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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

#201

Post by carson »

aheilbut wrote: post #126
funxed wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Apple completely controls the App Store and reserves the right to refuse any app for any reason (and have shown time and again they are willing to exercise that right), how could this possibly be unenforceable? It is their way or the highway. What is or isn't enforceable is entirely up to them. Note: I am in no way saying that Apple's stance on this situation is a good one or not, in face, absurd. The iPhone 3G…

Unless they start auditing source code and everyone's entire development process, there are lots of ways in which such a rule could be violated that would be completely undetectable (and some cases that would be easily detectable too).

I think you have it there. Developers probably need to be ready to submit their source code along with their binary. That is my guess on what will happen when one sees the "denied because it isn't hand written."

What this will absolutely stop is Adobe calling out developers who have added apps to the app store compiled with CS5. Those apps created that way will also be unable to move upwards to the new OS version. I would imagine it will also completely stop Adobe and others from any development on any OS 4 bridge because they would have to agree to the license to test against the actual SDK and they can't do that without legal problems.

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

#202

Post by Andrey »

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…

Enjoy being Apple serfs, developers! The guys over at Titanium [1] can give you genuflecting lessons if you need.

Apple has definitely crossed-over to the dark side. After 26 years of being a fanboy, they've finally exceeded what I can stomach.

[1] http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2010/04/apple-4-0-and... [2] http://ipadmakesmesad.blogspot.com

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

#203

Post by newobj »

wvenable wrote: post #174
ghshephard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, but then the app still wouldn't be "originally written" in Objective-C.

And how could this ever be proven?

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

#204

Post by tshawkins »

alex_c wrote: post #113

Welcoming explanations for how this is a good thing for Apple's end users.

Because the apps will be running on controlled development libraries that might be able to.... perhaps multitask in OS 4.0, remember guys this is a phone we are talking about here, not a games console, security is paramount, and apple is just trying to put the the genie back into the bottle before a mass of insecure apps are elevated up the permission chain in 4.0 to be able to operate on a par with apple authored apps.

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

#205

Post by enjo »

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.…

We're well past that anyways. 185,000 apps? What percentage of those are complete and utter crap?

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

#206

Post by tumult »

ptomato wrote: post #163
tumult wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does it matter what language I used to develop an application, if it produces a binary that runs acceptably on the platform and otherwise follows all of the rules? I can write a more stable application in SML, Haskell or even untyped Scheme than most of the clowns I see making app store junk in Objective-C.

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

#207

Post by ryanhuff »

hristov wrote: post #123
AndrewO wrote: post #88

While Adobe is going to bear the brunt of this, this looks like a calculated move against Android as well. By precluding things like PhoneGap (if it turns out that it's "an intermediary translation or compatibility layer"), they're forcing developers that can only afford to write an application once to choose one platform. Right now, iPhone is the easy choice for a lot of developers, just based on market. The end res…

Yeah, but if someone writes a compiler that compiles apps natively written for the iphone into android apps, Google will allow that and Apple can do nothing to stop it. So in a way this will mostly hurt Apple.

That would be Apple's dream. All mobile developers coding on macbooks.

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

#208

Post by jrockway »

MichaelGG wrote: post #185
jrockway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the open source world can successfully fight back, by making compilers that generate code the app store police can't tell from hand written. I think the answer is definitely yes. Apple's software engineering is not that great. There is always some hole in Safari that allows root access to the entire device. They can't get atomic syscalls working in OS X. Does anyone really think they can recruit and affor…

I am not sure that it'll be exceedingly difficult to determine if an app was compiled using another tool, and not written in Objective-C. I'd expect many languages and frameworks are going to have many very signature functions and patterns of code. If Apple decides to enforce this, they won't have a hard time. On top of that, if they miss it, and let a bunch of apps in, then later on determine those apps were crossco…

But of course, this makes for unhappy users too. "I just lost the $5.99 I paid for that app!"

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

#209

Post by g89 »

_delirium wrote: post #25
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.

How about the Corona SDK (http://anscamobile.com)? They use Lua, but they claim they're allowed by the pre-4.0 SDK. I don't know how it works behind the scene, but I think they were allowed because the SDK didn't allow you to load code on runtime (e.g. think about a C64 emulator), but as long as the code was fixed it's fine. It can't execute arbitrary code because the app signing process ensures that the only code that runs is the same code submitted to Apple.

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

#210

Post by hyperbovine »

enjo wrote: post #205
tzs wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.…

We're well past that anyways. 185,000 apps? What percentage of those are complete and utter crap?

A lot less than if Apple had opened the floodgates.
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