[Love Calm Quiet]

Apple sometimes gets taken to task on various issues on the Hacker News Forums ( Hacker News ), but I've NEVER seen the front page so *dominated* by outrage over anything as it is by new apple requirements for *what programming language* must be used *to develop* iPhone apps.
...and a LOT of these hackers do their development on Macs!

Not even IE6 has sparked such wrath. It really makes me worry about the future of the iPhone (and thus of the iPad) if Apple doesn't listen and modify their action. All those incredible apps may stop coming down the pipe as the developers shift to Android and other platforms.

I'm sure that the move was *initiated* to to block folks developing cross-compiled third party apps as a workaround to Flash (whose death would be okay with me), but they are *really* alienating the developer community that can make both iPhone and iPad continue to soar.

Anybody else follow what's happening with this - got any thoughts?

EDIT (addition):
Actually there may be another (less Flash-killing) motive on Apple's part ( http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...titasking.html ), but I'm not sure that publicizing that will mollify the developer community.

[alex_kac]

There is no outrage. Maybe a few hundred devs out of tens of thousands. And seriously who wants a badly performing app that was transcoded?

[Lint Police]

Just think if Adobe would have taken the last four years and made their stuff not suck....

[indigoimac]

You seem to be afraid that developers will stop developing for iPhone/iPad if they can't do it easily... I think this is highly mistaken. If there is money to be made and there is an easy alternative (Obj-C) there will not be a problem.

I cannot possibly see how an app made in Flash and then saved out could possibly work well... especially from an Adobe product... it's like save as Web Page in Photoshop, it's a novelty and diluted convenience at best. I cannot imagine that it would not take less time for a skilled programmer to recode it rather than clean up shitty generated code. This is on a platform that is already prone to memory leaks and various other limitations... I don't see what the objection is other than people being lazy and Adobe throwing a fit mostly because Flash video (which is craptacular regardless of platform) is on its way out.

It's really like coding a mac-app... why would you not want to use cocoa and objective c to get that native feel and whatever performance gains you can mange? Sure, some things may be beyond its capacity (debatable) but not those that would be on an iphone or ipad where you should want to achieve every ounce of efficiency... a point that is highlighted by the discussion of the multitasking apis, etc.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Originally Posted by alex_kac 

There is no outrage. Maybe a few hundred devs out of tens of thousands. And seriously who wants a badly performing app that was transcoded?

On what basis do you say that? Hacker News draws the most enterprising of developers - on all sorts of platforms; *many* have been developing for iPhone for years.

Of the 30 most-discussed blogs/articles on HN, about 25 are ranting about leaving Apple/iPhone: Try reading the comments on *any* of those. They're 20:1 pissed off.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Originally Posted by Lint Police 

Just think if Adobe would have taken the last four years and made their stuff not suck....

And that fact had (until now) made developers generally supportive of Apple sticking it to Flash.

I'd sure hate to see them lose that support (not to mention all the cool apps that *should* come about in years to come.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet 

On what basis do you say that? Hacker News draws the most enterprising of developers - on all sorts of platforms; *many* have been developing for iPhone for years.

Of the 30 most-discussed blogs/articles on HN, about 25 are ranting about leaving Apple/iPhone: Try reading the comments on *any* of those. They're 20:1 pissed off.

Then that 1 will be the one who makes serious money while the other 20 are whining about the rules made by the singular rulemaker.

No, Apple will not listen nor should they.

[imitchellg5]

If I'm able to develop an iPhone app, there is no reason for a developer to complain. Between the thousands of APIs that Apple provides, and the fact that CSS and Cocoa touch aren't incredibly hard to learn, it's a non-issue.

[lpkmckenna]

I'm concerned about scripting environments. For instance, Unity3D might be affected by this new policy, since games are made in Unity with C#, Javascript and Boo-Python, then converted into an XCode project, then compiled from there. Also, Epic is bringing Unreal Engine 3 to the iPhone and Android, which has its own Unreal Script for creating game logic.

So yes, if you're a game developer, being denied game engine tools is a reason to complain.

[imitchellg5]

I understand your point. I just think that Apple hopes the huge draw of iPhone OS as far as audience goes will be enough to make developers not care. And for the most part, they do seem to be correct.

[Wiskedjak]

I'll be more interested to see if Adobe reacts by dropping some Apple support (we all know how Apple would react if the shoe were on the other foot).

[turtle777]

Oh the outrage of it all.

