Apple bans competing ads from the iPhone Apple has tweaked its developer terms and conditions to explicitly lock out in-application advertising services that might compete with its own iAd service. The new terms, picked up by All Things Digital, spell out the rules. Applications may not collect statistical information for advertising, or any other reason, without …
1, Apple don't think that their products are good enough on their own merit to keep customers from straying to other products.
2, Apple think their user base will just up sticks and go and buy whatever product is shoved under their noses like stupid, moronic, dribbling, mouth-breathing, brainless sheep.
Hmmmm.
Apple are slowly creeping towards a walled internet garden like MS tried to do back in the 90's and appear to be getting away with it.
What next? Apple only DNS servers where they can filter out sites they don't want you to see?
Whilst there may not be an Apple monoculture within the mobile space, there is a monoculture within the Apple mobile space and that's not good.
Chip chip chip....thin edge of the wedge.
This stuff is just petty.
One of the things I like about Google is that they don't use their users and developers as pawns. They don't take the attitude of removing or downgrading their services on Apple stuff just to screw Apple, or block Safari on Mac from using Apple's services.
I can understand the analytics stuff from a privacy perspective. I don't like the idea of advertisers storing my location somewhere, for instance. But the 2nd clause is just nasty. Any developer with an iPhone app can't use Admob, even if they were happy with Admob before. They now have to switch to iAd or some other competitor and if that's a disaster for them, well, tough.
Apple is not using its consumers as pawns, it is actually doing what it has been doing all along: protecting the privacy of those from whom they actually make money.
Think about the consumer for a second, the end-user. Now think about what AdMob is doing, and the information that developers share with them, and then consider the value that it adds directly to the consumer. Got anything? The user's information is being shared and monetized without his consent, for questionable gains. The user agreed to use the App and to view adverts, but was never given the chance to consent to share this information.
Notice that the license agreement allows the developer to show adverts, from any third-party organization--as long as no personal information is shared or used, unless such use is required for the App's functionality, or the user's consent was acquired.
I say this is a good thing for consumer privacy.
-dZ.
DZ-Jay,
Everyone knows this is a power play by apple, and nothing else. Unscrupulous apps will continue to collect information behind apple's back through web services, so your argument of protecting users' privacy is a bit of a red herring. Especially since apple makes no indication that apple will not use that information.
You've defended every single apple tactic out there, so I'll ask this plainly...
What's your affiliation with apple?
My point is more about this bit:-
"for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent"
To me, that's like saying "we're banning any ad stuff to do with Google", without actually saying it. I don't quite understand why an "indepdent" ad provider is different to anyone else from a customer's perspective.
you know what ;
"I don't quite understand why an "indepdent"[sic] ad provider is different to anyone else from a customer's perspective."
This line sums it up.
An Advertising company owned by an OS/Mobile etc. developer is probably better and more trustworthy for the consumer isn't it? You could trust a huge company with correct procedures with your data but could you trust a new start up?
Lets not forget this, Technically Apple is blocking out all third party ads anyway, because if you want tracking , you have to incorporate iAds (I believe this supports tracking?) and if you care about your users then your not going to bombard them with ads, are you?
So chances are the developers not going to put to lots of advertisements on one application, surely that's not good for users.
If iAd does not support analytics then please ignore this post.
"One of the things I like about Google is that they don't use their users and developers as pawns."
Now that made me laugh. Google's whole business revolves around exploiting your web habits/data whether you like it or not. Just look at the whole streetview/wifi fiasco.
Despite loving my iphone I've finally had enough of his control - I don't think it's right that they monopolise this domain as they do. I'm going to get myself one of those new ACER liquids on Vodafone. Mostly an issue of pride.
Strangely enough I made a similar decision in the late 80s when moving from Apple to Microsoft PC.
Apple are so quick to take advantage of their near monopoly for profiteering - this being another illustration.
Why don't their competitors stoop to their level and put them out of business ? Imagine if Microsoft took their attitude and banned iTunes from Windows on stability grounds (certainly my experience). Or imagine if google preventing Safari from accessing Google Maps or the iPhone YouTube app from downloading video content. You'd be left with a pretty useless device.
Apple relies on fair play from every other player but abuses it themselves.
The new phone's headline feature only works with other people who have the same phone and only if you are both on Wifi. No integration with Mac iChat even. And I think they've made a big mistake with the styling. The current iPhone can be instantly identified as such from any angle whereas the new one could be any old phone of a similar form factor unless you can see the Apple logo or the home button at the bottom of the screen.
