So last night I pre-ordered a copy of Erica Sadun's "iPhone Developer's Cokbook" from Amazon. The expected ship date is sometime late in October, but I'll be surprised if that's even vaguely accurate considering the ongoing problems with the NDA. Developers are now resorting to paying each other US$1 so they can be a sub-contractor, and presumably have some sort of legal protection against Apple's legal team and the NDA, before sharing information about developing against the official iPhone SDK.
So I doubt Erica's publisher will let her release the book until the NDA is lifted, and she isn't alone in having that problem, there are no doubt a bunch of books, tutorials and other such things waiting in the wings, waiting for Apple to lift the NDA.
However it currently seems to be a case that it's not when the NDA is lifted, but if it's going to be lifted at all. In what is now being called the fourth age of software distribution, might yet more companies adopt this bullying approach? That's a faintly scary prospect for independent developers like me...
No comments:
Post a Comment