-t

[Lint Police]

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet 

On what basis do you say that? Hacker News draws the most enterprising of developers - on all sorts of platforms; *many* have been developing for iPhone for years.

Of the 30 most-discussed blogs/articles on HN, about 25 are ranting about leaving Apple/iPhone: Try reading the comments on *any* of those. They're 20:1 pissed off.

lol @ comments on that site. i bet 18 of those 20 are kids that think they are coders.

[Eug]

Personally I hope Apple gets slapped down hard on this. I'm not convinced they will, but nonetheless I hope they will.

[lpkmckenna]

From TUAW: We've heard directly from Unity Technologies themselves, and the company's CEO, David Helgason, has been in contact with Apple over the matter. Helgason says that so far Unity has "no indication from Apple that things are going to change." This is consistent with John Gruber's viewpoint on the new iPhone OS 4.0 dev agreement. Gruber originally thought that Unity3D would be a prime candidate for banning under the new rules, but given that Unity3D is, in Gruber's words, "a pre-processor than a cross-compiler," it's nowhere near as certain that Unity will fall on what Gruber calls "the wrong side of the line" per the new dev agreement.

[Eug]

Personally I think John Gruber is far too pro apple to be objective. He argues that iPad Kindle is awesome because it's Cocoa, and Mac Kindle sucks because it's not.

I guess that means all Cocoa apps are totally awesome and all non-Cocoa apps suck then?

Originally Posted by indigoimac 

You seem to be afraid that developers will stop developing for iPhone/iPad if they can't do it easily... I think this is highly mistaken. If there is money to be made and there is an easy alternative (Obj-C) there will not be a problem.

I cannot possibly see how an app made in Flash and then saved out could possibly work well... especially from an Adobe product... it's like save as Web Page in Photoshop, it's a novelty and diluted convenience at best. I cannot imagine that it would not take less time for a skilled programmer to recode it rather than clean up shitty generated code.

This doesn't exclude just Adobe's products.

"Now I have to explain to my boss the $1,000 we just spent on MonoTouch is a total waste of money."

Furthermore, the exclusion makes no attempt to exclude crappy apps. You can still make an uber crappy app that will get accepted, as long as it's using Apple's approved platform.

[Wiskedjak]

Ars speculates that the real reason for this move might be to discourage cross-platform development of mobile games.
Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?

[slugslugslug]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Personally I think John Gruber is far too pro apple to be objective. He argues that iPad Kindle is awesome because it's Cocoa, and Mac Kindle sucks because it's not.

I think people forget that Gruber can criticize Apple pretty harshly sometimes because he sticks up for them so often. But this time it totally feels like he’s just rationalizing.

I guess that means all Cocoa apps are totally awesome and all non-Cocoa apps suck then?


This doesn't exclude just Adobe's products.

"Now I have to explain to my boss the $1,000 we just spent on MonoTouch is a total waste of money."

Furthermore, the exclusion makes no attempt to exclude crappy apps. You can still make an uber crappy app that will get accepted, as long as it's using Apple's approved platform.

Right. Gruber tweeted something about whether Nintendo would allow Wii or DS games based that weren’t built in their SDK, and it struck me as the perfect counterargument. Whatever you want to say about the quality of the best Wii/DS games, there’s no denying that a lot of the criticism of Nintendo relates to the massive amount of shovelware you see on the Wii. Yes, people might make bad apps using Flash CS5, but disallowing that will hardly make a dent in the number of garbage apps in the app store.

If Apple wants to do things for quality control, they’d be better off very unambiguously specifying some rules about functionality and removing/rejecting apps based on those. The “no apps that are just a WebKit view for a specific URL” rule that was recently announced made sense.

[Spheric Harlot]

If it's for fine-grained multitasking control, why doesn't Apple just makeit clear that it's in-house tools or "no multi-tasking for you, buddy"?

[torsoboy]

Apple is altogether way too closed, and they are going to have to open up. People saying that it is good that Apple keep a closed system (yeah, I'm talking to you alex_kac), are just sad. There is no excuse for it, and I am pretty sure they are going to be learning the hard way about it. All of the crap that Microsoft has gone through over the years because of their dominance on the OS market is going to start happening to Apple fairly soon. They can't dominate the market, and force others out by limiting what 3rd party developers can do. Not for too long at least. The court cases are already being lined up... Apple will eventually have to open up their system.

