iOS Secret Meeting

There have been reports lately of Apple holding a secret conference for iOS developers. Now, let me just state up front so there's no misunderstanding: Other than the normal news outlets, I haven't heard any information about such a conference - I'm certainly not invited if there is such a thing going on. This post is just conjecture on my part.

But I'm not sure why this is news. Apple constantly has strategically important developers (and other partners, like wireless carriers) out to Cupertino to work on future product announcements and to be informed about future products. It certainly shouldn't be news to anyone that the people who get up on stage with Steve at keynotes and presentations (plus everybody involved behind the scenes) knew ahead of time that they would be doing so.

If you follow a lot of iOS developers, you'll pick up subtle hints about when some of them are on campus or on their way there. It might just be a "Wheels down SFO" tweet, a comment about the food at Caffe Macs (the cafeteria at 1 Infinite Loop which is quite excellent), or a dinner with certain Apple employees, but the signs are there if you know what to look for.

Unsurprisingly, Apple is just as careful about keynotes as it is with everything else. As a result there are constant "summits" going on in the weeks before any public announcement. Since Apple now spreads their product announcements around the calendar year, that means it's an almost constant ebb and flow of strategic partners.

The process to be involved with a keynote presentation is long, stressful, and involves many trips to Cupertino. I can't say anything more specific about the process without betraying confidences (I've never been directly involved myself), but rest assured that despite Apple's famous secrecy, if you're at all involved with the developer community, then there are likely people outside Apple whom you've socialized with who knew a fair bit about certain products before they were released. Even people who aren't directly involved with a keynote presentation have to, at times, find out information about products early, and in some cases even get access to pre-release hardware (though usually with strong precautions talem to keep photos or other info from leaking).

If this is a surprise to you, chalk that up to the fact that the third party developers who are involved understand and respect Apple's desire for secrecy and want to continue being involved with the process. Apple is not known for being forgiving to those who leak information of that nature.

So, is there something even larger than normal going on next week, perhaps a replacement for the Tech Talk World Tours of past years? I don't know. It's absolutely possible. But, what seems more likely to me is that Business Insider simply got a whiff of information about an ongoing process and interpreted it incorrectly. Apple is never idle, and we're less than a month away from 4.2 being publicly released. It's altogether possible (I'd say likely) that there will be hardware or other software announcements that will coincide with release of 4.2.

Frankly, I'd find it far more surprising if there wasn't a flurry of third-party developers going in and out of Cupertino right now and for the next few weeks. Whether it's a formal summit of any size, I don't know, but I have my doubts. The more people involved with something like that, the harder it is to keep it secret and the more likely a leak is. Right now everything I can find online leads back to the original Business Insider story. Despite requests for anonymous information, no new information seems to have come out.

My bets are on business-as-usual pre-announcement activity, not some secret conference. If it is a secret conference, the participants are likely only the most strategically important partners: people who have been involved with pre-release products previously.

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Mea Culpa

The original version of my Briefs.app blog post contained a snarky comment about the Director of the App Review team and a link to a Wired article about his past. A friend of mine, who happens to work at One Infinite Loop, privately took me to task for including that link in my post.

It took me about two seconds, now that I'm a little further away from it and not as angry, to realize that he's 100% right. It was a dick move on my part and I'm sorry for it. I have removed the link and offer my apologies to Phillip Shoemaker. The fact is, I have no visibility into what's going on and don't know where the holdup is on Briefs.app. For all I know, Mr. Shoemaker could be valiantly fighting for Briefs.app against higher up forces in the company, so casting an ad hominem attack like that was juvenile and uncool.

My basic feelings about the matter are unchanged, however. It was uncool when Apple left Google Voice in limbo, but that was one small product from one very large company. In this case, it's the sweat equity from one individual developer who worked very, very hard, sacrificing sleep, family time, and entertainment to create something very cool. The impact is much greater and much more personal and it's hard for me not to get angry about it.

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Briefs.app

My co-worker and all-around good guy, Rob Rhyne has officially open sourced Briefs.app as of today. After three months of being dicked around by Apple's review team, he's finally given up on getting Briefs.app onto the App Store.

Throughout the ordeal, Rob has taken the whole thing with tremendous grace and has only good things to say about the people involved in the entire process. I hope he'll forgive me for not being quite so gracious.

