Recently, Apple changed its iPhone OS developer agreement to prohibit the use of programming language other than Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript running in WebKit. This has the effect of pretty much pre-emptively killing Adobe’s CS5 iPhone developer tools, as well as several other, similar tools. Adobe has now said it will cease development of the iPhone development tools. To make matters really interesting, Apple has actually replied directly to this news.
Adobe’s Mike Chambers announced the news on his blog. Chambers believes that while Apple will most likely selectively enforce the new terms, Apple will enforce them against applications for the iPhone created with Flash CS5. “Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store,” Chambers writes, “We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”
“As developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason,” Chambers continues, “The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.”
Apple has actually replied to these comments; a rarity for the Cupertino company, which usually employs a strict ‘no comment’ regime. “Someone has it backwards – it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told CNet.
Of course, Apple is lying here by claiming H264 is an open standard – it’s patented up the wazzoo with complicated and restrictive licensing agreements. These patents and licensing agreements are overseen by an organisation which has threatened to sue ordinary users – an organisation Apple and Microsoft have stakes in.
Apple is right that Flash is closed and proprietary, and as far as I’m concerned, the technology moves into oblivion. However, this isn’t a Flash issue; the CS5 iPhone development tools deliver native code compliant with the iPhone SDK. I also don’t understand why this press person cites HTML5, CSS and JavaScript; to write real applications on the iPhone, those are useless. You’ll need Xcode, you’ll need a Mac, and you’ll need Apple’s blessing – just as closed, proprietary, and restrictive as CS5; more so, probably.
It’s understandable Adobe ceases development of these features, since they’re pretty much useless now. Maybe they can spend the energy on actually making Flash bearable on Linux and Mac OS X.
apple, H.264 is not open, it is proprietary, you know this. why are you lying?
Absolutely right. Further down in the article Thom writes “Apple is lying here by claiming H264 is an open standard”..
Thom Thom Thom! Once again, the shill comes out.
If you get to call Apple liars, I get to call you a shill. Both statements are probably wrong, at least one of them is. : )
It is not strictly a lie. HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are open and standard, and H.264 is standard.
H.264 is a public, published standard. However, since royalties apply, it does not conform to the accepted definition of “open”.
It does, however, conform to the strict definition of “standard”, since big buisness has been able to pressure some standard bodies to accept “RAND” terms. “RAND” means “reasonable and non-discriminatory”, it does not mean “no royalties”.
Having said that, the W3C web standards actually have a higher bar than other standards bodies, and they stipulate that W3C standards must have no royalties.
This means that H.264 is NOT a web standard.
Standard, yes; web standard, no.
So the quoted statement from the Apple spokesperson was not strictly a lie.
Re-worded slightly it would become strictly correct: “HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are open, and H.264 is standard”.
This is tricky, and very deceptive, but not strictly a lie.
Edited 2010-04-22 02:26 UTC
Uh, wrong. It is an open standard.
http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264/e
This doesn’t mean there aren’t patents & licensing associated with it. Open != free.
So, Apple is perfectly correct in making this statement and is not “lying”.
“Published” != “Open”.
“Open” = “Published specification, anyone may implement, no royalties apply, freely re-distributable”.
H.264 is published, and it is a standard, but it is NOT an open standard.
Edited 2010-04-22 02:24 UTC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
Keep arguing. There are probably 30 variations listed on that link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
Keep arguing. There are probably 30 variations listed on that link. [/q]
There is no doubt that this is a debatable topic. That is why I said that the Apple spokesperson did not strictly lie.
However, a good, working, acceptable definition of the term “Open” … from the people who actually want stuff to BE open, is as follows: “Published spec, anyone can implement, no royalties apply, freely re-distributable”.
This is a definition that the main camps of open source software, namely GPL license and BSD license, can agree upon.
Having said that … it must be admitted that there is a strong attempt to take over the word “open” and re-define it to include proprietary. Some of the wikipedia definitions you linked to are excellent examples of this, as are some of the licenses accepted by the OSI.
In any real, original, undiluted-by-vested-interests definition of the term “open”, there is no place at all for concepts such as “reasonable and non-discriminatory” or for “royalty”.