Imagine the outcry that would happen if every single application that was for Microsoft Windows had to be sold through a Microsoft website, and had to be approved by Microsoft. Or maybe every application that was run on an HP PC had to be sold though HP's website. Or every app sold for an Acer PC had to be sold through Acer. It is ridiculous, and it wont last. Since the mobile market is growing much more quickly than the desktop market, that is the exact same situation that we are going to be running into, and Apple is going to be getting hit with the lawsuits first.

[Spheric Harlot]

I don't see what the courts have to do with this.

Your store, your rules.

Does Kraft Foods have the legal standing to muscle its way into a whole foods organic grocery chain? If their rules limit the ingredients and additives, they're perfectly justified in doing so.

They may be shooting themselves in the foot, long term, depending on what their customers want and how much else they're offering, but there's no question about the legality.

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I don't see what the courts have to do with this.

Your store, your rules.

Does Kraft Foods have the legal standing to muscle its way into a whole foods organic grocery chain? If their rules limit the ingredients and additives, they're perfectly justified in doing so.

They may be shooting themselves in the foot, long term, depending on what their customers want and how much else they're offering, but there's no question about the legality.

lol I guess you haven't been following the news about ANY technology for the past 10 years.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

lol I guess you haven't been following the news about ANY technology for the past 10 years.

The only way that courts would be involved is if it were a monopoly situation, which it most certainly is not.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

These devs are scared because they are comfortable using flash and not much else. For every dev apple loses because of this they will gain 100 more.

They should stop bitching on the internet and buy a programming book.

Either that or join the club of all the dev's who abandoned Apple because they switched to OSX, Intel chips, universal apps etc.

Mountain over a molehill.

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

The only way that courts would be involved is if it were a monopoly situation, which it most certainly is not.

I do not believe that this is correct. I think the courts will be involved very soon. I guess only time will tell.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Personally I hope Apple gets slapped down hard on this. I'm not convinced they will, but nonetheless I hope they will.

Why? You either a developer or ever used a copy of flash?

Why the heck are you such a big supporter of flash and so against the company who you are obsessed with and have tons of their products you use every day.

You also spend 90% of your normal day on a Mac centric computer forum and you are rooting against Apple for being a loyal customer for 10 years?

Would you feel better if they did offer shovel-ware flash ports that can't properly multitask? So far all the flash ports on the iPhone have ridiculously non-standard interfaces and I will not miss them at all.

What in the world do you feel like you are missing because of this?

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

Apple is altogether way too closed, and they are going to have to open up. People saying that it is good that Apple keep a closed system (yeah, I'm talking to you alex_kac), are just sad. There is no excuse for it, and I am pretty sure they are going to be learning the hard way about it. All of the crap that Microsoft has gone through over the years because of their dominance on the OS market is going to start happening to Apple fairly soon. They can't dominate the market, and force others out by limiting what 3rd party developers can do. Not for too long at least. The court cases are already being lined up... Apple will eventually have to open up their system.

It is nothing like MS who gain their edge by buying out the competition and forcing crap products on people. Once MS won they give up on trying (ie6).

The "Open" method has been tried for 10 years with cellphones and IT DIDN'T WORK! It had its chance and it didn't seem to stick. Seem people are more interested in quality easy to install and use software go figure.

You really think the average iPhone/iPod/iPad users surfs computer forums looking for stories on how apple is blocking flash ports? No, they are more busy browsing the app store downloading all sorts of neat apps.

By the time 4.0 launches there will be 200,000 apps and growing.

This will be just as painful to read this thread as the one about how end of Apple came they day they used Intel chips

[torsoboy]

I think that this is far worse than MS's practices of old. They will be in court many times for it, I believe. And they will (hopefully) lose.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Either that or join the club of all the dev's who abandoned Apple because they switched to OSX, Intel chips, universal apps etc.

Aka, the ranks of whiney devs. Right now it's easier to develop for OS X and the iPhone than ever before. I just don't feel sorry for these people who constantly bitch about Apple's "closed system" when it has such open parameters.

[Wiskedjak]

I really don't care one bit about Flash, but getting rid of it does not get rid of difficult to use software. What I don't like is how Apple is using their monopoly in the smart phone space to push everyone around.

[pooka]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

What I don't like is how Apple is using their monopoly in the smart phone space to push everyone around.

This. Someone needs to remind Steve's inner hippy that karma is a bitch.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

If I'm able to develop an iPhone app, there is no reason for a developer to complain. Between the thousands of APIs that Apple provides, and the fact that CSS and Cocoa touch aren't incredibly hard to learn, it's a non-issue.