I'm pissed on his behalf, since he won't be. Make no mistake: This sucks. This is no way to treat anybody, but especially him. Rob has bent over backwards throughout the process to be nice and work within the system and to avoid saying anything negative about the problems he's faced. Rob has kept the discourse on a level I think few of us could manage. He didn't go out and raise a stink the way many developers have when they felt slighted by the App Review team. Rob just calmly and patiently worked within the system trying to make his case and get a product he worked on for months onto the app store… while working a full time job, starting a new business, and being a parent to a toddler. Oh, and his wife works too. Rob's one of the few developers I know who spends more time sitting at a computer than me.

If Apple's review team had just come out and rejected the app, it would have sucked, and it would have been the wrong decision, but it would have been an acceptable situation. The app review team's job is to make tough decisions. Sometimes they're going to make bad decisions, and sometimes they're going to make decisions that we developers are going to disagree with.

But since making decisions is, in fact, their job and they've never actually made a decision about this particular app, it's not an acceptable nor a forgivable situation. Three fucking months Briefs.app has sat in the review queue, and in that time, the app review team has allowed other prototyping applications onto the app store: applications that do the same basic tasks that Briefs.app was created to do. Interface was approved several weeks after Briefs.app was submitted to the App Store. LiveView and Dapp were both updated just yesterday. iMockups was approved about a week ago.

But Briefs still sits in the queue and nobody can be bothered to even say what the exact holdup is or what needs to happen before a decision will get made.

I don't know what reason they could have for dragging it on like this and not making a decision, but it's not right. Apple owes Rob, and all the people who want to use Briefs, an apology.

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Those Were the Days…

The Computer History Museum has recently posted the original source code for MacPaint and QuickDraw! Apple has given them permission to publish them both, and they're well worth taking a look at if for no other reason than to realize just how good we programmers have it today.

The source code is a combination of 68k assembly, resource files, and Pascal, and all of the code was written by the incomparable Bill Atkinson, one of the early heroes of Mac programming and author of Hypercard (among many other things).

As an interesting aside, Bill stopped programming several years ago to focus on photography, but started programming again after the iPhone SDK came out so that he could create PhotoCard.

If you're not really familiar with who Bill is, you might want to read some of the stories on Folklore.org, but be warned, it's easy to lose track of time at that site if you have any interest in Apple history.

Note: One question that occurred to me looking at this source code was "how could Bill could have coded this back then?" These were written before the Mac shipped, and the Mac shipped with only 128k of RAM, which is smaller than the MacPaint Pascal source. You couldn't have opened some of these source code files on an early Mac due to their size. The answer appears to be that they were written on a Lisa, which shipped with a meg of RAM. That was some crazy amount of memory for the day and part of the reason the Lisa cost $9,999 (somewhere between $19k and $40k in today's dollars. I do seem to recall reading, though, that the early versions of QuickDraw (aka LisaGraf) were written on some model of Apple 2, though.

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On Swords, Perspective, and Spin…

Although I thought Apple started off a little too defensive yesterday, when you boil it down, I thought they did the right thing. If you're having a problem and a case can fix it, here, have a free case. If you already bought a case, they'll refund the money you paid for that case. If you bought an iPhone 4 and the problem keeps you from being able to use or enjoy your phone, they'll take it back, no restocking fee, no questions asked.

All other issues aside, I'm not sure what more Apple could or should have done. There aren't many products that come with an unconditional guarantee any more, yet reading some of the output of various so-called tech "journalists" since yesterday's press conference, it seems that there are many who think that Apple didn't do enough and didn't "do the right thing". Short of Apple's senior management taking out swords and falling on them (at least proverbially, if not literally), I don't think anything would have made certain journalists (and I use the term very loosely) happy.

Of course, it's not exactly good for the tech press if this quietly goes away or turns out to be much ado about nothing. They're having a grand old time and raking in a lot of page hits on this whole "antennagate" thing they've created, so I guess it's understandable that they don't want to accept a reasonable response from Apple. They clearly wanted nothing less than a fall from grace… an admission that Apple didn't design or test properly. Instead, they got treated to a number of facts that didn't jive with what they wanted to hear. They were shown other phones experiencing similar phenomenon. They were shown a little about the testing procedures the phone went through and the investment Apple has made toward testing their antenna designs. They were shown, in short, why Steve doesn't think they did anything wrong.

The natural reaction to cognitive dissonance is anger, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the angry diatribes from some sectors of the tech press, especially those who aren't fans of Apple to begin with. But anybody who expected anything else out of yesterday's conference call are either intentionally stoking the fires for their own benefit or else they're morons who fail to realize there are perspectives other than their own. Perspective is an interesting thing, and it's not quite the same thing as "spin", which it is often mistaken for. Perspective is your own world view. It's a combination of a whole bunch of things that make up the way one person thinks about things: their likes, dislikes, biases, priorities, and fears. Spin, on the other hand, is when somebody intentionally tries to conflate facts, or select facts to make their position look better.

