(http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080728-iphone-nda-doing-more-harm-than-good.html) ===== iPhone NDA: Doing more harm than good By Chris Foresman | Published: July 28, 2008 - 01:50PM CT
The iPhone software development kit (SDK) is the only sanctioned way to develop applications for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch. The SDK includes APIs, documentation, and sample code; so far, Apple is treating all of it as confidential information. To download and use the SDK, developers must accept a nondisclosure agreement that prohibits discussion of any of this "confidential information." Since the platform targeted by the SDK—the iPhone OS 2.0—was released July 11, the NDA has become a source of frustration for the growing development community. [...] Several authors have programming books in the works based on the iPhone SDK. Until the NDA is lifted, authors and publishers are both left in an indefinite holding pattern. Erica Sadun is one such author, and her iPhone programming book was scheduled to be published by Addison-Wesley this month. "[My publisher has] advance orders; they have commitments. They are trying to deal with Apple and, as far as they knew, the NDA was supposed to be lifted July 11. That's what the people inside Apple believed," she said. She admitted that Apple has to do what's in its best interest, "but I do find [the NDA] a troublesome agreement. It made sense during the beta period, but now it just doesn't." [...] Users are also affected when developers are unable to get help with vexing problems. Many of the first applications for iPhone had issues with stability and crashing. Since then, feedback from users has helped developers squash the bugs, and updates have begun to trickle out. But users end up being beta testers for developers, and each developer is stuck solving issues on her own without help from the network of peers that Mac OS X developers enjoy. [...] ===== (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080728-will-freedom-ring-on-limos-linux-based-mobile-platform.html) ===== Will freedom ring on LiMo's Linux-based mobile platform? By Ryan Paul | Published: July 28, 2008 - 09:30AM CT During the Open Mobile Exchange at the OSCON event in Portland, ACCESS open source director David Schlesinger described the architecture of the Linux-based LiMo mobile platform. The platform is being developed through a collaborative effort coordinated by the LiMo Foundation, a coalition of approximately 50 mobile industry heavyweights. They aim to build a complete middleware layer on top of the Linux kernel using the GNOME Mobile stack and other conventional desktop Linux components. The strong emphasis on using standard APIs and programming practices means that there won't be much of a learning curve. [...] Porting existing GTK+ applications to LiMo, Schlesinger said, is as easy as tweaking the user interface so it will be usable on a small screen and then recompiling for ARM. The theming engine will adapt the application's look and feel so that it conforms with the rest of the platform. His employer, ACCESS, is working on the native SDK and says that we can "expect to see something out within the next few months." [...] [T]he unanswered questions about vendor control still leave a lot of room for skepticism. Schlesinger touted the flexibility of the platform and said that it will give carriers and handset makers the ability to define the user experience. But if history is any indication, the carriers will likely seek to define an extremely narrow user experience that lets them monetize every feature. [...] ===== -- Soh Kam Yung my Google Reader Shared links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16851815156817689753) my Google Reader Shared SFAS links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/16851815156817689753/label/sfas) _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://wiki.lugs.org.sg/LugsMailingListFaq http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