This whole "you should be happy you have the privilege to code for the iPhone on our terms" strategy is risky, and could fail very badly. What happens if the iPhone sees a serious competitor? It's not like the iPhone is going after mainstream America, it is still catering to those interested in a high end phone.

I'm not interested in making a moral call here or something like that, business is business, but this is just a retarded strategy on Apple's part. It kind of worked with Internet Explorer as far as Microsoft pushing their weight and dominance around and refusing to play properly with developers and others, but how will Apple's image stand if the iPhone becomes the next IE?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Why? You either a developer or ever used a copy of flash?

Why the heck are you such a big supporter of flash and so against the company who you are obsessed with and have tons of their products you use every day.

You also spend 90% of your normal day on a Mac centric computer forum and you are rooting against Apple for being a loyal customer for 10 years?

Would you feel better if they did offer shovel-ware flash ports that can't properly multitask? So far all the flash ports on the iPhone have ridiculously non-standard interfaces and I will not miss them at all.

What in the world do you feel like you are missing because of this?

It's not just Flash affected by this decision though, and it's not just programming languages that are tightly controlled. There are also issues of censorship, anti-competitive practices (the Skype thing, for instance), and just bad PR overall.

Apple is entitled to this strategy, I just think it is not a terribly smart one. Let the customers demand non-shovelware apps, many might be perfectly content with an app that doesn't multitask if the alternative was nothing at all. Many obviously have been thus far.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

It is nothing like MS who gain their edge by buying out the competition and forcing crap products on people. Once MS won they give up on trying (ie6).

The "Open" method has been tried for 10 years with cellphones and IT DIDN'T WORK! It had its chance and it didn't seem to stick. Seem people are more interested in quality easy to install and use software go figure.

You really think the average iPhone/iPod/iPad users surfs computer forums looking for stories on how apple is blocking flash ports? No, they are more busy browsing the app store downloading all sorts of neat apps.

By the time 4.0 launches there will be 200,000 apps and growing.

This will be just as painful to read this thread as the one about how end of Apple came they day they used Intel chips

When have cellphones ever been open in the last 10 years? Quite the opposite, really.

Apple's approach to supporting the developer community has actually been rather MS like. There is a reason why IE has been so non-W3C compliant and lacking support for a number of standards for so long.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Aka, the ranks of whiney devs. Right now it's easier to develop for OS X and the iPhone than ever before. I just don't feel sorry for these people who constantly bitch about Apple's "closed system" when it has such open parameters.

Open relative to what?

[besson3c]

Read the Ars article posted above guys, good read and good arguments. Here is the link again:

Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

The only way that courts would be involved is if it were a monopoly situation, which it most certainly is not.

are you suggesting that Apple isn't moving towards dominating the smartphone market?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

The only way that courts would be involved is if it were a monopoly situation, which it most certainly is not.

IANAL but I have to wonder if someone out there might actually take them to court on this using the monopolistic practices argument.

Using Gartner's numbers, some claim that Apple currently owns over 99% of the paid mobile app market.

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Why? You either a developer or ever used a copy of flash?

Why the heck are you such a big supporter of flash and so against the company who you are obsessed with and have tons of their products you use every day.

You also spend 90% of your normal day on a Mac centric computer forum and you are rooting against Apple for being a loyal customer for 10 years?

Would you feel better if they did offer shovel-ware flash ports that can't properly multitask? So far all the flash ports on the iPhone have ridiculously non-standard interfaces and I will not miss them at all.

What in the world do you feel like you are missing because of this?

Heh. I knew you'd say this. Even as a web designer, it seems pretty clear you don't have the slightest clue what's going on here. If you really think it prevents shovelware simply by only excluding Flash, then you're seriously deluded. This is about most other programming platforms that aren't Apple's, some of which are highly respected for iPhone app programming. I'm not a designer or a coder (besides taking a few programming courses in university) but this latest stunt from Apple still sends shivers down my spine.

Meanwhile there is a ton of shovelware that Apple will continue to accept, simply because they used a programming platform that Apple happens to endorse.

So I repeat. This is not about preventing shovelware because it doesn't even attempt to address that issue. Yeah, we'll have 200000 apps or whatever, but 199000 of them will be shovelware, but just shovelware created by bad programmers/designers who happen to use Apple's tools to create it.