And make no mistake, we saw some spin yesterday. Some of the statistics early on were very carefully selected. The iPhone 4 dropped call rate being 1 in 100 less more than the 3Gs call drop rate, for example, sounds small, but what was the 3Gs' dropped call rate? If it was 1 in 10,000, then that's a statistically huge change. If it was 3 in 100, then it's statistically tiny, probably within the margin of error. We weren't given enough information to know what that statistic meant. If I had to guess, I'd say the difference was probably statistically significant (though not necessarily huge) or they wouldn't have presented the data that way.

But, even with the spin, it was pretty clear that from Steve's perspective Apple went through a very rational, valid design and testing process and achieved something pretty amazing. And I tend to agree. I wouldn't easily give up my iPhone 4 now. It's an amazing piece of technology. It really is. I love just holding the damn thing in my hand. It's such a refreshing change from all the cheap plastic consumer devices in my life. Every other device that the iPhone manages to replace in my life (my point and shoot camera was the latest casualty), the happier I am. I would quite honestly give up using cell phones before I'd let somebody replace my iPhone 4 with a junky plastic Blackberry or Nokia phone with their confusing, poorly written and terribly designed software.

Now, that's not meant to downplay the antenna issue, because for some people it is real and a hassle, I'm just stating my own perspective. Regardless of your perspective, however, the evidence seems to show that statistically speaking, most people in most places are going to have better reception with this phone. All design is about tradeoffs and all products are designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of people. Moving to an external antenna system was a conscious choice that Apple made, and it appears to have been well thought-out, researched, and tested. A conscious design decision was made that would make more room for battery and additional sensors and gadgets while making the phone more solid feeling and still thinner than any previous phone. The tradeoff, other than the obvious ones of manufacturing costs, was the increased possibility for attenuation. Now, we know, thanks to Anandtech, that this attenuation can cause a reduction of up to 24dBm of signal strength. We also know that that amount makes no measurable difference in data speed or voice reception for most users in most locations. Months ago, before the iPhone 4 came out, and without the benefit of hindsight or knowing what kind of media circus would ensue, that almost certainly would have seemed like a perfectly valid tradeoff. "Wait, if we do this, most people, most of the time will have better reception and we can make the phone smaller and have better battery life and fit a gyroscope, and the only tradeoff is that some people in some situations if they hold the phone in a certain way will have one or two less bars? Great!"

Was it the right decision? Well, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps not if you factor in the negative publicity they've gotten. But, was the decision the kind of stupid mistake that deserves payment in blood? Absolutely not. Even suggesting it is ridiculous.

The iPhone is a consumer product. It's like off-the-rack clothing. It's not custom tailored to any one individual. It's the product of a long series of design decisions trying to make the best product for the largest section of the population. If you're an outlier - if you're one of those people for whom the issue is preventing you from using the phone, put it in a free case, or bring it back. Apple will give you your money back, AT&T will let you out of your contract. No questions asked, no restocking fee. You're then free to go find a phone that works better for you.

If you want or expect more than that, you've got pretty serious entitlement issues. If you don't want to do that because you think you can't find a better phone, then maybe you need to re-assess your own perspective.

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iPhone 4 Press Conference

Well, the iPhone 4 press conference just ended, and I thought I'd type up my thoughts quickly before diving back into work. Overall, the end result is exactly what I thought they'd do: free cases and refunds for those who want them. Seems very like a fair response to me.

I thought Steve started the presentation sounding a little defensive, though I can understand why. By the middle of the performance, though, he really hit his stride, and by the end I'd have to say it was one of Steve's best performances to date when you factor in that he wasn't announcing a new product, but instead defending an existing one, which is never as much fun or as easy.

The main points were that yes, you can interfere with reception on the iPhone 4 by grasping it a specific way, but you can also do that on most smart phones (they demonstrated it on several models of competitor phones), and that the press was making a bigger deal out of this than customers were in search of a headline. He pointed out that both Apple and AT&T were seeing lower return rates for the iPhone 4 than for the 3GS, in fact the returns have only been a third of what they saw with the 3GS.

There were little bits of insight into life at Apple that were unusual. We don't usually hear much about their actual processes (except manufacturing processes which have been part of their PR since the unibody computers). Seeing the anechoic chamber was cool and it was interesting to hear a bit about the process they go through to test reception on the antenna designs. Hearing about the problems AT&T has with getting new cell towers approved in San Francisco was somewhat enlightening. I've been rather harsh about AT&T's signal in NYC and SF myself, but never really though about the NIMB factor. I'm not ready to become an AT&T fan boy, but I am ready to cut them a little bit of slack on that issue now.

