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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

#21

Post by pyre »

aphyr wrote: post #4
starnix17 wrote: post #3

Would Adobe have a valid antitrust case with this?

Doubtful. Adobe, Appcelerator, et al are not in competition with Apple, only making products which run on theirs. The ToS have always been disclosed as variable. It's a good reason not to predicate your business model on the whims of another company which has no stake in your success. :/

You could say the same thing about developing software for any platform that isn't open. None of these companies could have foreseen that Apple would drop the hammer on the creation of tools to help developers create more iPhone applications. They still have to pay Apple to develop for the iPhone. It's not like this was some end-run around the system.

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

#22

Post by aheilbut »

In principle, couldn't any of these translation layers be converted to code generators that would produce compiled Obj-C that would fall within the rules?

Surely they aren't saying that all code has to be entirely hand-written? If so, then is running search-and-replace on a source file not allowed?

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

#24

Post by lurch_mojoff »

swilliams wrote: post #2

Is there a legitimate reason for this, or is Apple just thumbing their noses at Adobe (and everyone else)? Is Apple primarily annoyed that Adobe's app and MonoTouch aren't doing it the "Apple" way? Or do they not like that those frameworks present non-standard UI's (I haven't used MonoTouch, so I don't even know if that's the case here)?

If stuff gets compiled to ARM code and is linked to Apple's frameworks, which I think both Flash-to-app and MonoTouch do, it should be all the same to Apple. Therefore I'd go with thumbing their noses at Adobe. And I'd even say it is because of Adobe's we've-already-sneaked-in-a-bunch-of-apps stunt. In other words, this is not entirely about the betterment of the iPhone platform, it's at least partly personal.

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

#25

Post by _delirium »

WilliamLP wrote: post #18

> Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine Controlling programmers like this seems positively insane, doesn't it? Does this mean that games can't do scripting in something like Lua either, under the letter of Apple's law?

Lua is definitely out, and has been out for longer: Apple explicitly prohibits embedding interpreters, like the Lua interpreter, in your apps.

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

#26

Post by gte910h »

jsz0 wrote: post #7
starnix17 wrote: post #3

Would Adobe have a valid antitrust case with this?

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

Yeah, but the timing of the news could possibly end them in court.

Had they done this months ago, they'd likely have not had a problem. But 4 days before CS5's release? I could see that adobe has already filed suit.

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

#27

Post by bad_user »

WilliamLP wrote: post #18

> Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine Controlling programmers like this seems positively insane, doesn't it? Does this mean that games can't do scripting in something like Lua either, under the letter of Apple's law?

Games never could do scripting in Lua, since you can't run interpreted or Jitted code on the iPhone anyway.

What they are forbidding now is the usage of any third-party compilers that are producing native executables ... Adobe CS5, MonoTouch, Unity.

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

#28

Post by swilliams »

aphyr wrote: post #4
starnix17 wrote: post #3

Would Adobe have a valid antitrust case with this?

Doubtful. Adobe, Appcelerator, et al are not in competition with Apple, only making products which run on theirs. The ToS have always been disclosed as variable. It's a good reason not to predicate your business model on the whims of another company which has no stake in your success. :/

It especially sucks if Apple does follow through with this and the people that paid for MonoTouch end up with a digital pet rock.

http://monotouch.net/Store $999 for the Enterprise version? Ouch.

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

#29

Post by flatline »

icey wrote: post #8

I don't really have a politically correct way to say this: What a horseshit maneuver by Apple.

Yeah, I really thought all the hysteria about how Apple will crush small children's hopes and dreams by distributing a closed platform that does not allow tinkering was off base until now. This has much more the flavor of intent to put a stranglehold on the device above and beyond handicapping their competitors.

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

#30

Post by ptomato »

ezy wrote: post #12

Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. The corporate pissing matches have started in earnest... When Alan Kay said Apple would take over the world with an iPad, I don't think he realized that eToys or anything like eToys would never be allowed to run on the device and that a majority of the apps will probably have commercial spots embedded within them. Actually it reminds me of "educational" tv all over aga…

"a majority of the apps will probably have commercial spots embedded within them"

The majority of apps on the app store already do. Free apps, ad-supported. Apple just wants the ads to not suck so much, but hey, nobody has to use iAds.

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