Mhm. And the fact that he produced the first public implementation of this means that Apple isn't allowed to implement their own version — never mind the fact that such a feature requires lower level control than the App Store guidelines allows for its apps (meaning it's exactly the kind of feature that Apple should be implementing themselves, not App Store developers).

I think that's the main point is that he created an app that was probably declined because it used private APIs (or required root access?).

Also: he produced the first public implementation of what? A wireless syncing software? iSync on OSX came a while before that and I'm sure there have been quite a few before that.

Mhm, so I don't understand why he expected anything different or why people are so outraged it was rejected — that's one of the major benefits of the App Store: sandboxing and access restrictions of apps.

Yeah, as far as I know it was the first publicly-released wireless syncing software designed to let you sync iTunes and iOS.

I would guess that 99% of the outrage stems from the similarity of the icons.

Only problem is, that's about as generic an icon as you could get by mixing Apple's default iOS icon style with a standard WiFi and Sync icon. Not that unique...

So is an apple with a bite out of it.

There was no international standard wireless Internet logo for a long, long time. There still may not be. But this one is indeed Apple’s standard AirPort icon (they dropped one ring going OS X → iOS due to size contraints).

I dunno, the headline is "Apple copies rejected app" not "Apple copies rejected app icon". Seems to me that people either don't know how the App Store and its requirements work, or they're just want to be outraged at Apple. Edit: It seems to me that even people commenting here in HN don't realise that the App Store guidelines don't allow for an app to take this kind of access.

The icons are similar (despite how shitty an icon it is), but it won't actually be used anywhere other than apple.com/iOS5 as far as I know; for example it's not even in the Settings app on iOS 5. Plus people are forgetting that this icon is just what Apple have used for years as their WiFi/AirPort. If anything, the developer copied — or at the very least, took a lot of inspiration from — Apple's icons for his app's icon.

Oh yeah, I should probably be clear that I personally don't think the icon is a big deal, for the reasons you stated.

I actually don't think anything about it is a big deal. Someone made an app that should have been an OS feature, Apple rejected it for using undocumented APIs, Apple builds the thing that should have been an OS feature, and Apple haters use this sequence of events as evidence that Apple is Evil.

It's basically the same thing as when people enabled multitasking on jailbroken iPhones and then Apple implemented it. Did they "steal" the idea of multitasking?

Copied from another HN comment, but if this is true it'd explain why there's so much furor about it on the boards:

> yardie 36 minutes ago | link

> From what I remember it used the published APIs which Apple then unpublished and rejected his app. This is why the story got so much traction in the first place. If it was another developer doing cool things with unpublished APIs it would have been sold through one of the other appstores and that would have been the end of it.

It's not sand-boxing if you use bureaucracy instead of technology.

From the company that is suing over the use of the word "App" it is ironic.

Not to mention that they apparently tried to hire him.

Not to mention that they apparently thought of hiring him.

It isn't obvious of whether they actually made an offer, but I think not.