it didn't seem that big an issue with the iTouch and iPhone [...] it does seem odd that only now are people outraged by Apple's intransigence on the issue.
That's because no one expected a full browsing experience on a hand-held device like the iPhone. The standard of comparison was other smartphones, and that's a comparison that the iPhone could easily win at the time.
But a $500-$900 device with a netbook-sized screen, and too much weight and bulk to use like a smartphone, is naturally going to be compared to netbooks, where Flash has widespread support. People will expect the web to "just work" on an iPad the way it does on other devices of similar size and price.
In addition, Flash is now due to arrive on other smartphones before the end of the year, so people are starting to take another look at its absence on the iPhone. If Adobe can deliver a well-performing, stable plugin for Android, Apple will have a hard time continuing with the story that they're blocking it for technical reasons.
The ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics on board the Eee PC 1201T is easily capable of playing back smooth 720p and 1080p HD video in a few formats. CPU usage for both 720p and 1080p seemed to average at 50% CPU usage with dips as low as 30% and spikes as high as 70%.
Is a toy something you use to read books? Do you watch movies on a toy, update facebook on a toy, write on a toy? (And yes it's great for writing especially right after you wake up and you want to write down this great idea you had in your sleep).
If that's all true then yes, iPad is a toy.
Yes, it is. The key point is that the iPad is actually worse at all those tasks than other devices you can get for the same price (or less). So what are you paying for? The shiny novelty factor. That's what makes it a toy.
Usually the PC is saying they can do spreadsheets and other similar boring business type tasks. The Mac is more concerned about doing interesting things like managing photos and playing music and having a life.
Sounds like you've been drinking some of that delicious Apple flavored Hater-aid. I went into the apple store the other day and tried it out. It is really nice and is a pretty neat little gadget for just browsing the web while you're hanging out on the couch.
Funny, it sounds like you've been drinking some of Steve's own kool-aid.
I went to Best Buy a week ago and tried one out myself. It was mediocre: less portable than a phone, less useful than a netbook. The browser didn't work on JavaScript-heavy sites that work in the Android browser. It's too heavy to comfortably hold up for any length of time, so you're stuck leaving it on a surface or propping it up against something.
Is it a piece of crap? Probably not. I mean, it's a well-engineered device for what it is... it's just engineered to be something pointless. The term I'd use is "white elephant": it's unique, expensive, and disappointing once the novelty wears off.
So what you are saying is that the ipad is worthless in your opinion, which is more relevant than the fact the ipad is doing very well.
Tickle Me Elmo did very well, too.
The iPad is selling well because it's a cool, shiny, new toy. Compared to a smartphone or a netbook, it can't compete on features or price; it can only compete on being cooler, shinier, and newer. But sooner or later the novelty will wear off, and people will realize that the reasons they've been rejecting tablet computers for the past 15 years are still valid.
Likewise, if Apple introduced a video phone or a touchscreen computer that hangs on the wall, I'm sure it'd sell very well for a while. Then the novelty would wear off, and people would remember the reasons why they haven't been buying video phones and vertically mounted touchscreens for the past few decades either.
>Tiny screen? Not. Smaller than a 15.6" laptop? Sure but bigger or equivalent to most netbooks.
At that price, it'd better be.
> no Flash support We are still fracking talking about this? Please.
They still haven't fixed it, and they're clearly not going to. All the talk in the world about HTML 5 doesn't change the fact that many, many web sites use Flash, or that there's no HTML 5 equivalent of the Flash developer tools. Until either the iPad changes or the web changes, the iPad will be cut off from a big part of the web.
On screen keyboard in landscape mode does fine for typing pretty long missives
Having used an iPad myself, I beg to differ. I wouldn't recommend that screen for typing an SMS, much less a blog post.
