- Dropbox Ran Afoul of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines: So What?
Last week, a number of developers reported that Apple was rejecting iOS applications that used Dropbox, a popular cloud file storage and backup system. An initial thread on the Dropbox developers’ forum has led to a outpouring of tech news full of hyperbolic claims. However, none of this reporting has covered the real problem – Apple is now more concerned about protecting its business model than serving its users or its developers. Read more »
- Help pioneer Casebook: The Next Generation
We at the H2O project are seeking a full-time Project Manager. H2O is an online platform for textbook development and distribution, currently in a pilot stage. H2O is based on the open source model – instead of locking down materials in formalized textbooks, we believe that course books can be free (as in free speech) for everyone to access and, equally important, build upon.
Using H2O, professors can freely pull together materials for a course by selecting cases, editing those cases to the sections that are most relevant, and grouping them into readings. Once the materials are assembled, they can be copied in part or in whole by other interested faculty and then edited further. H2O has been successfully piloted in JZ’s 1L Torts class, and will be rolling out further over the coming year.
H2O’s project manager will play a leading role in shepherding H2O into its next phase, which will focus on developing new materials and incorporating additional features, in order to expand the platform beyond its law school roots.
H2O is a joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Harvard Law School library. The Project Manager will be housed at the HLS Library and work in close collaboration with lead members of the Library Innovation Lab team; he/she will also work closely with the Berkman Center and current H2O teams. More info and job posting here.
- Meme patrol: “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”
I participated in the Berkman Center’s fascinating HyperPublic symposium in the summer of 2011. When moderating a panel I invoked the aphorism that “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” It’s a way of encapsulating the idea that online free services usually make money by extracting lots of data from users — and then selling that data, or using it for targeted availability of those users for advertising, to advertisers. In that sense, the advertisers are the clients, and the users enjoying free content are what’s being sold. (Of course, sometimes that happens even when the user pays.)
I didn’t coin the phrase, and since it was featured (and attributed to me!) in wordsmith.org’s wildly popular “word a day” as a thought for the day accompanying the word “enceinte” — I sought to nail down its provenance.
The first use of the quote that we can find is as a comment within the famed MetaFilter community in August 2010. The user’s name is blue_beetle, who might be someone named Andrew Lewis. It’s entirely possible I saw it there, as MeFi is one of my five favorite sites on the Web.
Similar sentiments (whether drawn from that source or independently invented) have been expressed by Bruce Schneier in October 2010 and by Douglas Rushkoff in September ’11.
The phrase “you’re the product” also apparently appeared in a 1986 speech by President Reagan about the drug war.
Just say know.
–KA and JZ
- OS X Mountain Lion and Gatekeeper
This week, Apple announced that it was moving to a new, faster OS X operating system development cycle, starting with the release of Mountain Lion next summer. It previewed a number of features for the OS, and released some parts in beta.
Mountain Lion is slated to include a feature called Gatekeeper as part of the security and privacy settings. Gatekeeper allows administrators (those with full privileges on a Mac) to limit the applications that can run on the Mac. They can choose among allowing apps downloaded from the Mac App Store only, or apps from outside the Store so long as they are digitally signed to Apple’s satisfaction by their developers, or apps from anywhere. (The latter has been the way both Mac and Windows PCs have worked, for better or worse, since the introduction of the Apple II in 1977.) Read more »
- GPS-based Insurance Rates: The Devil is in the (Data) Details
A British insurance company called Motaquote has teamed up with TomTom, the GPS manufacturer to offer insurance prices based on data gathered by GPS. Fair Pay Insurance, Motaquote’s new program, is an opt-in insurance pricing scheme where drivers will get a free GPS unit in return for potentially lower (but possibly higher) premiums. The GPS unit will provide all the traditional navigational services as well as warn drivers when they corner too sharply or brake too hard. Read more »
April 15th, 2010 at 7:51 pm (#)
Well, it is indeed an anti-competitive practice, but Apple surely has reasons to do this for its own business purpose, it is not merely to spite Adobe.
By insisting that all apps for the iPhone be coded in C/C++/Objective C, as the terms do, Apple makes it very unlikely you will be able to port an iPhone app to Android or Blackberry, which are Java based platforms. C code can run on Symbian and Windows Mobile.
So if a developer is choosing how to write their app, if they decide to go for the iPhone they know they will have to rewrite, almost from scratch if they want it on Android. Only a company with market dominance would try that of course, but Apple’s dominance is in high end smartphones, and such phones are still just a minor part of the mobile phone market. Indeed, of the platforms, I don’t know if Apple yet even has the largest share in the smartphone market.
A 2009 study showed Apple at 15%, Symbian at 47% and RIM at 21%. Clearly you would have a tough time doing an antitrust on the company that is in 3rd place in a small sector of the mobile market!
But of course there is one area they are not at all in 3rd place, and that is in attracting app developers. If you want to get distribution for your app and make money from it, it is very hard to ignore the iTunes App Store. Thus you would agree to this ridiculous clause. In spite of all the Symbian phones out there, it just isn’t as attractive an app market.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:38 am (#)
“any logical reason Apple cares where an app’s code originates”
The argument is the same as not allowing flash. Apps that use a translation layer are usually rather poor and do not follow normal iphone conventions. For example, 99% of flash apps can’t seem to even get simple scroll bars right. Steve likes his apps to all be consistent in look and feel. People buy Apple products for the look and feel.
Antitrust is irrelevant. Apple only has a 25% market share in smart phones. There are plenty of other phones out there for people who prefer a different development situation. Unfortunately open development often results in poor user experience.
April 16th, 2010 at 7:46 am (#)
Apple hates Adobe for whatever reason and they also hate that many iPhone/iPad developers are writing their apps to run anywhere, particularly on Android. This new iPhone 4 SDK restriction lets them solve two of their ‘problems’ at one time.
Apple wants to stop these “run anywhere” apps to keep Android from having a lot of good apps right away. If they make it so that developers have alot more work to port their apps, then they hope the developers won’t do the port and stay right in fan-boy land.
Lastly, the thought that most apps using a translation layer are poor apps is goofy – have you looked at most of the iPhone apps? Most are poor! Using translation layer or not is no substitute for good app design. They are not related.
Apple just wants it’s usual monopolistic market – but this time it’s called ‘restraint of trade’.
April 20th, 2010 at 7:03 pm (#)
Apple’s tight control of it’s platform has inspired a ton of innovation by people trying to get around it’s strict rules.