Slashdot Mirror
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.
I think this is the first time I've heard "flash support" and "good news" in the same sentence. My, how the times they are a changin'.
Nice that they post the rejection guidelines, but when will they actually follow them? The WiFi finders that disappeared is one. If Apple thinks that is own wifi locating software in iOS is enough to trump all the quality apps that were out there then that means they could do the same for any app even if the app performs better then the so called existing app. The wifi finders found 10x the networks that the network finder in iOS finds, yet this was enough to have apple take the stupid action of eliminating all wifi finders. An example is Wifi-fo-fum which will find 10 networks, tell you the mac, mode, security protocol channel, rssi and rates as opposed to apple's that tell you subnet and ip, with rssi only given in the form of the signal graphic that is about useless when trying to trouble shot signal strength on a wifi network and what might be affecting it.
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.
I guess you still have to pay $99/yr for appstore developer ability, or $299/yr for corporate development.
But what about people that just want to do the coding for themselves or fun? I don't want to distribute my app. Why can't I register one device that I can load my code onto for free without paying either of these?
I have a Mac, iPhone and XCode. Why can't I compile my code and move it onto my device without paying (or jailbreaking).
Seems that would be a nice way to get some more developers in.
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! Flash can now port applications to the iphone!
Why would Flash take more battery than a normal app? Is there a suck_battery_life() function somewhere in the API nobody else is using but Adobe?
And the worst part is when he writes a crappy country song about it, your family won't even get a cut!
I think it will be good for everyone involved that the rules are clearer and more app creation tools exist, as long as the approval process is both stringent and non-abusive.
Also glad that Flash applets are not allowed... those are 90% advertisements, and for those useful non-ad content, I'm happy using my desktop to view them.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Of course that's not true about the book burning.
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.)
"Which feature of Flash is impossible to re-implement?"
1) High-quality fast vector graphics with morphing and keyframe animation. Nothing in HTML5 is even close (sorry, Canvas is just a toy).
2) Video overlays and compositing.
3) Audio (nope, HTML5 doesn't have enough support).
4) Language with optional typing and fast VM. JS is not yet there.
"Heck, they've even ported Quake to HTML5 [techcrunch.com]. That is quite a bit more advanced program than most Flash apps."
Nope, they haven't. They ported it to WebGL which is NOT a part of HTML5 draft standard.
Flash is a hammer that frequently gets used to nail in screws. But sometimes you actually need a hammer.
The ______ Agenda
Apparently. Firefox CPU utilization without Lexulous (a non-animated Flash-based Facebook game - shut up, my Mom likes to play it with us) is about 8%-10%. (This is with Twitter and Facebook open which presumably are doing AJAX polling in the background.)
Throw open Lexulous, and I discover that I'm losing again (bah), and the CPU usage shoots up to 90% as long as that tab is open. With a Flash app that is literally sitting there doing nothing. No animation, no AJAX polling, just showing a Scrabble board.
So, joke or not, yes, it would appear that somewhere Flash has found the equivalent of suck_battery_life() and has a rather liberal usage policy for it.
Disclaimer: the computer I'm trying this on is an old Mac Pro G5, so I'd hope modern computers wouldn't be quite as bad, but still, that's pretty horrible.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Well, you have to admit that it takes a visionary to make a product that's functionally inferior to everything else on the market, and yet outsell everyone by such a large margin. And then roll out new versions with all those missing features, and sell it to all those poor schmucks who had already bought the original phone again and again!
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.