[jsprinkles]

Best solution here would appear to be never sync that iPad again, back it up to iTunes, disable its Wi-Fi, and consider it her speech appliance. Don't update the OS, don't sync to iTunes, never do anything with it again aside from using it for this essential purpose. If you have to buy another one, restore it from your iTunes backup. These are the 'legal' avenues, clearly with jailbreaking it's simpler.

Unfortunate that a legal battle puts you in that position, but if this app is as important to her life as she says, she should be perfectly fine freezing that iPad where it is and not treating it like an iPad any more. It is now a dedicated appliance, not a general-purpose iPad. Buy another one for everything else.

Sucks, but, best solution given the circumstances, I think. Obviously, it'd be great if the circumstances changed.

(Edited to add backup.)

[btilly]

What do you do when it breaks?

Modern computer equipment is not designed to last forever. Computer equipment that is heavily used by a 4 year old is even less likely to survive. (I just was trying to talk in my pool/sandbox/mud/...!)

[jsprinkles]

Thank you, editing in to back up.

[mmahemoff]

Are you going back up the iTunes computer too? Restoring backups relies on various moving parts. It's never a simple matter when operating systems and hardware keep moving forward. I'm not saying there's a better solution here, just saying it's non-trivial and fragile.

[shuzchen]

I think the best solution is to port the code over to android. You might be disallowed from selling your app on any marketplaces, but there's nothing preventing you from running it on your own device.

[SoftwareMaven]

There's nothing to stop them putting the app on their Apple device if they had the source.

[shuzchen]

I don't do IOS development, but from what I hear you still need a developer account (which costs money and I'm assuming can be revoked) and there exists an install limit for your dev app (though I hear that limit is a lot higher than it used to be).

Their goal is also to provide this to other families. I don't think you can expect everyone that wants this tool to have apple hardware to compile on as well as a developer account.

That's a lot of hoops to get through when the alternative is as simple as attaching your .apk in an email or posting it online.

[stephen_g]

I wouldn't update to a major new iOS version (to avoid incompatibility issues), but there's no reason to turn off WiFi or not sync it. Like Google with Andriod, Apple has the ability to remotely remove apps from devices, but unlike Google [1] [2] I've never heard of them using it and I can't find any articles that suggest they have.

I assume that it's only for malware (given they haven't removed tethering apps, for example) so I wouldn't worry.

1. http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Uses+Its+Remote+Kill+Android... 2. http://www.neowin.net/news/google-to-remote-kill-malicious-a...

[gcb]

If it's life changing, pay the party that invented the thing, not the ones that copied it in a app.

Now, if it's not remotely equally useful, sue them for something for screwing your life with false claims.

[regularfry]

Who should pay for that? The company which believes they aren't infringing and are already in negotations over the licensing? Or the family who presumable don't have infinite wallets?

[gcb]

doesn't the company that claims to have invented it first have a product in the market?

[sp332]

No, the first company makes standalone devices. The (allegedly) infringing company, which I think was founded by former employees, makes an iPad app.

[regularfry]

Not one that's good enough, apparently.

[gcb]

I feel the discussion may be either: Cheap enough or marketed enough.

Because never the article talk about it. So either it's cost prohibitive, our they couldn't even find it's existence. But again... If it were life changing...

[regularfry]

Perhaps you missed this passage on a first read-through:

    What would happen if we lost SfY? I have no idea. As I’ve explained 
    before, we have tried other communication apps and didn’t find any 
    that were a good match for Maya.  Interestingly, we also carefully 
    considered purchasing a communication device from PRC, and met with 
    one of their representatives in November, nine weeks before a post 
    on my Facebook wall introduced me to SfY (and seven weeks before it 
    even existed in the iTunes store).  We examined PRC’s devices and 
    were disappointed to see that they weren’t a good fit for Maya.  
    For us, this wasn’t an issue of an expensive device versus a 
    “cheap” app.  This was an issue of an ineffective device (for Maya) 
    versus an app that she understood and embraced immediately.  The 
    only app, the only system, that she immediately adopted as her own 
    way of communicating.