance of recourse or go hungry like how many youtubers wake up with their cannels banned or deleted overnight byt a bot without any chance of fighting back?
Because you may have forgotten that you still have a choice? The rider (mind) is pretty weak compared to the elephant (animal), but still strong enough to convince itself its' thoughts are correct. Thoughts beget feelings, watch them. There is always light at the end of the tunnel.
> In one blatant example, Eleftheriou said he was approached by Apple’s head of mobile keyboard technology, Randy Marsden. The latter (who created the Swype keyboard) wanted to buy FlickType to add a native QWERTY for the Apple Watch and improve typing on the device. When Eleftheriou rejected Apple, it refused to remove copycat and scam apps from the App Store.
It’s pretty astounding if this isn’t flagged as monopolistic behavior.
I’m not opposed to Apple introducing a system keyboard as a clone but the independent developer should not be strong-armed off their platform.
Honestly it just shows weakness of character for the entire Apple company. This is no different than voter suppression when candidates can’t garner votes from the public legitimately.
Oh wait, I guess half the government is fine with voter suppression and whining like 4 yr olds about voter fraud.
That’s the new Apple for you…
Then again, they have the power and capability to make this move. Whose to blame them? A keyboard is something that should be locked down from a security standpoint and a fundamental piece of the system.
That being said you won’t catch me ten feet near an Apple Watch as a dev. Or as a citizen—that is a huge privacy concern. Not to mention the battery life is shit. I tried one for a week and couldn’t bear to have 3 charging cables by my bed at night. I would need at least a week but 2 weeks charge would be ideal…
If he proves in the courts that they do, yes. Just because someone else has built another keyboard for the watch does not mean that any IP was infringed on.
Beside the IP the copycat kb apps are nefarious for the app store users but I get it, Apple does not care about its users, it just pretends to when it suits their interests...
Unless this guy had a patent, any offer is a good offer. It’s not a terribly complicated feature to do from scratch and it does logically belong to the OS.
Blocking it from the store was an ass move, if it indeed happened as described and there’s no hidden context.
These excuses just keep getting funnier. App developers: make sure you file your patents, or else its YOUR fault if Apple decides to participate in blatant 90s style Microsoft anticompetitive behavior.
There are enough swiping keyboards around now that it would be tricky to get any patent on it surely? Definitely seems like a dick move but "tech company copies good feature that isn't legally protected" is not exactly uncommon in this industry, if anything it's encouraged by most consumers
The parent commentor is not excusing Apple's behaviour, nor saying it was the developer's fault. They said the developer would be in a better position if they had a patent.
Has no one noticed that this app in question is still on the App Store? First result on google when you search for "Apple Watch keyboards". This makes me even more suspicious of the guy creating all this outrage. It's also not very well reviewed.
The low ratings mostly complain about lack of language support especially german seems to be missed.
And the posted screenshot says it's removed from sale, maybe there were two versions, a free one and a payed one.
"A separate version for the Apple Watch would remain [in the App Store], but then Apple pulled that one as well, telling Eleftheriou that keyboards aren’t allowed on the Apple Watch."
Im not familiar with all the history nor what they mean there, but this is a better source and i think explains the story better. I havent seen the dev make that claim at least.
Ah, yes, reading documents on a computer. A keyboard. Both of these are things that have never been done outside of the Apple ecosystem before Apple made their copies.
I don't like Apple, but come on. Reading documents is what computers have historically proven best at, and a keyboard is a pretty logical extension of any given electronic device. Would sure save everyone a lot of time if these things were built in.
It was the presentation of the books mimicking exactly the work of somebody else. Sorry, I should have explained more. Apple contacted (if I can remember) the original author, had friendly discussions about the way he was doing the stuff, and then simply copied everything into the default app.
This is only from memory, but for me, the pattern is the same.
If you're not copying code, you're just doing what everyone else does: Creating a loose derivative of something else. There's never been an original creative work.
So... what are you saying? Apple shouldn't be allowed to improve the software for their own products? There should be a law that prevents Apple from building a keyboard for Apple Watch and consumers have to buy a third party keyboard made by a guy who still won't explain why the keyboard needed "network access OR VoiceOver to be turned on"? Seems fishy to me. I think I'd prefer the keyboard Apple makes.
She used Amazon as the example but thinks the same about the App Store. As much as I agree with her, the problem with this has been, where do you draw the line between applications and system software? What can be included out of the box? This has constantly changed as companies like Apple vertically integrate the user experience.
