Filed under: Bad Apple

Last December, Apple relented on the use of the otherwise private UIGetScreenImage() API. This function allows iOS developers to capture a screenshot on a device, regardless of the contents of the screen. In contrast, the standard SDK-safe approach to screen captures ([theView.layer renderInContext:context]) did not allow applications to access video layers, camera previews, or some OpenGL content.

iOS developer Manfred Nerurkar writes on his blog that he was just called by his Apple Developer Relations contact and told that Apple has made an about face on this issue. Apps using UIGetScreenImage will no longer be greenlit for the App Store. Instead, developers will need to use standard Quartz methods (as mentioned aboved) or migrate their camera capture code to AVFoundation.

As Nerurkar points out, this decision will force developers to refactor their code and, in doing so, limit screen capture to iOS 4.0 or later deployment. iPhone 2G users will not be able to use camera-centered utilities as iOS 4 AVFoundation functionality cannot be included on the earlier platform. Any 3G and 3GS users who have not upgraded from iOS 3.x will also be affected. That means that Nerurkar's iCamcorder and iWebcamera will lose a large part of their audience.

Nerurkar's Drahtwerk firm is not the only one affected. Popular scanner apps such as Occipital 's Red Laser (now bought out by eBay) have a large early model/slow adopter iPhone user base, and if they have to be updated to use the newer methods they will be leaving those users behind.

More discussions are ongoing at the Apple developer forums (behind the paid dev firewall).

Update 3pm Tuesday:Wired's Epicenter blog points to at least two threads referencing the CR story that have been left intact. Perhaps an overzealous forum manager has now reined in the urge?

If you were looking for a message thread on Apple's support forums pointing to Consumer Reports' article 'not recommending' the iPhone 4, it's not there any more. Apple's support forum moderators deleted the thread. Bing cached it.

If it happened once, maybe you'd say it was a glitch. But what if it happened twice? Three times? Four times, five, six?

I'm not prone to hysterics or a subscriber to conspiracy theories, but it's fairly hard to imagine any good way to interpret this. Every post that I saw listed in a Google search of Apple's discussion boards lead to the same result: "Error: you do not have permission to view the requested forum or category."

Sadly, this isn't the first time we've heard about Apple deleting discussion board threads on topics which are unflattering to Apple's products. It's closer to the fiftieth time. In fact, we've heard so many reports about this happening that it seems safe to call this standard operating procedure for Apple's discussion boards. That's not to say that there are no negative threads on the discussion boards, but the ones that are there are the ones that Apple's moderators have decided to leave active.

It's hard to imagine what Apple hopes to gain by doing this. Instead of having one negative news story, now we have two: not only did Consumer Reports come out and say they don't recommend the iPhone 4, but now Apple seems to be trying to prevent people from talking about it on their support board.

Want some overwrought comparisons to Orwell's 1984? Apple seems to be begging for it.

Thanks to reader Paul Richards for pointing this out.

Big surprise here, right? AdMob, freshly picked for purchase by Google (cue dramatic music) has been expelled from Valhalla, also known as the App Store, by a tiny change in the iOS developer agreement. Specifically, section 3.3.9 of the agreement, which precludes companies who do anything other than deliver ads from delivering ads on apps within Apple's precious, increasingly-walled ecosystem.

On the AdMob blog, chief exec Omar Hamoui stated, "This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it's clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress." Hamoui said AdMob would "be speaking with Apple," although there's no indication that Apple will listen.

I'd have to agree with Hamoui's statement. In fact, it's a little off-putting to see Apple react this way, considering it'll only lend fuel to the fire already raging around possible anti-competitive practices. No doubt Steve Jobs has a witty sentence in waiting for this one. Meanwhile, the thousands of developers using AdMob will now have to worry about deploying something else in their apps.

Have you called the Apple 800 number lately? At the other end of the line, an insanely chipper robot will try to "help you" connect to the most appropriate department. Mr. Roboto is fiendishly positive, with an upbeat approach to getting you the help you need.

The problem is that this robot isn't really very good at his job. He has a tendency to go off on long monologues about the glories of Apple online support options. Go on, give Apple a call and you'll see what I mean.

You can bypass this robot. Here's how. After the robot answers, wait for him to get to his first break and say "Customer Service Representative." The robot will confirm that he'll soon place you in touch with a real human being. He'll then ask you to clarify what topic you're calling about.

This is a trick. Do not respond with a topic. Apple will do practically anything to keep you from proceeding to a more expensive human service representative. They'd rather provide you with speech-synthesized rambles about the glories of particular online FAQs and help pages. They want to help you to "help yourself," i.e. keep costs down.