P.S. Sorry that it insults your sensibilities that my being a Mac and OS X fan doesn't mean I have to be a braindead Apple zealot.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Eug 

IANAL but I have to wonder if someone out there might actually take them to court on this using the monopolistic practices argument.

Using Gartner's numbers, some claim that Apple currently owns over 99% of the paid mobile app market.

They own what, about 20% of the worldwide smartphone market?

Their platform is the only one whose integrated store is actually getting people to buy apps. So? It's not even AVAILABLE to 80% of the market. Monopoly? Huh?

Are you gonna sue Gap for not selling Jingler's jeans at their stores? Or better yet, Mercedes for not selling you Mitsubishi parts at their service shops? Or your local bookstore for only selling English-language books, with the argument that they have to know what they're selling, and they can't tell with foreign-language lit?

Your shop, your rules. End of story.

They're not stopping anybody from programming apps.

Again: Smart, maybe not. Technically justified, possibly. Legal, of course.

[Eug]

Oh I agree to a certain extent. I don't buy the monopoly argument either. Still I would not be surprised if someone tries it. Also, the "your shop, your rules" statement seems a little too dogmatic. I'm not absolutely convinced that everyone would see it in such a black-and-white fashion.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Oh I agree to a certain extent. I don't buy the monopoly argument either. Still I would not be surprised if someone tries it. Also, the "your shop, your rules" statement seems a little too dogmatic. I'm not absolutely convinced that everyone would see it in such a black-and-white fashion.

I see this sort of argument as one-sided. Apple needs developers to make the iPhone what it is, Apple sells more iPhones because of these apps existing. It is not simply a "you should be happy to have the privilege to develop for our device, and because we are granting you this privilege we are dictating the rules" sort of relationship, or at least it shouldn't be... That is a pretty arrogant attitude to take.

You made a good point about a particular programming language not ensuring a good quality app too. I'm okay with x and y features only working properly using certain APIs, and I'm okay with Apple not supporting these other APIs/languages, but to ban them?

[torsoboy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Are you gonna sue Gap for not selling Jingler's jeans at their stores? Or better yet, Mercedes for not selling you Mitsubishi parts at their service shops? Or your local bookstore for only selling English-language books, with the argument that they have to know what they're selling, and they can't tell with foreign-language lit?

Your shop, your rules. End of story.

They're not stopping anybody from programming apps.

Again: Smart, maybe not. Technically justified, possibly. Legal, of course.

I don't think you know what you are talking about. The "your shop, your rules" argument doesn't hold water anymore. Straight dating sites have been forced to accept homosexual ads ( eHarmony Forced To Merge Gay, Straight Dating Sites In Discrimination Lawsuit ), Boyscouts has been forced to accept girls, Microsoft has been forced to sell (and even promote) other vendors' software, and Apple will soon be forced to allow other technologies to run on their devices.

Apple currently has the worst, most restricted development policies in the marketplace. On top of all of the other crap rules that Apple has for developing for their devices, they also require developers to spend thousands of dollars and huge amounts of time developing their applications before giving them a yes/no vote. They also require that you code on a Mac. It is absolutely ridiculous, and it can't stay this way for much longer. Steve's ego is getting much too big, and he needs to be brought down a notch. Yes, they have great/cool devices, but that doesn't mean that they can treat everyone like dogs.

(I hate Apple's closed iPhone development environment, can you tell? lol )

[lpkmckenna]

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

... Apple will soon be forced to allow other technologies to run on their devices.

I don't know what technologies you are talking about here. You can't mean Flash, because 1) Adobe Flash 10.1 isn't ready for any platform yet, and 2) this new rule isn't prohibiting Flash from running on the iPhone, only creating iPhone apps in the Flash IDE.

Apple currently has the worst, most restricted development policies in the marketplace. On top of all of the other crap rules that Apple has for developing for their devices, they also require developers to spend thousands of dollars and huge amounts of time developing their applications before giving them a yes/no vote.

The AppStore is no more restrictive or risky in this regard than XBox Live, or WiiWare, or whatever.

They also require that you code on a Mac. It is absolutely ridiculous, and it can't stay this way for much longer.

So if XCode must be ported to Windows, does that mean Microsoft must port Visual Studio to Mac?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

I don't think you know what you are talking about. The "your shop, your rules" argument doesn't hold water anymore. Straight dating sites have been forced to accept homosexual ads ( eHarmony Forced To Merge Gay, Straight Dating Sites In Discrimination Lawsuit ), Boyscouts has been forced to accept girls,

This is not discrimination against minorities. No NAAFP will take up Flash Programmers' cause and beat their way to the supreme court.