This is way, way too verbose to be of any practical use as a concise definition of what is meant by “open standard”, but it does convey the real meaning of the concept.
The W3C definition is not bad also:
However, the W3C does have a rule about “no royalties” that appears to have been omitted in this definition.
Edited 2010-04-22 06:07 UTC
Yes
Nice to have, not required for “Open” standard. Please re-read the Wikipedia article you quote from.
Edited 2010-04-22 10:01 UTC
OK, wilco.
I have re-read the page. I found plenty of references to definitions that stipulate that an open standard must be royalty free.
In particular, standards for the web are required to be royalty-free, and so h.264 is NOT suitable for use as a standard on the web.
However, there are a number of parties that are attempting to commandeer the term, and re-define it as follows:
Even here, however, the reference is to the un-qualified term “standard”, and NOT to the term “open standard”.
See, I can read!
There are only two organisations that would allow royalties within their definition of the term “open standard”. They are very much in the minority.
This fact does not contradict anything I have said. The original, unadulterated, non-corrupted definitions of “open standard” still hold that being royalty free is indeed a requirement, despite the attempts by some vested interests to corrupt that meaning.
Whoo-hoo! It is not often that I get backup from Microsoft!
So what exactly was your point? What are you on about, then?
Edited 2010-04-22 11:19 UTC
OK, do we get the gist here?
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-backs-Web-Open-Fon…
Well, it appears that Microsoft gets it.
It is not every day that I get backed up by Microsoft TWICE !!!!!!
Edited 2010-04-22 11:50 UTC
That I can agree with 😉
You didn’t read the article again. Not really. You picked the sections that suited your argument. Read the section concerning Patents. Royalty-free as a specific requirement is neither universal nor required. Then again, you are the kind of person that picks holes in most things to suit their own agenda – why should this be any different?
first you declare it to be open and then you acknowledge it to be patented/proprietary. you sir, are double speaking,misinformed or didnt think through your comment,
Patented technology are not “open”, they are “proprietary”. Since h,264 is proprietary, apple should have included it on the side flash is.
Edited 2010-04-22 03:17 UTC
No! Anyone with enough money to cough up can get in. It’s “open”…for business. You are associating Open with the open-source definition. Proprietary means it’s mine and no one else can play. Yes, it’s a derivative of the definition of open.
No, that is just an attempt to commandeer the word “open”. The true, unadulterated meaning of “open standard” most definitely includes “no royalties apply”.
Examples: the C and C++ programming language standards; HTML standard; URIs; ASCII standard; POSIX; TCP/IP standard; USB standard, OpenDocument (ODF); PNG; etc, etc.
Counter-examples: .NET; x86 architecture and instruction set; Visual Basic; H.264; MP3; .doc/.xls/ECMA376; etc, etc.
The latter group all have elements of “you may use this but they may not”. Hence they are decidedly NOT open, even though they pseudo-claim to be “standards”.
Edited 2010-04-22 06:35 UTC
No – you are missing the point. There are two distinct issues here. h.264 is open – there are fully working open implementations of both the encoder and decode. H.264 is patented up to its eyeballs. Two completely different situations. Anyone could implement a new h.264 implementation, but would need to live within the patent restrictions and licensing. Do you understand what I am saying? The right to implement the standard is open, the right to use the standard is not.
Adobe, on the other hand, do not give anywhere enough information to implement a fully working Flash VM. The closest there is, still is not implementing all the features of Flash 8 (IIRC, it may have improved.)
Apple is not lying, Apple is at worst being economical with the truth. But then, they have paid the licensing fee so the licensing does not affect them.
It’s no use to be able to implement the standard openly and then having to pay for royalties in order to distribute your code. There is no difference to having to pay for obtaining the specs.
Pfffft.
If “the right to implement the (h.264) standard” is indeed open, why did Apple have to pay a licensing fee in order to implement it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
According to Microsoft’s Vijay Kapoor, Apple are indeed lying.
