I’ve Been Macbroken
October 2nd, 2008I was honored this week to be invited as a guest host on the excellent MacBreak Weekly podcast.
MacBreak Weekly 108: Pull My iTunes
I listen to the show regularly so it was a bit strange to record with the guys I’m normally listening to passively. Every so often I had to remind myself that I could actually open my mouth and add something to the conversation!
A particularly well-timed (or poorly-timed, depending how you look at it) topic was that of the iPhone developer NDA, which we discussed a bit, carefully tip-toeing around any actual violation of the NDA, which was still in effect when we recorded, but was lifted a day later.
Developer Austin Meyer of X-Plane fame was also on the show, and one of the points we disagreed upon was whether or not it is productive for people outside Apple to present dissenting opinions or otherwise make a fuss about the inner workings of the company.
Austin tended to believe that we should trust Apple to work its magic in secrecy and with autonomy. I believe those of us on the outside can offer a unique perspective which Apple is itself sometimes blind to. A number of positive changes have happened in the past few years only after the public collectively agreed that Apple was taking the wrong course. It’s possible that Apple’s decision-making process has always been completely independent of outside influences, but I prefer to believe that they value the collective wisdom of their customer base, and are at least taking it into consideration as they develop their products and services.
I really appreciate Leo Laporte’s letting me take part in the show this week. If you haven’t given MacBreak Weekly a try before, this would be a great week to start!
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
> A particularly well-timed (or poorly-timed, depending how you look at it) topic was that of the iPhone developer NDA, which we discussed a bit, carefully tip-toeing around any actual violation of the NDA, which was still in effect when we recorded, but was lifted a day later.
Not exactly.
The NDA has not been lifted yet; the announcement was that they’re going to. As the announcement puts it, “Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so.”
Until then, the NDA is technically still in effect. (I have my doubts that Apple will bust anyone who violates it at this point, but that’s not the same as the NDA truly going away.)
October 2nd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I’m not so sure about that, Peter. I believe a public statement of NDA-lifting is sufficient to open the floodgates. It is a technique for NDA-lift clarification that Apple has used before. I guess we’re not lawyers, but in any case I think you’re right that Apple will not be busting anybody.
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Congratulations Daniel! I’m actually really pleased that Leo is including other people in the MacBreak Weekly podcasts because it stops them from getting stale and a bit predictable.
Here’s hoping that you are asked back again.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 am
I’ve been listning to MBW (and 99% of the rest of the TWiT podcasts) for years now, and CI since you and Manton started putting it out. I haven’t heard a bad episode of either yet. Hearing Austin was great, too (I’ve owned a copy of X-Plane since before it used OpenGL — ver 5???).
Once upon a time, I worked at Apple, too… and I can state from experience, that those people DO need outside perspectives to keep them grounded in reality. Actually, once *anybody* gets isolated from their customers, loosing their way gets real easy – perhaps inevitable.
I’m not a lawyer either, but… from my read of the NDA, it only covers information that’s not “public” — given the number of people that are now talking about it, I would guess that a good argument could be made that the SDK is now public knowlege (although, I have always thought that since anybody could download the SDK for free, an argument could be made that it always was public. However, I really don’t want to have to be the one making that argument to a judge!)
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Cool stuff. I will check out the podcast later.