It's really not "crippled" or "limited", not in the knee-jerk manner most consider. It's a nice productivity tool,
It's crippled in the sense that there are many applications you can't get, web sites you can't use, and tasks you can't perform with it, all because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. As for "productivity tool"... well, maybe with a Bluetooth keyboard hooked up. But at that point, you might ask yourself why you're trying to make it into something it doesn't want to be, and whether you might look a bit less silly using a device where the keyboard is attached to the screen.
and, it's a great device to have in the house or for travels. It does a ton of stuff.
Heh. You know what's an even greater device to have in the house or for travels, something that does even more stuff? A netbook. Comparable screen, lower price tag, actual keyboard, and uncrippled OS.
They're not hard to find. You don't even need to live near an Apple store: I went to Best Buy and saw a whole table of iPads. I wouldn't assume that everyone who gripes about the iPad hasn't already used one.
Yes, I tried one. I was not impressed. It was exactly what I expected: an iPhone that doesn't make calls and won't fit in your pocket. Typing on it was a joke, and the first site I tried in the browser -- an HTML+CSS+JavaScript application that works fine on desktops, and even on Android -- was an unusable mess.
People are still making plenty of text games, even more elaborate than the ones from the 80s (thanks to increased memory capacity, better tools, and evolving expectations). And indeed, they're popular with blind players who use screen readers.
Besides, Verizon sucks, why would you want to sign up with them anyway?
Besides their excellent 3G coverage, there's also the fact that the Droid is still the only top-tier Android phone with a physical keyboard. The Nexus One is nice, but only if you don't care about using SSH or emulators.
And I still find it funny that the whole "open" Android crowd is cheering that they get a closed plugin.
An open platform means anyone can develop for it, even proprietary software. Contrast it to Apple's closed platform, where you can't get that closed plugin because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. There are open source Flash players that could, theoretically, be ported to Android just as Adobe is doing (if anyone felt strongly enough about "closed plugins" that they were willing to port an open one). Again, that's something Steve won't let you do on the iPhone.
Also, most Android phones already ship with closed applications from Google. That's what the scuffle with Cyanogen was about, which is why installing CyanogenMod now involves backing up those closed apps and then restoring them after flashing the new OS.
You're like that scene in the British comedy The Young Ones. There's these interviews with kids on the street complaining that society does not recognized their value, but all they really want is to be able to get drunk in pubs.
It's a shame you weren't born a few decades earlier -- you would've fit in much better with the opponents of desegregation and women's suffrage. It took at least some balls to be a bigot in those days, and you got to wear scary white robes. Mocking youth rights is pretty cowardly in comparison.
Oh stop with the histrionics already. It's fucking video games.
And many instances of segregation were just "fucking lunch counters". Perhaps you'd have mocked, "Someone call MLK and Gandhi! A black guy can't eat lunch at this deli!"
Discrimination based on age is every bit as wrong as discrimination based on race. The fact that the discrimination is taking place in a context you find unimportant is no excuse.
You're kidding, right?
Nope. See, some of us actually care about civil rights -- even the rights of people younger than us, and even in contexts that might seem trivial. (But something tells me you'd have the same reaction if this were about voting, owning property, or anything else: bigots rarely keep their bigotry confined to trivial issues.)
It has nothing to do with superstition and everything to do with practicality. We draw a line because it's simple, and there are far more important things to worry about.
Are there really? We're talking about laws under which people are denied rights, or even arrested, because of an accident of their birth. That seems pretty important.
Drawing an arbitrary line just to get it over with is a travesty of justice, no better than convicting someone of a crime because he's statistically likely to have committed it.
That's why I believe that certain things should be permissable in practice, but not in distribution. It should be permissable for kids to PLAY violent games, if their parents buy it for them, but not for kids to BUY the games themselves.
Why are you only applying this to games (and maybe movies)? If you believe it's so important for restrictive parents to have control over what their kids buy that you favor a ban on selling video games to minors, then you ought to favor a ban on selling anything to minors.