Edited 2010-04-22 13:15 UTC
So Apple finally became a market leader in something and this is how they act? Their ugly behavior makes Google, who has been a market leader for ages, look downright saintly. Maybe if they weren’t such d$cks, they’d have a long term chance against Android.
Edited 2010-04-22 00:47 UTC
Android and Windows Phone 7 will both put pressure on them. All the companies that have made games with XNA will be able to easily port them to Phone 7.
but no direct confirmation from Apple:
As MonoTouch does not hide native APIs and is not an abstraction layer, we continue to believe that MonoTouch conforms to the spirit and intent of the terms spelled out in the developer agreement.
http://monotouch.net/
Continue to believe? They want people to shell out $400 for MonoTouch and just hope that Apple won’t take action?
Edited 2010-04-22 01:13 UTC
From what Chambers says in his blog post, it seems that Apple is going to be selective in what non-Objective-C code it lets in.
Flash compiled is a no go. That’s definite.
Monotouch or Unity3D? Maybe Apple will let them slide. I don’t really know. But it does show how arbitrary this whole thing is. Apple’s arrogance is overwhelming.
*Sarcasm mode*
So Apple’s profet The Mighty Steveness has in his infinite mercy graciously(1) allowed MonoTouch and Unity3D entry to the hallowed halls of The Holy iPhone… for now.
*End Sarcasm mode*
Well excuse me for not going out and immediately dumping 400$ on a MonoTouch license. Apple and His Steveness are fickle masters and they might say one thing today and the complete opposite tomorrow.
I think there are quite a few people thinking along the same lines out there. I don’t see MonoTouch picking up any (sane) new developers in the coming months due to the cloud of FUD that’s now surrounding the product. Even if Apple does nothing, which is the most likely IMO. Apple tends to have a mushroom management(2) approach to informing people outside the company about stuff.
(1): If you are reading this aloud, remember to roll the r, and try to ham it up a bit 😉
(2): “keep ’em in the dark and feed ’em s%!t”—mostly keeping people in the dark
Edited 2010-04-22 09:19 UTC
Miguel should just focus on MonoDroid and forget about Apple. They’re purposely not responding to him to discourage the use of MonoTouch. They want it to sit in a cloud of $400 FUD so developers go with Apple’s sdk instead.
This is really lame given how few apps are probably written with MonoTouch. It isn’t as if Apple has a shortage of Mac-only iphone developers. Apple is not going to gain converts by doing this.
you know…fuck apple, and fuck microsoft’s new crap that is a bad imitation of apple.
Apple wants to play hard ball with Adobe do they? Apple has forgotten a few things, apparently. If Adobe were smart, it would immediately cease sales of Adobe’s flagship Creative Suite for Apple Macintosh, OS-X equipped computers and instead focus its efforts on producing a port for Linux and of course continue its Windows version. If every professional graphics artist who uses Creative Suite on the Mac suddenly found themselves without Adobe’s major products, support or future upgrade paths I’m pretty sure Apple would start playing nice nice with Adobe real quick and stop wasting everyone’s time with its petty power plays. Who does Apple think it is, Microsoft?
That would be playing into Apple’s hand, and eliminate one of the biggest reasons for them to continue a marginally profitable “computer” business.
That’s all good except technically Adobe has treated Apple users like trash ever since the pentium 3 days. That would also be great except Adobe would lose about half of it’s Creative Suite revenue and to make it sound like Apple doesn’t know how to create top tier creative software is silly, Final Cut Pro or any of their other pro apps?
I would bet they already have a Plan B ready if Photoshop were ever to get worse or not released at all anymore on the Mac.
You can look at total market share all you want, at the end of the day actual publishing firms and businesses (the ones that actually buy and use Photoshop) are mostly all Mac shops, they were Mac shops when Apple was pretty bad with Mac OS 7-9 days and now they’re even stronger with OSX and Intel hardware.
I think you’ve forgotten a few things: the countless hours and millions of dollars that have already been invested in their Macintosh software. You’re also forgetting (or ignoring) the potentional millions more they will need to spend to develop a Linux version that will be acceptable to the Linux community. Furthermore, you’re underestimating the lost revenue Adobe will cop when design firms — rather than abandon their investment in Macintosh hardware — simply hang onto their older licences for Creative Studio.