So, say something strange. Something like "Gallupping Butterflies" or "Indigenous Bicycle Dinosaurs." Make sure that your topic cannot be understand by Mr. Roboto. Once you've stymied him, he'll finally forward you to a real customer service representative.

Of course, the customer service rep may insist on asking you all sorts of questions about whether you are using a Mac or a "PC computer" before routing you on a few more times. Even if you're just calling about a simple Apple Gift Card. (Yes, the example is drawn from real life.) Still, your chances of making a solution happen quickly are often better when you deal with a real person-to-person encounter, and now you know how.

If the supposed note from El Steve-o is to be believed, the iPhone is getting a unified mailbox at some future date. Don't you wonder what Apple was thinking when it wasn't in the original iPhone plan?

In Mac OS X, I like seeing all of my email on one page, and with a quick click I can look at any email account segregated from the others -- easy peezy.

You would have thought that the famous Apple GUI designers would apply the same logic to the iPhone, but for more than two years I've had to really struggle to see what is coming in on 3 different accounts. I'm tapping more than the Titanic's radio operator just to see what email I have.

I hope the fix comes soon, and that it winds up on the iPad as well. The lack of a unified or universal mailbox is one of those strange Apple decisions that is hard to understand. The lack of cut, copy, and paste was another seemingly bone-headed choice that Apple finally got right. Now Microsoft seems to be drinking the same kool-aid with its upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS. The company says no copy/paste will be in the phone OS, and they're telling users they don't really need it anyway. Sure.

Apple makes a lot of great choices and we love Apple products, but every so often they seem to miss a big feature. After a lot of bad feelings from customers, they finally make it right. Usually. Sometimes. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for that unified inbox, and switching frantically between mail accounts. Grrrrr.

Can you think of some other big missing items? A camera in the iPad comes to mind...

Apple's obsession with secrecy is legendary. For all the rumors and leaks that stoke media attention, very rarely do we have a clear picture of a new product until Steve Jobs comes out on stage and shows it to us. Even people who work for Apple often have very little idea what the company is up to; retail employees at Apple Stores usually don't know any more about upcoming products than anyone else, and retail managers have told me the first clear picture they get of new products is when they arrive on a truck. Even people who work in Apple R&D on products like the iPad operate in a "cone of silence," with security measures in place at Cupertino's labs that sound like something out of a James Bond film. And last year, an employee of Chinese supplier Foxconn allegedly leapt to his death to avoid further interrogation after he "lost" an iPhone prototype.

A new report from Reuters offers more insight into Apple's cloak and dagger world. Confidentiality agreements are only the beginning when it comes to Apple's tactics with its overseas suppliers. Apple contacts suppliers at the last minute, often only weeks before a product's release, and provides information about its products on a strict "need to know" basis. Apple also divides its projects between multiple suppliers, meaning that for a product like the iPhone, no one supplier is responsible for producing or assembling all of its components. As a result, even most of the people who are standing on the assembly line making Apple's products have no idea what they look like when they're finished. Only a handful of very closely monitored workers are responsible for final assembly. Apple also has a unique vetting process for its contractors: it will switch up product suppliers occasionally, issuing them different products, all in the name of hunting down and squashing leaks. Well, that and an attempt to thwart cheap knockoffs -- a somewhat common practice in certain parts of the manufacturing world.

One South Korean supplier has stated Apple makes "unreasonable requests." The company's demands for customization in its designs means suppliers are left with equipment and components that can't be used for other clients, and excess inventory cannot be repurposed.

The Reuters report paints a very dark picture of Apple's relations with its suppliers. The company has its reasons for being secretive, some of them more valid than others, but it seems incredibly ironic that the same company who satirized George Orwell's 1984 in their iconic Super Bowl commercial now employs the same sort of police-state tactics with both its own employees and its overseas contractors. As much as I enjoy using Apple's products, reports like the one from Reuters make it hard for me to like the company itself.

Read the Reuters report for yourselves, and then let us know how you feel about Apple's obsession with secrecy in the comments.

[Via AppleInsider]

When Steve Jobs was introducing the iPad last week, a number of us familiar with Delicious Monster had the same reaction during the iBooks demo: "That looks like Delicious Library."

Developer Wil Shipley noticed, too.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Shipley complained about the striking similarity.

"But the thing about iBooks is, it's a book-reader. So, of course they looked around, found the best interface for displaying books (Delicious Library's shelves), and said: yup, this is what we're doing."

He notes that he didn't copyright the idea of showing photo-realistic books on wooden shelves, and that if Apple had called ahead of time they would have revealed a secret on one hand, and admitted that the two apps were similar on the other.

"...they can't write someone a check unless they got some value in return. And if they got value, the lawyers would ask, how much was it? How was it determined?"

