Commodore 64 Runs Again On the iPhone

Hugh Pickens writes "Stephen Williams reports in the NY Times that the app recreating some of the Commodore's seminal retro games, including Le Mans, Dragons Den and Jupiter Lander, has been re-issued after being pulled in September. The app features SID sound emulation, auto-save to continue where you left off, and a realistic joystick with a beautifully crafted C64 keyboard. Apple originally rejected the program for violating the SDK agreement, which dictates that 'no interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).' After disabling the controversial feature, Apple published the app in September, but days later it was pulled and the developer was asked to remove, rather than just disable, the BASIC interpreter from the program, which would have allowed unscrupulous users to run unlicensed, emulated code on the iPhone or iPod Touch. 'The road was bumpy, but we remained persistent and made the changes Apple was looking for. Ultimately, BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it,' the company wrote on its blog."

Comments

Can you actually do anything useful?

[omni123]

Is there actually a method of doing anything unscrupulous with a BASIC interpreter running inside a C64 emulator running on an iPhone?

Re:Can you actually do anything useful?

[nomadic]

LOAD "VIRUS",8,1

Re:Can you actually do anything useful?

[DNS-and-BIND]

That's not the point. The point is, Apple must control everything. Yes, they regard even a BASIC interpreter as a threat. And they are very correct to do so. You might laugh but Apple's principles are sound. I have just spent some time reviewing documents from just before the Wall fell and it was very clearly revealed that letting people have a little bit of freedom was ultimately disastrous.

Re:Can you actually do anything useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. You can do things your Apple overlords have not expressly given you permission to do. This cannot be allowed, because they have not given permission.

The phone market is Apple's wet dream, because none of the customers have any expectation of openness or being able to actually do anything with their own hardware, so there's not much complaint when they give users the full Apple experience by locking everything down. I fully expect they'd do the exact same damn thing with OS X elsewhere if they could get away with it.

Re:Can you actually do anything useful?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well! I certainly take back my assertion that Apple's app store is authoritarian. You have certainly bested me in argument, sir, and I bow my head in shame. My strategy of comparing different sorts of authoritarianism has come apart in the face of your assertion that I would enjoy the violent deaths of thousands of people. Moreover, your rhetorical strategy of making any references to communism off-limits for any sort of discussion can only make future debates more fruitful and productive by letting our society forget about 20th century history.

Re:Can you actually do anything useful?

[kandela]

That's disappointing. Just when I thought my hard earned BASIC programming skills were going to allow me to write unauthorised programs for the iPhone. Oh well.