Many of you have reported bugs and made requests for updates to WiFinder. I’ve dutifully logged, and already fixed most of them. However, I should let you know why it’s taking so long. But first, some background…
On Private Functions (or APIs – Application Programming Interfaces)
I worked for many years at Microsoft. We generally had a policy with our third-party developers: if it’s public and you use it, we’ll do our best to support that use forever, even if it’s on the fringes of how we intended it to be used. If it’s an undocumented function or something from one of our other binaries, we prefer you don’t use it, but we’re certainly not going to prevent you if you need it. But we reserve the right to break your application.
Many of these APIs exist, both at the OS layer (as here: http://www.inlumineconsulting.com:8080/website/nt.sekrits.html) and at the application layers. There’s nothing malicious about them – they’re just code that needed to be exposed for others to use that wasn’t at a quality level or a support level that we wished to keep For All Time. Stop with the conspiracy theories!
On WiFinder
OK, I’ll admit it. WiFinder uses APIs from a private framework (Apple80211). So does an application released shortly after WiFinder (WiFiFoFum) and one released in just the last couple of days (WiFiTrak). AFAIK, we all released and got our apps through the review process just fine.
Unfortunately, I have been asked to remove the API usage. Bit of a shock, but I let them know that I’d be happy to if they provided me with a public interface. Until that happens, though, I’m in a bit of limbo, and no updates can go through the process.
The Consolation
At least for now, they haven’t removed my application (or any of the others!). So I’m not really complaining. Well, I’m complaining that another product came out, mimiced all my features, polished them up, and released – when I’ve had a better version than that sitting on my machine for a long time! But certainly, by the terms of their license agreement, I’m in the wrong (as is anyone who uses undocumented APIs on the Microsoft platform). I just wanted to let folks know why there hasn’t – and may well never be – an update to WiFinder or any of the other WiFi applications.
