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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

#361

Post by bruceboughton »

ftlbaby wrote: post #276
lispm wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wher…

The university example is a good one. I wonder if they will be covered by wireless app distribution, which will bypass the app store. From Apple's iPhone Enterprise Developer page... "Deploy proprietary, in-house applications to authorized users in your company, the iPhone Developer Enterprise Program is available to companies with 500 or more employees and a Dun & Bradstreet number.

Because companies with fewer than 500 employees have no need for custom apps...

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

#363

Post by tjmc »

starnix17 wrote: post #3

Would Adobe have a valid antitrust case with this?

Antitrust is about abusing monopoly power so I'd guess not, but I'd love to hear an opinion from a US lawyer about the 'restraint of trade' angle.

For example, I don't think automakers are allowed to ban competitors from making compatible parts for their cars. Similarly I think there have been cases where printer makers tried and failed to prevent competitors from making compatible ink cartridges for their printers. No automakers or printer manufacturers have a monopoly though.

Requiring the use of certain tools to produce an otherwise identical product seems to me a violation along similar lines. I'd love to hear an expert opinion on it.

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

#364

Post by philjackson »

blub wrote: post #345
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…

This is human nature, it's not related to source openness. Open source would just allow you to start over after you have been treated badly if you have the needed development skills (hello Mr. Drepper). It's also worth noting that the users aren't getting screwed at all by Apple, only the developers and only a small fraction of them.

I don't get it. You don't have to "start over" you continue from where you left off. Only some members of the community need development skills.

Secondly, users are harmed by these actions as there will be fewer developers making apps for them, plus, Apple are potentially stifling innovation.

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

#365

Post by AlisdairO »

Silhouette wrote: post #323
wvenable wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> This is entirely about protecting Apple's own interests and the comparison to Nintendo's lock down of the NES is not applicable. What I don't understand is how this isn't anticompetitive behaviour. By creating an app store and lock-in for application vendors, Apple become the only provider in the market. They now appear to be leveraging that monopoly to restrict another market, that of developer tools, to their com…

Because they don't have a monopoly on smartphones. They control their own platform, but as long as there's a reasonably competitive smartphone market out there, it's not illegal.

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

#366

Post by prodigal_erik »

sunchild wrote: post #348

Apple has pursued a single consistent goal under the reign of King Jobs II: protect the ecosystem, and grow it in careful, measured increments. In order to keep something great from turning to crap, you have to have a gatekeeper. If you don't trust the gatekeeper, that's OK. But I'm hearing a lot of noise from developers who are already beholden to their own gatekeepers (whether it's the core team of your open source…

> developers who are already beholden to their own gatekeepers (whether it's the core team of your open source project

I couldn't disagree more. The goal of free software is to ensure nobody has that kind of control over you and your tools. If you don't need to organize a fork, great, but they've already agreed they can't stop you.

As for the rhetoric, making tools is what makes you a member of our species. Agreeing not to is more like serfdom than partnership.

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

#367

Post by jabakobob »

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…

While I agree that C (and C++, and Obj-C) have some problems that make it really easy to write completely buggy software, I wouldn't go as far as blaming programming languages for buggy apps.

Plus, I don't understand why people keep praising XMonad for its lack of bugs. It has some bugs that are quite annoying (eg. stuck windows that don't close, locked with only one tile on a screen) -- on the other hand, I've never seen a bug in metacity.

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

#368

Post by cturner »

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.

    ALL other user interfaces by ALL other vendors suck.
I don't understand your enthusiasm for aqua (I've got a mac) but I understand what you're sayin in a general sense because I came to a similar conclusion about ten years ago.

If this is a big thing for you, I'd recommend the path I took after Be folded. Accept that complex user interfaces have bad tradeoffs (platform dependence, inflexibility). Find a full-screen tty you like (I use iterm because with apple+key + enter it goes full screen and gets rid of aqua) and return to living in the habitat of your ancestors!

A few things are inherently visual: paint programs, 3d games and movie editing. Everything that is not can be done effectively on the console. These interactions are often far superior to GUIs.

There's a learning curve. But once you're over it you'll have enormous power at your disposal and won't ever get locked in again.

Two things make this far easier than it has been previously:

1) Python. The standard library contains everything you'd want to do to push a system around. You can hammer out powerful tools in python in a casual manner and at a speed that has not been available to mere mortals before. You can get it on a variety of platforms.

2) Web browsesr. It's now easy to get high-quality web browsers on any platform you'd want to use. Where you do need to produce a GUI, you can knock up a trim webapp with html and forms.

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

#369

Post by cturner »

city41 wrote: post #161
api wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've started using it this week. Alt+tab becomes more and more broken with every release. There was a time when excel was the only application that didn't behave properly.

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

#370

Post by nailer »

bad_user wrote: post #118
minalecs wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lets see theres training, and consulting, theres offer the free version, and charge for a more robust paid version, theres pay for customization and don't forget ads. There are many ways to have a business model around "free software". Red Hat, Canonical, and Google are just some of the companies that have found valid business models around "free software".

> Red Hat, Canonical, and Google are just some of the companies that have found valid business models around "free software". That's a fallacy. The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement. Google doesn't have a business model around "free software". Neither does IBM or Sun. I'm also not Mozilla and my apps would probably never get in front o…

> > Red Hat, Canonical, and Google are just some of the companies that have found valid business models around "free software".

> That's a fallacy.

> The majority of open-source sponsors are selling closed systems or services to sponsor their "free software" involvement.

Red Hat, Canonical and a large chunk of IBM GS wouldn't be able to sell those services with proprietary products - the OSS licensing of various Linux OSs, Apache, etc. are the basis for them being able to have an audience to sell their services.

I agree with you re: Google. They're not a service business and could have written their own OS or used a proprietary one and not affect revenue.

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