While I was too young to experience its heyday, I have heard a lot of people wax lyrically about Apple’s HyperCard. Even Steve Jobs himself said, earlier this year, that he’d love for a HyperCard-like environment to come to the iPhone, but that someone would have to build it. Well, someone did indeed build it, called it revMobile, but Apple has rejected ‘it’ from the App Store (i.e., applications developed using revMobile) because it violates section 3.3.1 of the iPhone SDK agreement. The team behind Unity, however, are luckier: Unity games are still being accepted into the App Store, and as such, they’re not worried.
revMobile
In an open letter on RunRev’s website, CEO Kevin Miller has detailed why Apple has rejected revMobile, and also to what lengths the developers went to try and adhere to Apple’s demands. “We submitted an in-depth proposal to Apple that we create an iPhone-only product that uses native Cocoa objects, supports 100% of their API, works perfectly with multitasking and battery life, but uses a variant of the revTalk language to use these objects and APIs, and then translates those into native code,” Miller explains, “While a significant engineering departure for us from the current revMobile path, this solution would have resulted in perfect-quality iPhone-only applications impossible to distinguish from native applications.”
“It would have been impossible to tell these applications apart from native iPhone applications because they would be native applications,” he continues, “In other words, we set out to offer Apple what they wanted by raising our game in response to their stricter requirements, while dropping the other mobile platforms we originally intended to support.”
Miller believes that Apple would benefit greatly from an iPhone/iPad only develpment tool that he claims is “10x more productive than Objective-C”, while “[honouring] the HyperCard legacy still present on their Mac platform today”.
Sadly, despite the claim he’d love to see a HyperCard-like environment on the iPhone/iPad, Steve Jobs rejected revMobile. “Steve Jobs has now rejected our proposal and made it clear that he has no interest in having revMobile available on the iPhone or iPad in any form,” Miller writes,” Had they made their decision public earlier in the evolution of the platform, it would have saved us and thousands of other developers what must add up to millions of dollars of wasted engineering budget.”
They will continue to offer revMobile to customers of Apple’s Enterprise developer program, who are allowed to write and then distribute applications to devices in-house, and it will also remain available as a rapid prototyping tool for ordinary customers. For the rest, however, the focus will shift towards Android. “We are turning our mobile sights to the Android platform, and will unveil an aggressive strategy for supporting Android development projects,” Miller writes.
Unity
For Unity, the 3D game engine, the situation appears to be different – games made using Unity are still being accepted into and promoted in the App Store. “Awesome Unity games such as Armada: Galactic War, RPG Snake, Roswell Fighter HD, and Zombieville HD are still being accepted into and promoted in the AppStore (even after accepting the new ToS),” explains Unity’s David Helgason, “Therefore we are continuing and renewing our investment into the platform, while also researching contingency plans in case we need to modify Unity to keep it compliant.”
Unity 3 is currently in development, and will deliver many cool new features to the development platform, such as live debugging, deferred rendering, built-in lightmapper, vertex snapping, and a whole lot more. Game Center support will be added as well, obviously.
Steve Jobs is a known and well documented liar. I am surprised his wife puts up with him.
Why is he still running Apple? Isn’t there any real (honest) people left in the world?
To a business, profits is much more important than honesty. Ever heard of marketing?
Liars, Marketing, Activision-Blizzard, Steve Jobs, Government … all the same thing …
Well, actually your the one who claim that…
To me S. Jobs takes his word on protecting his user… like I am!
But if you try to find every one that have lied in their life… well:
– Adobe (flash that should have run on iPhone but apple doesn’t want… it turns that Abode haven’t any flash version ready for iPhone…)
– Microsoft… lol it begin from Gates saying that 640k is sufficient…
– Google and it revolutionary distribution model for mobile…
– Google and the Open Handset Alliance… lol
– Google and the Android market… lol (x2)
You’ll find a lot of them… every day… so what your point or are you a documented troll?
Well, things change and every one must adapt
Protecting users ? Against what ?
http://alain.shadows.free.fr/inthepocket/PageC000.htm
386 Apps, published by only one developper. All done in Objective-C, sure thing.
Is that the quality Steve was talking about ?
hey, I was not aware that apps exists… kudos to Alain Fernandes for producing so many different (well sort of) games
!
but in what way did you think that are bad apps that should be kept away from user?
There are no offending content, and normally it does not harm the idevice…
Anyway it seams that the apps store is well done (from your criteria) as I never see these apps…
Imagine how it could be with lots of flash-based apps
…
google, microsoft and adobe may all be liars, the original posters wasnt talking about their lies, he was talking about steve jobs’. You mentioning them is a poor attempt at changing the subject and i am calling you out on it.