A law that singles out M-rated games is not just a tool for parents to use in enforcing their house rules. It's an endorsement of certain rules to the exclusion of others: the state is saying that parental rules against buying M-rated games are more legitimate than parental rules against buying unhealthy foods, disagreeable political and religious material, ringtones, jewelry, revealing clothes, etc.
People will argue that kids mature at different rates, but, well, that's ImaginationLand where there's a magic test for "adultness" that can be applied every birthday to every young person.
It's not really that hard. All you need to do is decide what it takes for someone to be "mature enough" to do X -- whether that means drinking, having sex, voting, or playing GTA -- and then require someone to prove that they meet those criteria before allowing them to do it.
The reason people don't like that plan is that when they think about it long enough, they realize that any criteria they come up with will qualify a lot of people who they feel are "too young", and disqualify a lot of people who they feel are "old enough". And then, rather than throw out the concepts of "too young" and "old enough", they instead throw out the idea of applying objective criteria. They prefer the lazy solution that lets them hold onto their superstitions about age.
Part of civilization is agreeing on things like this. I see it as kind of a test. This sort of stuff is Society 101. If we can't get a general consensus on where to draw the age line for various things then we really are hopeless.
No... the problem is, age is a red herring. The year in which you were born really has very little to do with your capacity to employ judgment when watching movies or playing games.
We can't form a consensus on where to draw the "age line" for the same reason we can't form a consensus on where to draw the "height line" or the "weight line". It's a meaningless question. It cannot be answered with facts, because the facts don't point to any need to restrict content based on age. Any answer, therefore, is necessarily going to be subjective and inaccurate.
It's a proven medical fact that the parts of the human brain which control executive, long-term, decision making, are not fully developed until around 20 years of age.
The human brain is always developing. A 30 year old will look back bewildered at decisions he made at age 20. Ten years later, he'll shake his head at decisions he made when he was 30. Ten years after that... you get the idea.
There is no age when a person becomes "done" and has all their faculties. Their decision making changes throughout their life as they gain knowledge and experience.
Furthermore, using the developing brain as an excuse to take away minors' agency is nothing but a weak rationalization for ageism. The important question is not "when is someone 'fully developed'?", but rather "when is someone developed enough?" Much like a computer with no floating-point unit can still do floating-point math, a brain which is still developing can make rational decisions.
Generally, when adults complain about minors' decision making, what they're really criticizing is the outcome, not the process: you see somebody coming to a different decision than you want them to, so you blame their supposed inability to make decisions. But generally this reflects a difference in priorities and goals, not a difference in the decision-making process.
That's why the collective experience of society has determined, over the millenia, that 18 and 21 years of age are the key ages for granting freedoms.
Except it hasn't! Age restrictions vary from state to state, from country to country: for example, in the US we usually let people drive several years before they can drink, but in other countries it's often the other way around. In some places, the age of consent is 14; in some places, it's 19. If age restrictions were based on any sort of objective measurements, there would be a consensus by now.
But if you allow your child to go to the mall, you certainly can't know or prevent them from buying an R-rated game or seeing an R-rated movie. Hence, the retailer should probably enforce it.
If you allow your child to go to the grocery store, you can't prevent them from buying candy. If you allow your child to go to the bookstore, you can't prevent them from buying books about material you disapprove of (e.g. religions and philosophies you disagree with). So, should retailers enforce those house rules too?
If not, why are you singling out video games and movies? Why is it only the retailer's job to enforce some house rules, specifically the ones based on third-party rating systems with their own biases (e.g. MPAA attitudes on sex vs. violence)?
Science hasn't shown conclusively whether violent games affect the mental, emotional, or behavioral development of kids. Candy, however, is pretty harmless.
Well, that's disputable, but more importantly it's irrelevant.
Your original argument was that retailers ought to enforce parental rules because it's hard for parents to enforce those rules on their own. You said nothing about requiring any level of scientific proof to justify those parental rules. Now, apparently, you're moving the goalposts.
