Slashdot Mirror
Apple Pulls C64 Emulator From the App Store
Rob Hearn sends in a piece up at PocketGamer.co.uk on why Apple suddenly pulled Manomio's C64 emulator soon after finally approving it. (El Reg has coverage too.) "It was a glorious few moments for retro gamers when Manomio's C64 emulator was finally approved by Apple and released to the eager, nostalgic iPhone public. Then, calamity! It was gone again. Apparently some wily users figured out how to access the Commodore 64 BASIC system that was originally packaged with the emulator — something that Apple wasn't too happy with, given the nature of the interpreter's code. By setting the keyboard to 'always on,' launching a game and restarting BASIC, players got into the 'empty shell' of their C64 emulator."
For technophiles, the iPhone is dead. The n900, with it's Debian-based-OS and open platform, is our new lord and savior. http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Where the C64 emulator becomes THE preferred programming environment on the iphone as Apple neglects to understand the nature of the threat...causing a renisannce in C64 programming; catapulting a once dead platform from the grave back into stardom...
The point is you arent allowed to have any sort of dynamic, interpreted code at all. No java, no .net runtime, no assembly interpreter, no scripts, no nothing.
You see, it opens the door for people to write their own C64 basic phones and run them on the iPhone, without - gasp - Steve Jobs approving, or getting paid! I could write my own "lemonade stand" game, and distribute it, OUTSIDE OF APPLES OFFICIAL CHANNELS?
THE APPALLING HORROR OF AN OPEN PLATFORM!
BTW, you can do a whole lot from a c64 shell when you're clever.. You're obviously too young to know.
Commodore's BASIC was licensed from Microsoft with a one-time fee. If I were Apple, I wouldn't let Microsoft BASIC anywhere NEAR this emulator until I got a signed legal document from Microsoft saying that the license covered all derivatives of the Commodore device, or that Apple had a free and clear right to use it.
Format c: didn't apply to the TRS 80 (aka the "Trash 80" as it was often called :)).
Interestingly enough "way back in the day" when I had my own C64 my aunt had a TRS-80 that she'd bought for my cousins to use. They were older than me by a ways (and only 1 year apart from each other), so they both graduated shortly after the computer was purchased. She ended up just giving the thing to me since I'd been over there to mess with it quite a bit. To a young kid who was already well into geekdom just getting an extra computer back then to play on was just awesome.
Looking back, no, I didn't like it as much as my Commodore, but it was still fun. One of my best pranks as a kid was to write a BASIC program for that TRS-80 and left sitting in memory. Somehow I coaxed my cousin to run it later and it printed out a nice connection string about connecting to a classified DoD computer and after the two of us spending 10 minutes trying to guess the password (after which I let the correct out just slip out :)) it logged in and started displaying "top secret documents" on how they'd really found aliens on the moon during the Apollo missions. She got freaked out for a while before I finally let her in on the joke. It was kinda fun to live in that age when people were gullible enough to accept ANYTHING that popped up on screen.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Write arbitrary code.
Which is against Apple's T&Cs.
Because the iPhone isn't intended to be an all-purpose pocket computer - its a phone and music player.
Apple's fear is that people will install buggy apps that screw up the phone, and then blame Apple. No conspiracy needed. If they were purely interested in lock-out they'd never have approved Spotify.
If Apple allowed apps that ran arbitrary code they'd have to check not just the C64 emu but every app with a macro or scripting facility to ensure that they were adequately sandboxed. That would be a lot of work.
If you want a phone where, if you break it, you get to keep both pieces, go buy an Android phone or (if you want to lose the will to live) Windows Mobile.
Disclaimer, I have an Android phone, and an iPod Touch (iPhone without a phone) and am looking for a sufficiently deep hole in which to cast my old WM phone. So I'm not a complete fanboi.
Meanwhile, this guy agreed to remove BASIC but either deliberately or negligently left it in. I'd rather not install their software, in case they negligently or deliberately left anything els in, thanks.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
S60 r5 has a lot of the same functionality as the iPhone these days - and guess what - I can run any app I like on it including C64 emulators. Yeah the n97 is kinda expensive (599$) but 32 gigs, expandable to another 48 gigs, user serviceable battery, and freedom to use the device on ANY network I have a sim card for, and run any app I want is really quite cool.
Oh and Symbian has always had copy/paste ;).