Lies are lies regardless of what and why the lier is lying about .. He is still lying even if he does to protect users of his products. If you know steve jobs is not a liar, demand the original poster back up his statement, dont try to change the subject by raising up unrelated topics(a classic movebyf apple fanboys at responding to criticism)
Edited 2010-05-18 23:16 UTC
I really don’t understand what you are trying to say here.
Maybe they don’t have a flash version ready because Apple told them they aren’t interested in Flash.
At some point in time it was enough. A misprediction isn’t the same as a lie.
I don’t follow you. Could you please elaborate on these ‘lies’?
Well regarding the comment of Shannara say that S. Jobs was a « documented » liar, I express two objection:
1) Who sais Jobs is a « documented » liar?
2) S. Jobs have dais a lot of things, among them that the he will protect the level of usage of the Apple product.
Thus as a consumer I agree with that… And will not every thing please me, it still a lot better than other company offer (again in my point of view).
Well that wasn’t how Adobe present the thing…
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/03/18/adobe.iphone.flash.co…
Whatever this just prove that the decision of Apple (Jobs) was the good one at the time.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7709473/Disastrous-Flas…
Well like the one in the article this was some promise to user that are not fulfilled as advertised and mostly because of some change strange internal policy… but nobody claim people behind are « documented » liar…
Anyway I doesn’t fell like I should go ahead on the subject….
If you have failed to get the point, My main concern here is the gratuitous comment about a so-called « documented’ liar about A CEO who bring me some of the best product I’m actually using (and not I’m not using only apple product…)
Also to respond to a previous reply I don’t change any topics, I reply to a exiting reply of the article…
And if trying to tag as « fanboy » anybody that doesn’t blindly agree to bashing an Apple related thing is your only type of reply… who’s the fanboy???
Finally back to the topic, it’s always sad when the use of a technology is restricted…
But regarding the revMobile case I’m not sure of what is the real gain of this product for the end-user nor for the developer in fact!
Rapid prototyping is interesting for experimental product, less for final products. And with interface builder, Core Data, Managed Object and Binding programming, Cocoa can be used as a very productive way.
And it can bring easy Mac porting.
Well it seems like just another programming environment with little added value (for a cocoa developer perceptive).
Unity however is different : it bring new stuffs, notably a 3D modeler along with a 3D engine thus there is a real added value, even for a cocoa developer.
That why these cases doesn’t appear outstanding in the point to have as first comment something about « documented » liar!
Edited 2010-05-19 01:05 UTC
I did not call you a fanboy though my comment may be interpreted as me calling you one and should have write it clearer, my apologies.
if you disagree with a statement that steve job is a documented lier, challenge the original poster to back up his statement.
two seconds googling and i came up with these two articles that seem to document jobs lies. YOu may not agree with these articles, but they do document jobs actions and statements and they make the poster’s statement valid.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/jan/21/liesdamnliesa…
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/11/did-steve-jobs-spin-the-ny-t…
Well your first link is a joke! Calling a lie because some doesn’t feel the perspective? Are you serious, Have you read the article? It just a big title…
One the second link, sorry I didn’t see the obvious documented lie or maybe you are referring to the S.J answer to a journalist about why there is no camera on the iPod? Again are you serious?
Next time do not jut google around
But if you are serious about these really minor « lies », if lies there are, thus everybody is a liar! So again what the point on focusing on one man then?
The fact is with this type of comment, we focus on non-interresting subject and forget that the point in the article is about controlling the development tool chain!
Allowing third-party developer tools that provide too few value-added features is then probably considered as a threat!
May be this is bad for iPhoneOs plate-form or may be in the end it will be good. At this time it’s just too early to say…
everybody is a liar, including steve jobs. These maybe “really minor” lies(to you) but they are lies and they are “documented lies” as minor as they are and hence there exist “documented steve jobs’ lies” 🙂
Just because everybody lies, it does not mean people should not be called when they lie and to point to somebody else who is also lying when called on it is being disingenuous and it is a cheap attempt at deflecting criticism.
Well i realized that we don’t have the same expectation of a documented thing…
By the way it’s you that see a lies when I see just big word… lol if someone if a liar just by saying and not proving like the link before… lol a 3D graph as a support for a « visual » lie… and the numbers on the are correct thus it’s only the way that people can eventually see it that is a lie … sure it exist… just try to not tell that to serious people
oh right, then peace brother, bad mouthing someone is always a wrong way to criticism
Pointing other « lies » is not to deflect criticism (as this isn’t criticism, just badly documented comment…) but to emphasizing the context we are in…
Moreover the comment was not about me, thus i don’t have to deflect anything…
And again, my point is I don’t see any lies in what S.J. may have said relative to the article subject!!
By the way this discussion about « documented lies » has turned out to be funny
The result of their iphone code restrictions, is that like this company, their efforts will be redirected towards android.
