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

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

#161

Post by city41 »

api wrote: post #157
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.

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.

Although historically I have always agreed with you, I dare say Microsoft is starting to figure it out. Slowly but surely. Win7 is almost a pleasant experience.

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

#162

Post by api »

city41 wrote: post #108
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.

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.

That's what I'm worried about. The instant that happens, I'm gone.

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

#163

Post by ptomato »

tumult wrote: post #159
ptomato wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even granted that, the reason Apple doesn't want that is still because of the UX. Apps with the same codebase for Android/iPhone will automatically suck as far as the UI is concerned. Things like the lack of multitouch gestures on android, different screen sizes, &c. Certainly has never worked well on desktop platforms... see: Java UI toolkits, QT (which looks fairly native but tends to feel very wrong), Adobe Air, &…

Who cares what you think they want? Read the developer agreement. What's it say? Anything that isn't C, C++, or Objective-C is banned.

Yup. And your point is? For the third time now, my point isn't that this is a good thing, and I'm certainly not a fan of the decision. My point is that Apple isn't doing this because they hate developers, or want to tweak Adobe's nose (well, maybe a little), but because all they care about is their product's user experience.

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

#164

Post by GHFigs »

tumult wrote: post #87
ptomato wrote: post #52

Problems with it aside, and I certainly don't like it anymore then anyone else here (I was still hoping to get a lisp working for iPhone development), I think it would be wrong to attribute the decision to malice. Apple's doing this for the exact same reason they do EVERYTHING else controversial that they do on iPhone OS: because the primary (only?) thing they care about is the end user experience being as good as po…

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…

so they cripple the tools that developers may use

By only allowing the tools they use? It seems like if what you said was true they would do exactly the opposite.

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

#165

Post by ghshephard »

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…

Adobe's response, from a game-theoretic perspective, is to adhere to

   3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs
   in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use
   or call any private APIs. Applications must be 
   originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or 
   JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit 
   engine, and only code written in C, C++, and 
   Objective-C may compile and directly link against
   the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link 
   to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation 
   or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
by simply generating Objective-C as their Object Code. Developers then compile this for their target platform (iPhone) and stay within the bounds of 3.3.1. I see Apple is trying to put a kibosh on this with the "originally written" clause, but, that will be a stretch to enforce.

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

#166

Post by tl »

bad_user wrote: post #101
papachito wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not a free software "zealot" and don't mind some closed-ness Maybe we were not that zealot after all when we free software "zealot" said that proprietary software allow their owners to treat their users badly and that eventually, this happens to every proprietary software. Just saying. It amazes me how surprised users of proprietary software are every time they get screwed by their masters even though this has…

There are products and there are platforms. Products are OK to be proprietary as long as the value provided is top-notch. Sorry, but I don't see profesional designers using Gimp over Photoshop. Relying on a platform for your existence is a different story. But as a business you need alliances with other businesses, and not just in software. And everybody can pull the plug on you, that's why reputation matters and in…

You're wrong: every decent product is a platform. Photoshop and GIMP have plugins developed on top of them, and professional designers are very much reliant on "photoshop the platform" for their existence.

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

#167

Post by api »

mjgoins wrote: post #77
api wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a very loyal mac user for years and love it, but I'm seriously considering going back to Linux. I am not a free software "zealot" and don't mind some closed-ness, but this is getting absolutely insane. Enforcing which LANGUAGES can be used on a platform?!? Insane! Edit: I've been looking at these guys: http://www.system76.com/ (I don't work with or have any vested interest in them, but they look cool.)

I have a Starling Netbook from system76. Nothing to write home about, but I've had few, if any real problems with it. It's a little flimsy, physically. And I am a proud free software zealot, so I moved it to debian.

Hmm... if it's flimsy I probably wouldn't like it. One thing I don't like about Apple hardware is how you have to treat it like a family heirloom or it turns into a scratched up mess. Anything less hardy than that would be unusable.

Toughbooks are also promising, but they're light on the specs... could someone please make a durable and well-specced laptop?

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by wvenable »

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.…

This is exactly what I thought the original app approval process would be for: an Apple "seal of quality". That would be a fine trade off for users -- they may only get the approved apps, but at least they're screened for quality.

However, that isn't what the approval process is. There are literally thousands of crappy applications that were happily approved and clogging up all categories in the app store. It seems non-trivial app rejections are not done on behalf of the user but are done solely to protect Apple's own interests. Remember when a bunch of high-quality Google voice apps disappeared from store? And that's just one example, there have been many more.

And now they're rejecting apps not based on their quality, but based on the programming language or development environment used to create them. How is that at all relevant to the user? This is entirely about protecting Apple's own interests and the comparison to Nintendo's lock down of the NES is not applicable.

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