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

[iBug2]

Apple has been fairly unsuccessful with its Pro apps, so it cannot sustain sales based on those.

What? Final Cut Pro has been quite successful, same with logic. Granted logic is not something apple developed but in any case it's their app. Both of those apps have a very good marketshare in their respected industries. Can't say the same for the rest of their pro apps though.

Surely they can't sustain sales only with their pro apps, but that doesn't mean their pro apps have been unsuccessful.

 

[Bytor65]

From your comment, you seem very much like a basement coder. In the real world, about the only place where performance still matters to the point of using low-level languages with no garbage collection or automatic memory management is high performance 3D games.

Heck, most Web and smaller 2D games on things like the iPhone are written with abstraction layers and they run just fine.

More than anything, your failure to realise this shows me you have absolutely 0 experience in the field of software beyond either your code monkey job at EA or your basement.

I see, so real world == web.

Local 2 year college of web design? You are correct, I don't do trivial web stuff, that is what students are for.

I have been doing telecommunications development since the 90s. Real time networking/call processing where c/c++ performance is critical, Just as it is for any activity extracting the most performance.

Yes you can do cheesy flash games, or equivalent without using the best tools.

But if you go to any major gaming house, C++ will be the language of choice.

So Top Game Development, telecommunications, Operating Systems, any real time programming will be done C/C++ (Obj-C for Apple). Calling c,c++,Obj-C backward languages is asinine. They offer some challenge, but the reward is worth it. They are an excellent choice if you want to maximize the envelope on a resource constrained system (like a phone).

VMs/RTEs are fine if you don't care about your memory footprint or performance. So you can do little cheesy 2-D games, but leading edge games that stand out will be coded in high performance languages(C/C++/Obj-C) to take full advantage of the hardware.

Also you seem to keep making the assumption I am against libraries/toolsets/frameworks that speed development. I am not. These are a fact of life even in telecommunications development.

-------

Back to this issue of increased development lock down.

From my perspective, tools that aid development and even many game engines won't be blocked.

This is all about the platform fight, and Flash-to-App is the primary target.

Flash is not a tool/aid/framework for iPhone, it is a separate platform competing against iPhone, trying to ride on top of and supplant the iPhone platform. Therefore it makes complete sense from the Apple perspective, to block it, because it is only detrimental to the iPhone platform.

As stated before, I wouldn't be surprised if MS did the same for WP7 and it's new Appstore, for similar reasons. That is if Adobe ever got around to targeting them.

 

[iBug2]

Nope. It's 64-bit this month on the mac. Too late for many, though.



Photoshop has everything to do with it. There was a 10 person 2d department at my company, and those users needed Photoshop 64-bit. The TD's, modelers, and animators (different dept.) needed Maya 64-bit. Hell, if Photoshop was 64-bit on the mac a while ago, they would have stayed Mac. The finished files don't matter so much.

That doesn't make sense even one bit. You say that people "need" photoshop64 due to minor speed increase it brings. Maya on Mac works much much slower than Maya Windows, has only a fraction of plugins available. So even 64bit Maya on mac will run considerably slower compared to 64bit Maya on Win.

So if the small speed increase for photoshop64 "mattered" to the company the much bigger speed increase for Windows Maya should have make them migrate earlier, EVEN if photoshop64 was available for mac.

 

[freeny]

so many asses, so many people talking out of them

 

[dmelgar]

Seriously folks. Any suggestion that Adobe kill a chunk of their own business because Apple is maintaining control of their own platform is utterly moronic.

It is not a reasonable management reaction, it is a pouty 12 year old tantrum reaction.

Its not a cut and dry as you make it sound.

If you have a business to run... are you going to invest millions of dollar to develop for a platform when that platform may decide to lock you out at the last minute as they have already done in the past. Would you really be willing to risk any more millions down that same drain?

Business need to have some understanding of the risks when they invest their money. Apple has never been transparent about their dealings. More than most companies, it is very secretive and makes sweeping decisions without warning.

It is a huge risk to develop for a platform, spend lots of time, energy and money in it, to have the rug pulled out at the last minute.

I'm not just talking about Adobe. I'm talking mostly about smaller developers who cannot afford to lose the investment. As developers and development companies decide where to invest, Apple looks more and more risky. Many companies have created products based on tools no longer allowed by Apple's sudden change of terms. If they have to start over, do they start over with Apple tools, or move on to a more stable environment?

 

[cmaier]

Approximately 50% of Adobe's business is sales for Mac users. Even if some of those people came along to windows, there's no way Adobe is going to give up around half its business just to erase some "uncertainty."

