Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 495 posts

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

#351

Post by l0stman »

jrockway wrote: post #288
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Emacs, vi, Mac OS X, iPhone OS, Windows 7, Google search, Apache, Nginx, the very first web browser, et cetera are utter crap.

As an Emacs developer, I can tell you with 100% confidence that the C part of Emacs is utter crap. The good news is that there isn't very much of it. The rest of the software is buggier than it should be. My web browser has remotely-exploitable security holes. Random drivers in Linux randomly regress as the version number increases. OS X and Windows 7 crash for no reason, and don't support enough hardware. The only p…

To be fair, the part of Emacs implemented in Lisp looks nothing like poetry. I wouldn't qualify it as ``utter crap'' but it's a lot messier than I thought. Some of the default packages looks like straight C code translated verbatim to Lisp.

My take is that even if it's easier to screw things up in C, that doesn't mean that if you program in a higher level language, you'd automatically produce elegant code.

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

#352

Post by Confusion »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #255
jrockway wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person's tolerance for faulty software is lower than it should be. I guess Apple wants to raise expectations, so that people are locked into the iPhone. ("OMG, that android app has ITS OWN KEYBOARD!!!111".) Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.

Yeah, the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Emacs, vi, Mac OS X, iPhone OS, Windows 7, Google search, Apache, Nginx, the very first web browser, et cetera are utter crap.

Not sure why this is getting upvoted (and the grandparent downvoted), because it is completely besides the point. I'm always amazed when any of my code runs, but the more so when I write C. Apple is strangely not supporting any modern language that reduces the chance of subtle and hard-to-fund bugs.

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

#353

Post by mkramlich »

edster wrote: post #191
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…

It's not just with the consoles. I used to develop Lotus Notes applications. The problem with Notes was that the barrier to entry for developers was too low such that it hurt the platform, and it made it hard to distinguish good developers and good apps from the chaff. When a bunch of unqualified developers fill the world with junk it gives the entire platform a reputation as being junky. I now develop iPhone applica…

Apple should filter by quality, not by what language/technology was used to make the app.

It makes more sense to reject Fart apps -- or least the 100th Fart app. It does not make sense to reject apps written in Python or Clojure, for example.

To put it another way: they are disproportionately turning away the better quality devs, not the lower quality ones.

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

#354

Post by Tichy »

tumult wrote: post #245
joubert wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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++.

There is a native interface for Android. While it isn't intended to be used for GUI development, maybe it is doable? I could imagine it could work like PhoneGap, except for C: write a wrapper in Java that exposes the required methods to C, then write your app in C.

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

#355

Post by bobwaycott »

If you want to develop apps for the iPhone, iPod, or iPad, then you have two choices--make a webapp, or make a native app.

Don't want to learn Objective-C? Then build a webapp.

Apple is not restricting your rights. Apple is not stealing your freedoms. Apple is not being tyrannical. Apple is not snatching your children away as payment for your access to the AppStore. I bet there's very few on here who are even developing apps that are doing all the bitching. Your the I'm-a-Flash-developer I-can-has-AppStore? type who want to have access to the latest opportunity to grab some money bags without having to learn a new trick. Did you try to read a line of Obj-C and realize it has a different syntax than your Flash timeline and AS and decide to cry cos you might have to work for those riches you're after?

Do you all gripe that the web requires HTML? Did you all complain when Macromedia didn't give you Flash that only required you have a scant understanding of HTML and CSS to call yourself a "developer"? Your complaints are so lame.

Companies make products. They want to control their products and its image as much as they can because it is their livelihood. If you want to base your livelihood on that product, then you pay by their rules. If you want to be outside the rules then you go your own way, but don't start crying cos they ask you to use their product to make your money in a specified way that protects their name and image.

If you don't want to use the tools, make a web app. If you want to complain thAt web apps can't do everything a native app can, then learn the platform and make a native app.

Stop expecting that the company that has taken all of the risk and spent all the money on r&d and given you an SDK and documented it exhaustively and covers the costs of distribution and takes all that WORK and COST off your back is asking too much to request that you repay them with the kindness of protecting and advancing the brand by using the tools THEY BUILT FOR YOU so the product and the platform can stay popular and successful and keep making you money.

Good grief. That shit is so hard to swallow isn't it? Let's all burn our Macs and sound like morons with all our Android-or-Nothing cries while we quietly go fire up XCode so we can make some offing money.

This is stupid.

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

#357

Post by mkramlich »

travisjeffery wrote: post #274
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.

I agree with you; but don't hurt your argument by saying that C, C++ and Obj-C are kiddie languages.

When he said 'kiddie' I interpreted his intent as saying there were insufficiently advanced or sophisticated. While on one hand I agree they are 'hardcore' languages (pointers, memory management, compiled, type declarations, header files, #includes, etc.) on the other there are more higher-level, more expressive, less ritualistic and verbose languages available today. I loved C and used it for many years, back when the alternatives were BASIC, Pascal, COBOL, Fortran, etc. but today when the alternatives are Python, Clojure, Haskell, etc. yes in some sense I consider C/C++/ObjC as 'kiddie' languages. Maybe 'paleo' languages would be a better term. C for OS development may still be a good choice but for applications? No way.

With Apple's change to the dev license they are basically saying, "We only want you to use paleo languages. Put away your shiny modern toys and come back to the creaky past with us."

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

#358

Post by axod »

jackowayed wrote: post #196
api wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, freedom to have: no access to hardware, no ability to do anything computationally intensive, no filesystem access, no storage, no disconnected access, ...

There is storage--and the ability to run offline--thanks to HTML5, and the same web apps will work the same (more-or-less) on Android and webOS (Palm) phones. You get a SQL db (up to 5MB), plus a persistent key-value store and a window-local "session" key-value store that isn't persistent. But yeah, no camera/GPS/microphone/etc.

You can now get location from Javascript APIs in the safari browser following the iPhone 3.0 release.

http://blog.bemoko.com/2009/06/17/iphone-30-geolocation-java...

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

#359

Post by mkramlich »

toluju wrote: post #301
joubert wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, for iPhone/iPad development, you can use C, C++, Objective-C, or JavaScript (4 languages). But on the other platforms you are in reality limited (in practice) to one or two languages? I'm looking at you, Android and BlackBerry. (Windows and Palm don't really count, since nobody's writing for them).

This is hilarious. People have gotten Scala, Ruby, Python, Lua, and a whole host of other languages running on Android. At least check your damn facts before posting bullshit. http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-an...

Between this iPhone dev license change, and your claim that folks have gotten Python apps running on Android, this is probably the final straw pushing me to jump to Android.

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

#360

Post by cheald »

thought_alarm wrote: post #254
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.

> Apple has consistently demonstrated that they don't care about what developers want. The facts disagree. The App Store model is unusual and it is not perfect. Few developers have any experience with Cocoa or Objective-C. Developers must use a Mac. iPhone software only runs on the iPhone and is not easily ported to other platforms. Despite all of that, Apple has attracted developers to the App Store and the iPhone i…

Apple is operating under an effective first-mover advantage. That conveys a lot of benefits that let them get away with a lot of abuses. If/when the other players in the market catch up, that won't hold quite as true.
Post reply on HN