iFixIt Violates Apple NDA, Gets Punished, Complains ⇥ macobserver.com

iFixIt got one of the forthcoming Apple TV’s through the lottery intended to provide early units to third-party developers under a strict NDA. Instead, they tore it apart and wrote about it publicly. Apple responded by cancelling their developer account, which nullified the app they had available on the App Store.

Jeff Gamet of the Mac Observer:

For iFixit, this isn’t going to be that big of a deal. The content they offered through their app is available on the company’s website, and it can still buy products it guts on release day just as it has always done.

For the rest of the developer community, however, the consequences are a lot bigger. Apple rarely gives developers pre-release access to hardware like this, and thanks to iFixit that likely won’t happen again. Next time, Apple will most likely limit access to a few hand picked developers who come to the company’s headquarters for some controlled hands-on time ahead of the product launch.

I hope that Apple can see past one bad egg. This should be entirely uncontroversial: iFixIt abused their developer account to acquire a prerelease product, knowingly violated the terms of receiving it, and was somehow surprised when Apple terminated the developer account associated with it.