Steve Jobs Offers Explanation About iPhone SDK Changes Restricting Adobe and Other Cross Compilers

MacRumors · Apr 10, 2010

In a series of emails reportedly between Steve Jobs and Greg Slepak, Jobs responds to questions about Apple's recent move to ban tools that allow cross-compilation from other languages into iPhone OS native code. The change in terms effectively blocks Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone compiler and could affect other similar developer tools.

Jobs reportedly points to John Gruber's analysis of why Apple might have implemented this. Gruber argues that Apple wants control over native iPhone OS development and cross platform solutions would dilute iPhone-exclusive and iPhone native apps.

If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage. If, say, a mobile Flash software platform — which encompassed multiple lower-level platforms, running on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry — were established, that app market would not give people a reason to prefer the iPhone.
....
And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple’s control. Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features.

Gruber also believes that these cross platform compilers rarely produce high quality native apps. Steve Jobs reiterated this point in a followup email:

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

Article Link: Steve Jobs Offers Explanation About iPhone SDK Changes Restricting Adobe and Other Cross Compilers

allendsmeet · Apr 10, 2010

Adobe just needs to suck it up and adapt. If they don't, Apple might as well acquire them later on.

doug in albq · Apr 10, 2010

Steve Jobs, it is high time for Apple to make a standards-based, "creatives'-friendly" set of web authoring tools. if this is not in your back pocket I am not sure where we are supposed to go from here...wait for Adobe to make some html5 and JS Authoring tools with a GUI that designers can appreciate...?

alent1234 · Apr 10, 2010

Sorry adobe, it's nothing personal. It's only business.

jo0 · Apr 10, 2010

just let it go adobe.... you're too bloated to keep moving forward.

Kesuke · Apr 10, 2010

I'm suprised so few people have mentioned the apple exclusion of 3rd party cross compilers means developers are still locked into owning apple macs in order to develop products for the iphone. The flash compiler would finally have enabled PC based production of apps.

Steves latest comments do little to placate my growing sense of unease with apples stratergy. Never the less, this looks set to be a big show down in the mid to long term and like all good shown-downs there are two sides to this story, both of them probably in the wrong if we're being honest with ourselves -

Adobe are charging extortionate amounts for products that have hardly changed in 5 years (photoshop), and in the case of flash are probably acting more as an anchor to progress than a driving force. They just want to keep riding the gravy train.

dagamer34 · Apr 10, 2010

jo0 said:
just let it go adobe.... you're too bloated to keep moving forward.

You seem to think this affects only Adobe, which shows how little you know. =/

And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.

alent1234 · Apr 10, 2010

I usually think sj is full of crap, but he does have a point. I bought my 3gs at launch and i still see almost no games taking advantage of it's graphical hardware. If he can push developers to make software that tAkes advantage of new hardware as soon as it ships, more power to him. Better for me

cmaier · Apr 10, 2010

Yawn. Can we get a few more threads talking about this issue?

snoopjonny · Apr 10, 2010

dagamer34 said:
And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.

Crappy Tools allow crappy developers to create crappy apps. The current set of tools weed out the developers too weak to learn how to use them.

AustinZ · Apr 10, 2010

Well, I guess it's Apple's right to do whatever they want with their software (within certain legal bounds, of course). But I wonder what this means for other third-party authoring tools, especially Torque for iPhone and Unity's iPhone product, which would also fall into this 'prohibited' zone.

If Apple is going to enforce these revised TOS/conditions, I hope they at least apply them uniformly, in concordance with their stated arguments as to why blocking third-party tools would be advantageous.

Kesuke · Apr 10, 2010

doug in albq said:
Steve Jobs, it is high time for Apple to make a standards-based, "creatives'-friendly" set of web authoring tools. if this is not in your back pocket I am not sure where we are supposed to go from here...wait for Adobe to make some html5 and JS Authoring tools with a GUI that designers can appreciate...?

Adobe Dreamweaver would presumably push these features. They still seem to see flash as a standalone plugin to a page, with pretty much total resource focus.

I like to think that deep deep down, adobe do appreciate on some cerebral level that flash has played its part in the internet, but that its day are ultimately numbered.

DaveGee · Apr 10, 2010

Kesuke said:
I'm suprised so few people have mentioned the apple exclusion of 3rd party cross compilers means developers are still locked into owning apple macs in order to develop products for the iphone. The flash compiler would finally have enabled PC based production of apps.

Steves latest comments do little to placate my growing sense of unease with apples stratergy. Never the less, this looks set to be a big show down in the mid to long term and like all good shown-downs there are two sides to this story, both of them probably in the wrong if we're being honest with ourselves -

Adobe are charging extortionate amounts for products that have hardly changed in 5 years (photoshop), and in the case of flash are probably acting more as an anchor to progress than a driving force. They just want to keep riding the gravy train.

First... APP development being on OS X only certainly hasn't been slowing the number of APPs on the App Store.

Second... for what Adobe charges for their full blown flash developer environment you could likely by a Mac Mini.

Third.. Buy a Mac and load Windows on it and replace your most aging machine.

Certainly plenty of options...

MorphingDragon · Apr 10, 2010

dagamer34 said:
You seem to think this affects only Adobe, which shows how little you know. =/

And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.

I suggest you have a harder look at things like Linux. The opensource community has a fine set of programmers yet they're usually limited to GTK+ or QT, so they're apps immediately look like they're meant for mattel.

FFArchitect · Apr 10, 2010

Steve Jobs is simply not going to sacrifice the platform. Apple's products; Apple's rules. I don't see armies boycotting this. Most don't care.