We also heard that Apple has sold over three million iPhone 4s in roughly 3 weeks and that they're still selling every one they can make. That's impressive considering the amount of bad publicity they've gotten from this issue.

At the end of the session, Steve pulled up Bob Mansfield and Tim Cook to answer questions, and I thought that was especially well handled with some nice bits of humor, though they took off the gloves about a few reports, especially one from the NYTs about a supposed software bug contributing to the reception issue. I especially like the comment that was made when Bob Mansfield was talking about how they sometimes send engineers to a customer's house to test reception. Bob said "For the record, we notify them we're coming", and Steve chimed in with "…and we didn't bash in any doors". Just a great response, it showed a sense of humor while getting in a bit of a jab at Gizmodo (who were never once mentioned by name that I can remember - it was always "some website" when talking about things they did).

There were two other things that struck me, but I'm not sure if they are worth mentioning, they might just be be reading too much into things, but I will because it's fun to speculate about such things.

The first thing is that Steve mentioned that Apple has Verizon cells on campus in addition to AT&T cells. Now, it's not uncommon for large companies to have towers onsite to ensure their employees get good reception at work, but it seemed odd that he felt it was worth mentioning that they had Verizon cells on campus when talking about an issue that would only be affected by AT&T towers.

The other thing that struck me as odd was the fact that in one of the question responses, Steve talked about the press "going after" Google because they were successful and that he wished the they wouldn't do things like that. He talked about how great the stuff Google made was and made a weird little comment about people not appreciating innovation that's still happening inside the U.S. Again, it may not mean anything, he could have just been trying to think of a big successful U.S. tech company and that was the first one that jumped to mind, but given the state of affairs between Apple and Google lately, it seemed oddly conciliatory and defensive. Perhaps a hint that the Google/Apple competition is headed back to more civil grounds even if may never go back to the days of friendly coopetition of yore? I dunno, but maybe. We can hope.

That's all, now it's back to work. You should too, slacker. ☺

Update: Apple has just posted a new page explaining attenuation and signal loss.

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On the iPhone 4 Reception Issue…

Until today, I've kept pretty much quiet on the iPhone 4 reception issue. Part of that was simply that I didn't own a phone until a week ago when my pre-ordered phone finally arrived. Part of it was just that I'm crazy heads-down on the book and doing client work right now. And part of it is that I'm having trouble deciding exactly what I feel about it. It feels to me like the issue is being overblown, but I doubt that people who are severely impacted feel that way.

I also don't think Apple has handle the situation as well as it, perhaps, could have. Apple is normally exceptionally good at "spin", but the response to this issue has felt a little ham-handed.

For me, I can recreate the issue if I try, but not in the drastic way that some people can, and not consistently. I've been able to get my phone to drop from five bars down to three, on a few occasions even down to two. Sometimes it won't go down at all. I don't know if it's whether there's moisture on my hand or what, but sometimes no amount of pressing will cause it to drop, other times, simply placing my thumb over the break on the left side will cause it to drop one or two bars.

Fortunately, even though I usually hold my phone in my left hand both for voice and data, this just doesn't affect me. The way I hold my phone, I don't bridge the gap. But even when I do bridge the gap intentionally, my phone still functions fine even with the lower bars. In fact, my reception and data transfer speeds are measurably faster over 3G than they were on my iPhone 3Gs. We have some large "warehouse" stores in the area (Lowes, BJ's) where I have always lost reception with every cell phone I've ever head when I get more than fifteen or twenty feet into the store. That was true even back when I was on Verizon. My iPhone 4 gets signal in those stores, throughout the store. I also haven't had a single dropped call since I got my iPhone 4. So, for me, not only is this not an issue, I'm thrilled with the reception my phone.

I know it's a real and serious issue for some people and for them, it's preventing them from fully using their phone, and that's gotta suck. But for me, and for all but two people that I've talked to (and I know a few people with iPhone 4s) it's mostly a non-issue in terms of real day-to-day usage. The foofoorah over this really seems a bit overblown to me, not that I've come to expect anything more from powerhouses of journalistic integrity like Gizmodo, but still…

If Apple were to recall the phones or offer a refund, I wouldn't let them have mine. I wouldn't willingly go back to an iPhone 3G at this point. Now, if Apple offers a free bumper, I might take them up on that. I've been thinking about getting one anyway, and only the fact that I live 45 miles from the nearest Apple Store has kept me from getting one already, but I'm not going to be upset if they don't.

