Apple allows Google to cheat in the SDK | Hacker News Reader

Apple allows Google to cheat in the SDK

spazout.com

15 pointsKevinBongart10 comments

Apple has had an agreement with Google since the announcement of the iPhone. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt even sits at Apples board meetings.

Google is a special partner and this is why you get Google Maps integration, Google as the default search, etc... It only makes sense that they get preferred treatment in other situations as well.

Due to the Android conflict of interest, Eric Schmidt excuses himself from all conversations involving the iPhone.

True, particularly in strategic decisions. However, that does not mean that Google doesn't get special treatment when it comes to Apple products.

Eric Schmidt is a heck of a lot more likely to get Steve Jobs to bend the rules a bit than Joe Shmoe is.

<pedantic>recuses</pedantic>

"Our friends at the worlds biggest software company seem to not be playing fair when it comes to their new iPhone application."

Microsoft has an iPhone application?

And plus, Microsoft actually gets most of its revenues from selling software. Google gets its most of its revenues from selling ads.

Actually it looks like Google was just using a private, undocumented API. Apple likely did not give them special access. The blogger was able to gain access to the method later.

From using the app, it looks like they just use the accelerometer and guesswork. Or they just really suck at detecting my head. The preference for screen rotation says "Turning on Screen Rotation disables motion sensing for voice search."

The article has been updated to reflect that it's overriding an undocumented method on the UIApplication class called -proximityStateChanged. I've tried it and it looks like it's not a delegate method.

Gruber has a much better article on this here:

http://daringfireball.net/2008/11/google_mobile_uses_private...

Yeah, I think my phone just wasn't liking my hand/head when I was trying to test it.

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