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iPhone SDK Agreement Shuts Out HyperCard Clone
Halo1 writes "Demonstrating it's not just about Flash, Apple has officially rejected for the first time another alternative iPhone development environment following its controversial iPhone SDK Agreement changes. Even though RunRev proposed to retool its HyperCard-style development environment to directly expose all of the iPhone OS's APIs, Steve Jobs still rejected its proposal. The strength of RunRev's business case, with a large-scale iPad deployment project in education hinging on the availability of its tool, does not bode well for projects that have less commercial clout. Salient point: at last February's shareholders' meeting, Jobs went on the record saying that something like HyperCard on the iPad would be great, 'but someone would have to create it.'"
Just imagine the outcry if Microsoft banned all other development environments than Visual Studio and .NET from Windows. It would be hit with lawsuits and there would be tons of stories and tens of thousands of comments dissing MS on slashdot.
People also always cry about how consoles are locked down. Slashdotters cry about DRM, restrictions and not giving them control of the devices they buy.
But suddenly when it's Apple it's all ok. Why the hell?
Jobs went on the record saying that something like HyperCard on the iPad would be great, 'but someone would have to create it'.
This being the same Steve Jobs that effectively killed the original Apple Hypercard back in 2000?
Maybe that should have read, "something like HyperCard on the iPad would be great, but we would have to create it, otherwise it clearly would not be insanely great..."
For something like Hypercard? Sure.
This isn't just the 10,000th fart app.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I hate it when people trot out that tired convicted monopolist argument.
So if tomorrow the Supreme Court found Apple to be a monopolist with regards to smartphones (setting aside all plausibility arguments as to such, this is a hypothetical), I presume that would make you say what Apple is doing is wrong?
I somehow doubt that would be the case for most people that raise the convicted monopolist argument.
Legality is not the same as morality.
If we were all guaranteed with a crystal ball that Apple would forever remain a niche player and that the iPhone/iPad mobile ecosystem would not become the dominant paradigm of mobile computing, then I would agree with you. However, given Apple's current trajectory, this conclusion is by no means clear to me. So in the meantime, I am trying to prevent that from happening, but raising attention to the bad things that would happen if Apple's current growth continues unimpeded.
This is about rights and freedoms. Freedom of choice is meaningless if when the time comes to make a choice, there is only one thing to choose from.
Android probably never will go down that route, and as a result, no matter how successful Android phones become in the market, Android apps will never be as successful as iPhone apps.
not true, Android Marketplace?
The only problem is convincing developers there's a market there, or that developing for generic devices with any number of different features is a good idea.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Eh, nowhere in my post do I reference individual Macbook models, or Macbooks in general. There is also no "rugged Macbook" (which I would love), etc. I guess I don't understand your argument here.
Regardless of what hardware they offer, when it comes to developing for OS X it's like any other operating system, and that will never change.
I haven't heard Toyota calling for developers to come develop for their platform, nor have I seen them using developers to create the usefulness that justify the price a Prius commands. A Prius is worth its price out of the box. IMO, the iPhone and the iPad would be worth much less than they are if not for 3rd party developers. Apple quite often uses the work of these 3rd party developers as bullet points to why you should purchase one of their devices. Without them, you've just purchased an $800 combination Movie/Music player and internet browser.
The word "entitlement" is thrown around as a negative, but in this case - perhaps yes - developers are entitled some amount of consideration from Apple. Note - I said consideration. Thus far, it's only been Apple's way or the highway.