When they released Pencil, there was already a product called Pencil for the iPad by the company FiftyThree. It was fairly big at the time but I never heard anything about how that effected them.
Me too. And I used to be an actual fanboy who defended them on Reddit. I have grown increasingly disillusioned with their philosophies to the point where I switched to Android and will soon be switching to Linux when my Framework laptop ships.
Yeah, except that's not a real choice. That's pretending the issue does not exist and pretending that you can avoid privacy issues with a piecemeal choice. But you can't, of course. Cobbling together your own solution doesn't obscure the fact that you will almost inevitably end up with something that respects your privacy much less, which was my original point.
The real choice turned out you don’t need to solve a lot of the problems and don’t need an ecosystem and don’t need to create a problem that doesn’t need to be solved.
Example.
Numbers on my iPhone. Fuck it, use libreoffice on my laptop and have no online spreadsheet solution. Didn’t really need it. Sometimes things can wait. Shrug.
at least Lotus was still allowed to run on Windows at the time
Microsoft did not have a way to block Lotus from running on Windows at the time (other than intentionally breaking their system calls, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10432608).
There's a very Australian term that perfectly describes Apple at this point, similar to Punts but starting with a C. That's exactly what they are, for pulling off stuff like this.
They're clearly abusing their monopoly here. I hope this will bite them in the face.
Apple's behavior here doesn't surprise me.. there's a history of this kind of thing.. what would surprise me however is if the developer didn't see this coming after Apple made purchase offers.. were the offers insultingly small?
Watch keyboard? How does that work? Did it use the iPhone as a proxy to swipe on the watch (since there are obviously no APIs to custom keyboards on the watch).
No, just that there’s no way to create a custom watch keyboard that I know of. I’m wondering if they managed to do so and if it required using private APIs or something.
The commonly shared tale is that Apple was not only founded in the garage of 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California – Jobs’s family home – but that the first Macs were designed and built in the garage as the company was bootstrapped.
“The garage is a bit of a myth,” Wozniak told Businessweek. “We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there.”
[…]
“The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home,” said Wozniak. “We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.”
This is dumb I still think the high barrier of entry is good for the App Store. Let Apple call the shots, let the developers who are concerned focus on a different platform if they become that worried that developing for Apple devices is high risk, if it reaches a fever pitch Apple will adjust, if not then it’s probably not a big enough problem. Unlike in healthcare I think it’s reasonable in this environment to sacrifice the few for the betterment of the most and for Apple to have the rights to control their own platform.
The App Store doesn't have a high barrier of entry. The barrier is low and completely based on whatever Apple's product strategy is at the moment. Sometimes also based on arbitrary feelings from Apple execs like Phil Schiller.
It's not a popular take, because you are ignoring the history of the situation that has been mentioned a large number of times on this page and in the article.
> Apple had begun rejecting updates for the app because it required full system access, a fact that Eleftheriou disputed, saying that it still worked without the permissions.
Then why did it even ask for full system access? Did it? IMHO developers of the apps which ask for any permissions besides those technically necessary for performing the actual function the user installs the app for should be warned once and then banned for years.
> Do you have reason to believe that's not what they did?
None at all, no, and I did not mean to assert that they didn't. I was not saying anything about the program itself, only responding to the claim that permissions had to be requested for optional features (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538104):
> Then why did it even ask for full system access? Did it? IMHO developers of the apps which ask for any permissions besides those technically necessary for performing the actual function the user installs the app for should be warned once and then banned for years.
> Then why did it even ask for full system access? Did it? IMHO developers of the apps which ask for any permissions besides those technically necessary for performing the actual function the user installs the app for should be warned once and then banned for years.
Since the permissions become necessary when the user chooses to use the optional features, I took kevingadd to be claiming that the permissions had to be requested whether or not the optional features were used.
> A separate version for the Apple Watch would remain, but then Apple pulled that one as well, telling Eleftheriou that keyboards aren’t allowed on the Apple Watch.
This is wrong, as far as I can tell. The watch app is still in the App Store.
I am against regulations but I still find these practices anticompetitive.
Not sure what the conclusion should be here.
On one side this runs on Apple platform:"it is my platform, I rule it".
On the other hand, they have a de-facto position to abuse by just kicking out companies at will to enlarge their businesses and monoplolize them...
