Apple Eases Restrictions On iPhone Developers

WrongSizeGlass writes "MacRumors has a story on a report by Apple Outsider's Matt Drance that Apple is easing their restrictions on interpreted code used in iPhone development, a change which allows game developers in particular to continue to use interpreted languages such as Lua in their App Store applications. The change comes alongside Apple's further modifications of its iOS developer terms that again allow for limited analytics data collection to aid advertisers and developers, but appear to shut out non-independent companies such as Google's AdMob from receiving the data. It's not enough of an 'about face' to let Adobe or Google back in the picture but they've backpedaled enough to let the little guys squeeze through."

Comments

Common sense prevails

[Dan East]

Good to see a little common sense prevailing. I use Lua in my game engine, and it is a very good language for embedding in an application. It is much more efficient to call into than Javascript, for example. This is more about the logical segregation between engine developers and game designers. Scripting (especially event-driven) better suites game designers, who often are not hardcore developers that have a firm understanding of Objective C, C++ or C.
It's not even about portability - pure C and C++ (not dependent on any external APIs besides that of the game engine) is even more portable. It's about using the proper language for the job.

Re:Common sense prevails

[icebraining]

At least Python users generally admit that they're using Python as a prototyping language, just because it allows for quick, but shitty, development. When their idea is somewhat proven, then go back and rewrite it using a real programming language like Java or C++.

You mean like Youtube?

Python is fast enough for our site and allows us to produce maintainable features in record times, with a minimum of developers.

Or like EVE Online?

Python enabled us to create EVE Online, a massive multiplayer game, in record time. The EVE Online server cluster runs over 50,000 simultaneous players in a shared space simulation, most of which is created in Python.

More: http://www.python.org/about/quotes/

I don't know about Ruby, but I disagree with your opinion on "shitty development" of Python.

big nothing

[MrDoh!]

So.. interpreted is not ok atm, but might be ok next week.
Cross compiled flash is not ok now, but might be ok if server side translated to be displayed.
Showing too much on a desktop picture frame still gets your app removed.
Flash (that'd allow more apps to run, just no totalitarian control of the app market) will never be allowed.
Gotcha.

Stuff even attempting to develop on this platform.

Re:big nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, while "officially" China is a very restrictive country, I think the Chinese are much more relaxed and flexible than Americans (U.S. Americans and Canadians both - I had the doubtful pleasure of dealing with both as manufacturers).

In China, there's much less sense of entitlement. This means that:

  A) Your project matters to them. If you take enough time and attention to talk to their engineers, you'll see that they are often (not always, of course) both smart and resourceful, and will generally want to work with you.

  B) They will not apply rules like automatons would, just to get out of work. Typical US excuse: "we are not allowed to change the production process without a written ECO and a re-quote" - never mind that basically adds a week of downtime to any "experimental" change, and allows the manufacturer to sit on their ass for a week. Or, "well, I guess we'll have to wait until we have the intermediate product before we start making tooling for the next step, you know you can't trust those thar CAD drawings of yours."

  C) Unions. It's very "amusing" when you move a piece of equipment from one room to the other (on casters no less), just to get written up for not requesting a union employee. This usually takes at least 4 hours to get sorted, usually a day. The problem with unions is not that they don't want to do any work, but that they don't want anybody to do any work that they are also not doing.

As an engineer, who has absolutely no financial interest in the cost/profit from my designs, I would still very much prefer to manufacture in China.

Re:big nothing

[0xdeadbeef]

Jebus Crust! You mean for any application there is a 5% risk you'll end up sitting in limbo, and the weeks of time and money you spent developing the application could be wasted?

That's a service level availability of "one nine". No business would tolerate that, but fanboys think it is great.

Re:big nothing

[kanweg]

Well, according to Apple the top three reasons why those 5% of apps were rejected are:
1) they crash (apple doesn't want rotten fruit in its shop)
2) because they don't do what the developer says they do (lemons instead of peaches)
3) third I forgot (perhaps the use of non-public APIs. If Apple changes those, the third party apps relying on them wouldn't work; see #1)

It is not as if the developer isn't in control of any of the above.

Bert

Today they allow it, tomorrow it will be forbidden

[sosume]

Apple is acting worse than Microsoft has ever done. The have developers jumping through hoops.

"No we won't allow non-objective C so your investments in your app are worthless."
"Oh we're getting bad press now? well we'll allow it then for a while."
"Storm settled? let's forbid it again."
"Antitrust investigation? Hmm let's allow some for a while again"

My business has decided against investing in the iPad/iPhone development platforms. The uncertainty and unreliability of Apple management are too great a risk.

PR drivel

[yyxx]

against Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone compiler as part of Apple's broader effort to keep third-party meta-platforms from eroding the user experience and stifling innovation as developers become reliant upon them to roll out support for new features introduced by Apple

Translation: "... Apple's broader effort against a fair and competitive market place, and their attempts to translate their early lead into a monopoly".

What they are afraid of is people using non-Apple music and video stores and people creating applications that also work on Android. And in doing so, Apple stifles innovation and manages to extract more money out of people's pockets.

Re:PR drivel

[teg]

What they are afraid of is people using non-Apple music and video stores and people creating applications that also work on Android.

Apple allow non-Apple music and video solutions - they allow e.g. spotify, wimp, netflix and many more. The latter is definitely one of their targets - not because they don't want things to work on Android, even though not being able to share the costs might be a fringe benefit now that the iPhone app market is so dominant. Their real goal is to avoid development environments that abstracts away their platform - and target the lowest common denominator, and won't give access to new iOS features when available.

