New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by MutantSushi » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:46 PM UTC

tshawkins wrote: post #190

I think Apple could have done with some explanation on this, despite all the anti-compertative conspiracy theories, this has probably got more to do with weeding out apps that wont be able to multi-task on the new OS 4 platform, than being another salvo in an apple-adobe wars. Thats why the Rule change has been couched more in terms of how you can write apps (objective-c, api's etc), and not in terms of how you cant…

Sorry, I think you've failed to grasp what Apple's "Multitasking" is about. They are perfectly happy with apps that do not multitask AT ALL. They are not offering "true" multitasking, but allowing app's to notify system daemons to carry on CERTAIN tasks, e.g. IM notificiations, VoIP, downloading content. If an app doesn't want to do this, and there's no reason an App written in MonoTouch can't do this just as easily as an ObjC Cocoa app, that really doesn't matter to Apple.

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

#242

Post by jfoutz » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:46 PM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #165

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…

If i understand "originally written" correctly, doesn't this also kill objective-j and GWT?

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

#243

Post by chops » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:52 PM UTC

andreyf wrote: post #37

Looking 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 currently hold toward Apple.

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

#244

Post by lispm » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:53 PM UTC

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…

Say, one wants to develop a touch user interface for a visual programming language for music composition and the core engine happens to be written in Common Lisp (say, something like PWGL or Open Music) - why can't I have that in Lisp? It is compiled, native and would use the Cocoa libs.

There are not only consumers which want to download ebooks with ads. There could be an area of innovative and experimental use where Universities want to develop novel applications - applications that might be written in Smalltalk, Lisp, Haskell - or any other language that can compile and is not Objective C. In many cases the innovation lies in the core logic and the innovative use of a touch screen. Why should I develop my core logic in a way that it is tied to the iPhone or iPad (assuming that the iPad will get the same developer agreement) and where I have to use a relatively low-level language like Objective C.

It is one thing what you assume Apple's target (Adobe, cross platform frameworks, ...) is and another thing who else is also affected by these clauses the developers have to agree to.

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

#245

Post by tumult » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:53 PM UTC

joubert wrote: post #227

tumult wrote: post #54

This is unsavory in the extreme. I had been writing an iPhone app in Haskell, and now I have to can it? What the fuck? Fuck you, Apple! Blowhards. Hope you guys enjoy the mass exodus of decent developers from your dumbass platform with kiddie languages.

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++.

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

#246

Post by riso » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:54 PM UTC

I am not trying to defend Apple, but is it possible that the approval process was being slowed done by having to ensure that all the other intermediary translators were not using private APIs?

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

#247

Post by base10 » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 11:54 PM UTC

MutantSushi wrote: post #230

audionerd wrote: post #35

Isn't MacRuby sponsored by Apple? There's been discussion re: writing iPhone apps with MacRuby, AOT compilation. I wonder how that project will be affected? http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-Jan...

It's not MacRuby, it's RubyCocoa, but yes, they have their own project using a language not included in this list. No, I'm not expecting consistency here against their own "baby", but what kind of environment does this set up? Would you even want to use RubyCocoa in this environment, much less a 3rd party language bridge to Cocoa (which is 100% targetting Apple's platform and APIs).

MacRuby and RubyCocoa are two separate projects. MacRuby is not a Cocoa bridge like RubyCocoa is. It's a complete reimplementation of Ruby's primitives in Objective C to allow you to compile a Ruby app to a double-clickable app bundle.

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

#248

Post by smncameron » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 12:00 AM UTC

cschep wrote: post #141

Zak wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're forgetting that it's also really fun to make an app that has the best "look and feel". I can make things that make people say "Wow." A lot easier on the iPhone than on Android. Developers will make apps where it is fun to make apps. I haven't had any horror stories with the app store, so it's still just more fun to make iPhone software than anything else.

The developers who make apps 'for fun' aren't producing the blockbusters that make the appstore so important to the iPhone.

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

#249

Post by halostatue » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 12:00 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #104

spolsky wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the wording says "Applications must be ORIGINALLY written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript"

I've just invented a new language: C2010. It looks exactly like ActionScript, for some reason... (Hint: Apple's version of C is unlike any standard version of C, like C99. So technically, you can't use Apple's tools. Or, you can call anything you want C, just like they do.)

This is incorrect. Apple's C is C99; they have also introduced a new optional syntax for blocks that they have submitted for standardization.

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

#250

Post by _dk » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 12:01 AM UTC

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 need to realize that iphone OS is actually just that...an OS. What you are saying is kinda like saying that we would be incapable of finding valuable web apps or locally installable apps on windows/linux/whatever OS we use on our PC. Because there are no restrictions there and never have been.

1. It's only a matter of time until apple realizes this model is not good for anyone. 2. Android (who by the way is powered by the very people who specialize in filtering out the crap on other platforms) will dominate the next few years.