Before you call "coincidence," note that many former Delicious Monsters employees are now at Apple. Of course, you can't say that this was malicious. In fact, Shipley's assertion is probably correct: They felt that Delicious Library's implementation was the best and ran with it.

In a way, it's flattering. Something he made has been acknowledged by a huge corporation known for design. Still, it's gotta sting. Shipley again:

"But your [designs] aren't really yours. They have lives of their own. So when your designs do change the world, you have to accept it. You have to say, 'Ok, this was such a good idea, other people took it and ran with it. I win.'"

Yo, Apple. February's coming, and likely with it, the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. And you know what? We're totally over this infuriating ducking NDA thing when it comes to the iPhone software development kit.

NDAs refer to nondisclosure agreements. They are contracts -- in this case, between Apple and would-be developers -- that prevent those who have been granted beta access to early releases of Apple's software development kits from discussing any aspect of the SDK in public forums.

Apple has pulled this NDA on us a few times before, for iPhone SDKs that anyone and their brother could download and look at freely. I'll say it for the record: NDAs on new iPhone OS SDKs are a bad, bad thing.

These NDAs provide no protection against competitors discovering Apple's proprietary secrets. Apple places no restrictions on who may sign up and access those materials. At the same time, they limit developer discourse outside of Apple's rather minimal members-only developer forums.

Under past NDAs, TUAW could not publish how-to articles or code samples, which was frustrating. The fundamental problem is not limited to this site, though. Developers couldn't tweet about their experiences, write about them on developer e-mail lists or otherwise engage in the kind of productive peer support that makes a development community thrive. Limiting discussion to a vendor-approved site where posts can be modded and/or deleted at the vendor's whim does not exactly cultivate open discourse.

Of course, we're talking about Apple. As avowed "Gearhead" Aleksandr Milewski puts it, "It's Apple. They'd NDA their customers if they could." So you can take it as likely that once again Apple is going to slam down an NDA on our collective selves. At least unless enough people proactively stand up and say: "We're mad as hell about NDAs and we're not going to take it any more."

So what can you do? Add your voice to this post. Leave a comment and express exactly how you would feel about Apple NDA'ing the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. Tweet it. Status wall it. E-mail it to your friends and to Apple. File a bug report at bugreport.apple.com. Give some unofficial feedback. Post about it on your own blog and leave a link in the comments.

It's time to be heard. We're tired of REDACTED and we want change.

One of our readers informed us that he was seeing some strangeness with Photo Booth time stamps. Photo Booth is the built-in Mac app that lets you grab stills or video from your iSight or attached USB or Firewire camera. It does the job dutifully, and with no issues... until now.

Beginning on or about December 27, the app started creating file names that are exactly one year in the future. It's not getting the creation date wrong, that's just fine. But Photo Booth is now giving files names like 2010-12-29 at 11.00.

It's not the end of the world, but if you are looking to find a file by date in the name, you're sure to be confused. The bug appears in Snow Leopard, and I haven't been able to determine if it appears in other, older versions of the OS.

If you want to check the bug for yourself, take a snapshot with Photo Booth, and then look inside the Photo Booth folder inside the Pictures folder in your user directory. Let us know what you find.

Perhaps Apple should re-name the app "Time Machine II."

[Thanks to Oliver for the tip]

Uh oh! It looks like there's shipping delays and availability issues with 27 inch iMacs. It's reported that these delays could be due to graphics issues with the GPU. Several Apple resellers are citing shipping delays when trying to order the models.

Apple made a brief statement to CNET tonight acknowledging the delays, but iMacs are showing a two week shipping delay on Apple's online store, which might mean you won't be able to purchase one in time for the holidays.

Graphics issues are nothing new to these iMac models. Some 27 inch iMacs also had issues earlier with graphic performance and Flash, which was fixed in the 10.6.2 update. The 27 inch iMac has also had a number of other reported problems before, from machines that have had broken screens, to iMacs arriving that simply don't work.

Back when the iPhone Developer Program was first announced, developer provisions (the 'permission slips' that allow developers to distribute pre-release builds of apps in progress) lasted one year. It seemed natural to have a one year expiration, as our developer memberships also lasted one year.

Everything was all fine, developers created new provision profiles as they grew, and each lasted one year. However, sometime in May of this year, provision profiles seemed to start expiring after 90 days. At first, many thought this was linked to the expiration time of their iPhone developer memberships, which would decrease the time to use a provision.

However, it seems that it's been set that provisions are only going to last 90 days. Also, distribution provision profiles, which are needed to submit applications to the App Store or distribute applications via ad-hoc, now only last about six months instead of one year.

If your provisions are expiring, your iPhone will remind you to renew your provision, and will state when that provision will expire.

