New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others • Hacker News Board

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#191

Post by edster » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:07 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #46

Getting away from the frenzied rhetoric, my opinion is that what Apple really wants to prevent is people releasing multi-platform compilers. So taking Flash as just one example, if I can build one app and the compiler can make me an iPhone executable, an Android executable, and so forth, Apple don't want that. In my experience so far with such "cross platform compatibility layers," they always produce results that wa…

It's not just with the consoles. I used to develop Lotus Notes applications. The problem with Notes was that the barrier to entry for developers was too low such that it hurt the platform, and it made it hard to distinguish good developers and good apps from the chaff. When a bunch of unqualified developers fill the world with junk it gives the entire platform a reputation as being junky.

I now develop iPhone applications, and I personally agree with Apple in this respect. If you want to develop iPhone applications, spend some time and become proficient with the tools.

And, @raganwald is correct that it's still lock-in, it's just a matter of where the lock is.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#192

Post by rimantas » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:07 PM UTC

tumult wrote: post #151

rimantas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as if Flash is known for its stability (especially on the Apple platform) and security…

This affects anything that isn't C, C++, or Objective-C. Pay attention.

Yes it does. My comment was about Flash however.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#193

Post by MutantSushi » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:07 PM UTC

natrius wrote: post #155

jbeda wrote: post #121

I'd love to see something like Logo or MIT's Scratch for the iPad. As I think about introducing my kids to computers that totally makes sense. This new language from Apple seems to preclude that. It is totally off base.

Interpreters were already prohibited.

Interpreters being banned is old news, this is about compiled stuff being rejected because you chose a 'wrong' language.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#194

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:08 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #105

tumult wrote: post #54

This is unsavory in the extreme. I had been writing an iPhone app in Haskell, and now I have to can it? What the fuck? Fuck you, Apple! Blowhards. Hope you guys enjoy the mass exodus of decent developers from your dumbass platform with kiddie languages.

GHC has a C backend. Just claim that you wrote that code yourself. Problem solved.

It's being phased out in the next version.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#195

Post by api » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:08 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #137

mortenjorck wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market.

"If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market" Perhaps, like Nintendo, they learned the lessons from the collapse of the home video game market in 1983. When Nintendo was contemplating developing the NES, they took a deep look at what had caused the collapse. What they concluded was that the main cause of death was the market being flooded with too many crappy games.…

Couldn't you have a non-fascist solution to this?

Do something like Reddit, Digg, or Hacker News... let people guinea-pig apps and upvote/downvote them and sort in each category.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#196

Post by jackowayed » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:09 PM UTC

api wrote: post #172

axod wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just make a webapp :/ all the freedom you need.

Yup, freedom to have: no access to hardware, no ability to do anything computationally intensive, no filesystem access, no storage, no disconnected access, ...

There is storage--and the ability to run offline--thanks to HTML5, and the same web apps will work the same (more-or-less) on Android and webOS (Palm) phones. You get a SQL db (up to 5MB), plus a persistent key-value store and a window-local "session" key-value store that isn't persistent.

But yeah, no camera/GPS/microphone/etc.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#197

Post by ptomato » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:09 PM UTC

awa wrote: post #150

And Microsoft just announced they silverlight can work on iPhone/iPad using IIS Media Services http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/silverlight_media_se...

That isn't silverlight, that's video, which the silverlight media server now just provides in a format the iPhone/iPad already supports. No .net running on iPhone OS at all.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#198

Post by tshawkins » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:10 PM UTC

MutantSushi wrote: post #173

raganwald wrote: post #46

Getting away from the frenzied rhetoric, my opinion is that what Apple really wants to prevent is people releasing multi-platform compilers. So taking Flash as just one example, if I can build one app and the compiler can make me an iPhone executable, an Android executable, and so forth, Apple don't want that. In my experience so far with such "cross platform compatibility layers," they always produce results that wa…

Sure, 'multiplatform compiling/targeting' is one thing. But banning non-approved languages is silly. Even apple is funding projects like RubyCocoa and bringing Python compatability to the Cocoa API. If somebody wants to write an app using CocoaTouch but finds Ruby, Python, Lua, or Mono to be a better fit for the project or their own capabilities than Obj-C, why stop them from doing so? If the apps still have to inter…

Think OS/4, think opening up multitasking to 3rd party apps, perhaps thats why they are being so anal about how apps should be written, if they are planning to make changes to the low-level libraries to support 3rd party app multitasking then they are going to want to make sure that 3rd party apps are linked against them.

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#199

Post by kgroll » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:10 PM UTC

kqr2 wrote: post #95

Zak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycotting the Mac platform (which is pretty much free of any such absurdity) doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That's where Apple is doing things right . You should of course, shun iPhone OS devices if you feel this way. The system76 laptops are probably generic machines from Clevo, Sager or some such with a custom badge. Alienware used to do the same thing.

Yes, but it's the content creators that are developing the apps and making the iPad/iPhone a more valuable platform. Boycotting Apple's content creation tools and consequently not developing for the iPad/iPhone is one way to send a message.

I've been wondering about this a bit lately. I've so far chosen not to support the iPhone OS for the reason you mention, instead favoring Android.

However, I'm ultimately interested in serving my application to the largest number of people, and it seems clear to me that the App Store is the best way to achieve that today. So, do you cave in and develop an iPhone version? Or, do you stand by your morals, and, in turn, limit your audience?

Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others

#200

Post by MutantSushi » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:10 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #48

jsz0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the phone market.

"Nope. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the phone market" It's a common misconception that you have to have a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law. You don't. It also goes the other way--having a monopoly is not necessarily a violation of antitrust. For instance, mergers have been shot down on antitrust grounds even when the merged companies would have had under 50% of the market. Antitrust is more about the effect…

Yes, but is relevant if they are not judged to have a anti-compoetitive effect on the market as a whole. Clearly a company does not have to be a 100% monopoly in the literal sense to run afoul of anti-monopoly laws, but these sanctions are not applied to EVERY company. In Europe, it is not even a matter of behavior illegal for 'monopolies' to engage in, if they are a 'monopoly' there can be sanctions.