So, back to the point, do you think we ought to pass a law making it illegal to sell anything to anyone under 18 without parental permission, as long as there's some remote chance that it might "affect the mental, emotional, or behavioral development of kids"? Because that includes a lot more than just violent video games: it could easily include all video games, sports equipment, books and movies (especially related to politics, philosophy, or religion), etc.
It's a LOT easier to control distribution at the point of sale, rather than at the point of consumption.
Some parents don't want their kids eating sugary snacks. So, should we pass a law making it illegal for grocery stores to sell candy to anyone under 18 without parental permission?
Some parents don't want their kids learning about evolution, either. Should we pass another law making it illegal for bookstores to sell science textbooks to anyone under 18 without parental permission?
You can't possibly expect retailers to enforce parents' house rules. That's the parents' job. It's not impossible to stay on top of what your kids are doing, it's just a lot of work. If you're not prepared for that responsibility, then maybe you're not ready to have kids.
If the parents want their kids to have access to those games, then they can still buy GTA 9 for Johnny's birthday.
Why should those parents have to waste their time in order to not restrict their kids from doing something? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the parents who do want to restrict their kids' behavior to enforce that restriction?
A Flash to Objective-C translator just seems to me like something that's prone to breaking whenever either side updates their IP, and a bit of an abomination from the standpoint of conceptual clarity.
Not really. Assuming the translator generates valid Objective-C code, any change Apple might make that would break the translator's output would also break a lot of hand-written ObjC code.
Ultimately this is why, regardless of the business strategy involved, Apple does in fact have a valid technical motivation here.
Slashdot Mirror
it didn't seem that big an issue with the iTouch and iPhone [...] it does seem odd that only now are people outraged by Apple's intransigence on the issue.
That's because no one expected a full browsing experience on a hand-held device like the iPhone. The standard of comparison was other smartphones, and that's a comparison that the iPhone could easily win at the time.
But a $500-$900 device with a netbook-sized screen, and too much weight and bulk to use like a smartphone, is naturally going to be compared to netbooks, where Flash has widespread support. People will expect the web to "just work" on an iPad the way it does on other devices of similar size and price.
In addition, Flash is now due to arrive on other smartphones before the end of the year, so people are starting to take another look at its absence on the iPhone. If Adobe can deliver a well-performing, stable plugin for Android, Apple will have a hard time continuing with the story that they're blocking it for technical reasons.
Except for the fact that a laptop, this includes netbooks, are crap to use any place other than by a desk.
Tablets are crap to use anywhere. That's not an improvement.
Yeah, sure. Try playing an HD movie on your low-powered netbook.
All right.
Given that Android uses the same renderer as the iPad, I'd have to call BS on your post.
Sorry, but it's the truth. I verified myself that the site (1) does not work on the iPad and (2) does work on the Droid.
Both browsers are based on WebKit, but with customized code, and different JavaScript engines.
Is a toy something you use to read books? Do you watch movies on a toy, update facebook on a toy, write on a toy? (And yes it's great for writing especially right after you wake up and you want to write down this great idea you had in your sleep).
If that's all true then yes, iPad is a toy.
Yes, it is. The key point is that the iPad is actually worse at all those tasks than other devices you can get for the same price (or less). So what are you paying for? The shiny novelty factor. That's what makes it a toy.
Usually the PC is saying they can do spreadsheets and other similar boring business type tasks. The Mac is more concerned about doing interesting things like managing photos and playing music and having a life.
Like this?
Sounds like you've been drinking some of that delicious Apple flavored Hater-aid. I went into the apple store the other day and tried it out. It is really nice and is a pretty neat little gadget for just browsing the web while you're hanging out on the couch.
Funny, it sounds like you've been drinking some of Steve's own kool-aid.
