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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.'"
It's Apple. For at least 10 years people have been saying that if Apple had MS's market share that things would actually be worse than they are now. Well, now we get a small hint of things to come. OTOH, perhaps Apple is so large now their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing.
Yeah, I read the book and I saw the commercial. Ironic.
This week, Slashdot featured a really good article form Slate that ended with this quote:
Steve Wozniak has said that he pre-ordered three iPads, two for himself and one for a friend. This is a testament to his incredible good nature and his loyalty both to the firm that marginalized him in the 1980s and to a friend, Jobs, who refused to write a foreword for his memoirs. Yet somewhere, deep inside, Wozniak must realize what the release of the iPad signifies: The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists.
That last sentence is really the core problem here. We were used to Steve Wozniak's Apple and we were in love with that Apple. Now the only Apple left is Steve Job's Apple. Times have changed but before we cast acerbic words at Jobs you must acknowledge he has led the company in a very profitable direction. Could he have done that while adhering to Wozniak's "open" idealism? That's the real debate here.
My work here is dung.
Apple hasn't forgotten the lesson they learned from IBM and others. Allowing developers to use proprietary tools like Adobe's Flash suite makes them dependent on Adobe's development cycle and not their own. Apple claims to have just released 1500 new API's for iPhone OS. How long will it take for Adobe to support them with their development tools? About as long is it takes to get a version of Flash for OSX that doesn't use 99% of the CPU? Or as long as it takes IBM to release a 3 GHz G5?
Not all issues surrounding control are negative. Sometimes it's just about controlling your own destiny and place in the market.
Do you suppose Steve Jobs might still be upset about the long delays in Adobe's release of OSX/Intel native products?
Nah.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
As far as Microsoft goes... I don't get where where you get the the idea that they "demand" anything. I don't recall having to even ask their permission to write Windows applications more or less ask them for permission to write the application in any of my choosing. Or install them. Or run them. Or distribute them.
Somehow, developers have to realize that the iPhone, iPad (and in a certain way an iMac too) are no longer meant to be computers with an operating system. They are devices with an API. As far as I see these API's are trying to protect the devices (and the company and the users).
Get over it.
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* Sigh *
Strongly disagree.
Supporting bad long-term over-arching policies because they happen to work towards a small short-term result that you like is really a bad idea. In the end you'll just work against your own actual goals. For instance, presumably you dislike Flash because it is closed, proprietary, non-compliant, resource-intensive, or whatever. But promoting a ridiculous closed ecosystem will just mean that Flash will replaced with something just as closed, proprietary, non-compliant, or whatever.
Just be consistent, and explain exactly what you dislike about Flash, and what you dislike about Apple's policies.
This is bullshit through and through, sorry.
The problem here is that Apple is restricting applications that are pure C/C++/ObjC code, not any different in that regard from anything that you'd write manually, so long as that code is generated from something else. Such applications don't pose any more portability problems than any other C/C++/ObjC application written for the platform.
Furthermore, they go ahead and ban all frameworks - even those written in languages that are otherwise allowed - if said frameworks enable cross-platform development. Again, since a framework just calls the same system APIs that an application would otherwise call directly, an app+framework combo is not at all different then just the app alone when it comes to porting to a new architecture.
Nah, this is clearly about control, and forcing people to develop for iPhone and only for iPhone, rather than single app for multiple platforms.
Apple is saying "you can only use C, C++, Objective C, and JavaScript as executed by the iPhone's JavaScript engine". No more, no less. This has fuck all to do with saving your platform from OMG EVIL PORTED GAMES. Poorly ported games are still possible under the new policy. And it applies to many, many things that aren't games. At best, this is an insane and stupid attempt to fuck over Adobe for little reason, and at worst, it's just insane and stupid. Either way, this isn't "good" by any metric that doesn't involve the RDF.
Don't worry though, I'm sure Apple will apply this rule arbitrarily and inconsistently, so you at least won't see the major applications that grossly violate it gone, but it will probably be lots of headaches for everyone else, and be yet another contributing factor to continuing to drive developers away from Apple's little walled garden of madness.
Just a thought. When tens of thousands of Android phones get 0wned, due to some Flash exploit, for example, and at the same time, hundreds of thousands of iPhones don't get 0wned by any exploit, who do you think will be smiling quietly to himself at all the bad publicity towards Android & Google
Fear is such an useful tool to keep people quiet and compliant.