I wish there was choice beyond Apple and Android. I am myself starting to look for alternatives. Espcially because of privacy concerns. Things like these at the end go against us customers.
> I am against regulations but I still find these practices anticompetitive
I really don't know how anyone can see this sort of crap and say they're against regulations. The market obviously isn't fixing itself, do you have any other solution?
For me "The market will fix itself" is just a neoliberal lie, no amount of repeating it will make it true. <edit>Sadly many people believe people who speak with conviction. A family member shared similar crap (oh noes, i will have to pay more for gas) in a private group</edit>
History has shown over and over that left to their own devices people will act in their own self interest. And from a biological point of view it would even be the correct thing to do IMHO. But we ain't running hungry through the wilderness no more. A win-win would be better for everyone.
I think inequality creates fear. Even in those who profit, the fear of loosing their wealth. There was a case of a town in the US, were the population was pretty homogenous, their culture forbade the flaunting of wealth, so everybody acted humble and even dressed the same. Then the younger generation went to college out of town, came back with a differnt mindset. Pools were built, cars bought, inequality made obvious for everyone to see. What happenend? Cases of heart disease were low before, but rose afterwards. Found a link: https://www.unimedliving.com/living-medicine/illness-and-dis...
it is not my position. Nothing to do with neoliberalism the fact that regulating also has evil incentives. We live in a regulated world where many corporations have de-facto privilege because of overregulation yet people ask for more regulation.
It is as if I am a soldier and hit you and you ask for an army to feel safer on the basis that "soldiers should be good in theory, they are here to protect us"and u see it again and again and ignore the facts.
a world with fewer regulations makes way more difficult monopolies and privileges through more free competition. The problem is when someone pretends to be capitalist and regulates for friends (crony capitalism). What if they did not have the power to do it? Then it would be clearly better. Our world reached development in an environment with very little regulation. Now they are trying to regulate everything. Later we need welfare blabla and lots of stuff. Some people pay and others take it. Bc u have all kind of rules. Derregulating means let people do. If people can earn a life without this creators of scarcity I am prerty sure that we would need far fewer social helps and would have cheaper services. This uswd to be the trend. We are breaking it... Bad news.
Whats the point of market fixing itself in this situation?
"Market fixing itself" describe relationships between consumer and supplier. In this case "consumer" is better off so seems like market works as intended.
Developer's being f-ed over is sad thing but unless the situation for developers is so bad that they abandon App Store in troves then nothing will fix anything.
Also one could argue that overall situation is pretty-pleasing for everyone, apps that do not go into Apple's territory (system stuff) seem to be thriving and don't complain too much.
I'd rather them not to regulate it because they start with Apple and end up killing shareware and everything else. Who knows what kind of crazy stuff they'll invent for open source, can they outlaw it? I'd rather them to not even start.
> In this case "consumer" is better off so seems like market works as intended.
How is the consumer better off when a choice for them has been removed? If Apple's keyboard is superior, then consumers will automatically chose that and not buy this guy's software. How is this "nanny state" behaviour by Apple justified?
I assumed that they get this option for free instead of buying an app and less stuff to install generally.
If Apple's option is worse (which I doubt, at least for English) and/or original app is free then probably consumer suffers a bit. But if consumer is worse off then it is better because AFAIK American anti-monopoly system focuses on consumer's well-being so the more examples of consumer being worse off the easier to attract courts and regulators, isn't it?
then the topic would shift to who regulates the regulator.
And there are very EVIL incentives in having regulators. More free market is a way better solution.
I agree it is a shitshow.But it is also true that these companies created products. What does a regulator do? Regulate and having incentives to regulate in certain directions (come on we all have seen that). However they bring zero value to people (unlike Apple, for example, with all its defects)
There are sooo many absurd regulations that prevent people from building businesses or even working that Ithink we should start there. And later, and only later talk aboutthe rest.
That's interesting because in later iOS versions apple actually started to allow replacement keyboard apps, including paid for ones.
Remember, money "wasted" on apps is straight revenue for Apple. It's why they want to win the case against Epic (and by extension Netflix, Spotify, etc) so badly, because they get a sweet 15% on every purchase made at minimal cost.
this falls in to the same category of reasoning (IMO) as "you're holding it wrong." - it doesn't answer the underlying issue (in this case - that apple's obviously being unreasonable to the developer)
There are other ways to solve the "wasting their money" problem - offer refunds or similar (again, not at the expense of the developer)