I went to Best Buy a week ago and tried one out myself. It was mediocre: less portable than a phone, less useful than a netbook. The browser didn't work on JavaScript-heavy sites that work in the Android browser. It's too heavy to comfortably hold up for any length of time, so you're stuck leaving it on a surface or propping it up against something.
Is it a piece of crap? Probably not. I mean, it's a well-engineered device for what it is... it's just engineered to be something pointless. The term I'd use is "white elephant": it's unique, expensive, and disappointing once the novelty wears off.
So what you are saying is that the ipad is worthless in your opinion, which is more relevant than the fact the ipad is doing very well.
Tickle Me Elmo did very well, too.
The iPad is selling well because it's a cool, shiny, new toy. Compared to a smartphone or a netbook, it can't compete on features or price; it can only compete on being cooler, shinier, and newer. But sooner or later the novelty will wear off, and people will realize that the reasons they've been rejecting tablet computers for the past 15 years are still valid.
Likewise, if Apple introduced a video phone or a touchscreen computer that hangs on the wall, I'm sure it'd sell very well for a while. Then the novelty would wear off, and people would remember the reasons why they haven't been buying video phones and vertically mounted touchscreens for the past few decades either.
>Tiny screen?
Not. Smaller than a 15.6" laptop? Sure but bigger or equivalent to most netbooks.
At that price, it'd better be.
> no Flash support
We are still fracking talking about this? Please.
They still haven't fixed it, and they're clearly not going to. All the talk in the world about HTML 5 doesn't change the fact that many, many web sites use Flash, or that there's no HTML 5 equivalent of the Flash developer tools. Until either the iPad changes or the web changes, the iPad will be cut off from a big part of the web.
On screen keyboard in landscape mode does fine for typing pretty long missives
Having used an iPad myself, I beg to differ. I wouldn't recommend that screen for typing an SMS, much less a blog post.
It's really not "crippled" or "limited", not in the knee-jerk manner most consider. It's a nice productivity tool,
It's crippled in the sense that there are many applications you can't get, web sites you can't use, and tasks you can't perform with it, all because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. As for "productivity tool"... well, maybe with a Bluetooth keyboard hooked up. But at that point, you might ask yourself why you're trying to make it into something it doesn't want to be, and whether you might look a bit less silly using a device where the keyboard is attached to the screen.
and, it's a great device to have in the house or for travels. It does a ton of stuff.
Heh. You know what's an even greater device to have in the house or for travels, something that does even more stuff? A netbook. Comparable screen, lower price tag, actual keyboard, and uncrippled OS.
How did this get modded up?
They're not hard to find. You don't even need to live near an Apple store: I went to Best Buy and saw a whole table of iPads. I wouldn't assume that everyone who gripes about the iPad hasn't already used one.
Yes, I tried one. I was not impressed. It was exactly what I expected: an iPhone that doesn't make calls and won't fit in your pocket. Typing on it was a joke, and the first site I tried in the browser -- an HTML+CSS+JavaScript application that works fine on desktops, and even on Android -- was an unusable mess.
People are still making plenty of text games, even more elaborate than the ones from the 80s (thanks to increased memory capacity, better tools, and evolving expectations). And indeed, they're popular with blind players who use screen readers.
Free games. Access to web sites that use Flash heavily, like Midomi (for recording and playing back audio) or Newgrounds (vector animations).
Besides, Verizon sucks, why would you want to sign up with them anyway?
Besides their excellent 3G coverage, there's also the fact that the Droid is still the only top-tier Android phone with a physical keyboard. The Nexus One is nice, but only if you don't care about using SSH or emulators.
And I still find it funny that the whole "open" Android crowd is cheering that they get a closed plugin.
An open platform means anyone can develop for it, even proprietary software. Contrast it to Apple's closed platform, where you can't get that closed plugin because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. There are open source Flash players that could, theoretically, be ported to Android just as Adobe is doing (if anyone felt strongly enough about "closed plugins" that they were willing to port an open one). Again, that's something Steve won't let you do on the iPhone.