I'll be curious to hear what Apple does say tomorrow in their press conference. I have to think that the days of ham-handed responses to this issue are over. They can't afford for those days not to be over. This is hurting their reputation far more than it should.

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Grand Slam!

Apple has set a new record for WWDC video avialability this year, getting them out not even a week after the event ended. Amazing.

Even more amazing, they're not selling them this year. Registered developers can access them for free. Want to know what all the fuss is about with Xcode 4? Go watch the videos.

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Apple is Hiring Cocoa Touch Programmers

In the last few hours, I've seen tweets from at least two different folks at Apple about new openings for engineers for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Here's one. Here are some more.

Or you could just do your own search on Apple's job's site.

Also, if you're more of an East Coast kinda person, Rosetta Stone is also looking for a good iPhone programmer. Ping me on Twitter or in e-mail for more details.

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The Fabled Tablet

I've been studiously not making predictions about the iPad/iSlate/iTablet or whatever the product being unveiled today turns out to be, but like most people, I'm assuming it will be a touch screen device that's larger than an iPhone. Beyond that, I have some guesses, but not even that many of those. I've learned with Apple that it's generally best to play wait-and-see.

I do think it will be based on the iPhone OS rather than Mac OS X, although it could be a completely new variant of OS X that borrows features of both Mac OS X and iPhone OS. The reasons I don't think it will use the Mac OS is that touch handling isn't an integral part of the responder chain. Cocoa Touch is also "cleaner" than Cocoa. By that, I mean there are less legacy libraries so less code that uses design patterns from a different era of programming. And, finally, for reasons that John Gruber talked about on Monday, because Apple has control over the entire OS with the iPhone OS, and Apple likes control.

Breaking: I've heard a rumor that the next version of the iPhone OS will be renamed to something along the lines of iOS, and that the device will use it. The rumor is from a credible source, so I give it a pretty high likelihood, though wouldn't say it's 100%

Beyond that, I don't know. Will it use window like OS X, or will every application take over the whole screen like the iPhone OS? My guess is the former. Will it have background processing? I'm betting on some form, but not necessarily full, unfettered daemons like OS X. I'm betting it has standard IO ports such as USB-2 and Mini DisplayPort, and will use a more powerful chip than the iPhone. And those are all safe bets, I know, but I don't profess to be a prophet.

I've seen a number of "pundits" making dire predictions about the tablet being unpopular in business and have even read articles discussing how to keep the things off their networks. FUD. Probably written by bloggers who take money in some form or another from Microsoft. If not, then they're written by people with a complete lack of vision.

I also read this article. It's focused on one industry: Healthcare. But many of the points it makes are relatively universal. I spent many years working in so-called "Enterprise Software" for my day job, writing and implementing complex software in large corporate and government environments. From my experience, the vision in this article is spot on, just stated in terms that are too narrowly focused.

Think of all the specialty computing devices that get carried around on a daily basis. Think of the devices that the UPS drivers, FedEx Drivers, and Postal Carriers all have. Now think of all the jobs where a portable device COULD be used, but aren't. Think of the way the Apple Store employees use iPod Touches to check out customers. If today's announcement delivers on the unspoken promises, the possibilities are quite literally endless. A hotel concierge, for example, could be freed up to do his or her job anywhere in the hotel with a tablet. Maitre's D's could have their reservation information and access to their in-house beeper system under their arm, rather than be tied to a podium. School teachers could walk around their room and take attendance rather than having to sit at his or her desk marking in a gradebook or typing into a regular computer.

One prediction I feel comfortable making: The tablet, like the iPhone, will be a programmable device priced so that even consumers can afford it. Also, the touch screen will mean that its interface can adjust to whatever task needs to get done, not unlike the bridge controls on the U.S.S. Enterprise back in Star Trek:The Next Generation. That means it can be made to do most anything somebody needs it to do.

There are a lot of small and medium-sized businesses out there that can't afford to have a specialty device designed and programmed the way FedEx can, but certainly could afford a couple of consumer-priced tablets and the cost of developing a small, special-purpose piece of software, or to license a piece of niche software. There are a lot of jobs that involve walking around and where even a laptop computer isn't practical, but a touch-based tablet would be. The tablet and the iOS SDK (or whatever it ends up being called) could revolutionize and democratize custom software development by extending it into jobs where computers have been a viable option before.

I think the opportunities for experienced Cocoa and Cocoa Touch programmers are huge, whatever Apple releases today.

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Crime and Punishment

KRAPPS.com has a very disturbing article about Apple's action against the developer of the forChan app. The forChan application is simply an image scraper designed to work with image boards such as 4chan. While many of the pictures posted on these imageboards (which are all posted by users) are innocuous, many of these imageboards cannot be described as anything but the nasty, grimy underbelly of the Internet.

