Greg Hughes, the developer of the Wi-Fi Sync jailbreak app, has been reaching out to all sorts of websites – including iSource – and pointing to the fact that Apple’s new Wi-Fi Syncing features functionality that is very similar to the app he submitted to them a year ago. Posts at TUAW and The Register have reported in the issue, and have even pointed out how seemingly similar the two icons are.
I’m not above believing that Apple will simply take a design without asking for permission (the iBooks and Delicious Library scandal wasn’t that long ago), but this instance just isn’t terribly convincing. The idea of syncing over Wi-Fi is not a Greg Hughes exclusive – Microsoft’s Zune announced Wi-Fi syncing back in 2007, and there are plenty of other examples of more basic versions of over-the-air syncing (MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange, etc.).
Then there’s the matter of the icons. While both Wi-Fi Sync icons do appear to be similar, Apple already has a pretty strong iconic precedent in this area, and it’s called iSync. From where I’m standing, Apple’s new Wi-Fi Sync icon looks much more like an iSync icon with a Wi-Fi symbol and rounded corners (another common Apple iOS element), than a rip-off of Greg Hughes’ own app icon.
We definitely owe Hughes something for bringing the concept of Wi-Fi Sync to iOS before Apple had a version ready to ship, but it also seems to me that the debt has been paid in the form of 50,000 Cydia Store sales (Wi-Fi Sync retails for $9.99 at regular price). I’ve gladly used Hughes’ hack several times over the last year, but I don’t feel any guilt about my $10 purchase being outdated by a free solution from Apple.
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TAGS: wi-fi sync, WiFi Sync
