Reprinted from TidBITS#1018/15-Mar-2010 with permission. Copyright (C) 2010, TidBITS. All rights reserved. http://www.tidbits.com/ ExtraBITS for 15 March 2010 --------------------------- by TidBITS Staff article link: Our extracurricular reading this week was all about Apple, with the New York Times examining the Apple/Google rift, the EFF taking a close read on Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, and usability guru Jakob Nielsen criticizing how iTunes handles app updates. **New York Times Examines the Apple/Google Rift** -- The New York Times has a lengthy article laying out the history of the relationship between Apple and Google, which started close but has now developed schisms due to the huge differences in corporate approaches and increasingly competitive products. Apple prefers proprietary systems and tight control over high margin products, whereas Google's goal is to increase Web usage (and thus ad revenue) via free services and open-source software. It's the iPhone OS versus Android, Mac OS X versus Chrome OS, Safari versus Chrome, and Apple's Quattro acquisition versus Google's AdMob buy. All that, and the competition between the companies is just starting to heat up. Read/post comments **EFF Examines iPhone Developer License Agreement** -- Alongside Apple's undeniable success with the iPhone App Store have been the near-constant stories of app rejections for dubious or entirely bogus reasons (to be fair, most rejections are entirely legitimate). But what gives Apple the right to reject or even remove apps? The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, to which all iPhone developers must agree, that's what. The EFF has now acquired copies of the agreement and analyzed some of the more troubling clauses. Would they stand up in court? There's no way to know until someone sues Apple. Read/post comments **Jakob Nielsen Criticizes iTunes App Update Interface** -- Usability guru Jakob Nielsen devoted his Alertbox post this week to showing how interfaces can become confusing if elements like buttons and checkboxes are too far away from the objects they act on, using the iPhone app updating interface in iTunes as an example. Our take is that the overall mistake here is that Apple is relying on iTunes for too many unrelated tasks that call out for different interface approaches. Read/post comments $$ This is TidBITS, a free weekly technology newsletter providing timely news, insightful analysis, and in-depth reviews to the Macintosh and Internet communities. Feel free to forward to friends; better still, please ask them to subscribe! Non-profit, non-commercial publications and Web sites may reprint or link to articles if full credit is given. Others please contact us. We do not guarantee accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017. Copyright 2010 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license. Contact us at: TidBITS Web site: License terms: Full text search: Subscriptions: Account help: .