ForChan.app is simply a client to a particular type of web application that is widely used for non-porn images as well as porn. The app scrapes the imageboard HTML for image tags, then presents all of the images from one subboard as thumbnails, allowing the user to view them larger by tapping on a thumbnail. The app doesn't, itself, contain porn or do anything that clearly and undisputedly violates the SDK agreement.

After Apple realized that they let on a dedicated client tailor made for some of the nastiest places on the Internet, they quickly pulled the application. Had they stopped there, it would have been wrong, but not on any kind of epic scale. It would have been just another example of the risk of working in the Cathedral¹. We all farm Apple's land, and we all know they have a certain amount of power over us. But, Apple didn't stop there, they then revoked the developer's certificate and removed all of his other applications from the App store. In one arbitrary, unappealable step, they completely removed one developer's source of income and made the product of many, many hours of work completely useless. The reason? Because he "deceived Apple about the intent of the application".

This is unfair in ways it's hard to describe.

What was the developer's deceit that was so bad it warranted completely destroying his livelihood? Well, he um… didn't default the application to show porn, which Apple has decided is the app's main purpose. Despite the fact that the very name of the application, and certainly the description submitted were very clear about what the application does (hell, the application is named after one of the seediest imageboards on the net). Because whomever reviewed the app wasn't savvy enough to pick up on the App's purpose the first time through, they've declared the developer to be dishonest.

I give Apple the benefit of the doubt whenever there is any to give. I have defended their actions a few times when they might not have deserved to be defended. But this is too far for even me. This kind of arbitrary and devastating action is disproportionate punishment and I can't see any justification or defense.

Apple should reinstate Charles Rodriguez's developer credentials and restore his other apps to the App Store immediately along with an apology. I doubt they will, but that's the right course of action for them to take.

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1- This is a reference to Eric S. Raymond's classic comparison of commercial and open source software models The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

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January 27th is On

Media Invites for the special January 27th event at the Yerba Buena Gardens are now out and it's official. It's still not official what's being announced, though most people are assuming it will be the fabled and long-awaited tablet.

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Tech Talk World Tour NYC

Well, about 3:30 am this morning, I rolled in from the New York City stop on the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour. It was an exhausting, long, and very, very good day.

Yesterday's tech talk registration opened at 8:00am, with John Geleynse's kick-off presentation starting a little after 9:00. According to John, there were 350 iPhone developers in attendance, and looking around the room, I don't have trouble believing it. There were a lot of iPhone dev geeks sitting in the room. I got to see a lot of old friends, and meet a whole bunch of new people, which is one of the things I love about events like this.

There were three tracks, with five sessions during the day in each, plus a lab that was open all day long. Apple engineers were available for help and for code and UI review.

For me, the highlight of the day was Allan Schaffer's two OpenGL ES talks in the afternoon. They contained a lot of really in-depth technical data that I haven't seen presented before (and I went to all the OpenGL ES talks at WWDC). All of the other sessions I went to had some overlap with sessions I went to at the dub-dub, but they all contained good information and were presented well. I didn't hear a single negative comment from anyone about any of the sessions.

The format and presentation were very much like WWDC except on a much smaller scale, of course. Apple had with them the entire evangelism team, plus people from various engineering teams as well as support staff from Apple Events. We were given a continental breakfast, bagged lunch (but a really good bagged lunch), and we ended the day with a wine and cheese hour, which gave us the opportunity to socialize with each other and with all the Apple employees at the event.

It was a truly great event. I would have gladly paid to attend; the fact that Apple did this for us for free is somewhat mind-boggling to me. I can't imagine what it cost them to put it one. We had a whole floor of the Marriott Marquis, the event was fully catered, and Apple must have brought along somewhere in the range of thirty full-time employees, maybe even more. Plus, we got another Apple T-shirt for our collections, although mine is going into my wife's wardrobe, as it's been quite some time since I could wear size L T-shirt (probably Junior High).

Apple brought great people, presented great information, gave one-on-one consultations to dozens of developers, and they listened. They listened to developer's concerns about a wide variety of issues and gave feedback and insight to help people resolve their issues.

If they do these events again next year and you are an iPhone developer of any ability level, do yourself a favor and sign up as soon as it's announced. Even if you have to travel and spend the night in a hotel, it will be well worth the expense. It's a great opportunity to meet other developers, to talk to people at Apple, and to improve your knowledge of the platform.

So, for anybody at Apple who might stumble across this post: Thank you.

