Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#71

Post by zppx » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 4:45 PM UTC

The situation isn't new, what type of company press their employees to not write blogs or have twitter accounts about something they should be proud?

This is my main instance against Apple, Apple is partly a soviet style bureaucracy, it's impossible to know right now from whom the good ideas came from, basically people blame or praise Steve Jobs after every show keynote for the work that a team of great anonymous engineers are developing for each new product.

This don't show that Steve Jobs is mad, it only says that the board of directors is either oppressive towards Apple employee or submissive towards Jobs, anyway incompetent, but it is hard to say about incompetence when your company is so lucrative.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#72

Post by 83457 » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 4:46 PM UTC

nfnaaron wrote: post #67

So why doesn't Adobe just add a feature to their tool, that will take an app originally written for the iPhone in Jobs-approved languages, suck that source up and produce either source for Adobe's tools or source directly for other phones? It doesn't take care of existing apps that were written elsewhere first, but it does take care people who can write iPhone apps and would like to port those elsewhere.

Seems like a valid idea but defeats their current purpose of making flash development available for the iphone

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#73

Post by tedunangst » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 4:52 PM UTC

tibbon wrote: post #20

So Frameworks like Unity for game development are basically dead, making it so that indie developers who don't have the money/ability to write their entire engines from scratch are nearly banished and putting only the AAA title makers in the running. Great...

Why can't an indie developer use a game engine written in C, C++, or Objective-C?

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#74

Post by skywalker » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 4:54 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #28

orangecat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably yes. Microsoft never tried to stop users from running whatever software they wanted on Windows, they just made it more inconvenient in some cases to get that software.

"I will use my operating system monopoly to put you out of business if you don't assist me in putting an unrelated competitor of ours out of business" is worse to you than "you may only use Objective C to develop on this device"? I don't like Objective C either, but I don't take it that far.

"I will use my operating system monopoly to put you out of business if you don't assist me in putting an unrelated competitor of ours out of business" is worse to you than "you may only use Objective C to develop on this device"?

What about this: "I will use my mobile operating system prestige to put your mobile company out of business if you don't assist me in putting a competitor of ours, Adobe, out of the mobile app business".

The word "monopoly" doesn't add much. People could develop for MacOS back then when Microsoft did that, but nobody used MacOS. Likewise, people can develop for Android now, but nobody uses android.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#75

Post by JeremyChase » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 4:58 PM UTC

This rule is only in there so they can justify their selective enforcement. I'm sure you'll still be able to do whatever you want, but it gives them a line to point to when not approving certain apps they don't like for whatever reason.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#76

Post by grumpyfart » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 5:00 PM UTC

"It is perhaps reasonable to specify the nature of the programs that can be sold in the AppStore. It is not reasonable to specify how developers create those programs so long as the end result meets the specified end result criteria."

Can you see the pattern?

About a couple of months ago we were swearing to Apple because of AppStore policies, and now AppStore policy to ban random apps is acceptable since they introduced even more ridiculous terms.

I like the way how Steve plays!

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#77

Post by MikeTLive » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 5:05 PM UTC

Is Jobs taking these actions to prevent the commoditization of his platform? I refer the reader back to the Joel Article reposted a few days ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250958

If apps are portable from iphone to droid the phones step closer to being just another commodity portable device.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#78

Post by potatolicious » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 5:07 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #66

wvenable wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true, but the implicit assumption here is that only EA can make AAA games and indie developers just produce crap. That assumption has been demonstrated to be false on both points.

Not at all! You can buy a few C++ game engines (e.g. Torque) and port them. I have Torque running on Linux, Solaris, Mac, & Windows. Considering it's normal posix underneath, you just have to redo some plumbing.

The iPhone is POSIX, but not to you as the developer. Porting Torque to the iPhone will have to be done by GarageGames, not by you - even if you pull it off it will certainly be violating a laundry list of App Store rules.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#79

Post by grumpyfart » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 5:09 PM UTC

Even though it's insane all developers will suck it up as Apple has the power (boat load of users) and developers want to make money. They'll suck it up and keep developing what they are developing.

From Apple point of view this makes perfects sense, they are not loosing anything. They know as soon as they can keep the end-users happy developers will come. That what has been happening and it'll keep that until someone else comes up with a better marketing + product and take over a big chunk of the market. And Android is not ready for that kind of action yet.

Re: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

#80

Post by potatolicious » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 5:09 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #73

tibbon wrote: post #20

So Frameworks like Unity for game development are basically dead, making it so that indie developers who don't have the money/ability to write their entire engines from scratch are nearly banished and putting only the AAA title makers in the running. Great...

Why can't an indie developer use a game engine written in C, C++, or Objective-C?

Nearly every major game engine out there uses scripting for actual game logic - it decouples the engine from game code, which is desirable (no rebuilds to alter basic game behavior, for example, enabling faster turnarounds and prototyping).

Hell, the most popular game engine of our day (Unreal) uses its own proprietary JavaScript-like language for nearly all game code. Other engines like Gamebryo leverage Lua extensively - to the benefit of both developers as well as consumers, who can modify the game (not an iPhone advantage, but still).