In fact, Apple is only selling about a half-dozen of its own apps, and half of those are free.

The other 190,000+ are not Apple's apps.

You can't sue a classical record shop for refusing to sell your hip-hop. You just can't.

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

Microsoft has been forced to sell (and even promote) other vendors' software,

No they haven't.

They've been forced to include links to other FREE options TO THEIR FREE BUNDLED SOFTWARE for a certain amount of time as PUNISHMENT for the abuse of their quasi-monopoly to advance said bundled software, stifling competition.

That has nothing to do with this situation.

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

and Apple will soon be forced to allow other technologies to run on their devices.

Yes.

Like Windows Mobile. Or Windows Phone Super 7 Series Xtreme or whatever it's called. Or Android. Or Symbian.

Because Apple is using its monopoly on Apple hardware to force its own OS down the throats of the optionless public, caught in the deathgrip of the only remaining phone manufacturer…

No.

Okay, so they'll be forced to let you run other vendors' software. Like, um, Skype. Or photoshop.com mobile. Or TomTom. Or…

Nah. Unimaginable.

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

Apple currently has the worst, most restricted development policies in the marketplace. On top of all of the other crap rules that Apple has for developing for their devices, they also require developers to spend thousands of dollars and huge amounts of time developing their applications before giving them a yes/no vote. They also require that you code on a Mac.

They also require people to CODE their own app, as opposed to submitting ideas via a web form. THE NERVE! This means that they FORCE people to go through lengthy studies, perhaps even college, costing them tens of thousands of dollars, before they can even BEGIN to produce stuff that Apple will gladly sell for them at a 30% cut, no questions asked.

Except Apple even requires these poor sods to actually write software that will RUN on their machines! Holy **** what bastards! Yes, it's true! They won't even sell Symbian or Android software! No Windows Mobile organizer on the App STore for YOU, buddy!

HOLY SHIT ITS A MONOPOLY

Oddly, they also have BY FAR the most successful environment for the people who do go through that ordeal.

Why is that?

Perhaps because their closed environment actually allows people to just download and try out stuff willy-nilly, without fear of ****ing up their device?

Because AFAIK, there is no programming environment on the Mac that allows you to write Windows Mobile apps, at all. Never has been.

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

It is absolutely ridiculous, and it can't stay this way for much longer. Steve's ego is getting much too big, and he needs to be brought down a notch. Yes, they have great/cool devices, but that doesn't mean that they can treat everyone like dogs.

(I hate Apple's closed iPhone development environment, can you tell? lol )

It's beginning to show a bit, yes.

Are you actually a developer, or are you armchairing this, like I am?

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

This whole "you should be happy you have the privilege to code for the iPhone on our terms" strategy is risky, and could fail very badly. What happens if the iPhone sees a serious competitor? It's not like the iPhone is going after mainstream America, it is still catering to those interested in a high end phone.

Obviously it hasn't failed though. It's probably safe to say that the iPhone has the most developers engaged with the platform of any mobile device.

[Salty]

The unfortunate thing is, I probably would have considered making an App in Flash and it would have been damned good! Granted it would have been a sort of eBook meets web portal sorta thing, but still woulda been pretty dang great... not every app needs to be done by someone with great knowledge of cocoa sometimes it just needs to be done by someone with a good idea.

[Salty]

By the way just wondering, could one of Apple's excuses be security? For example we all know flash isn't always the most secure platform, could it be that Apple's concerned about app security? If so wouldn't it make sense to perhaps "bless" a few third party environments and work with those developers?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Salty 

The unfortunate thing is, I probably would have considered making an App in Flash and it would have been damned good! Granted it would have been a sort of eBook meets web portal sorta thing, but still woulda been pretty dang great... not every app needs to be done by someone with great knowledge of cocoa sometimes it just needs to be done by someone with a good idea.

I shudder to imagine

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Salty 

By the way just wondering, could one of Apple's excuses be security? For example we all know flash isn't always the most secure platform, could it be that Apple's concerned about app security? If so wouldn't it make sense to perhaps "bless" a few third party environments and work with those developers?

That could be a reason. Haven't viruses been spread over the Blackberry network in Flash apps?

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

That could be a reason. Haven't viruses been spread over the Blackberry network in Flash apps?

If that were the case, I can't imagine Apple not pointing it out.