Developing within iPhone NDA Muffle aka The Cone of Silence

iphone application IQ Game Trivia

Neutrinos just wrapped its second iPhone application, it is a 20 questions trivia game called iQ.  It is great step from our first app, TipTotaler.  For iQ, I took on the user interface design for the application in addition to my normal website design and marketing.

The amount of graphic design and image handling in iPhone development is extensive and I’ve already blogged about a tool to assist in the 3d iPhone application icon design.  But the most interesting stuff is happening in Interface Builder and in xCode that I’m not supposed to talk about here.

Apple has an NDA up with all developers that they can not talk about their experience with the SDK.

5. Confidentiality
5.1 Information Deemed Confidential
You agree that the SDK licensed hereunder, the terms and conditions of this Agreement, and any
other non-public information that You learn about Apple’s products, designs, research,
development, know-how, or Apple’s business, finances or personnel, or non-public third party
information, in connection with this Agreement or in connection with Your use of any part of the
SDK will be deemed “Apple Confidential Information” under this Agreement.

 Here’s a shout to Rob Teel who would appreciate the intersection of tech and law here.  Anyhow, there are a lot of people speaking up about the gag order that has been imposed on people who are developing for the iPhone.  ARS Technica condemned it with an article with weird images in it.  The leading macrumor right now is that it has to do with multi-touch patents.

Whatever the reason, the NDA hasn’t kept some people from posting insights and portions of source code they aren’t supposed to.  Yet, Apple isn’t closing the threads and I haven’t read any reports of people being kicked out for it.  The drama of coding within a new platform was there when I started working with Facebook applications.  But Facebook didn’t have this secrecy thing going on, which makes this a little cooler.  Analyst expectations that Apple will sell 4.47 milliion more 3G iPhones makes it hot.

If you or someone you know has an iPhone–tell them about  iQ.

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