You’re proposing a very expensive way for Adobe to give Apple “the finger”. I believe they are smarter than that. 🙂
Bwahahahaah! Um, Adobe can’t afford to do this. The tables have turned and Apple doesn’t need Adobe. The converse holds however. Flash is a pile of junk. Long live HTML5!
Apple owns the platform and controls what is placed on it because they care about the user experience. They don’t cater to the developer who wants to inflict some steamy pile of junk they want some bone-headed user to download. Leave that to the Windows users of the world.
Apple and fans want to be elitist on commodity x86/ARM hardware?
The Emperor has no clothes…
Flash is not a pile of junk. Flash is pretty amazing actually. For the first time, I can go to any website, and watch a video through my browser. Without having to worry about some Media Player plugin, without having to worry about some Real Media product crashing on me, or not showing me the progress bars, or not being able to pause a video, or trying to figure out just what codec I am missing. Flash has done what no other format did: Unify the movie infrastructure on the web. HTML5 does the oposite. By not standardizing or specifying the format of the video, we are back to the crapper. Ex: I can’t use Firefox to watch a youtube video if I switch to HTML5 beta youtube. That is ridiculous. It’s 2010, and I can’t watch a video on the internet?! Give me my flash back, kthx.
RMSe17
and thanks for all the crap–er, flash.
Will the change in iPhone OS developer agreement affect Monotouch as well?
On one hand, Im a developer. I despise the idea of being told not only what types of apps I can write, but now what language is blessed for me to write them in. I frankly don’t write iApps, but if I did this would probably piss me off enough that I would quit.
On the other hand, I’m a user. I just recently got an iPad. I like it – it’s pretty nice. But i have to say… I HATE flash… So as a user I am glad that flash is being embargoed. Granted, there are some cruddy apps in the app store, but allowing flash would lower the bar so far the flood of crap that would result would make the whole place stink.
So I honestly don’t know where I land on this one…
I’d hate to disappoint you – well, actually I don’t really care
– but you’re quite mistaken if you think people can’t/won’t create a similar flood of crap by using Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript running in WebKit 
When developing for the iPhone you are pretty much stuck with Objective-C anyway. Sure you can mix a bit of c++ in there, but the API is totally Obj-C built and driven.
I was a bit miffed having to learn Obj-C, but actually after a few months using it, I really like it… The foundation frameworks are very nice too. Obj-C just feels more mature than C++ to me now
I have to wonder what kind of developer you were since you don’t understand that the CS5 compiler is not a flash run time but a compiler that compiles to native code, just like C, OBJ-C, C++ etc.
Given Apples new rules you are not allowed to write code in for example Forth even if the app would be more efficient than an OBJ-C application. So efficiency is not a valid argument at all.
You are missing the point entirely. The compiler/runtime/technology details are not relevant at all to my issues with flash. The problem is the _developers_, because most of them couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag.
It is a tool designed over 10 years ago to make things shoot around on the screen, and the vast majority of its users have never got passed that use case. Sure, it has matured some over the years and with flex and other technologies that have been bolted on it is now arguably a capable tool for application development – but that doesn’t mean its going to get USED that way…
My point is, like it or not, the current barrier of entry to iPhone/Pad development a requirement to at least have a fundamental understanding of programming concepts. Many (most?) flash “developers” simply don’t have that – a large portion of them never get past making banner ads… I don’t think the apps those people would write will bring any real value to the app store. hence my flood of crap comment. HOW the app is run, i.e. compiled instead of using the runtime – is totally besides the point – its still built in Flash.