As an iphone user, I really hate and love their approach. I dislike that I can't develop what I want. On the other side, the quality of the apps is higher - and I prefer a phone experience with no flash. Probably without iAd too, I don't want rich, intrusive ads.

What scares me more than their technical requirements, is their content censoring. I don't want a walled, Disney-like "think of the children!" world.

Doesn't matter

[blind biker]

Apps have been rejected for no good reason whatever. Even apps that have been approved at a certain version, their updates have been rejected. For no good reason. The process is absolutely capricious and you can never, ever be sure your app will be approved in the Apple store.

Re:Today they allow it, tomorrow it will be forbid

[blackraven14250]

Guess what?

Anyone writing an app that takes more than 1 person two weeks to create, like those real, groundbreaking apps that aren't rehashes of another app that's already been done, aren't going to waste their time with a company as inconsistent as Apple when they have other platforms to develop for.

Especially when there's reason to believe that Android is beginning to exceed the iPhone.

Re:Today they allow it, tomorrow it will be forbid

[jo_ham]

Ah, yes, the padded numbers from the 2 for 1 Verizon promotion, and the slump in numbers because the iPhone 4 release is very soon...

Numbers for 1 quarter don't tell the whole picture, although I am glad Android is doing well - competition is good for all.

This has come up in discussion before - 95% of the apps submitted to the store get approved, and any company that is serious about making a living from mobile development is *crazy* to ignore a 100 million user base just because they think it might possibly cost them a little bit extra in development. If your company cannot afford to "take the risk" (ie, developing an iPhone app that is rejected would cause the company to fold) then it has bigger issues than a potentially "inconsistent" company.

"Wasting their time" developing for an app that (for conservative estimates, ignoring older phones), is available to 50 million customers... right.

If you are serious about development in the mobile market you are crazy to ignore the iPhone - the user base is enormous, the app store is centralised and it continues to grow.

It would be the equivalent of being a scissors manufacturer, or a can opener maker and not making a left handed version for the cost of development. Even if the left handed population is small, relative to the whole (10% approx), it is still a market that is worth developing for. The iPhone is a significantly larger portion of the smartphone market than 10%. Ignoring it because you are worried about a serious minority of app rejections is just not good business sense.

By all means, develop for Android (especially with the rise in handsets and users - it's a clear emerging market), but any sensible business will also be "risking" iPhone development.

iOS Development

[awhite]

Many people on this thread have a very skewed picture of iOS development. I have released three fairly large iOS projects (i.e. months to years of development rather than a few days or weeks like so many toy apps). The first was a smashing success and our 3-person development company was acquired for it. The acquiring company is now my employer so I won't name specifics in this case. The second was an independent iPhone app I wrote that was a total flop. The third is my new independent iPad project called Stash that's doing pretty well so far: http://stash.hedonicsoftware.com/

Just the existence of Stash on the App Store - basically an app for porn, though it doesn't provide the explicit content - is evidence that Apple isn't nearly as draconian and capricious as many in this thread are portraying them to be. If you create a high-quality app (or hell, even a low-quality one so long as it doesn't crash) that follows their general guidelines and doesn't try to take over basic functions of the iPhone, you won't generally have a problem. Sure, there are famous counter-examples, and I really feel for those developers. I can't imagine a more frustrating experience then pouring your time into something that's rejected outright. But it doesn't change the fact that these are the few exceptions in a vast sea of approvals or justified rejections (based on the three points that Jobs outlined). Moreover, in my experience Apple is getting much better about working with developers to get apps their approved. It's still a slow process - the last release of Stash was delayed without feedback for over 2 weeks, which felt interminable - but they eventually call and tell you about any solvable issues and give you a chance to correct them.

I'd also like to point out that outside the pain of dealing with the review process, iOS development is a lot of fun. Someone on this thread said no one is in the App Store simply for the love of programming, but I strongly disagree. Apple provides some really nice APIs, and it's relatively easy to create something that looks and feels smooth and professional. I'm currently working on an Android project for my employer, and it's a real chore compared to iOS dev. I don't care how "open" the market is or even how powerful the SDK is if I hate coding for it and need a graphic design team to make it look decent. People forget that Apple/NeXT has been in the GUI framework business for a long time. They know what they're doing. They also seem to be good at letting their internal APIs fully bake before including them in the SDK, which results in a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than in Android, where everything feels over-engineered. I recently read an article by another iOS developer that sums up my feelings pretty much exactly: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/03/android-sdk-from-iphone-developer.html

That's my 2 cents. YMMV. But if you're interested in mobile development at all, you owe it to yourself to give iOS development a shot.

Re:iOS Development

[shutdown -p now]

Just the existence of Stash on the App Store - basically an app for porn, though it doesn't provide the explicit content - is evidence that Apple isn't nearly as draconian and capricious as many in this thread are portraying them to be.

Given that we've seen a bunch of cases where an application was approved for N major releases, and then blocked in (N+1)th, over the feature that has been present in it from the start, I dare say that this doesn't prove anything.

Now, if you want to have some proof - write an anonymous hysterical complaint about your own app ("porn! think of the children!" etc) to Apple, and see if they tell you to GTFO, or re-review and pull the app down. If you're that trusting of Apple, I dare you to do this, and post the result of this little experiment on Slashdot.