"Go screw yourself Apple" — Lee Brimelow

"Go screw yourself Apple" — Lee Brimelow

Instead of just adding to the oodles of posts out there on Apple's recent move with just another long hateful rant, I will just add my two cents in little paragraph, as well as a few good reads on the matter.

What are you talking about?

Okay, let's start from the beginning.

In the past, to develop iPhone apps, users had to download the "free" (note the quotes) SDK from Apple, which ONLY runs on MAC. In addition, developers had to pay $99 per year to Apple and join the "iPhone Developer Program" in order to publish their apps to the store. The only way to put iPhone apps onto your iPhone is via the apps store (unless you jailbreak the phone, but that may void your warranty)

This was the only way to develop games and applications on the iPhone, and some companies would offer to port the games for a fee.

On October of 2009, at the Adobe MAX conference, Adobe announced that Flash Player CS5 will have the ability to export Flash games and applications to a format that can run natively on the iPhone. Natively means no slow interpreters or emulators, but direct compiling to the iPhone's bytecode. [Ryan Ragona's comprehensive blog post, Lee Brimelow's video, and Adobe's official iPhone apps site]

The compiler upgrade in CS5 was VERY exciting for developers, as not all developers have the time or money to port all their games to the iPhone format or go through each line of code and translate it to Objective-C.

Wohoo! Now even I can make iPhone games!

Not so fast, I haven't come to the bad news yet.

Early April 2009 Apple announced that it is illegal (or whatever legal term they used) to compile your iPhone applications using any other tools then their SDK.

They even updated their new license agreement to state the following:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

For more details, read this blog post:
http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler

What?? Why would Apple do something like that?!?

I haven't found any official statement by Apple, however, there are several "guesstimates" on the oodles of rants out there on this topic:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250946
http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=347116

A few good comments:

Templarian: They have a VERY good reason. Anything that allows development across all platforms is bad. They don't want other smartphones to have the same games and applications ported in a few minutes.

Lorren Biffin: With regard to the rationale, while the action was seemingly pointed at Adobe and may have been spiteful, I would say that there are obvious competitive advantages to the move:

• The largest RIA platform available today, that just happens to be in competetive water with Apple (even if indirectly), takes a blow. The more stigma that's attached to Flash, the more people will be using alternative solutions.. some of which are covered by HTML5 and CSS3.
• The iPhone OS and Applications are more likely to perform well with the iPhone/Pad hardware if the code used to build them is the code that was intended to be used.
• Objective-C is likely to have more developers who are familiar with it, simply because they're forced to. This means more people are capable building applications that perform well and integrate even better with proprietary Apple hardware and software.
• Proprietary; Moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymon...

And from the same source, another quite funny but still good illustration:
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2548425#post2548425
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2548441#post2548441

So the general idea is, if you can just as easily develop apps for the iPhone as for other mobile devices, Adobe will no longer control the market and have their little monopoly. If they still have apps that are "Only for the iPhone", people will likely buy the iPhone (and MAC, and iPod, and iPad, and iDontGiveADamn) rather than reasoning, "Well, the apps I love are just as available on the Android, so I'll get one of those instead".

What are your thoughts on the matter?

I feel that any company that makes their products "only work with their operating system" or "only with their player" for their own personal gain is a monopoly, and deserves to be crushed. I hate it when companies hold back or lock developers out of using their file formats, and instead charge ridiculous amounts of money just so you can use their product.

Yes, this includes Windows and Apple, and even Adobe.

For example, the one thing I hated the most about Visual Studio.net was that you could only publish the projects as a Windows executable file. I do commend Adobe for releasing AIR with multi-platform support, however, they still need to work on getting a stable Flash Buider release for Linux!

Some further reading

If you really feel like digging deeper, I warned you there were a lot of opinions out there. I believe I used the term "oodles"...
NY Times Bits Blog - A Change at Apple Causes Trouble for Adobe
Apple blocks Adobe Flash CS5 iPhone Exporter
ComputerWorld - Apple blocks Adobe's iPhone 'end around' plans
Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?
Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself
New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler
IT World - Adobe vs. Apple is going to get uglier
TheFlashBlog - Apple slaps developers in the face


And of course, this. ;)
http://www.foxtrot.com/2010/03/03212010/

This article is part 1 of 3 in the series "The Apple vs. Flash Wars"

1. "Go screw yourself Apple" — Lee Brimelow
2. Steve Jobs responds regarding Flash
3. Thoughts on the Steve Jobs reply [in progress]