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Developers Angry About iPhone NDA

Submitted by Edward Kirk on July 23, 2008 - 7:57pm.
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So the App Store has been open for weeks, but Apple has yet to lift the NDA on what developers can disclose to each other and the public about what their working on. As you might guess, quite a few of these developers are pretty darn upset, and as TUAW points out, have voiced their frustration on an aptly named website, F***ingNDA.com (link url is NSFW), which collects together tweets from developers cursing the iPhone app NDA. Will Apple respond to their pleas and lift the contract? Who knows.


Submitted by Kevin Dunahee on July 23, 2008 - 8:31pm.
I don't fully understand what they aren't disclosing. People have a general idea now what the SDK does and doesn't allow. My understanding was that any random person browsing the Apple website could even download it for free. The only thing that makes sense is that Apple doesn't want devs to disclose what Apple themselves are working on. Hasn't that always been the case though? That developer connection thing has roughly the same set of rules doesn't it? Apple's behavior always confuses me. So if new apps utilize unreleased Apple technology devs aren't allowed to talk about their own apps. That's a sticky situation for both of them.

Submitted by Unregistered (not verified) on July 30, 2008 - 8:54am.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superman View Post
I don't fully understand what they aren't disclosing. People have a general idea now what the SDK does and doesn't allow. My understanding was that any random person browsing the Apple website could even download it for free. The only thing that makes sense is that Apple doesn't want devs to disclose what Apple themselves are working on. Hasn't that always been the case though? That developer connection thing has roughly the same set of rules doesn't it? Apple's behavior always confuses me. So if new apps utilize unreleased Apple technology devs aren't allowed to talk about their own apps. That's a sticky situation for both of them.
Insider information tends to leak before it even would become developer or public knowledge. I doubt Apple would disclose information to developers before they are ready for the public to know about it and other companies to basically copy the ideas. There are too many channels nowadays for people to share information and have no way of tracking who it was that released the information. Therefore, I strongly feel that the "disclosing what Apple is working on" idea is a mute point.

I bet that they want to keep developers not talking to each other because of the magnitude of applications that they need to review since they are playing publisher. Slowing down the development process reduces application submissions and in return Apple's workload. Once the initial rush of apps is over or Apple expands their testing/support department to handle a larger stream of applications, then they'll lift the NDA.