Slashdot Mirror

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball asks some very relevant questions about this.

You mean John Gruber the Mac fanboy who's too much of a zealot for other fanboys has an issue with a Google product.

Colour me unsurprised (and unconvinced).

Is the Unity3D [unity3d.com] Game Engine threatened? I doubt it. Adobe, yes. Unity, no. I think this Adobe guy is reading between the lines of Apple's announcement. He knows Flash (its code generator workaround, not Flash itself) will be targeted, but not Unity3D. He's only trying to get Apple to admit its hidden agenda, or goad them into banning Unity3D to maintain consistency (which would only go against Apple's interests, Unity3D already has many top selling titles, the code generator from Adobe is not even close).

It's not just him, Ars Technica has a writeup about the new terms and they felt it was probably targeting Adobe and Google both, by making it harder to do cross-platform development. (Since it basically outlaws many development tools.) Ars lists "Novell's MonoTouch, Unity3D, or Ansca's Corona" as definitely going against the new terms, and "Appcelerator's Titanium and PhoneGap" as questionable (in they might or might not run afoul of Apple's gatekeepers).

In all honesty the new clause is ridiculous, have you read it? It says:

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 APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Another thing pointed out (by this developer/blogger):

Developers are not free to use any tools to help them. If there is some tool that converts some Pascal or, Ruby, or Java into Objective-C it is out of bounds, because then the code is not “originally” written in C. This is akin to telling people what kind of desk people sit at when they write software for the iPhone. Or perhaps what kind of music they listen to. Or what kind of clothes they should be wearing. This is *INSANE*.

Ars also pointed out that at its most extreme the wording would ban writing English pseudocode first, because then the application would not "be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript".

And yes, Unity3d is threatened as it allows you to use C#, which is then compiled down into native ARM assembler. You know, just like Adobe's Flash CS5 was going to let you use Flash to develop iPhone apps and compile it down into ARM assembler. Want to make any bets on whether Apple's consistent on enforcement and bans all Unity3D developed games as well as all future Flash CS5 developed apps?

Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad: "If you need to "originally" write your code in Swahili, while listening to Milli Vanilli, while reclining in a patch of mud, and then you need fifty oompa loompas to translate the Swahili into C, that is none of Steve Jobs fucking business. And the idea, which I am sure is actually the plan, that he will inspect application code to figure out what the "original" language is that the code was written in is just plain pathological."

(typing again because /. ate my post)

If anything, the pendulum might swing backwards as competitors try to ape 80% of the iPhone's functionality at half the price.

Swing back? It never swung that way. Firstly, I'll assume you meant smart phone in general - there are others beside the Iphone, you know.

Despite what some might think from reading all the Iphone coverage that Slashdot gives, by far most phones sold are still the cheaper ones (e.g., see http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=6836 ).

It's also long been the case - long before your Iphone was thought of - that "feature" phones have "aped" most of the functionality of so-called "smartphones". Things such as Internet access, email, running programs, are now commonplace on all but the most cheapest and basic of phones . As technology progresses, I can't help thinking that the distinction between smart and non-smart will become even less meaningful (I'm glad someone agrees with me). Pretty soon the "smart" phone category will only exist from a marketing point of view, for companies like Apple who want to inflate their market share by reporting their share of an arbitrarily restricted one, rather than the mobile market as a whole.

And indeed, I'm curious you refer solely to the Iphone, as it doesn't really fit neatly in the smartphone category, in that it lacks several features that even "feature" phones have (one might just as well say that the Iphone tries to ape 80% of a Motorola's functionality at twice the price). In the smartphone market, there are plenty of other phones doing 100% of functionality, and more. Don't expect to read about it on Appledot, though.

I guess it's a little late for this thread, but Apple addressed precisely this issue at their developer's conference yesterday. They will have a solution in September. More info here: "iPhone Background Processing: Not Fixed But Halfway There."

"Mr. Jobs, tear down this wall!"

iPhone's lack of (3rd party) background processing will hamstring whole classes of new apps. The best summation of iPhone SDK problems I've seen is here:

Apple's iPhone SDK Prohibits Real Mobile Innovation

Google already has some resources and some developers, and all those developers are screaming Android is FURTHER innovation. I don't say iPhone is not innovation. It IS. But android will be innovation from iPhone point of view. Something like iPhone - Steve Jobs' phone, Android - owners' phone.

The lack of background processing in 3rd party iPhone apps will hamstring whole classes of new apps. The best summation of iPhone SDK problems I've seen is here:

Apple's iPhone SDK Prohibits Real Mobile Innovation

"if you are writing with Flex and AIR or HTML/Javascript and AIR you are not writing to Windows, or for that matter Mac OS X. The strategic import of this cannot be understated. Having MS-DOS and then Windows as the world's most important software development platform has been Microsoft's single most significant advantage in its history as a software company. That advantage is gone."

"Adobe's strategy is a death stroke to Windows as a strategic monopolistic platform. And Adobe as a software company with revenues north of three billion dollars has the muscle, the development community, and the momentum to fight this battle. They will not be "Netscaped."

"Windows will be a money maker for years to come as a tool that end users care about. And to be sure, there is still significant strategic value to the platform. But as a "must have" because people need to run Windows compatible apps, as of today we can say that rationale is officially dead."