I suppose C++ will be banned when QT for iPhone is ready.
New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
251–260 of 495 posts
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You do get GPS, just no camera, mic.
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried writing your Haskell-based app for Android? Or perhaps Windows Mobile? or Palm?
Android requires use of the Dalvik VM. Native code cannot make API calls to create interfaces etc. WebOS is the same deal, must use JavaScript and their framework for a native interface (and WebOS is a dying platform.) Windows Mobile is garbage, maybe 7 will be better, but it's half a year away and likely Microsoft will just copy Apple blindly and ban languages other than C# and C++.
So, for iPhone/iPad development, you can use C, C++, Objective-C, or JavaScript (4 languages).
But on the other platforms you are in reality limited (in practice) to one or two languages? I'm looking at you, Android and BlackBerry. (Windows and Palm don't really count, since nobody's writing for them).
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
This change doesn't just cover Flash though; it also hits all of the Mono cross-compilers (and Scheme, and everything else that happens to cross-compile). I can't see any way that this turns out as remotely positive for developers.
Apple has consistently demonstrated that they don't care about what developers want. They seem to believe, and have so far been shown to be correct that if they can get the consumers, developers will follow. The only way I can see this changing is if a killer app that consumers want becomes available on another platform and not iPhone OS due to Apple's restrictions.
> Apple has consistently demonstrated that they don't care about what developers want.
The facts disagree.
The App Store model is unusual and it is not perfect. Few developers have any experience with Cocoa or Objective-C. Developers must use a Mac. iPhone software only runs on the iPhone and is not easily ported to other platforms.
Despite all of that, Apple has attracted developers to the App Store and the iPhone in numbers nobody would have predicted. Meanwhile, all other mobile platforms are rushing to duplicate the model.
It would seem Apple knows exactly what developers want.
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market.
The average person's tolerance for faulty software is lower than it should be. I guess Apple wants to raise expectations, so that people are locked into the iPhone. ("OMG, that android app has ITS OWN KEYBOARD!!!111".) Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.
Yeah, the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Emacs, vi, Mac OS X, iPhone OS, Windows 7, Google search, Apache, Nginx, the very first web browser, et cetera are utter crap.
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#256This is only enforceable for tools like CS5 that reverse engineered the app signing process. How could Apple distinguish binaries produced intermediaries like PhoneGap and Appcelerator's Titanium from binaries produced by native Objective C code?
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're clearly doing this to lock people down and prevent strong innovation on their platform. They want tons of toy apps, but nothing threatening. They don't want people abstracting over their platform. They are deliberately restricting developer freedom. If they wanted to avoid crap apps, they would just reject crap apps. They don't care about that. They want to prevent developers from innovating on top of the…
What language and tools do you think Apple uses for the apps they provide and/or sell on the iPhone/iPad?
Assembly and graphics shaders are used extensively, to name two that external developers are prohibited from programming in.
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I had to guess, the iPhone and iPod Touch are seen as more successful endeavors to Apple than the Mac has been of late. So I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's iPhone policies start leaking their way onto the Mac too.
If you believe Trefis, the iPhone makes up a little over 50% of AAPL's value as compared to ~20% from the Mac line, so anyone that thinks of it as more successful is right: http://www.trefis.com/company?hm=AAPL.trefis&hk=34d9a244... I really hope that this ridiculousness doesn't start to bleed through - the MacBook Pro is pretty much the only laptop I've ever considered usable for development, and I don't know what I…
Get a Sony Vaio Z, and install Lucid?
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#259Looking forward to Adobe's response. Going to wager it'll be in the form of a lawsuit, and that the FCC will get involved. Whip out the marshmallows, this should be interesting :)
As much as I dislike this particular move, and Apple's Orwellian control over their platform, bringing this to a lawsuit and getting the FCC involved would be straight-up wrong . Let the market decide this one, Adobe has no legitimate ground whatsoever to force Apple to support it. I would be hugely disappointed to see Adobe pursue this course of action, and would regard it with significantly more contempt than I cur…
the market is fucking clueless. it's entirely possible that the path from where we are now to completely locked down "appliances" has monotonically increasing user experience. that doesn't mean it isn't an abysmal local maxima though.
Re: New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
#260Earlier 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.
The hardest thing to me about ditching Mac would be that Apple is the only company capable of doing a user interface. ALL other user interfaces by ALL other vendors suck. For some reason, no human beings on the entire planet other than those that work at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino are capable of doing a UI.
This is a massive exaggeration. I went from OSX to Ubuntu and I am more productive on Ubuntu in interface terms. The dock is very silly and graphical when you have quicksilver or gnome-do. Chrome is a better browser and browser UI experience than Safari in my opinion (and lots of people like firefox and opera more). The Finder vs Nautilus differences aren't big enough really, there are pros and cons to each. Apple stuff is well designed until you want to go past just cookie cutter customizations and then the openness IS the UI because I define it to work how I want to.
The same caries over to other things. Sure the install and uninstall of applications on OSX is a great UI. But apt-get just seriously leaves it in the dust. The problem with linux was never that it had a bad UI or was too customizable. The problem with linux was actual hardware bugs in drivers, lack of office, lack of flash, lack of games. Which have mostly been addressed asides from games (which is a sore point for Apple too). UI is far too overrated over actual features.
And it's all based on a myth. Steve Jobs ringing up SUN over their looking glass and threatening with UI patents is just ridiculous. As are the claims to Apple fame with interfaces taken from Xerox.
So yes, I agree Apple are very good, possibly the best at UIs. But my points are 1) UIs aren't as massively important as people say, 2) Apple's "innovations" have been overrated 3) your statement that "no human beings on the entire planet other than those that work at One Infinite Loop in Cupertino are capable of doing a UI" is just ridiculous.