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Steve Jobs Offers Explanation About iPhone SDK Changes Restricting Adobe and Other Cross Compilers
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Developers are ultimately lazy. If there's a way to reuse something somewhere else, they'll do it. And in the case of Flash-to-iPhone, they'll reuse the whole damn thing. I don't want my iPhone apps to be compromises from needing to be from the same Flash project as Pre, Android, etc, and having little to no iPhone-ness as a result.
Mozilla 0.x/1.x and Firefox 1.x anyone? The whole UI was compromised on all platforms, because they couldn't (or wouldn't) develop it such that a Mac app should look and work like a Mac app, a Windows app should look and work like a Windows app. How long did that annoying "invisible" floaty placeholder window stay around in Mozilla, just so they could sort of simulate the "Mac apps stay open when no window is open" thing? And still waiting on Keychain support (among other things) to this day.
Flash-to-smartphone compilation is a way of making things barely adequate for everyone, with minimal "Save As", one-size-fits-all effort. If Android, Pre and Windows don't mind their apps lacking in differentiation or being completely devoid of best-of-breed qualities, then that's their business. I want better for iPhone.
And again, this is not particular to Flash either. That .NET cross compiler goes in exactly the same basket. Them poor .NET boyz is gonna have to actually learn to write an iPhone app now. Instead of putting in the barest, most minimal effort possible out of spite from the company embracing Apple tech instead of letting them stay in their Microsoft-only, Microsoft-everywhere comfort zone.
The gold-rush tourists.
Mozilla 0.x/1.x and Firefox 1.x anyone? The whole UI was compromised on all platforms, because they couldn't (or wouldn't) develop it such that a Mac app should look and work like a Mac app, a Windows app should look and work like a Windows app. How long did that annoying "invisible" floaty placeholder window stay around in Mozilla, just so they could sort of simulate the "Mac apps stay open when no window is open" thing? And still waiting on Keychain support (among other things) to this day.
Flash-to-smartphone compilation is a way of making things barely adequate for everyone, with minimal "Save As", one-size-fits-all effort. If Android, Pre and Windows don't mind their apps lacking in differentiation or being completely devoid of best-of-breed qualities, then that's their business. I want better for iPhone.
And again, this is not particular to Flash either. That .NET cross compiler goes in exactly the same basket. Them poor .NET boyz is gonna have to actually learn to write an iPhone app now. Instead of putting in the barest, most minimal effort possible out of spite from the company embracing Apple tech instead of letting them stay in their Microsoft-only, Microsoft-everywhere comfort zone.
The gold-rush tourists.
But they do manufacture the products that are the iPhones biggest selling point right now.
If I were an Apple stock-holder I'd be worried about the longer term effect this might have. A dispora of developers towards other products, particularly android, would be very alarming. Cross compilers would mean developers could make apps once, then simply compile one for the mac and one for other devices.
Given that android app development is growing at an exponential rate and apple have a very limited range of devices to sell against the growing range of Android and later Windows Phone 7 products, if apple lose developers they risk finding themselves isolated and left behind in the quality and volume of their apps.
People are arguing against cross compilers saying they can't adequately function on both an apple and google device. I find that ludicrous personally, since right now virtually all smartphones are using nearly identical hardware. At any rate, I see no reason why they shouldn't be given the chance to at least try - if the quality is bad, THEN block those apps.
That's right, and feel free to short AAPL.If you don't like the Apple approach/philosophy.....shop elsewhere and stop moaning.
Let your dollars be your votes. If you think Apple sucks, let's see you pony up to the table and bet against them. I am all for betting my dollars against yours because that's what I've been doing for the last 5+ years as a shareholder.
Play big or go home. I don't care if it's $50 or $50K, just put your money where your mouth is. I've taken my beatings in the stock market.
steve is absolutely right! the last million times mobile safari crashed on my iPad nano is all because it was developed with 3rd party tools.
$100/year and a required Mac since 3rd party tools are no longer available doesn't equate to being free.
also, while Flash Professional CS4 or Flash Builder costs hundreds of dollars, they are OPTIONAL. the open source Flex SDK is free, and you can use any free open source IDE (Eclipse) to develop your work.
$100/year and a required Mac since 3rd party tools are no longer available doesn't equate to being free.
also, while Flash Professional CS4 or Flash Builder costs hundreds of dollars, they are OPTIONAL. the open source Flex SDK is free, and you can use any free open source IDE (Eclipse) to develop your work.
Apple's toolkit is not really free. It costs ~$100 a year to actually use it and to keep test devices provisioned. That's $200 so far I've spent to keep even my own personal apps running on my own devices. And each year it'll cost me another $100 just to do that.
That's very expensive compared to RIM ($25 for lifetime key for all apps) or WinMo (free) or WebOS (free), where my own apps last forever.
Libraries "shoehorned in" for compatibility would also be written in C/C++/OC.
The whole history of computer science revolves around writing libraries for code security, reliability, testability and especially portability.
It struck me as strange that apple would decide now, on the eve of CS5's release to put this out there.
Apple do potentially have a technical reason for the ban, fair enough. But why not wait and test the adobe compiler to see if it works? - If the end product is good then why ban it? (unless of course your motive is corporate competition).
Also, why a blanket ban on all cross-compilers? Why not take them on a case by case basis. If someone can create an SDK like environment why not let them? - at the end of the day if it produces quality apps whos complaining? (unless of course your motive is corporate competition).