Its not a cut and dry as you make it sound.

If you have a business to run... are you going to invest millions of dollar to develop for a platform when that platform may decide to lock you out at the last minute as they have already done in the past. Would you really be willing to risk any more millions down that same drain?

Business need to have some understanding of the risks when they invest their money. Apple has never been transparent about their dealings. More than most companies, it is very secretive and makes sweeping decisions without warning.

It is a huge risk to develop for a platform, spend lots of time, energy and money in it, to have the rug pulled out at the last minute.

I'm not just talking about Adobe. I'm talking mostly about smaller developers who cannot afford to lose the investment. As developers and development companies decide where to invest, Apple looks more and more risky. Many companies have created products based on tools no longer allowed by Apple's sudden change of terms. If they have to start over, do they start over with Apple tools, or move on to a more stable environment?

 

[dmelgar]

Approximately 50% of Adobe's business is sales for Mac users. Even if some of those people came along to windows, there's no way Adobe is going to give up around half its business just to erase some "uncertainty."

Ok. I didn't know how big it is.

But for small companies who have been stopped in their tracks, its cause for them to pause and reconsider retooling for iPhone or move to another platform.

 

[lilo777]

Approximately 50% of Adobe's business is sales for Mac users. Even if some of those people came along to windows, there's no way Adobe is going to give up around half its business just to erase some "uncertainty."

This statement assumes that CS4 users are Apple users first and Adobe users second. As someone who worked for AMD, I am sure you are familiar with the job of mask designers which in some respects is very similar to the work of graphic designers. You know then full well that people of these professions spend entire working day using one application (be it a layout editor or Photoshop). Very often they have rather poor knowledge of the OS. They just do not need it, it's not what brings the money for them. My point is that faced with the choice: to abandon Mac (3% of their work time) or abandon Adobe (97% of their work time) these people may overwhelmingly choose Adobe.

Obviously there are other issues involved. I am aware of some. I just wanted to make a point that is important.

 

[cmaier]

This statement assumes that CS4 users are Apple users first and Adobe users second. As someone who worked for AMD, I am sure you are familiar with the job of mask designers which in some respects is very similar to the work of graphic designers. You know then full well that people of these professions spend entire working day using one application (be it a layout editor or Photoshop). Very often they have rather poor knowledge of the OS. They just do not need it, it's not what brings the money for them. My point is that faced with the choice: to abandon Mac (3% of their work time) or abandon Adobe (97% of their work time) these people may overwhelmingly choose Adobe.

Obviously there are other issues involved. I am aware of some. I just wanted to make a point that is important.

Of course - as I pointed out, some would go. But not all of them. And certainly not all of them right away (many would be perfectly happy continuing to use CS4 for quite awhile, and by then some new alternative would likely emerge).

In any event, I can assure you that Adobe is not going to cease CS-on-Mac sales, no matter how tight their panties are in a bunch.

(P.S.: our mask designers not only changed platforms regularly - HP->Sun->Linux - but they changed tools as well, going from Cadence to Mentor to Avanti, etc. It's easy to learn tools. It's hard to learn the engineering or art that is needed to use them)

 

[KnightWRX]

I see, so real world == web.

Local 2 year college of web design? You are correct, I don't do trivial web stuff, that is what students are for.

Again, College, Comp Sci. This was late nineties, before HTML 4.0. I think ColdFusion was starting out and though Perl script through Apache were too slow, people decided to write mod_perl instead of having to suffer through C language CGI.

I had exactly 0 web design/programming courses and all my classes used C, except for that one that was in Cobol.

I know about the languages. You want to argue industrial specialized applications ? We're talking about the iPhone. It's not even really an embedded devices.

Heck, my 5 year old Sony Ericsson phone is not even close to an embedded devices. There is no such thing anymore really in the consumer space. Thanks to ARM, we have fast processors, RAM is dead cheap so everything has 128 MB and over.

Remember the PCs in the late 90s ? You know, the PCs that had multi-tasking, ran interpreted languages, ran bytecode languages (things like Java, Visual Basic) ? Those were less powerful than my 5 year old Sony Ericsson phone, which happened to have a full J2ME stack and JVM. Game dev on it was done in Java, by shops like Gameloft (weren't all top games written in C/C++ ? Not in the mobile space, sorry).

So now you're trying to argue with me about the merits of top notch to the metal performance ? Rubbish. You're a basement coder that can't bear to part with his yellowed copy of K&R. The iPhone would benefit greatly from a managed platform. It has the power to run one since it's more advance than many devices that came before it that had no problems running managed code.