To compound this Apple are now roofing in their walled garden and fitting triple locks to all the doors... sorry... the one door. This really is 'my way or the highway'. There is money to be made if you're willing to take the risk to develop something. But by Apple's own keynote figures there have been 5 bilion downloads with $1 billion paid out. That's an average of 20c per download (about 13p?). Not something that most developers will be able to retire on.
I don't expect this change to have a significant impact on the number of people developing for the iPhone but I do think that the likelihood of legal action against the company has just risen a smidge. But then, what the hell, video calls never took off when 3 launched and they could be made over 3G and to any phone that supported it.
Have Apple made a better product? Yes. Will people go out in droves and buy it? Yes again. Will it be more successful than Android. No. Not a chance. And all down to just two specific points: the closed ecosystem and the expensive, inflexibly price hardware - these say to me that Apple believes they have no competition.
I expect an Android phone will appear in the next six months that out-performs the iPhone on every front except possibly video calls. It will be cheaper and it won't wed you to a desktop computer for sync, or lock you inside a single manufacturer walled garden. I'm so glad I've moved off the iPhone.
So the Apple haters on here, who presumably don't have one of their portable devices are getting upset that Apple won't allow applications to collect user stats / profiles without their prior consent.
So they would prefer a device where it's a free for all, where they then have to install additional programs to block companies spying on them in order to try and sell them something.
I do find it interesting to see why some folk invest so much energy in hating Apple, would be interesting to know what the problem actually is.
About 7% of the cars on the road are made by BMW, I'm not really a fan of their cars, personally I find them to be a little overrated and feel that I can buy better for less. Because of this, when I'm in the market for a new car I look at the many alternative manufacturers in order to find something suitable rather than invest all my energy in trying to convince BMW drivers that they're stupid and proclaim my superiority on the internet.
Using your criteriea (surmisations drawn from a broad spectrum of El Reg comments) I'd probably be classed as an Apple hater. Yet I have a significant number of Apple hardware from the pre-OS X era. My absolute fave is the Newton, a device that was well ahead of its time and believe it or not is actually somewhat useful even today. I had a couple of Apple computers running OS X Leopard (not Snow Leopard) because the designers liked them, but we traded them in against several new PCs due to problems accomplishing our business objectives if we continued to use them (simply wasn't capable at the time, don't know if it is now).
I'll spell out the problem for you in plain English. Lock-in. When I buy a programmable or customisable device I expect to be able to utilise the hardware capabilities in any way I see fit as long as what I am doing is within the confines of the law. Apple hardware of recent years basically doesn't let me do what I like with it. Do it Apple's way, or not at all.
To be honest I think I'd be more forgiving if it was actually simple to transfer my personal data from an Apple portable device to any other platform of my choosing. Hell it'd be great if transferring data between individual applications on a single device was easy!
I do share your appreciation of the El Reg comments section. I don't see the comparison to YouTube's comments, however I do agree that here on The Register we commentators can have a good laugh and not be abusive towards each other.
The lock in only applies to their handsets, not to their computers. The lock in policy is because 99.9% of end users are not tech savvy they just want an appliance to work. A colleague of mine the other day was wrestling with his Linux phone (I don't recall which model it was), for some reason its' filesystem had corrupted and was now mounted read only. He was able to unmount the volume, fun fsck, and bring the think back to health. He thought it was fantastic that you could do that, 'imagine being able to do that on your phone a few years ago!' was his proud comment. I thought that was awful, so to be able to use his phone you'd need to know how to use Linux and know about file systems, yes I'm sure that most readers of The Reg would know how to do this but what about the rest of the world? How can this be a good thing?
The lock-in makes it as idiot proof as possible, ensures a quality of service to the software that can be installed (remember that Google-App where you could check your bank balance from your phone that told the author of the software your bank details at the same time? Can't see that happening any time soon on an iPhone).
The bottom line is this, if you want a closed eco-system on your smartphone then I'm sure that one with an Apple logo on would be quite suitable, if you want to do what you like because it's your device then buy one of the many alternatives but do so with the understanding that you will have to understand your device to a greater level and will possibly run into apps that cause your device to crash or that contain malware.
There's no deception or monopoly so I can't see why there are so many posts these days in the Comments section hurling abuse at those that would possibly choose the former.