Unfortunately Apple will sell their restrictions as ‘keeping things consistent’ which is a depressing situation that so many are willing to be suckered into giving up freedom for at least the perception that they’re going to be kept safe. I hope that they change their mind and allow manual loading of applications onto the device but I have a feeling like the HTML5 issue – they believe they’re on the right side of the argument. The question is at what price will Apple being willing to pay for its dogmatic position?
While being slightly OT, i would prefer if apple would allow compiled macruby applications into the app store. Maybe they will once it matures?
After all, macruby is an apple inc project.
But then again, i’m not very keen on developing for a platform that wont even let me distribute (and run) my binaries in any way i so please (including on my own iphone).
… with these terms ? What I get from M. Miller’s quote is that a motivation for (consequence of) these new terms is to restrict applications to the sole iPhone platform so that the same development wouldn’t yield an app for the iPhone AND for one or other competitor devices/OSes. Aren’t there laws against that? Seems like an abuse of position to me. Even console manufacturers at the golden age of Sega/Nintendo, before the Playstation arrived, weren’t that extreme.
Why put efforts at the mercy of whimsical app rejections when the market share trend, according to what has been reported here, is on the down slope? Sorry but I don’t feel very sorry for them.
Clearly, the success of the iPhone is mainly due to the variety of applications. If that variety declines while stores of other mobile OSes (specifically Android) are expanding, doesn’t it mean that the iPhone’s future is **somehow** in jeopardy?
I concur with Bill Shooter of Bul: “Apple is kililing the iPhone”
On something else, people point their fingers at Steve Jobs too much in my taste: I just don’t see how he would manage to have his say in each and every app submission. Does anyone have some figures with respect to the number of people working for Apple? I’m really interested in knowing that.
I know unity has a lot of fans, but i feel it’s a little irresponsible from them to say..
“Purchase our product! it may not be allowed under 3.3.1, but no app has been refused… yet!”
So what ARE they going to say? The fact is that they, just like every other iPhone developer, are entirely at Apple’s mercy.
Hypercard and hypercard clones were nice products to generate moderately functional apps.
I really thought Apple was “going somewhere” with all these rules, perhaps about to debut some new Apple Development tool but I haven’t seen nor heard anything that might actually indicate that. Instead it just seems like they are trying to exercise a super-tight grip on their platforms.
The fact is that there are multiple way of designing an application using cocoa:
– One very similar to the traditional object-oriented way, yet still very powerful and that look a lot to how it’s done with Java or .net.
This way is still complicated for middle and large project.
– One that is more Objective-C specific « Binding programing » and include Key Value Coding, that is older (!) but not very fully used. Often it’s only partially used as it needs some training and an adapted design to be efficient. But used with Core Data and you can even write the basic skeleton of your application with (very) few line of code with the help of interface builder. And with the introduction of managed object (extension of objects used by Core Data) fewer line of code are required.
But than need trained developer to efficiently use these features in a production ready application… exactly as with every dev tool suite.
Sure they are: they sell the hardware. Third-party developer tools potentially run on non-apple hardware
But that probably not the only reason:
– Application review: having all application compiled with a well know tool chain is certainly more effective.
– Developer training: having one well-know development suite will enable better global effectiveness of developer thus a better use of device. It’s not because that you are a cocoa developer that your code is good, and that’s true for every development tool suite…
That’s the way Apple has always been though. I don’t see why anyone is surprised by this; I’d be more surprised if they started being open towards developers.
Apple’s tight grip on their platforms is what makes them what they are. OS X is a great commercial OS because Steve and his associates designed it to be such. The iPhone OS is so great at what it does because it was designed to be; it has clearly defined boundaries. The down side is that developers and even users are inconvenienced so Apple can keep the platforms at their high level of performance and stability.
I wish it weren’t that way; I’d love to trade my iPod touch for an equivalent Android or even Maemo device, but neither platform is really “there” yet. And, I’ve come to the sad realization that OS X on anything but a true Mac is just asking for trouble — my Hackintosh install has degraded in stability to the point of being unsuitable for daily use.
Apple has some amazing software platforms, and some pretty good hardware to run it on, but you pay for that with lock-in and proprietary restrictions (why can’t I just drag-and-drop movies and music onto my iPod???). At this point I don’t blame any iPhone developer who jumps ship to Android.
You just can’t believe Steve Jobs when he talks about Hypercard. He described the rumours of Apple stopping Hypercard development as being “bullsh**”. Next thing that happened was that Hypercard was dropped.
I can testify that RunRev would increase the speed of iPhone app development by a very large amount, probably 10x. It would be seven shades of awesome 🙂
I didn’t know about HyperCard and just read the wikipedia page. How Apple managed to kill it is unbelievable.
RunRev is Runtime Revolution, right? *shudder*.