Free Republic

An Apple spokesperson has provided a brief explanation of why an unofficial Wikileaks app was pulled from the App Store. "We removed WikiLeaks because it violated developer guidelines," the representative says. "An app must comply with all local laws. It may not put an individual or target group in harms way." Apple has declined to say which groups or individuals might be "in harms way." The claim likely refers to the belief in some political quarters that recent Wikileaks documents are putting Americans and the US government at risk, having recently exposed activities like spying at the United Nations or...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven't been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday. The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it...

In Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” he said that Apple will soon be making more money from iPhone downloads than it does from the iPhone itself. He said this to make a point that businesses can still be successful charging for content. But a quick glance at the iPhone’s numbers show that he may have been a little too hasty in his assertion. By “iPhone downloads,” Gladwell is probably referring to the software programs that people download from Apple’s App Store, which offers a selection of more than 50,000 applications,...