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Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

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Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#81
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple essentially repackaged this guy's work, used it to enhance their own product in a way that all but eliminates any need to ever visit his website or even know it exists. Excellent.

Crazy thought, but, what if the primary motivation of the creator of JGuitar has nothing to do with his website, his reputation, etc.? For example, what if his primary motivation is to do something useful for others? What if his primary motivation is just to improve the enjoyment of people who like playing guitar? I agree that Apple should have handled this differently. At the same time, I think we should honour this…

> Crazy thought, but, what if the primary motivation of the creator of JGuitar has nothing to do with his website, his reputation, etc.? For example, what if his primary motivation is to do something useful for others? What if his primary motivation is just to improve the enjoyment of people who like playing guitar?

The whole point is that Apple never asked for this guy's opinion. That he's OK with what Apple's doing is a happy coincidence, and the next guy whose work they're going to use may have a different opinion.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#82
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he put up a public API? From the post it looks like the shortcut is constructing a search result url, and then scraping the photo out of that page.

Every URL is kind of an API. Some returns HTML, some JSON. If I write a custom browser that only loads images from web pages then I'm abusing the internet?

"Every URL is kind of an API"

That is exactly what I meant, but better phrased - thanks.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#83
post #58
post #41

> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more. Is everyone missing the fact…

The reason everyone is reacting the way they are is because this news really isn't about this particular website. It's about the fact that the largest corporation on earth has decided it can freeboot everyone else's content. It's part of a trend too. Google a topic and on the right hand side of the page you'll see the first paragraph from Wikipedia. How exactly do you expect wikipedia to survive if no one ever has to…

The web was literally built do be usable this way. I know people have started to believe that the only allowable way to view "content" is in the way the website builders decided, but your browser is allowed to display the content it downloaded in any way it wants to you.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#84
post #41

> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more. Is everyone missing the fact…

If I build a chart generator for use in one of my sites, hosted on that domain, with no published API whatsoever, it would be odd to see some random productivity app using that straight from peoples phones to chart their stuff.

Not illegal, Apple or the developer isn’t claiming that my API is theirs. And maybe it’s open on my robots.txt and maybe my terms of service say nothing about it.

But it’s weird. You just pushed an app out to a billion devices allows users to hit my chart generator directly. That’s plain weird.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#85
post #56
post #41

> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more. Is everyone missing the fact…

I don't get it either... It's like calling a lawyer because Google links to your page.

Would there be a difference, if Apple had downloaded the content and was serving it from its own hosts? (As far as an app user is concerned, there isn't much of a difference.) Now add to this the hosting fees / resources used…

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#87
post #41

> I'm genuinely thrilled that someone at Apple deemed my chord calculator technology worthy of inclusion in the iOS shortcuts gallery. If anyone from Apple is reading this, please reach out using JGuitar.com's contact form. We can work together to make this experience even better. I can provide high quality SVG images of all chord diagrams, support alternate tunings, instruments and more. Is everyone missing the fact…

> When you publish something on the internet, people can link to it. That's how the internet works.

I think one issue is that Apple themselves prohibit it. From their App Store Review Guidelines, section 5.2.2 [1]:

"5.2.2 Third Party Sites/Services: If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a third party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so under the service’s terms of use. Authorization must be provided upon request."

And Apple also prohibit you from doing so on parts of their website, from 4.5.1:

"4.5.1 Apps may use approved Apple RSS feeds such as the iTunes Store RSS feed, but may not scrape any information from Apple sites (e.g. apple.com, the iTunes Store, App Store, App Store Connect, developer portal, etc.) or create rankings using this information."

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#int...

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#88
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it either... It's like calling a lawyer because Google links to your page.

Would there be a difference, if Apple had downloaded the content and was serving it from its own hosts? (As far as an app user is concerned, there isn't much of a difference.) Now add to this the hosting fees / resources used…

This would actually cross the line. Right now there's a strong argument that Shortcuts is just acting as an images-only web browser, (like Lynx, but the opposite). If Apple actually copied the images to their own servers then they're copying the author's work without his authorization.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#89
post #3

It's cool that Apple's using your stuff, it's not cool they're not giving you attribution. I'd add a JGuitar url and copyright notice to all your images, so that this is displayed in Apple's results, and also call a lawyer.

It's not Apple that's using his stuff, it's the end user. Apple is providing software that enables the user to do so, but saying "Apple's using your stuff" here is like saying Mozilla foundation is "using your stuff" every time someone visits the website with Firefox or Thomas E. Dickey is "using your stuff" every time someone visits the website using Lynx.

It would be cool if Apple had reached out to him, but as other commenters have mentioned this integration has existed for a long time in the Workflow app, so it's not even new.

Re: Thanks for the Surprise Integration with My Website, Apple

#90
post #44

Only Apple can have someone effusively thanking them for what effectively amounts to abuse. Unbelievable.

For the real artist, most important thing is to know that people use your work and they like it or it's useful for them.

Perhaps, but I have a strong suspicion that if this had been a Google or a Microsoft the response by the author would have been very different.
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