“Kills” is just the right word for it. It take some reading and thinking to decide whether there was malice or culpability, but kill is the right word. For instance, I kill misbehaving apps on my computer all the time.

I think the journalists are missing the possibility that kill has a factual, rather than pejorative meaning here.

Ernie

His claims to the goodness of licensing to iMuni is deceptive at best. Basically what is going on here is that NBIS is demanding protection money or they'll bust your shop. iMuni paid them off, so they get to stay open. The “NBIS” guys appear to be bullies with clubs, and Apple didn't verify their claim before they shut down Routesy.

Whatever.

BTW – Yuo hate Muni? Y'ought try the VTA. Now that's a joke of a transit system.

tim in san jose

What?? MUNI owns the data! It's MUNI's buses. They paid NextBus to install the systems and provide the monitoring and aggregation software. It is their data to do whatever they please with it.

“They pay to have a prediction system in place for their riders” …. and yet they don't own the data? Come on. You're over-reaching here.

Public data belongs to the PUBLIC. Don't like it? Don't use it.

FYI: the City paid Nextbus to install the GPS systems and monitoring software.

Learn to read before you start to type.

Apple pulled the plug on the app, so therefore Apple killed it. Now whether it was justified or not, can be debated.

So anyway, that's why he can't. It's not available.

tim in san jose

BUT as a mistake, they certainly failed to be reasonable.

Also, one has to wonder about “Community standards” In the case of “Hot Dog Down A Hallway”, which was previously rated as being appropriate for ages 9 and up.

But hey, some people just see what they want to see.

NextBus was an interesting little startup in the late 90's, based in Emoryville.. Anyone familiar with transit systems in the bay area will recognize the name from the system put into place on the Emoryville Go Round, a transit prediction system donated by NextBus as a working R&D tool. The next system installed was on the #22 bus line in SF. All the trains in SF were done in 1999/2000.

So who owns the data? Good question. The nextBus prediction system was sold off years ago to a Canadian firm doing bus and transit tracking systems. The firm NBIS (in Emoryville) owns the marketing rights to the data. Ken is the major stakeholder here because the company still owes him money. Millions of dollars. He wants his share back. I don't blame him. So who owns the data? Muni? Probably not. They pay to have a prediction system in place for their riders as well as the use of the data for planning and control of the fleet of trains and buses. NBIS? Probably not. They own the rights to the commercial advertisement on the NextBus system. The Canadians. Bingo.

And me? I got 11,000 shars of NBIS bathroom wallpaper.

Nobody owes anyone anything. It would behoove developers to work with the data stream collectors to ensure their apps don't break. It would behoove NBIS to figure out a way to legitimately make money off this, and it would certainly behoove Apple to make sure their app developers can keep paying customers happy.

tim in san jose

I stand by my perception of why the word “kills” appeared in the head and it wasn't, in my opinion, for accuracy but rather to generate hits.

But your point is well taken and I will say no more. Good use of ad hominem attack though.

Yes, Apple should be more forthcoming. Having said that, Apple has maintained it's reputation and it's cache by keeping strict control of the operating systems and hardware that run those systems. I am a big fan of open source but linux in all of it's versions is simply too hard for me to manage. I don't have the time or the smarts. And while I may not be a computer guru, I too have multiple computers running in my environment and have had since the early CP/M days.

I saw no real refutation of “fairly reasonable explanations” other than the presupposition that there should be no limits by anyone on anything. And yes, Apple has invested millions and my concern is the capricious way that folks would have them put that investment at risk defending litigation so that copyright, intellectual property rights, and community standards (the majority of your examples) can be usurped.

And, for the record, I have only a Palm Treo associated with my employment that runs the abysmal mobile windows operating system. I don't own an iPhone but do have an iPod Touch which I find very useful.

I wish that I had your ability to make open source work for me and Android phones must be very interesting to you. Hopefully everyone will be satisfied in the future…. guys like you and aging computerists like me.