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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..."
Steve is really trying to sell himself short, here. His reality distortion field has gone to his head, and he thinks he's bulletproof. And you know what? When he was the only game in town, he was bulletproof.
But he's not the only game in town. In fact, as of 1st Q 2010, he's not even the biggest game in town! As an application developer myself, the recent shenanigans around dictating to developers like me how we can or can't do our job and/or what tools we can use make the iphone a non-starter.
Sorry, too hostile for me, too much lockin for my clients, and not enough benefit. Android it is!
Isn't it ironic that the company responsible for opening up the smartphone market is now offering the most closed platform?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Do you mean to say that Microsoft is now going to force developers to publish through its app store and nothing else?
This appears correct.
I did not know that. Citation needed please.
From this InformationWeek article: "All apps must be approved by Microsoft, and can only be distributed via the Windows Marketplace for Mobile."
Everything that has gotten approved so far uses XCode as a build step. You don't necessarily have to do all your development work in XCode (i.e. Unity game engine),
Where have you seen that Unity has been approved by Apple? All I've seen is the Unity people saying "we think we're fine because Apple can't afford to remove all apps on the appstore that have been built with our engine, but obviously we can't offer any guarantees".
Cross compile to an XCode project with things like static libraries for your runtime and everything will be fine.
I'm not sure how you can interpret an SDK agreement stating, a.o.,
as
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Are you completely new to the cellphone industry? There have been development kits available before the IPhone or IPod even existed. I wrote my own apps using J2MEE long before Apple decided to enter the market. That is on phones NOT considered smart phones.
Apple is not the first cellphone manufactuer to support dev tools, but they are definitely one of the first to disallow someone who owns a device from choosing what to create or run on it.
They are also a first for dictating what development environments or even PREPROCESSORS a developer can use. XBox, Nintendo, Sony, etc all allow apps to be compiled in C/C++ to their target ABI (Application Binary Interface).
You present a failed comparison. In the world of cellphones, and closed systems, this is a first, and it should anger anyone who thinks they should actually OWN a device.
Microsoft is doing what it always does: Copying.
But in this case, the copying went the other way around. Microsoft had the XNA Creators Club ($99 per year) and Xbox Live Indie Games several months before Apple had the iPhone Developer Program ($99 per year) and App Store. This is just Microsoft extending the XNA model to phones.
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.