And for the ones that do care, there's Android, Palm and a few other platforms where you can enjoy that world.

The rest of us recognize that everything won't happen on it -- we simply want a platform that is truly revolutionary and works.

Warbrain · Apr 10, 2010

dagamer34 said:
You seem to think this affects only Adobe, which shows how little you know. =/

And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.

Flash is crap. If my browsing experience is better without Flash - and it is - then the tolls are crap.

DaveGee · Apr 10, 2010

snoopjonny said:
Crappy Tools allow crappy developers to create crappy apps. The current set of tools weed out the developers too weak to learn how to use them.

Exactly... whats that saying... A carpenter is only as good as his tools...

Also since we seem to be discussing this AGIAN...

Answer me this Mac users... Do you want a SHIP LOAD of RealBasic APPS flooding the iPhone too?

And doesn't this scare the CRAP out of you?!?! (it should)....

Link: http://www.runrev.com/products/crossgrade/

For a limited time we're inviting users of FileMaker Pro, Flash, RealBasic, Visual Studio and other popular tools, to add Rev to their toolbox..... This year we'll be launching for popular mobile platforms and on the server (both in pre-release testing now). With the Rev platform you can deploy to iPhone, iPad, Nokia's Maemo, Windows Mobile devices, Windows desktop, Mac OS desktop and Linux desktops, together with FireFox, Internet Explorer and other popular web browsers on all 3 desktop platforms, and as a server side language embedded directly into HTML. All of these platforms share the same language: revTalk, enabling code sharing and reuse.

Oh and it makes one hell of a sandwich topping!

elwood19 · Apr 10, 2010

Having being a mac user since OS 8, I have to agree with the reasoning on this. I was crippled for many years with a few pieces software like what they are describing, and it sucked. I'm happy with the content and the quality of the apps, I see no need to flood it with a ton of converted flash apps. Sorry flash fans I do enjoy the odd flash game from time to time from my laptop.

lilo777 · Apr 10, 2010

alent1234 said:
I usually think sj is full of crap, but he does have a point. I bought my 3gs at launch and i still see almost no games taking advantage of it's graphical hardware. If he can push developers to make software that tAkes advantage of new hardware as soon as it ships, more power to him. Better for me

Well, it's easy to explain. If you have to develop the game from scratch using C/C++ (remember no so called "undocumented API" i.e. no game engines is allowed) it'll take you a few years to do so. Apparently that's what Apple wants. Your best chance for getting good games on a phone is to switch to Android.

MacFly123 · Apr 10, 2010

Sounds about right Steve.

P.S. Who the crap is Greg Slepak???

BTW · Apr 10, 2010

On a mobile platform you want to develop for the native APIs not some extra layer that Adobe would have developer pinned to.

lilo777 · Apr 10, 2010

snoopjonny said:
Crappy Tools allow crappy developers to create crappy apps. The current set of tools weed out the developers too weak to learn how to use them.

Apple has one of the crappiest software development tools in the industry. Nobody ever use them unless they have to. And now you are suggesting to make the tools even more difficult to use (to weed out all the developers once and for all).

Kesuke · Apr 10, 2010

DaveGee said:
First... APP development being on OS X only certainly hasn't been slowing the number of APPs on the App Store.

Thats not really the point I'm getting at though - its the restrictive nature of apples mentality that disturbs me. It seeks to lock developers into an apple 'world'. You're either IN (which means buying the macs, the iphones/iPads, the SDK license etc.) or your OUT (which means you go find something else to feed your kids). Never in any other programming enviornment (even the rip off - see below - that is flash) has a company asked so much ideological investment from developers.

DaveGee said:
Second... for what Adobe charges for their full blown flash developer environment you could likely by a Mac Mini.

I've got no arguments there. Its one thing to pay for new software that has taken time and energy to develop. But Adobe are milking their gravy train for all its worth. Having used photoshop since v3 I can honestly say remarkably little has changed for what is essentially a ~£300 purchase every couple of years, i hate to think what that money has paid for because it isn't product development thats for sure.

DaveGee said:
Third.. Buy a Mac and load Windows on it and replace your most aging machine.

Thats just apple fandom there. I'm not going to get into the jingoistic 'my computer tis of thee' Windows v's OSX debate.

cvaldes · Apr 10, 2010

cmaier said:
Yawn. Can we get a few more threads talking about this issue?

As long as it pumps up AAPL, I have no problems with excessive rumor mill coverage.

I am really sorry to say this, but I really couldn't care less about anyone's opinion anymore, as long as the stock goes up. Fanboys, haters, whatever. They're all the same to me at this point.

"The only bad publicity is your obituary." -Editors of the Harvard Lampoon

lilo777 · Apr 10, 2010

cvaldes said:
As long as it pumps up AAPL, I have no problems with excessive rumor mill coverage.

I guess this explains the quality of this discussion. When investors start discussing software development techniques it does look weird.

Steve Jobs Offers Explanation About iPhone SDK Changes Restricting Adobe and Other Cross Compilers

macrumors bot

macrumors newbie

Suspended

macrumors 603

macrumors regular

macrumors member

macrumors 65816

macrumors 603

Suspended

macrumors newbie

macrumors member

macrumors member

macrumors 6502a

macrumors 603

macrumors regular

macrumors 603

macrumors 6502a

macrumors newbie

macrumors 603

macrumors 68020

macrumors 6502

macrumors 603

macrumors member

macrumors 68040

macrumors 603

Our Staff