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Sunday, October 5, 2008

Why did Apple have NDA for iPhone application developers?

On October 1, Venture Beat reported that Apple dropped NDA(Non-Disclosure Agreement) for iPhone application developers, which was rejoiced by application developers. Before that, iPhone application developers have to agree not to talk about Apple development kit or the work they did with it before they can download the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit), which looks very restrictive (more restrictive than Microsoft Windows API?). I do not think it was a good decision, which hinders the healthy growth of iPhone as a platform. Making it open, iPhone should see a more healthy growth. Anyway, what is Apple afraid of? Same reason as they did for Macintosh?

Maybe the drop is related with the upcoming G1. Android, the operating system of G1, offers an open alternative to iPhone. I think an open platform will foster innovation and benefit cell phone users.

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