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Adobe Evangelist Lashes Out Over Apple's "Original Language" Policy
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's recent decision to restrict the languages that may be used for iPhone and iPad development has provoked some invective from Adobe's platform evangelist Lee Brimelow. He writes on TheFlashBlog, 'This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple's devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won't allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.' He ends his post with, 'Speaking purely for myself, I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple. Comments disabled as I'm not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.'"
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."
People are jumping to too many conclusions here. Apple updated the developer terms, and has not confirmed that they will shut Adobe-compiled apps out. The compile-flash-to-iPhone feature from Adobe is vaporware anyway for now, as Adobe hasn't really shown it that publicly yet. Appleinsider is reporting that the ban is not from spite but for technical reasons; as cross-compiled code may interfere with the proper multitasking coming out in iPhoneOS 4.0.
I won't get mad at Apple until it's confirmed that they are shutting it out. Apple selectively enforces it's developer rules (they let Google's app through when it used private APIs), and Apple hasn't commented on the Flash-compiler controversy. No, a ranting Adobe evangelist has as little information as you or I do at the moment.
Last I checked, Windows currently runs on 3 hardware platforms in various versions (not counting mobile phone versions). Those are: x86, x86-64, and Itanium.
It does? That's strange, I don't recall having problems on my x86-64 system... Other than it won't run code written for Windows from 15+ years ago.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
As someone who has worked at Adobe and developed on the Mac - trust me - its a labor of love - its not nearly as easy as it is on Windows, Linux and even Solaris.
You don't develop on the Mac because of your insane sales figures on that platform. You don't develop on the Mac because of the tons of developer help they give you. You don't develop on the Mac because they even like you. You do it because ... you always have and you have customers to support.
Good example - they would release a patch on 10.4.x - that would break various things like printing (in minor ways - like custom doc sizes start failing), break drivers that work with our products and on and on and on. They never tested a single thing of ours when releasing anything - despite being their largest 3rd party software developer. We never got a single patch ahead of time - ever - to even do the testing ourselves.
Apple's announcement of Intel OSX caught us blindsighted (we found out the exact same second everyone else did), their announcement of not supporting carbon on 64bit was a surprise (caught mid development of CS4) - especially when they said it would be supported previously.
Radar bugs are a black hole - ask anyone who has filed one.
Compare that with Microsoft. They used to log bugs with us on Vista against things like Acrobat 4 - which we hadn't supported in 8 years. That sort of thing was really really really common. But it shows their commitment to making sure that apps from one of their largest 3rd party vendors ran perfectly on Vista when it shipped. And guess what? Despite all of Vista's issues - everything Adobe ran perfectly.
Microsoft used to pre-emptively notify us when the Windows crash reporter picked up a new problem, including their analysis of the issue. There has been more than one crash report they provided that I've personally seen lead to a bug fix in a patch.
For example, the ipod connector. Could have very easily been mini/micro usb. But it isn't
No it couldn't. The original iPod had a FireWire port. The second generation needed to support FireWire and USB, because most Macs at the time only came with USB 1.1, which was too slow, and most PCs didn't come with FireWire. It also needed a line out signal to connect to the line out port in the dock. The fourth generation also needed composite video out pins to drive a TV from the dock.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sorry, the ipod connector could not have been mini/micro USB. Unless you have some way to pass analog audio and composite video via USB without an additional set of a/d/d/a. Now, it could have been mini/micro USB PLUS analog line out/ composite out, but that's something else entirely.
We never got a single patch ahead of time - ever - to even do the testing ourselves.
I stopped reading here. Either you're a slick troll or Adobe is massively fucking incompetent (I'm not sure which might actually be true and it doesn't really matter). You're seriously claiming Adobe doesn't get the same access to pre-release updates that every other Mac developer gets?
No - that's where the doubt is; the Apple license refers to the language in which the program was "originally written". The most common interpretation of that which people are understanding is that it means "what the programmer typed". No matter what code generation process Unity used, there is no way of getting around the fact that the programmer typed C#/UnityScript/Boo, not C/C++/ObjectiveC.
Android yes, iPhone no. What are the 7 resolutions you speak of? Care to point them out? I'm excluding tablet-based for the moment. And the 3 I think of are 480x320 (G1, Magic, Eris, Hero, Moment, MyTouch3G), 480x854 (Droid), 480x800 (Nexus One).
I was making no claim as to which platform is easier to develop for, makes more or less money, or about his argument regarding the iPhone. Just pointing out that the "fragmentation" of Android resolutions is more hype than fact.
So please explain why you think my comment was disingenuous.
meep
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?
I'd guess they think the answer to that is "yes". I think they are very wrong about that, but it seems they don't value Apple custom. If they did, they wouldn't have delayed the intel versions of CS3 for a year. That definitely cost Apple in people upgrading to intel machines.
Everything I've read about that is that Apple blindsided Adobe on the change. Adobe found out when everyone else did -- when Apple announced it. It's kinda hard to blame Adobe for the delay when Apple didn't even tell them about it ahead of time. A former Adobe Mac developer has already posted the same info in an earlier thread. (It's anonymous coward so take it as you may, but I have read the same thing other places in the past so I believe it.)
I can think of one - stability.
If they dont keep control of development of applications, then it will become a nightmare where they will be blamed for every bad app. To the user, the app is the device, and the device is the app.. they dont know the difference and apple gets the blame.
So, keeping tight reigns on this helps keep that risk at a minimum.
---- Booth was a patriot ----