"remember that Google-App where you could check your bank balance from your phone that told the author of the software your bank details at the same time? Can't see that happening any time soon on an iPhone"
You mean, the Apple app review would catch security flaws? Like... A picture texting program that uses neither encryption nor sign-ins to secure the data it links to? (Quip) Or a program that looks through your contact list and sends the entire database (phone numbers, names, e-mail addresses, personal information, etc.) unencrypted to a non-secure server to match it with databases downloaded from other users? (Aurora Feint) How about a program that harvests personal information, data of use of web services and other applications, phone number and frequence of calls, and uses all this to monetise your advertising potential to direct marketing techniques? (MogoRoad) Or...
The main security the iPhone has is obscurity. Nicolas Seriot already showed how applications can easily access all kinds of information they're not supposed to access, and how the review process is inherently unable to catch these security flaws since the code source isn't accessible to the reviewers. Hackers have already been able to spoof verified OTA access on Apple's behalf, and I'm sure the Black Hat community isn't ignoring the appeal of the iPhone as a source of income. There will be security problems on it, just like on any platform.
The problem is expectation.
You're not locked in to Apple's hardware any more than you are locked into any other phone manufacturer. Arguably you are locked into their infrastructure when you buy an iPhone, but they make no secret of it.
If you want to write your own software for the iPhone, then you can sign up for a (free) developer account, download a (free) development toolset and a (free) simulator to test your software on. You can then connect your own device to your own development machine and use your own software on it.
In what way is that preventing you doing what you want with the hardware?
"If you want to write your own software for the iPhone, then you can sign up for a (free) developer account, download a (free) development toolset and a (free) simulator to test your software on"
Uh, no you can't. That shit ain't free. It also comes with a lockin cost because it only runs on Mac OSX.
"So they would prefer a device where it's a free for all, where they then have to install additional programs to block companies spying on them in order to try and sell them something."
People like freedom of choice. Freedom for developers to do as they like, freedom for users to decide what is acceptable to them. I don't own any of their portable devices. I do have a mac keyboard though. This is another example of control and lock-in, setting Apple up as the master of their platform like how Microsoft tried-and-succeeded in being the master of Windows in terms of office productivity.
Let me state this, as long as ads are not intrusive and let me work without interrupting my flow, I'm fine with them. The moment they make me pause or wait its the moment I throw the phone in the trash bin.
But coming back to what was to be my main point. Are these ads being push to the phone using our (now) limited bandwidth? Do they count towards the monthly limit, be it 200MB or 2GB?
If they do, then there is a problem. No matter how tiny or compressed they are no way they should be allowed to use my (now) limited bandwidth. Just imagine finding out that you run out of the monthly bandwidth allotment because of the continuous bombardment of ads to the phone.
Yes, these iAds will count towards your monthly limit. But so do any other ads from any other ad-supported application you install. Nothing has changed in this regard. The differences are two-fold: Firstly, that instead of serving ads from AdMob and other third-party networks, some of the ads will be served by Apple. Secondly, that no information may be shared for the sake of showing ads and collecting analytics.
-dZ.
"But by Apple's own keynote figures there have been 5 bilion downloads with $1 billion paid out. That's an average of 20c per download (about 13p?). Not something that most developers will be able to retire on."
And on average, that's 25000 downloads per app, so about £3250/app. You've either got to be churning out shovelware, or be a heavily promoted title to make much on that basis.
"Compare to IE # ↑
But MS didn't have a monopoly in the browser market either but it didn't stop the EU forcing them to bundle other browsers within their OS.Surely removing the ability for people to use (other) ad software is a restrictive practice?"
It is about leveraging their Windows monopoly to push IE.
Apple have no monopoly with the iPhone so there are no monopolistic practices.
Of course Apple has a monopoly with the iPhone - the iPhone app market itself.
The market for apps on the iPhone is big enough in it's own right that there are several competing supplies of ad services. Now Apple comes in and says that developers have to stop using these other ad services, and use Apples own mobile ad services.
If it was simply a matter of restricting the way information was gathered by in-app ads, that wouldn't be a problem, but by only imposing those restrictions on competitors, and explicitly exempting it's own service, Apple is abusing it's monopoly powers.
Ironically, this wouldn't be the case if there were competing App stores, but because Apple decided that there would be only one "legal" source for iPhone apps, it created a separate and standalone Market in which it clearly has a monopoly position.
The one thing that everyone has missed - Apple is simply doing what Google has done for years. You know, the Google with a near-monopoly in online advertising vs Apple's non-existent position?
Can Apple sell advertising on google.com or gmail.com? Of course not. Google controls that 100%.