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What I Love About this Community

I really love that the Mac and iPhone developer community consists of primarily mature, intelligent people. I love that disagreement and debate is accepted, and people with differing viewpoints are able to along so well. And I mean that without a shred of irony or sarcasm. I've had more than one heated, late-night discussion at WWDC that caused not the slightest rift or inability to get along. But, of course, there are exceptions to every general statement.

This is not the first ad hominem attack to that I've received as a result of taking the position I have on Rogue Amoeba's very public abandonment of the iPhone platform, but it is probably the most amusing. Mike Hunt? Very witty. Yes, I can remember laughing very much at that joke in the movie Porky's twenty-something year's ago. Quite riotous, if not very original.

So, as you can see evidence of in the screenshot above, my Skype account has been under periodic attack this morning. To the person or persons doing this, if you think your childish and ham-handed attacks are likely to change my stance or silence me, you're sadly mistaken

Fortunately, for every "Mike Hunt", there have been dozens who have sent me thoughtful, logical, and well-reasoned arguments on both sides. Those people rock, regardless of whether they came to the same conclusion as I have. To the few of you that I haven't responded to yet, bear with me, I'm buried at the moment and have a chapter deadline to meet.

I knew these posts would make me unpopular with a certain subset of our community. Perhaps, it would have been smarter to keep my mouth shut. Unfortunately, that's not really my style. I realize that some of you think we should all "stick together" and just accept Rogue Amoeba's condemnation of Apple as incontrovertible and undeniable, but since their very own statement of the facts doesn't support their conclusion (assuming you know the first thing about either contracts or IP law), I can't. I'd rather be unpopular than to publicly make a statement I believe to be wrong.

If you see factual or logical errors in my posts that haven't already been pointed out, by all means, I'd love to hear from you and am perfectly happy to reconsider my stance if you can show me a substantive flaw. But if your idea of rhetoric is launching an attack on my Skype account, then I have a suggestion for you: Since you believe in this so strongly, I think you should make a show of solidarity with Rogue Amoeba by leaving the iPhone development community. Right now.

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Rogue Amoeba

Today, Rogue Amoeba announced they were giving up on iPhone development. It's definitely not a good thing to have a second high-profile developer publicly leave the platform in a little over twenty-four hours. Clearly, Apple has a public relations issue to deal with.

The blog post in which this was announced was, it appears to me, intended to paint out a black-and-white picture. Apple was wrong. Rogue Amoeba was not only right, they were taking the only reasonable course of action available to them.

I'm going to risk the ire of the maddening crowd once more, but I think somebody needs to come to Apple's defense this time. I love a good mob scene as much as the next guy, and I keep my pitchfork nice and sharp just in case the need should arise. But… the picture that Rogue Amoeba has painted in their farewell post doesn't look quite so black and white to me. Certainly, Apple could have handled many things about the situation better, but so could have Rogue Amoeba. Let's strip it down to the basics.

1. Airfoil Speakers Touch included pictures of Apple products;
2. These were images owned by Apple;
3. The iPhone SDK Agreement specifically prohibits the use of images, icons, and logos owned by Apple in iPhone applications;
4. The first rejection clearly and unambiguously stated why the app was being rejected and how it could be fixed.

There's simply no reasonable argument that Airfoil Speakers Touch didn't violate the SDK agreement, and we're not exactly talking about an obscure clause of that agreement. This is a term that every iPhone developer knows. It is common knowledge among iPhone developers that if you use Apple's images, icons, or logos, you run a strong risk of rejection. The implication of Rogue Amoeba's post seems to be that they should have been given special treatment and been granted an exception for two reasons. First, because Apple allowed the images in the previous version of Airfoil Speakers Touch, and second, because the icons they used are available through public API calls in Mac OS X.

The first argument is silly. It has a certain emotional appeal, but it lacks any substance whatsoever. If you were pulled over for speeding, you wouldn't suggest that the police officer should let you go because you've sped down this same road every day for the last month. That you've never been caught before is no excuse when you finally do get caught. The review process is an imperfect, manual process, and they don't catch every violation every time. You can't seriously expect that they're going to grandfather violations in simply because they failed to catch them previously.

The second argument is that the images were available through public APIs on the Mac. And that's absolutely true, but it's hard to see the relevance. If these images were vended by APIs in the iPhone OS, then it would be a very valid point. But the iPhone is not the Mac. They don't have the same APIs and they don't have the same rules. That something was available on the Mac has absolutely no relevance to whether you can use it in an iPhone application. These images are NOT available in the iPhone SDK using public APIs.

