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

[seveej]

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

I beg to differ.
I have a long history in the business of producing 50-100% tailor-made systems, applications, services etc. in various companies and for a multitude of clients.

The fact of the matter is that code quality (you can call it speed if you want) is of only a minor importance when desktop or client-server systems are planned.
If costs of writing the code to be twice as fast (optimizing it) exceeds the cost of buying a bigger server, then it won't be done. This is the background world for many of those people today programming mobile apps.

Using native tools has the advantage, that if the code if the code is bad or suboptimal, you can optimize, optimize and optimize until it runs. It will not pardon your mistakes.

I agree that crappy code is not automatically due to a crappy tool, but in the Flash-to-iPhone -case the code is not done by the programmer, in the sense that he has any real influence on the end result. And believe me, that is a scenario I am awkwardly familiar with.

Using a black-box type approach where some kind of (naturally business secrecy-covered) repackager/recompiler creates the final application, means that the developer effectively has no way of optimizing the end result.

Considering the very limited resources of most handheld devices and keeping in mind the importance Apple bestows on usability I fully understand and support the move. The fact that it allows Apple to sideswipe Adobe at this juncture is a mere fringe benefit.

Pekka

 

[Digitalclips]

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...?

Agreed. Apple must provide the tools now for designers as well as programmers.

 

[puffnstuff]

I have been trying to learn objective-c since the news broke but too many things at once. I am going to keep my focus on action script,javascript, ajax,and php for now even though I can no longer create apps that way and keep the app thing on the back burner until I get time to learn it.

 

[dr34mc4st3r]

And how you know that Apple is not been malicious? You have seen Apple internal emails and been present in the meetings?

you seem to imply that Apple is guilty unless proven innocent?

 

[Digitalclips]

Crappy tools facilitate the existence of crappy developers.

Flash is a shining example of that. Now imagine adding another layer in between the crappy flash developer, crappy flash, and the iPhone.

I am old school in thinking that programmers need to know how to program and not just drag widgets around.

I agree to some extent but designer oriented software that enables good code (hopefully coming from Apple soon) does allow creative and better looking products in many cases. Programmers, and I have employed my fair shair, are not always gifted in the design area.

 

[sjo]

you seem to imply that Apple is guilty unless proven innocent?

I'm implying that without investigation we are not in position to pass judgment either way.

 

[Koalaboy]

I agree to some extent but designer oriented software that enables good code (hopefully coming from Apple soon) does allow creative and better looking products in many cases. Programmers, and I have employed my fair shair, are not always gifted in the design area.

How about a 'programmer' and a 'designer' working on a product together ? You know, teamwork, where each does the job they're skilled at.

The programmer writes the code. That's what they do. The designer provides the pretty pictures. They do that well.

Why do so many people involved with 'computers' think they can do all the technical work as well as those who have actually studied and worked towards it for many years ?

Why should a designer go anywhere near writing code ?

 

[djellison]

Walled garden environments are great. But they need a gate in and out, otherwise it's just a prison with flowers.

 

[emiltin]

macruby

i would much rather use macruby than flash

 

[MorphingDragon]

Walled garden environments are great. But they need a gate in and out, otherwise it's just a prison with flowers.

Welcome to my mind.

 

[extensor]

It's fascinating the venom towards Adobe, no one ever really thought about them negative or positive, up until Steve told us they were bad. Now they're lazy and incompetent because Steve told us that they are.

No one? Sorry but this someone hasn't liked Adobe's bloatware for quite some time and my dislike for Flash started when it moved from an animation tool to creating full websites. Nice try tho.

 

[tutukun]

Crappy tools facilitate the existence of crappy developers.

Flash is a shining example of that. Now imagine adding another layer in between the crappy flash developer, crappy flash, and the iPhone.

I am old school in thinking that programmers need to know how to program and not just drag widgets around.

i cant state my opinion any better than this.

People need to stop whinning about what Apple want on their platform. It is THEIR platform they can do whatever they want. If you disagree with their practice then move to other platform.