If Google thinks that Apple is being unfair, they can start by opening up THEIR apps and network to Apple. "Do no evil" my a$$.
What's good for the goose....
Surely Apple only allowing specific software etc on their device is like Microsoft only allowing IE on Windows, in fact worse, as you can have any browser on Windows they just didn't tell you about it.
I'd think that now they're bigger than MS it would only take a few of the big companies to go to the EU and complain about their unfair treatment by Apple.
Personally I think it's a good thing, keep cutting your ties Apple, then f**k off an die. Over priced and over hyped. Other peoples innovation wrapped in chavy chrome.
Truly the change in the language kicks Google/Ad Mob in the nuts but its intent is to protect users from shady developers. It doesn't prevent other ad networks from working with iPhone apps nor does it prevent App developers or Ad Networks for from starting their own Ad network or creating Apps, respectively. It delineates the function of the App from the serving and function of the Ad being provided. It would seem to level the business playing field, we can only assume iAd would be using the same data that other Ad networks have access to, and it clarifies the legal playing field, who gets sued when an App or Ad Network uses customer data inappropriately. I'm not sure about Opera but that last thing you would want your closest competitors to know about your products is how much and the ways your customers use them. Not to mention this now pits MS against Google. It is bloody unlikely that MS and Google would partner on mobile ads, it would signal that MS is far weaker a technological titan than is thought.
It does NOT ban anyone else other than Apple. It bans sending device data (hardware data, location data, etc. that is NOT related to content being viewed) without the consent of the user. . . . .Those BASTARDS at Apple want you to give your consent. How dare they!!
Second, it prohibits advertiser entities who are engaged in the business of creating mobile hardware/software (i.e. Admob which is owned by Google (Android)) because they don't want Google stealing their data to compete with Apple. They did enough of that when Eric was on the board and then release their derivative copy called Android (have you noticed every phone looks like an iPhone rip off?)
Sorry to you folks who want to see evil everywhere, but these two prohibitions are completely reasonable.
It's likely more about unfair business practices which may or may not be a monoploy. All you generally have to prove is that you've been intentionally harmed in such a way that you have no recourse, i.e. predatory.unfair business practices.
Typewriter makers were essentially put out of business by the advent of word processors. But there was nothing unfair or predatory, just newer technology that made typewriters obsolete. That's a common theme in business. Assembly line robots put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. But we still have robots.
So it's really a misnomer to keep using "monmopoly" in every case where it seems something just isn't right with a business's practives. AC is right, there's no monopolistic practices here on Apple's part. Unfair? Predatory? Maybe so, but no monopoly.
"I expect an Android phone will appear in the next six months that out-performs the iPhone on every front except possibly video calls. It will be cheaper and it won't wed you to a desktop computer for sync, or lock you inside a single manufacturer walled garden. I'm so glad I've moved off the iPhone."
Isn't that pretty much what the Tux brigade have saying about desktop Linux for the last 10 years?
Apple unfairly updates ToS screwing more devs/users in process *yawns* El Reg could write these headlines in advance, publish in advance, and have dates coinciding with each update to iOS.
Wonders how long before Apple introduces tiers for developers; apps placed accordingly in app store lists, developers having access to different "features", etc.
To all mooners,
The iPhone / iPad / iFuture gadget is designed and build by Apple.
They don't have to open it up/share it with other companies, but they can if they see fit on their terms and conditions. If they don't want to allow flash etc, then so be it.
.
That is a choice Apple has, it is NOT a monopoly as their are competing smart phones and other internet enabled gadgets.
We, you and I (and all other consumers) have the free choice NOT to buy Apple's product.
I have made a long time ago the decision not to take part of the iPhone hype as I simply feel that the device is not worth the pricetag plus the subscription cost.
//K
"Whats the difference with this and the mechanics of the anti-trust suit that hit Microsoft back in the day?"
The difference is that Microsoft was using a monopoly in one area (operating systems) to stifle competition in another (browsers), and that's illegal. Monopolies by themselves aren't illegal. Locking people in to a platform isn't illegal. It's the combination of the two that's a problem.
Unless and until Google (or any other mobile adverstiser) can complain that they're being prevented from competing because every possible platform on which to display ads is controlled by Apple, and they're being unfairly excluded from that platform, then Apple aren't breaking any anti-trust rules.
Doesn't your heart just bleed for Google (who own about 98.5% or whatever it is of the global online advertising market) that they're now facing some competition? Quick, let's open up the advertising market before Google go out of business!
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