If this is the way it's going to be, we may have to live with it -- it's just something that I would like to stay consistent, rather than wondering every time I renew a provision whether Apple has swapped out its stopwatch again.

Sometimes Auntie TUAW gets emails from anxious iPhone developers. In this case, the correspondent is running into issues with Apple's new automated checks for private API use in iPhone apps.

Dear Auntie TUAW,

I got an email from Apple's App Review team saying the code in my iPhone app uses private APIs. They pointed to -setOrder, which is a method I created in code, and -setThumbnail, which was created automatically from a Core Data property.

But those are all from my own code, and thumbnail is actually a property for my CoreData class. Any idea why? I don't even have a setter for thumbnail, it is just a dynamic property for the CoreData class.

I don't want to rename my properties because I'm not sure that CoreData will automigrate my renamed items and my users are going to start crying if everything breaks.

Love & snuggles,

Lauren

Read on for Auntie's reply.

Several of my colleagues here at TUAW and other people around the country are seeing some slowness and timeouts from MobileMe mail today.

The web interface seems to be working faster than the Apple Mail app, but even the web is slow. No communication from Apple support about what the problem is, but something clearly is wrong for some customers. Others may be doing fine.

I'm not seeing any reports from users on the Apple support board yet, but I expect they'll be flowing soon. Several MobileMe customers are seeing repeated timeouts from Apple servers.

Hopefully this will be just a short lived glitch, and not an epic failure.

Update: Service seems to have been restored for as of 3:15 EST, but still no word on the MobileMe support site.

For some Magic Mouse users, the streamlined human interface device is not only a dog, but a dog that pees on the carpet, smells bad, and barks continuously. Apple support boards are beginning to fill up with complaints about tracking issues and Bluetooth disconnects. There are also complaints about the lack of a third mouse button, and some all-too-early hardware failures.

I liked the Magic Mouse when I saw it at my local Apple Store, so I took one home for my Mac Pro. It seemed to work for awhile, but now it is very erratic at tracking and speed, even when MouseZoom is installed. Its Bluetooth connection has dropped several times, and it either comes back after a long wait or simply fails to connect again.

When I moved back to my wired Apple mouse, I found that I had actually preferred the form factor of the Magic Mouse, and I missed the button-less scroll wheel.

The Magic Mouse seems to be working fine for many users, but there are some hints that the little rodents are having trouble with some older hardware. My 2006 Intel-based Mac Pro may be one of the computers at issue.

Apple will hopefully issue a software update, if that is the problem. In my case, the only magic I'm going to see from the Magic Mouse is when it disappears from my desktop.

How is it going for you?

Face it: your address book and your contacts, they're personal. They reveal a lot about you: your friends, your business partners, your cake buying proclivities, and more. The address book you see at the top of this post appears to be for someone in the Denver area. I know that because of the REI Denver listing and Le Bakery Sensual on 6th, which I drive by whenever I head East from Broadway.

These contacts, along with their notes, their phone numbers, dates of birth, and other information say a lot about the person whose address book this is, and also about the people who appear in that contact list, with all their personal and professional info.

There's one big problem. The screen shot you see wasn't made by the person who owns this me.com account. Under certain very specific conditions, Apple is inadvertently sharing data from other people's accounts. Ouch.

A TUAW reader sent us a video made as he renewed his me.com account from the UK. The address book data he accessed during that time included this Denver-based set shown here, as well as data from an Ireland-based user of Polish descent (all his contacts were back in Poland although his business was based in Ireland).

This all went down during the period when his MobileMe account was renewing. Each time he logged off and back on, he was presented with yet another set of contacts--none of them his. He writes, "Each time I logged off and on I got a different address book. All the other options were disabled (because my renewal was being processed) but clicking the Contacts icon showed me *an* address book," just not his address book.

With a little Internet-fu, he checked out some of the numbers and found that they were valid and operational. This leads him to believe that this is real data. My inspection of the local Denver data from his screen shots convinces me of the same. Further inspection of work addresses and personal family names makes us believe we know whose Denver-based address book this is. We've attempted to contact this person but as yet have not heard back.

The address book glitch ended once the registration process finished, leaving our TUAW reader with a series of screen shots and videos and a deep concern about Apple's ability to safeguard personal data. He's already contacted Apple about the bug. "I contacted them by two means: their web-chat thing where they told me that they 'had no reports of such an issue'. They suggested closing and reopening Safari (helpful eh?) and a generic autoresponse saying they'd reply within 5 days when i sent an email." He adds, "I don't think the people manning the help desk appreciated the seriousness of the situation."

TUAW has sent a heads-up to Apple and will keep monitoring the situation to see how it develops.