 

[Reed Rothchild]

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.

That's exactly what Steve Jobs said .

 

[Santabean2000]

Is there any chance that Apple might look to acquire Adobe in the future?

 

[jaykk]

And how you know that Apple is not been malicious? You have seen Apple internal emails and been present in the meetings?

At least I didn't see any examples of killing Netscape and balant copying of java from any other tech company. Miscrosoft have been running like a evil empire for quite sometime. They just got break from change of government(Bush).

And apple here is pushing for an open standard (not ratified) , it's a lot different from flash or silverlight which benefits only adobe and ms.

 

[Aaargh!]

The real problem

All this talk about if flash is good or bad or what language results in the best applications is missing the real problem here.

Developing applications for iPhone has become a huge risk. Apple has displayed complete disregard for the developers that made their platform such a huge success. Not only Adobe was hit by this, lots of other developers had just seen months of work go up in smoke.

Apple has shown they are willing to change the TOS without prior warning. This means that developing a high-quality iPhone app, which can take months of work and can cost a lot of money is at best a gamble. Your app may be fully compliant with the TOS when development starts, but who knows what the TOS will look like when you're done.

I expect the quality of apps to go down significantly as a result of this move, rush your app out the door while it's still compliant. Less and less developers and their investors are going to be willing to risk big iPhone or iPad projects, especially if they have been burned by this change.

 

[Jimmetry]

Very smart move on Apple's part.

"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."

The famed Internet Explorer effect.

 

[peestandingup]

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

Exactly. This wouldnt be a big deal if on a desktop platform. But on a mobile one you really gotta make those apps as clean as possible. For functionality, for efficiency, for the overall look/appeal & for the limited resources you're working with.

Anybody who says different is only concerned with getting their apps on the most platforms so they can sell more & not with quality.

 

[iMacDragon]

My concern is that this excludes a language like Freepascal, that compiles to native arm code, linking as any other native xcode app does into cocoa libraries now that it's had extensions built into language to deal with objective c. I see no reason why a language like this should be disallowed.

 

[Winni]

If you don't like the Apple approach/philosophy.....shop elsewhere and stop moaning.

"Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall."

 

[Winni]

My concern is that this excludes a language like Freepascal, that compiles to native arm code, linking as any other native xcode app does into cocoa libraries now that it's had extensions built into language to deal with objective c. I see no reason why a language like this should be disallowed.

It's all about control. Apple already owns the customers and the supply channel to them. Now they also want to own the developers.

Apple's business practices are more monopolistic and evil than both IBM's and Microsoft's were back in their day.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Apple's business practices are more monopolistic and evil than both IBM's and Microsoft's were back in their day.

I suggest you find a law dictionary. There is nothing monopolistic about Apple's business practices.

"Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall."

In case you didn't know, it's considered rude in to quote something from another language without providing a translation.

 

[Marlor]

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.

Middleware is fine with this change.

It just has to be middleware written specifically for the iPhone, and which uses one of the standard languages supported by the iPhone SDK.

If you want to create middleware to make iPhone development easier, you can. If you want to create some sort of cross-platform Android/iPhone middleware, then you'll run into trouble.

I don't necessarily agree with the change. But this isn't the end of libraries, game engines, or middleware for the iPhone. It just means that they have to be written in a specific way.

 

[bwindels]

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.

Why wouldn't you be able to use a game engine? In a technical way, every game uses a game engine. They are just a bunch of APIs built on Apple's libraries (actually what *every* app out there does). Apple is talking abound undocumented Apple APIs (private frameworks).

 

[kiljoy616]

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.

Very well said, if some programers don't want to follow the rules there is no problem, go over to palm, they are looking for people or any of the other smartphone. No one is saying that they can't. If you want to stay with Apple get use to it this is the norm, last thing Apple likes is flaky products making their hardware look slow, lame, and malfunction.

This is why, we consumers tend to like what Apple brings out, not perfect but close enough that we can actually say "hey look this actually works as advertised."