Apple still hates Podcaster, the tiny startup that the suits say is an evil threat to iTunes.
Steve Jobs and buddies—or are these "friends" actually saboteurs from within Apple?—continue to ban Podcaster from the App Store.
Door slammed on Podcaster shoppers
And now Apple has zapped Podcaster’s ability to provision more iPhones and Touches. Read more via Techmeme roundups.
Existing Podcast customers, including TeleBloggers who followed up on my enthusiastic review of the beta, can still download and install the program. You just had to sign up before September 23. But thanks to Apple suits, would-be new iPhone/Touch customers are SOL. Here you could have downloaded podcasts directly to your portable gadget!
The legal and dev angles: Bad news for Apple?
Could there be anti-trust issues down the line? Weren’t developers supposed to have a way to bypass the App Store?
Google, moreover, especially after having just seen T-Mobile unveil the spiffy new phones for the Android platform, should love Apple’s latest missteps. Photo is from Gizmodo’s hand-on ("the screen is fantastic").
And on the e-book front…
Lexcycle (Stanza), eReader and other first-rate developers of e-book apps also may want to consider the implications here.
It’s not as if they’ll stop developing for the iPhone. But at least in their place, I’d start paying a lot more attention to Google’s rival Android platform, the new destination for Podcaster.
Actual thinking at eReader and Lexcyle, right now?
Just as in the case of download stats (here and here), I’d love to hear from Steve Pendergrast at eReader and Marc Prud’hommeaux at Lexcycle about the ramifications of Apple’s Podcast policy, if they care to comment.
Steve and Marc, are you concerned that Apple will muscle in on a business you’ve developed? Not ban you, necessarily—but perhaps restrict you?
Needless to say, both eReader and Stanza have distribution capabilities built-in—eReader directly and Stanza with help from Feedbooks’ API. So what happens if Apple gets serious about e-books and wants all the action, or at least a heftier part of it than it’s getting now?
What’s more, Apple is now saying that developers are not even permitted to disclose the content of rejection letters.
Way to go, Apple. Rah rah.
It isn’t a simple – Apple is wrong for tramping all over our rights as users/developers/consumers to buy whatever we want – kind of issue.
Sure, not allowing PodCaster a place on the AppStore annoyed a few very vocal people who seem to latch onto anything Apple does as an excuse to get out their pitchforks and torches but Apple was well within their rights to not allow it on their store. It’s a business, not a religion.
Yes, their reason, as told to us by the developer (since we haven’t heard from Apple on this issue) seems a bit flimsy but that seems more a lack of communication than evil. A historical problem that anyone who has read the Apple developer relationship tea-leaves should have been aware of. Working with Apple as a developer has always been frustrating.
This new issue with PodCaster – where the developer has tried to route around, in true Internet fashion, Apple’s AppStore by provisioning other iPhones to use his app, really DOES run afoul of the agreements/NDA’s all official iPhone developers agree to. There is a limit to the number of devices a developer can provision without going through the Appstore — a LOT less than this developer claims to have gotten away with before Apple shut him down.
(It’s probably violating the NDA to even mention which part of the agreement it violates given Apple’s recent ham fisted enforcement of the NDA against another iPhone developer. So I won’t cite chapter and verse. Probably even admitting I signed that pesky NDA is risky.)
In this case, I don’t see any alternative but for Apple to do something, no matter what the original justification was. He was blatantly thumbing his nose at Apple.
IANAL but I don’t see where anti-trust plays into any of this. There are other options. Don’t like what Apple is doing with the Appstore? Buy something else. A netbook, a laptop, any of a dozen other devices like the Zune. Even that Google thing, if it does more than generate pundit excitement, will eventually allow some kind of open development environment.
Andy, thanks for your comments—we’ll leave it to the lawyers to sort out the anti-trust angles. But from a consumer perspective, I can assure you that the decision is a DISASTER.
In my opinion Apple is selling not just the hardware but the possibilities of useful apps that go with it. And whether the Podcaster decision is justifiable or not at the legal level, it will lessen the faith of many developers in the platform. Many think that other apps overlapped with Apple things just as closely as Podcaster did. So how much predictability will there be? Not the best dev environment in a biz sense. Even with Google jumping in, everyone will be a loser, Apple included. Let’s hope folks there change their minds.
Thanks,
David
Voicing your “concern” (meaning anger) here might have some impact:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
as perhaps would letters to The Steve himself. These events smell of marketing and legal counsel departments run amuck. Marketing doesn’t want competition for Apple products. Legal thinks nasty bullying is clever. Lawyers always think bullying is clever.
They’re also being rather backward. These events are throwbacks to the pre-IBM-PC world of the early 1980s, when computer companies tried to create incompatible desktop computers and profit by controlling what could run on it. You had to buy software specifically tailored for their PC. Users hated that, and flocked to the IBM-PC and “compatibles” like Compaq when they became available. If Apple tries this same sort of control, they’ll make the other smart phones look that much better, particularly those with better methods of text input. The plus of the iPhone is that it’s seen as a laptop in your pocket. No one wants Apple Corporate deciding what software goes on their laptop.
Finally, keep in mind that Apple desperately wants to sell iPhones into the corporate world. They’re the entering wedge into that market like the iPod was for home users. Get a story about this in the Wall Street Journal or get David Pogue to do a podcast on it, and Apple will have to scramble to mend fences with developers.
–Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien
Well, I have to say I agree pretty much with Andy. After all the iPhone is a closed system. Apple has always said it is a closed system. Apple has said this over and over again, but the Apple bashers don’t seem to listen.
What is wrong with a closed system – nothing, as long as you know it is closed when you buy it. Why bash someone who says: this is closed, if you buy it it is closed and you have to get all the stuff from us. If a consumer buys it then you shouldn’t be calling Apple evil, you should be calling the consumer evil for agreeing to buy into the closed system. Does this make buyers of Sony Readers and Kindles evil also?
As to developers, they all signed on board with Apple and agreed to Apple’s terms and conditions. They didn’t have to do this. They did it voluntarily. So why is Apple so evil for signing up a bunch of developers who agreed to Apple’s terms? A lot of developers seem to be making a vast amount of money off the stuff they are selling on the the Apple store. I guess they are evil for doing this, too.
This constant “Apple is evil” rant is totally beyond me. Why don’t you bash Nokia, the largest mobile phone provider in the world, because Symbian applications have to be signed by Symbian (to assure their quality) before they can run on most Nokia phones. How evil is that?
As to Android, why should anyone sign up to develop for a phone that is sold by the smallest carrier in the country, which has the smallest network, and an almost non-existent 3G network when compared to the other carriers?
Android isn’t the iPhone, or even Windows Mobile, both of which have hardware standards. There are no hardware standards for Android, so what a developer builds for the current phone is not guaranteed to work with a different Android phone. (This is even a problem with Windows Mobile and a number of developers have publicly dropped out of the Windows Mobile market because they are tired of the constant customer complaints about how their apps won’t work on the latest phone.) Android is a niche player at the low end of the market and will probably stay there. While all the media fops are hyping the Android phone, just look at one minor problem with it that will substantially reduce its uptake with knowledgeable users: there is no 3.5mm headphone jack, so if you want to use a decent set of headphones you are out of luck. You’re stuck with the set that HTC provides that plugs into the USB port. No serious music listener will plump for this.
Android isn’t a cure for anything, it’s just another OS that will confuse the public even more. If you think ebook ebabel is bad, now we have mobile phone bable. Take your pick: Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, iPhone, Palm OS, etc, all of which are totally incompatible as far as cross-applications go.
As to Mike’s comment: “No one wants Apple Corporate deciding what software goes on their laptop.” That may be true for a laptop but not for a phone. I think one of the iPhone’s big benefits is that Apple can decide what goes on the phone. This is a phone – a communications device of first resort. As a matter of fact I have mine on 24/7. Over the years I’ve used Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian phones and have had many instances of rogue, or poorly designed, programs trashing the contents of my phone. It’s no fun to be on a business trip, as I have been, and have a game cause your Treo to reboot, reset and loose all your contacts and calendar items. I am glad that Apple is vetting the programs and keeping, hopefully, nasty stuff from wrecking my communications system. I think a lot of people feel the same way and feel strongly that it is one of the prime selling points of the iPhone.
Pretty much everything Apple does is closed and restricted almost beyond comprehension. If you go the Apple route you have to think and do exactly like Apple dictates. (Isn’t it ironic that a company whose slogan is “think different” dictates that everyone must think exactly the same?) Apple also (mis)uses all the power it has due to its monopolies to not have to compete by making better products, but by destroying the competition by other means. This is harmful to pretty much everyone and therefore I hope Apple dies a quick death.
Android, OTOH, is almost as open as the iphone is closed, and Nokia is talking about opening Symbian a more than it has already. These should make for a fierce competition, which will benefit consumers. I expect great things to come soon on the smartphone market.
Isn’t this the company that once had a slogan of “Think Different”? The company that once urged us to “Rip. Mix. Burn”?
Why is it such an issue? Because we’re used to this sort of tired nonsense from MS, but Apple keeps telling us they’re different. Except when it comes down to it they’re just as capricious and evil as their competitors, and just as willing to promote stupid lock-ins.
The ban on Podcaster has absolutely no purpose *except* as a method of lock-in. Apple’s done something similar with its iPod, where it has actively worked to make it more difficult to write third party apps that will sync with the iPod (I’m one of those who owns many iPods but won’t install iTunes because, well, it sucks).
Paul has to be joking when he talks about rogue programs. Apple didn’t yank this program because it was buggy. They yanked it because it threatens their buggy business model.
One of the major lessons I think we’ve seen over the last 20 years is that Microsoft’s behavior was no accident. If, say, Apple had wound up as the dominant OS company with MS reduced to a minority of fanboys, it’s clear Apple would have acted in much the same way that MS did, and in the way that Google and Amazon are desperately trying to imitate.
Most likely, Apple has its own podcaster-like app under development. We’ve already seen them compete for dollars with a poker(!) app. So why shouldn’t they feel like a podcast app isn’t their birthright?
Wasn’t there recently a mail app that was rejected too?
But yeah, the way this looks right now, none of this is good for eBooks.
The iPhone can be populated with music that has been sourced from places other than iTunes, Apple does not prevent that. I cannot see Apple restricting ebook readers, even if they started to sell ebooks via iTunes in the same way as they sell music. I still also populate my iPhone with audiobooks purchased from Audible even when Apple sell audiobooks in the iTunes store.
Perhaps Apple will produce core iPhone support for ebooks (epub anyone) but even then I think it would be unlikely they would restrict the existing ebook applications.