Comments on: Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 Finally Ships

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:16:08 +0000

1) update Airfoil to NOT send the images to the iphone App
2) re-submit the iPhone app, requiring the newer version of Airfoil
3) app is approved for not showing the copyrighted images
4) update Airfoil to send the images again
5) PROFIT ( or QED app store review process is broken )

By: Gex2501

Gex2501 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:23:56 +0000

Have you considered releasing your programs for the iPhone jailbreak community? I regular purchase tweaks and programs that are only available via jailbreak BECAUSE they aren’t approved by apple. I think you’ll find your programs well received. I love your Mac software.

By: Ari

Ari — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:56:10 +0000

I feel bad for your ordeal but you could have avoided all of that trouble by including your own licensed generic looking icons to represent the computer you were connecting to. Instead, you chose to stubbornly use the defence that just because an icon is available to you via an API on a mac, that gives you the right to use it any way you see fit. What if the customer was running a custom replacement set of icons on their desktop? How would your app be able to tell the difference between the original icons and the replacement? What if the author of the set of icons only gave permission for use on mac desktops and not for any other use? Your program would cause the end user to be breach of the distribution agreement without their concept or knowledge.

As a windows developer, I can access virtually any icon on a windows box through various APIs but that does not give me automatic permission to publish those icons on a website or within a a separate mobile client UI as images.

By: TonyB

TonyB — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:29:02 +0000

RA guys.

I feel bad for you, but to a large extent you screwed yourself here. Actually, the distinction is very blurred in terms of who is right. Here’s an example…. Let’s say I develop an app which uses a web browser control (provided by apple)….

…and I connect to some random website that happens to have apple images on it…

…that’s EXACTLY the same as this app does. It downloads an image, from somewhere else… In fact what your app did is better. Since you download the image from an app running on a machine with (you assume) a licensed copy of OS X on it which grants the user the right to use those images (whether it grants them the right to transmit them over a network is another matter entirely to which I don’t know the answer.)

The argument about public APIs etc is nonsensical. They are a different SDK entirely. A much better argument would have been to say “I download that image, from a machine, with a paid for copy of OS X on it which permits my end user to use that artwork. It’s not part of my app, it’s downloaded content, just like pointing a web control at apple.com”

For that matter, why didn’t you just put a little switch line of code in there that waits 30 days from submission date before turning the icons back on. You could have just quietly turned it off for a while if you think you’re in the right. No one would ever have known (or cared) and you would have felt like you’d got one over on them. Now you have all that attention drawn to you for no particularly good reason…

I agree their responses are draconian and absurd and would not stand up to even a modicum of scrutiny in terms of “protecting customers.” Clearly they just (excessively and un-necessarily) protect apple. But screaming “no fair” and “You let me do it last time!” isn’t going to get you anywhere…

That said, your apps are wonderful and I wish you every success in your future endeavours…

By: techydude

techydude — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:31:48 +0000

& let me clarify what i mean by calling Lamarche an Apple apologist (it could’ve been alot worse):

sure, we all signed up to the App Store terms. rightwingnuts usually think “well then, all bets are off, what happens happens, and any bad shit is your problem, you knew what you were getting into”.

thousands have given it a shot, and won. lovely.

but quite a few also lost big, having invested heavily, only to be fucked over by vague or inconsistently applied approval criteria.

people on the outside don’t make the app store approval process better.

people on the inside bending over & taking a reaming from Apple for the kinds of stupidity we’ve seen from Apple’s borked approval process without saying a word, doesn’t make the app store approval process better.

the only way the app store approval process will get better is when those on the inside bump into its shit and say Not Good Enough, Apple. they’re not God, they’re not infallible. and there’s far too many lawyers involved.

By: Law Student

Law Student — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:25:39 +0000

This is what happens when a company is taken over by their legal team. I say, Apple should take their lawyers and replace them with engineers.

By: Devin

Devin — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:20:55 +0000

I enjoy RA’s products, but if you think throwing a shit fit to get the “blogosphere” into a tizzy is going to get you to wiggle out of the terms of your contractual agreement with Apple, you’re wasting your fscking time. I don’t care about the technical details. You are essentially displaying Apple’s icons within the context of YOUR application. VNC viewers are different. They view Apple’s icons with the context of Apple’s application, inside the context of the VNC viewer’s application. Totally different.

I really think you need to take this post down, man up, and read your agreement again.

Jesus…

By: Moschops

Moschops — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:14:09 +0000

Do I recall correctly that Apple have a history of letting others develop, watching to see what sells, and then taking that market for themselves?

By: Lars

Lars — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:06:19 +0000

The public API you are referring to is a Mac OS X API. You assert that it is alright to transfer the image provided by that API to another device and display it there. This may or may not be the case but in my opinion, you argument could be a non sequitur. Just because one system provides you the means of getting a certain bitmap does not automatically entitle you to use that bitmap somewhere else.

I think you should be allowed to use it and as a fellow developer I dislike the AppStore model as much as the next person. Nevertheless, your argument isn’t really logically sound here as far as I’m concerned.

By: Sykes

Sykes — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:40:21 +0000

Well, Rogue Amoeba, I certainly hope that eventually you’ll return to producing applications for the iPhone. I hope Steve Jobs is pay attention to this case as a particular example of how the App store’s review process is woefully inadequate. Then, not only should Steve Jobs re-do the review process, but he should publicly apologise and try to get companies like Rogue Amoeba back to developing iPhone products.

Here’s to hoping!