Apple's NDA Extended to App Store Rejection Letters

Recently some high profile rejections at the App Store have caused a storm of controversy across the blogosphere. The controversy centers around apps being rejected because they duplicate pre-existing Apple app functionality --- as well as a lack of transparency over App Store policies.

Well, this move sure as heck isn't going to help with that transparency problem.

In what's obviously a response to the criticism over the recent rejections, Apple has decided to extend their already rather draconian NDA for the iPhone SDK to rejection letters. New letters not have the following message:

THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE

While I'm not aware if this is simply a reminder, meaning the NDA had previously covered this, or a new development, it's certainly not going to go over well with developers and critics of Apple. Does anyone besides me think Apple, with its relatively new status in the marketplace, is becoming slightly drunk with power?

And while some say that if you're developing something for a smartphone, it has to be on the iPhone, there's that other recently introduced platform that calls out to developers with its openness. Of course, there's that throttling issue, which might be a major blocker for those with high-bandwidth apps, but that's another story.