Yesterday, June 9, 2011, MacRumors.com posted an article with a headline reading, “Apple Borrows iOS 5′s Wi-Fi Sync From Rejected App Submission.” I enjoy MacRumors because they generally present credible, frequent news about Apple. They occasionally do what they did with this article, right a controversial headline to get some clicks.

Please read the article before continuing on. (The Article)

Greg’s App

Function

Greg Hughes should be commended for trying to push the boundaries and provide a feature that wasn’t available at the time on iOS devices. However his choice in what app to build was not well thought out. It should have been obvious that Apple was actively developing a solution that would also allow syncing without a wire. It should have also been apparent that the app would be rejected under the duplicating existing services clause in the App Store.

Icon

The icons in question.

Greg’s icon uses two icons one denoting wifi and the other syncing.  I am having trouble tracking down who came up with the wifi symbol used in both icons but I can tell you that the exact shape of the wifi icon was used by Apple long before it was used by Greg.

The wifi portion of the icon in question was used by Apple as far back as 2005 in the AirPort Extreme Base Station manual. This is at least 3 years before apps for what is now iOS were even developed by anyone outside of Apple.

Screenshot from 2005 manual.

The sync portion of the icon in Greg’s layout was not ripped off by Apple on any level.  The arrows align much differently and Apple’s sync arrows align the white space to a full circle. Greg’s icon is very likely just icon’s drawn by another party other than Greg that were slapped together.

The Good News

So I think that Greg did the perfect thing.  He went underground and is selling his app for money to jail-broken phones. He didn’t, as far as I know, throw his hands up and complain but instead found a way to profit from the work he did on the app development.

Why this Article Bugs Me

The nerd nirvana that is the WWDC keynote was held just a few days ago.  This event announced the following:

• iOS5
• Lion
• iCloud
• Twitter integration
• iTunes Match
• Over-the-air sync
• Disk-less OSX instal
• PC free iOS devices
• Newsstand

With all these significant changes, why is an icon knockoff story top of news? The tone of the headline is meant to communicate that Apple is ripping off developers in some way. To me the real story that should have been written is “Developer Makes Money from Rejected App”.

Secondly the article frustrates me because if any icon stealing was done it was most definitely in reverse. Apple was using both the wifi and sync icon’s well before iPhone, iPad, or iOS existed.

So, MacRumors I’m calling bologna sandwich on you here. Get back to writing real stories.