Also, most Android phones already ship with closed applications from Google. That's what the scuffle with Cyanogen was about, which is why installing CyanogenMod now involves backing up those closed apps and then restoring them after flashing the new OS.
*shrug*
If advocating against discrimination makes me a dumb shit, then so be it. But a dumb shit can be educated; bigots rarely recover.
You're like that scene in the British comedy The Young Ones. There's these interviews with kids on the street complaining that society does not recognized their value, but all they really want is to be able to get drunk in pubs.
It's a shame you weren't born a few decades earlier -- you would've fit in much better with the opponents of desegregation and women's suffrage. It took at least some balls to be a bigot in those days, and you got to wear scary white robes. Mocking youth rights is pretty cowardly in comparison.
Oh stop with the histrionics already. It's fucking video games.
And many instances of segregation were just "fucking lunch counters". Perhaps you'd have mocked, "Someone call MLK and Gandhi! A black guy can't eat lunch at this deli!"
Discrimination based on age is every bit as wrong as discrimination based on race. The fact that the discrimination is taking place in a context you find unimportant is no excuse.
You're kidding, right?
Nope. See, some of us actually care about civil rights -- even the rights of people younger than us, and even in contexts that might seem trivial. (But something tells me you'd have the same reaction if this were about voting, owning property, or anything else: bigots rarely keep their bigotry confined to trivial issues.)
It has nothing to do with superstition and everything to do with practicality. We draw a line because it's simple, and there are far more important things to worry about.
Are there really? We're talking about laws under which people are denied rights, or even arrested, because of an accident of their birth. That seems pretty important.
Drawing an arbitrary line just to get it over with is a travesty of justice, no better than convicting someone of a crime because he's statistically likely to have committed it.
That's why I believe that certain things should be permissable in practice, but not in distribution. It should be permissable for kids to PLAY violent games, if their parents buy it for them, but not for kids to BUY the games themselves.
Why are you only applying this to games (and maybe movies)? If you believe it's so important for restrictive parents to have control over what their kids buy that you favor a ban on selling video games to minors, then you ought to favor a ban on selling anything to minors.
A law that singles out M-rated games is not just a tool for parents to use in enforcing their house rules. It's an endorsement of certain rules to the exclusion of others: the state is saying that parental rules against buying M-rated games are more legitimate than parental rules against buying unhealthy foods, disagreeable political and religious material, ringtones, jewelry, revealing clothes, etc.
People will argue that kids mature at different rates, but, well, that's ImaginationLand where there's a magic test for "adultness" that can be applied every birthday to every young person.
It's not really that hard. All you need to do is decide what it takes for someone to be "mature enough" to do X -- whether that means drinking, having sex, voting, or playing GTA -- and then require someone to prove that they meet those criteria before allowing them to do it.
The reason people don't like that plan is that when they think about it long enough, they realize that any criteria they come up with will qualify a lot of people who they feel are "too young", and disqualify a lot of people who they feel are "old enough". And then, rather than throw out the concepts of "too young" and "old enough", they instead throw out the idea of applying objective criteria. They prefer the lazy solution that lets them hold onto their superstitions about age.
Part of civilization is agreeing on things like this. I see it as kind of a test. This sort of stuff is Society 101. If we can't get a general consensus on where to draw the age line for various things then we really are hopeless.
No... the problem is, age is a red herring. The year in which you were born really has very little to do with your capacity to employ judgment when watching movies or playing games.
We can't form a consensus on where to draw the "age line" for the same reason we can't form a consensus on where to draw the "height line" or the "weight line". It's a meaningless question. It cannot be answered with facts, because the facts don't point to any need to restrict content based on age. Any answer, therefore, is necessarily going to be subjective and inaccurate.
It's a proven medical fact that the parts of the human brain which control executive, long-term, decision making, are not fully developed until around 20 years of age.
