In an uncharacteristic display of good sense (by current standards), Apple has finally decided to drop the non-disclosure clause from the iPhone developer agreement, claiming that it was intended to prevent competitors from ripping them off (which makes no sense - no NDA is going to prevent that months after a product's release - but it's water under the bridge, I suppose). Now, how about those ridiculously inconsistent and developer-hostile App Store policies...?

Looks like Apple has come up with a unique way to deal with the iPhone App Store issue: They've begun putting the actual rejection letters themselves under a non-disclosure agreement. The mind, it boggles. I have to wonder - are we starting to see a return to the "dumb Apple" of the early-to-mid-1990's? (courtesy of Daring Fireball)

Apple's apparent intent to keep competing applications off of the iPhone and iPod Touch is ridiculous. It is wholly inexcusable for them to abuse their control over the platform in this way. Who is to say they won't try this on the Mac as well, some day? John Gruber provides some additional commentary.

A short critique on the most recent of Apple's poorly conceived iTunes user interface ideas: Two buttons that look alike but do two entirely different things. Apple has a great track record when it comes to user interface design, overall, but have slipped a fair bit since Mac OS X came out over seven years ago.

Upon reflection, it seems like the absolutely best anti-spam tool we have in our arsenal is the English language and the inability for spammers and phishers to actually write good copy. They can almost perfectly pull off the appearance of a real security alert email from a bank, but - between the need to mangle words to get them past Bayesian filtering and the the fact that the senders are usually unable to come up with anything beyond broken English themselves - only an idiot would fall for most of these emails. Problem is: There are a lot of idiots out there.