I 100% agree with Apple's decision on this matter. At the same time, I am completely disgusted with Apple for not allowing Adobe to make a proper version of Flash for iPhone OS.
The problem most people leave out when discussing Steve's strategy to end Adobe is the repercussions to the end users of Apple products. Steve's chants of HTML5 this and that offer no solution for the end user right now. Right now the Apple product buyer is suffering because Jobs offers no Adobe solution to view Flash content on iPhone OS.
Not to reverse course, but one last thought. Whatever Apple does do to its developers now, it needs to pick a strategy and go with it. Changing developer agreements often, changing app acceptance policies to the App Store, and screwing around with developers will reverse the development success of the iPhone OS. Apple needs to agree on all of its policies and allow its developers to move forward never fearing their development, time, energy, and investment is a waste of their resources. I hope Apple finally has this correctly.
The problem most people leave out when discussing Steve's strategy to end Adobe is the repercussions to the end users of Apple products. Steve's chants of HTML5 this and that offer no solution for the end user right now. Right now the Apple product buyer is suffering because Jobs offers no Adobe solution to view Flash content on iPhone OS.
Not to reverse course, but one last thought. Whatever Apple does do to its developers now, it needs to pick a strategy and go with it. Changing developer agreements often, changing app acceptance policies to the App Store, and screwing around with developers will reverse the development success of the iPhone OS. Apple needs to agree on all of its policies and allow its developers to move forward never fearing their development, time, energy, and investment is a waste of their resources. I hope Apple finally has this correctly.
Don't ever see that happening.. Adobe is way to powerful and important to be swallowed up by another big fish.
Wow, i'm using Xcode IMHO it's very decent
Visual studio is just terrible
But I know many people that have just opposite opinion
It is very subjective
As for iPhone SDK, I think Xcode is the best platform for developing mobile apps. But again it's my opinion
Just as you can develop in C/C++/Objective-C with Eclipse and compile with gcc. Your precious free solution works both ways, you know.
And in both cases, you're better off working with the more developed tool, because going the free route out of pure spite to prove you can is just making a rod for your own back.
No, it is free. COMPLETELY FREE, as a bird
$100 is different story
And yes, Adobe software is expensive
Flex builder professional costs about $500 (5 years of Apple dev program subscription)
Eclipse plugin isn't free
Sdk is free, but using command line tools for the flex development is just nightmare (IMHO)
What's odd is that the front page shows an odd box with "00 92" in it (company’s), but the thread's top post gets proper apostrophes. My Mac usually hasn't shown difficulties in displaying non-local character sets, so I don't understand why stuff like that crops up.
Oddly, my quote shows up, so maybe the coding for the forum software or page coding is set correctly.
edit: The front page code specifies UTF-8 character set, whereas the forum software pages specify ISO-8859-1.
No, it is free. COMPLETELY FREE, as a bird
It's also completely useless in its free form for iPhone developpement. You can't even test your app on your own hardware with the provided free tools.
But Flex Builder Professional is not required to build Flex apps. Only the free Flex SDK and an IDE like Eclipse, which is also free. The best part ? You can then run your apps free on your own hardware or even distribute them to others, free.
It's 100% free.
This is a pile of crap. Language doesn't make an app good or bad. C apps aren't automagically faster and better. Developpers aren't good because they know C (heck, most just think they know C, when in fact they don't have a clue).
It doesn't matter what Steve says, the move is bad on Apple's part. Even when limited to Objective-C and XCode, devs have been producing crap apps and piling them up in the App Store for years now. Most of what is on there is junk. At least maybe a few good Flash devs would've compiled some good Flash games for iPhone with Adbobe's tool. Maybe a few good .NET devs would've brought us some good apps with Monotouch. Now we'll never get the quality stuff. Let's just continue having to wade through the "1000 pics girls" apps....
imo, This is a lame excuse from Apple. Consider the logic:
Allowing people to develop iPhone/iPad apps with Flash/Unity3D/etc will destroy the App Store platform because apps won't be able to adapt quickly enough.
Meaning none of the existing Obj-C devs behind the >100,000 current App Store apps will continue to develop in Obj-C? Really?
Everyone will suddenly start developing in Flash, dropping their Obj-C code libraries?
If Obj-C offers better access to advanced APIs, then Obj-C devs will have an advantage, and their apps will rise to the top, creating a natural incentive to dev in Obj-C. Flash-based apps without access to those APIs would suffer competitive disadvantages. But that doesn't mean all Flash apps would suck.
imo, This is simply about controlling the platform.
Allowing people to develop iPhone/iPad apps with Flash/Unity3D/etc will destroy the App Store platform because apps won't be able to adapt quickly enough.
Meaning none of the existing Obj-C devs behind the >100,000 current App Store apps will continue to develop in Obj-C? Really?
Everyone will suddenly start developing in Flash, dropping their Obj-C code libraries?
If Obj-C offers better access to advanced APIs, then Obj-C devs will have an advantage, and their apps will rise to the top, creating a natural incentive to dev in Obj-C. Flash-based apps without access to those APIs would suffer competitive disadvantages. But that doesn't mean all Flash apps would suck.
imo, This is simply about controlling the platform.
The argument goes against the very reason for using middleware. If you have 20,000 devs all doing their thing with Apple's tool, when Apple releases a new feature, 20,000 devs need to implement it. Now if those 20,000 devs are using middleware, the 1 middleware dev needs to implement the new Apple stuff and all the other 20,000 automagically get it when they update.
Code reuse. Portability. These are not bad things, unless you happen to be named Steve and just decided to lock down your platform.