There was a third, implied, argument that Apple should have allowed the application on the store despite the violation because not letting the application on prevented users from receiving an important bug fix. Again, there's a certain emotional appeal to this argument, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Rogue Amoeba knew exactly what the problem with their app was back in July, and they were told exactly what they had to do to get the app through review. The reason that users of the application couldn't get an update for three months was because Rogue Amoeba didn't want to "bend" back then. They felt that they were in the right, despite the fact that their application was in clear violation of the SDK agreement, an agreement whose terms they had accepted. Rogue Amoeba chose to try and force the issue rather than fix the problem. It was essentially the corporate equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum, and Rogue Amoeba wants Apple to take the blame for the consequences of their own actions.

I can certainly sympathize with Rogue Amoeba's frustration and can understand why they're choosing to focus on the Mac. I don't blame them whatsoever for the decision. Working on an unrestricted platform has its benefits and a definite appeal. I'm looking forward to getting back to some Mac development myself once this book is done, not in protest, but just for a change of pace. But, the Mac has disadvantages as well. For one, it's a lot harder to reach potential customers. You don't have 50 million potential customers who are but a few taps away from buying your app at any time. Maybe that doesn't have value to Rogue Amoeba, since they already have a user base and web store infrastructure in place, but it does have value to many developers.

Rogue Amoeba's final, parting shot was to suggest their customers who want Rogue Amoeba to return to developing for the iPhone should contribute to the EFF by sending them to this page.

If refusing to bend was the corporate equivalent of a temper tantrum, then this is the corporate equivalent of running to your mom when someone picks on you. This isn't a freedom issue, and the linked page doesn't present an accurate description of the situation. It says Apple "prevented" Rogue Amoeba from delivering a bug fix "because of trademark concerns". That's not what happened. That's such a one-sided misrepresentation that I would call it only a hair's breadth away from lying. Apple prevented Rogue Amoeba from delivering an application that violated a contractual term that Rogue Amoeba had agreed to. In other words, Rogue Amoeba agreed not to do X, then did X. It then took three months before Rogue Amoeba accepted that they actually couldn't do X. On this page, they also fail to state that the "code provided by Apple expressly for this purpose" happens to be code provided on a completely different platform and not actually on the iPhone OS. The code most certainly is NOT provided so that people can display these images in an iPhone application. The statement is misleading and, again, darn close to being a lie.

Bottom line, this is a contracts issues, not a free speech issue. If Apple had rejected the version with the link to the EFF page, then there might be a free speech issue, but Apple didn't reject that. Rogue Amoeba has valid concerns, but they don't have anything to do with constitutionally protected rights. I don't have a right, for example, to sell products in Wal Mart if Wal Mart doesn't want my products on their shelves. Wal Mart owns their stores and gets to say what goes on the shelves. It's not a violation of my rights that I can't force Wal Mart to sell whatever I want them to sell. Same goes for Apple. If the terms aren't acceptable, you're free to go develop for another platform. But don't suggest that your rights have been trampled on because you don't want to comply with the terms of a contact that you agreed to.

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New York Tech Talk

I'm hearing from people who have received acceptances to the New York tech talk, so they have started to send them out. I have not received one yet, but my fingers are still crossed.

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Tech Talk London

Sounds like the London Tech Talk World Tour acceptances have started to seep out of Cupertino. That's almost a month before NYC, so it may be a few weeks before the NYC ones start escaping from One Infinite Loop. That's a long time to keep fingers crossed.

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NYC Tech Talk Update

If, like me, you've signed up for the New York City Tech Talk, do not fret if you haven't received confirmation yet. According to Apple's Graphics Technologies Evangelist, Allan Schaffer, they haven't processed the NYC ones yet.

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Tech Talk World Tour

I didn't blog about this year's iPhone Tech Talk World Tour when it was announced. Many of the locations filled up so fast, it seemed like it would be just a tease to tell people about it when it was too late to actually do anything about it.

If you did sign up, I've gotten word from a handful of people that acceptance e-mails have started to trickle out of Cupertino. I signed up for the NYC Tech Talk, but haven't received word either way yet. Fingers crossed.

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Oh, My. Fiscal Results.

Today, Apple announced their Fiscal 2009 Q4 and boy, what a quarter it was. Funny, it's been a while since I heard someone predict the death of Apple. It's hard to believe just how common a practice that was among pundits only a decade ago.

Apple sold more iPhones and more Macs last quarter than in any previous quarter in history, and they have the largest percentage of the market share they've had since 1994. That's true whether you take the lower Gartner number of 8.8% market share, or the higher IDC number of 9.4%.

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