Steve Jobs Weighs In On iPhone Programming Language Mandate

Dotnaught writes "Greg Slepak, founder of software company Tao Effect, wrote Apple CEO Steve Jobs to complain about Apple's mandate that iPhone applications be originally written in C/C++/Objective-C. Job's response was to endorse a post by John Gruber on the Daring Fireball blog. Jobs called it 'very insightful,' suggesting Gruber's prediction that third-party iPhone development tools are out might be right. Jobs sent a second reply that also doesn't bode well for third-party iPhone development tools: 'We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.'"

Comments

Re:They want devs to choose

[drinkypoo]

This is the one. He wants apps written for the iPhone, not apps that try to shoehorn some kind of cross-platform abstraction on top of the iPhone, because that usually sucks, and (at least in his eyes) it makes the iPhone look bad if the apps look bad.

That's stupid because the iPhone does not differ substantially from other smartphones. It has a big touchscreen, just like the rest. There's no reason why an app written for a range of smartphones wouldn't look and work just fine on it.

How many times do you hear gamers complain that a game is a crappy port because it is not properly written for the platform it is on, but instead tries squeeze in the functionality of some other platform? That is the exact thing he doesn't want on his platform.

His platform? He can have it. I'd like a platform that belongs to the users, thanks. And Thank Google for providing one based on Free Software and Open Standards, not to mention Open Source.

Porting is a totally different issue.

[the_raptor]

The problem with console to PC ports is that consoles are designed with the limitations of game controllers in mind and so therefore are often "simplified" compared to native PC titles. That isn't what this is about. This is about porting between the different touch based smart phones which are all so similar in capability that it is like porting between Windows, Linux, or OSX (which works fine if you don't target a propriety platform to begin with). This is solely about Steve Jobs trying to turn his beachhead in the mobile market into an occupation.

iTunes for Windows is using non-native APIs

[dotwhynot]

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.” -- Apple

Is Apple actually calling iTunes for Windows for a sub-standard app? That perhaps should be banned from the platform? Apple themselves are using non-native API intermediate layers such as CoreFoundation and CoreGraphics in their implementation of iTunes for Windows.

Re:They want devs to choose

[TheRaven64]

Not sure about Google, but we (GNUstep) have a project to implement UIKit. We already have pretty much all of the Foundation framework that the iPhone exposes, and our CoreGraphics implementation will hopefully to be finished as a result of this year's GSoC. A lot of UIKit is very similar to stuff we've already implemented for AppKit, so there's a lot of potential for code reuse. We've approached Nokia for funding the development of UIKit, with the N900 as a primary target, but if anyone at Google (or anywhere else) is interested in funding some of the work then please let me know.