ActionScript is a full programming language. It's not something a web designer with no programming knowledge can pick up. To try to make it seem like you're too elite for it because hey, you know C, you can malloc() and free() and bounds check, just makes you seem ignorant about what you are arguing against.

Take all your experience in programming, and actually learn something new for once. When the next iPhone is stuck with a PIC instead of a A8 processor, then we can argue the performance benefit of straight C.

 

[Punchey]

Most real (not web) game development is done in C++.

You have no idea what you're talking about. While engine code is all in C++/Assembly, game logic code is almost always done in a scripting language. Unity 3D's engine is entirely C++, but the game logic you write for it is in C# or JavaScript (compiled AOT for iPhone, JIT for Mac/PC, with Mono).

But games like Tap Tap Revolution, which Jobs himself showcased as a great example of a great iPhone app in his iPhone OS 4 presentation, use Lua and other scripting languages. The idea that having some of your code in something other than C/C++/Obj-C making your app/game "sub-standard" (as Jobs put it) flies in the face of the facts. Many of the top 100 games in the App store use languages other than these and/or an interpretive layer.

Having a game engine like Unity 3D available for iPhone allows developers to spend more time and resources on content and user experience rather than just getting boilerplate code written just to get the game to run.

Unless you're EA or some other large studio, you're going to write your game in Obj-C, etc, and wind up spending much more of your time just getting it to compile and run correctly, which means the content and user experience will either get less attention, or your development time (and therefore costs) will increase dramatically. How does that translate to better App store offerings? Answer: it doesn't.

 

[Bytor65]

Remember the PCs in the late 90s ? You know, the PCs that had multi-tasking, ran interpreted languages, ran bytecode languages (things like Java, Visual Basic) ?

Yep for "hello world". I have seen mistaken attempts to do industrial strength large scale Gui Managament systems in Java. They were crushingly bad on powerful unix workstations of the day (Quad core Suns).

It doesn't matter though, argue till the end of time. Flash-to-app looks dead for Apple.

 

[AidenShaw]

They were crushingly bad on powerful unix workstations of the day (Quad core Suns).

Those "quad core" Suns were also very expensive quad socket systems. "In the day" there were no multi-core SPARC chips.

 

[Bytor65]

You have no idea what you're talking about. While engine code is all in C++/Assembly, game logic code is almost always done in a scripting language. Unity 3D's engine is entirely C++, but the game logic you write for it is in C# or JavaScript (compiled AOT for iPhone, JIT for Mac/PC, with Mono).

Call me strange but when we are talking about computer languages for game development, I tend to think about the actual game engine and not the scripting. Scripting is more like glue.

I am quite aware of scripting engines in games, Neverwinter Nights is one of my favorites of all time. Part of what made it great was shipping with the full module tools including the scripting engine available in every copy, this lead to 1000+ modules built for NWN.

 

[johnhope]

Thanks God

Thanks God Apple is restricting that crap.
Are you still wondering why the apple ecosystem so strong and clean is?
The reason is just that: stopping crap coming in.
Flash is crap because it's CPU hog.
Compare a quicktime movie with a flash movie.
The flash movie will lose most frames and has a crappy quality.
The only reason youtube had success with flash is because most windoze pcs have no quicktime and most pc users dont' even have a clue of what quicktime is.
So the decision to avoid crap is simply in the philosophy of Apple and has NOTHING to do with market.

 

[gibbz]

Here is a nice piece on Adobe v. Apple, linked by John Gruber

Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.

 

[KnightWRX]

Yep for "hello world". I have seen mistaken attempts to do industrial strength large scale Gui Managament systems in Java. They were crushingly bad on powerful unix workstations of the day (Quad core Suns).

It doesn't matter though, argue till the end of time. Flash-to-app looks dead for Apple.

Wow, you're really dense. However, since you just posted a quip instead of a reply, I'll take it you just realised how wrong you've been. The added comment about inevitability cements this. Of course, we aren't discussing when this will change, only the right or wrong of the situation.

BTW, good catch Aiden, seems Mr. Bytor might not be as old school as he thinks he is.

Call me strange but when we are talking about computer languages for game development, I tend to think about the actual game engine and not the scripting. Scripting is more like glue.

Call me strange, but I doubt the Flash Player or whatever it is the package does is written in ActionScript.

So his example is a pretty accurate way to describe Flash.

 

[Punchey]

Call me strange but when we are talking about computer languages for game development, I tend to think about the actual game engine and not the scripting. Scripting is more like glue.

Then you aren't keeping up with the issue at hand. The issue isn't what language is best for a game engine. The issue is that according to Apple's new TOS, they are not going to allow ANY app that uses even a TINY BIT of any language that is not C/C++/Obj-C, no matter how much sense it makes to use it.