The human brain is always developing. A 30 year old will look back bewildered at decisions he made at age 20. Ten years later, he'll shake his head at decisions he made when he was 30. Ten years after that... you get the idea.
There is no age when a person becomes "done" and has all their faculties. Their decision making changes throughout their life as they gain knowledge and experience.
Furthermore, using the developing brain as an excuse to take away minors' agency is nothing but a weak rationalization for ageism. The important question is not "when is someone 'fully developed'?", but rather "when is someone developed enough?" Much like a computer with no floating-point unit can still do floating-point math, a brain which is still developing can make rational decisions.
Generally, when adults complain about minors' decision making, what they're really criticizing is the outcome, not the process: you see somebody coming to a different decision than you want them to, so you blame their supposed inability to make decisions. But generally this reflects a difference in priorities and goals, not a difference in the decision-making process.
That's why the collective experience of society has determined, over the millenia, that 18 and 21 years of age are the key ages for granting freedoms.
Except it hasn't! Age restrictions vary from state to state, from country to country: for example, in the US we usually let people drive several years before they can drink, but in other countries it's often the other way around. In some places, the age of consent is 14; in some places, it's 19. If age restrictions were based on any sort of objective measurements, there would be a consensus by now.
But if you allow your child to go to the mall, you certainly can't know or prevent them from buying an R-rated game or seeing an R-rated movie. Hence, the retailer should probably enforce it.
If you allow your child to go to the grocery store, you can't prevent them from buying candy. If you allow your child to go to the bookstore, you can't prevent them from buying books about material you disapprove of (e.g. religions and philosophies you disagree with). So, should retailers enforce those house rules too?
If not, why are you singling out video games and movies? Why is it only the retailer's job to enforce some house rules, specifically the ones based on third-party rating systems with their own biases (e.g. MPAA attitudes on sex vs. violence)?
Science hasn't shown conclusively whether violent games affect the mental, emotional, or behavioral development of kids. Candy, however, is pretty harmless.
Well, that's disputable, but more importantly it's irrelevant.
Your original argument was that retailers ought to enforce parental rules because it's hard for parents to enforce those rules on their own. You said nothing about requiring any level of scientific proof to justify those parental rules. Now, apparently, you're moving the goalposts.
So, back to the point, do you think we ought to pass a law making it illegal to sell anything to anyone under 18 without parental permission, as long as there's some remote chance that it might "affect the mental, emotional, or behavioral development of kids"? Because that includes a lot more than just violent video games: it could easily include all video games, sports equipment, books and movies (especially related to politics, philosophy, or religion), etc.
It's a LOT easier to control distribution at the point of sale, rather than at the point of consumption.
Some parents don't want their kids eating sugary snacks. So, should we pass a law making it illegal for grocery stores to sell candy to anyone under 18 without parental permission?
Some parents don't want their kids learning about evolution, either. Should we pass another law making it illegal for bookstores to sell science textbooks to anyone under 18 without parental permission?
You can't possibly expect retailers to enforce parents' house rules. That's the parents' job. It's not impossible to stay on top of what your kids are doing, it's just a lot of work. If you're not prepared for that responsibility, then maybe you're not ready to have kids.
If the parents want their kids to have access to those games, then they can still buy GTA 9 for Johnny's birthday.
Why should those parents have to waste their time in order to not restrict their kids from doing something? Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the parents who do want to restrict their kids' behavior to enforce that restriction?
A Flash to Objective-C translator just seems to me like something that's prone to breaking whenever either side updates their IP, and a bit of an abomination from the standpoint of conceptual clarity.
Not really. Assuming the translator generates valid Objective-C code, any change Apple might make that would break the translator's output would also break a lot of hand-written ObjC code.
Ultimately this is why, regardless of the business strategy involved, Apple does in fact have a valid technical motivation here.
No, I'm afraid they still don't.