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Apple's Developer Tools Turnaround 'Great News' For Adobe
cgriffin21 writes "Apple is being praised for loosening of some of the restrictions in its Application Developer Program license agreement that open the door for app developers to work in Flash for the Apple iPhone, iPad and other devices. And no one is happier about the change than Flash-maker Adobe itself. They wrote, 'This is great news for developers and we're hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple's restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.'"
Apple also received praise from Google over their reversal, which may have been prompted by an FTC probe. Reader Stoubalou adds that Apple shed more light on the app review process by publishing a list of guidelines (PDF) the violation of which may get an app rejected from the App Store.
After reading the pdf "App Store Review Guidelines" I'm of two minds.
First, damn that's a long list of rejection reasons.
Second, the subset of that list that is neither reasonable nor obvious is very short. There are only a couple that I would say are stupid, and they revolve around censorship (i.e. adult themes).
In the end, would I try to write an app that violated any of those rules? Probably not. One could argue that I might want to... and that's true. But if I want to do that, there's an Android market just over thataway. It's a walled garden, but there's a door right there.
I just recently got full and official Flash support on my Motorola Droid with Android 2.2. It seems oddly coincidental to me that as soon as Android has solid Flash support, Apple decides it's time to open the floodgates and be best buddies with Adobe.
What the fuck? Sure, it's natural that Apple would do that because they want to stay competitive with the Android segment of the market, but Apple was supposed to be the leader and "innovator", not the follower.
It will only last until people stop thinking that lack of Flash support is an effective talking point for criticizing Apple. Then everyone will go back to hating Flash.
It's possible to both hate Flash and realize that a lot of things you want still require it.
(And, possibly, that there isn't a better alternative technology in some cases. I said some cases, HTML5-is-the-answer-to-all-things-video partisans.)
Choice is good, not bad.
If I needed Flash I wouldn't have bought an iPhone. Choice made.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Flash is a hammer that frequently gets used to nail in screws. But sometimes you actually need a hammer.
The ______ Agenda
Please do not conflate the question of Flash sucking hard, and the question of freedom of choice. One can hate Flash with a passion, but still believe that one should have the choice to enjoy that suckiness in full.
I still don't get why you need to have every possible choice available to you. You already have a choice here - don't buy iOS devices. Apparently nerds need to bitch until their every unrealistic whim is satisfied?
What's eerie is that Apple does this with every single thing they have ever launched since time immemorial, and slashgeeks still love to think that Apple is evil, prone to making huge gaffes, and then quietly making good once they realize their colossal blunder. The "no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" mindset is so effing retarded it's now an Internet meme, and we *still* don't get that the joke is on us. Not Taco. Us.
This is what Apple does: (1) strip every half-baked feature/freedom out of a new product until it is boiled down to its most basic essence. (2) Release it. (3) Start adding the features/freedoms back in one at a time once they are fully baked. (4) Profit! (Notice the lack of a ...? step.) They do this. Every. Single. Time. iPod storage. iTunes on Windows. Virtually everything in OS X. Webkit. Macbooks and minis. iTunes DRM. iPhone cut and paste. iPhone devkits. iOS multitasking. Every single time the geekosphere gnashes its teeth and bemoans that Apple is pushing bullshit that is missing X, Y, and Z. And then Apple does X, Y, and Z, and the geekosphere congratulates itself for doing Apple's product development for them.
If we believed our own propaganda (and it is apparent that many of us do), Apple is the world's most incompetent company that barely survives thanks to nerd rage steering them back on track on a more or less continuous basis. But Occam's Razor suggests that a more likely explanation is merely that Apple polishes the consumer experience first, and the nerd experience second. I guess that angers us.