Thanks God Apple is restricting that crap.
Are you still wondering why the apple ecosystem so strong and clean is?
The reason is just that: stopping crap coming in.
Flash is crap because it's CPU hog.

How many times does it have to be said? Apple isn't just denying apps written using ActionScript (which, BTW, isn't the same thing as Flash). Apple is saying they're going to deny ANY app that uses ANY language but C/C++/Obj-C, and ANY app that uses a "compatibility layer". Do you know what kinds of "crap" apps that fall under that description? Why at least 30% of today's top 10 games on the App store (one uses Unity 3D, and two others use Lua). Possibly as many as half of them, actually. Do you really want half of your favorite games removed from the App store? Think about that before you say things like this!

 

[Bytor65]

Then you aren't keeping up with the issue at hand. The issue isn't what language is best for a game engine. The issue is that according to Apple's new TOS, they are not going to allow ANY app that uses even a TINY BIT of any language that is not C/C++/Obj-C, no matter how much sense it makes to use it.

You are correct. That is why I don't believe it will happen this way. There will be negotiations, adjustments, clarifications. In the end I would be rather surprised to see tools that aid the platform locked out.

Wow, you're really dense. However, since you just posted a quip instead of a reply, I'll take it you just realised how wrong you've been. The added comment about inevitability cements this. Of course, we aren't discussing when this will change, only the right or wrong of the situation.

Wrong where? The comment about inevitability has to do with me being done, this just going in circles.

I still think flash-to-app would lead to flood of more crappy apps. Yes there are already too many crap apps. Flash-to-App will only multiply that number.

I can see Apples perspective, Flash is a a competing platform not a tool to aid the platform. So I fully support the effort to ban it.

I don't believe that all tools will be shot down. I am pro Unity, pro Lua and I think eventually most decent tools will get through, they will meet with Apple/work with Apple and find a way to get approved.

Since I agree with the position, and am damn happy that there won't be a large addition crap app flood coming. Why waste my time arguing with the angry folks.

Enjoy stewing.

 

[KnightWRX]

I still think flash-to-app would lead to flood of more crappy apps. Yes there are already too many crap apps. Flash-to-App will only multiply that number.

It would also lead to a bunch of good apps. Like there are good apps already. In fact, I'm willing to bet the percentage wouldn't even move one inch.

Maybe we'd even get Chibi Knight :

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/526470

See how things look less gloomy when you think positive ?

 

[cmaier]

Those "quad core" Suns were also very expensive quad socket systems. "In the day" there were no multi-core SPARC chips.

I worked on one of those for 3 months before I was crushed under the burden of Sun's incompetence and fled. Single core, but 9-way issue, with up to 256 instructions in-flight. I was designing the scheduler. Had a massive 9-read port CAM. Crazy stuff.

 

[SactoGuy18]

What law is being broken?

1914 Clayton Antitrust Act, Section 3, which prohibits tie-ins and exclusive arrangements.

Essentially, what Apple stipulates with the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK is you can ONLY use Apple's own development tools to write iPhone OS apps. It would be analogous to traveling between New York City and Washington, DC and the only choice of transportation is the Amtrak Acela commuter train and you can't drive a car, take a bus, or fly between these two cities.

 

[cmaier]

1914 Clayton Antitrust Act, Section 3, which prohibits tie-ins and exclusive arrangements.

Essentially, what Apple stipulates with the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK is you can ONLY use Apple's own development tools to write iPhone OS apps. It would be analogous to traveling between New York City and Washington, DC and the only choice of transportation is the Amtrak Acela commuter train and you can't drive a car, take a bus, or fly between these two cities.

Unless I'm missing something, those rules apply only if Apple has market power. They are the third best-selling smartphone maker.

 

[KnightWRX]

1914 Clayton Antitrust Act, Section 3, which prohibits tie-ins and exclusive arrangements.

Look, the California Motor vehicules law stipulates that wearing a DOT certified helmet is mandatory, but guess what, that doesn't apply if you're standing in the shower...

 

[MorphingDragon]

1914 Clayton Antitrust Act, Section 3, which prohibits tie-ins and exclusive arrangements.

Essentially, what Apple stipulates with the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK is you can ONLY use Apple's own development tools to write iPhone OS apps. It would be analogous to traveling between New York City and Washington, DC and the only choice of transportation is the Amtrak Acela commuter train and you can't drive a car, take a bus, or fly between these two cities.

As long as you have iPhone SDK installed and iPhone Simulator running you can use use Netbeans, Eclipse, GCC etc.