If you’ve been following the recent story about Apple developer Guilherme Rambo getting locked out of his Apple Developer account for months, then you should know that he’s back in business. Rambo noted on Twitter that Apple has reinstated his access.
Guilherme “Gui” Rambo is the Brazilian developer behind the adorable ChibiStudio. But he’s best known to the Apple community at large as a “spelunker:” a developer who roots around in Apple’s macOS and iOS code looking for interesting tidbits. He uncovered evidence of the iPhone X prior to launch, and he also found AirPods Pro images prior to Apple’s official announcement. In addition to developing, Rambo writes for 9to5Mac, where his deductive analysis has been essential to uncover product scoops.
In August Apple locked Rambo out of his developer account with no explanation. He privately sought resolution from Apple for months, but got absolutely nowhere. Apple failed to return his calls, after reps promised to escalate the issue to supervisors. Apple’s complete stonewalling inspired Rambo to post this past week to his own web site with details about what happened.
The post went viral on social media, and numerous Apple web sites picked up the story (including iDownloadBlog). General consensus among the Apple digerati was that Apple’s conduct seemed unnecessarily petty and retaliatory. Even if Rambo’s account access had been suspended because he’d run afoul of Apple’s draconian non-disclosure agreements with registered developers – something only speculated upon, since Apple offered absolutely no explanation for his shutdown.
Yesterday Apple finally made right.
My Apple developer account issues have been resolved. https://t.co/gcLP9rCosd
— Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) November 22, 2019
iDB reached out to Rambo for comment, but he told us his public post and tweet will have to do. The important thing here is that Apple finally corrected a really lousy situation – even if took public approbation for them to do so.
Do you think Apple was right to shut down Rambo? Do you think their silent treatment was unnecessary? Let us know what you think in the comments.