I’m sure I sound like an ass saying that – it is harsh but try to read past that… I think there is a reason the “new” Apple has not tried to create another HyperCard, and why Microsoft killed off classic VB in favor of .NET, and why modern “learning” languages like Python are actually build to scale to _real_ development – it is because of the realization that giving dumbed-down tools to non-programmers that allow them to create programs is a dangerous strategy in the long run – it damages the environment so to speak. Sure, there were some gems built in HyperCard and even VB, but not many – most of it (millions and millions of lines of VB for sure) is totally useless educational exercises that the rest of the world should have never been exposed to…
There is nothing wrong with HyperCard or other simplified languages as learning tools (I leave out VB because I think it does more harm than good), but you have to leave those languages behind at some point. They require no real commitment by the developer, they are toys, and they have too much missing functionality to scale to real development. This flash for iPhone business sounds EXACTLY like a dumbed-down, non-programmer, casual development tool to me…
Having said that – that is how I FEEL about it. As a developer, anything that can turn a non-programmer into one is a good thing. I just wish that was some way to allow people to learn the craft without turning unsuspecting users into their beta testers…
Oh give me a break you can only build ‘punch the monkey’ type crap without doing any programming in Flash. But more importantly a poorly optimized game written in any language will not make it past the approval process.
As for VB being used as a teaching language over Python a big part of that has to do with Windows integration and getting students familiar with building programs in Visual Studio. There’s also a convenience issue since schools can just install a copy of VS and have a languages available for multiple skill levels.
I personally hate VB.net (dim dim dim) but the schools like it and it does its job as an educational/casual language. If Python had a good Windows ide that included a visual program designer it would probably be used more.
The real problem with Flash games is that they have been given a bad rep by mediocre programmers. Flash has attracted a lot of web developers that don’t have a strong background in programming and just sort of bang together something that works. Then you have latency issues which makes the experience even worse.
If you want to see what skilled developers can do with Flash then have a look at Machinarium. It’s a full length adventure game built entirely in Flash.
http://machinarium.net/demo/
A non-programmer with some time on his hands and some moderate artistic skill can learn enough flash in a week to write a ‘punch the monkey’ game. Hand the same person XCode and see how far he gets in a week…
There is nothing wrong with a tool that lets anyone with an IQ over 80 build a simple app in a week, some of those people will go on to actually become real developers (which is good – most developers start with such tools). It is the false impression that you ARE a developer BECAUSE you wrote ‘punch the monkey’ in a week I take issue with…
I was talking about classic VB. VB.NET, while I don’t particularly care for it, is a different language and most of the stupidness has been corrected. Not all, but most. While I don’t use or much like VB.NET, I think it (barely) qualifies as a “real” programming language – unlike its predecessor. Classic VB was an abomination – it did virtually everything wrong. It was an anti-teaching language, i.e. it taught you how to be a bad programmer.
And my point is a mediocre programmer has to spend quite a bit of time and brain power to learn enough Obj C to even successfully compile a simple program that works reliably. They are therefore much less likely to give Obj C a bad rep, because they are forced to commit to it and thus are less likely to be mediocre…
Sometimes good developers have to use bad tools – and that usually results in a good product. That does not change the fact that the tool is still bad…
Hi Guys,
What Programming Language is Adobe CS5 written in … ?
If its C or C++ etc. then should it not be fine for iPhone OS 4.0 devel coz really what Adobe would be doing is translating from their format (Flash Markup) to C++ to Native iPhone binary …
Or is this completely wrong reasoning …
Get real Thom,
you said “You’ll need Xcode, you’ll need a Mac, and you’ll need Apple’s blessing – just as closed, proprietary, and restrictive as CS5; more so, probably.”
Lets see, Adobe CS5 costs what, like $2000 (And no, just because you can pirate CS5 for free does not make it an open platform).
Xcode – FREE!! All XCode is is a nice IDE built around the GNU toolchain, you can just as easily use eclipse, or makefiles if you wanted.
As for compiler, we have gcc , tell me Thom, how exactly is gcc more proprietary then Flash???
Lets talk language, C++, Objective C and Javascript, all open standards, and again compiled by gcc.
How about libraries, you have access to millions of open source libraries with the C family of languages. You can leverage all the existing C based libraries you have written in the past.
So, we are left with the cost of a Mac, about $599 or so for a Mac Mini.
I will give you that H.264 is patent encumbered, but Apple paid the license fees, and you are free to play any H.264 encoded movies on iPhone. What about compression, a: free with Quicktime, and free with Handbrake (IMO, the best dammed compressor out there) Is Handbrake fully legal, not exactly sure about that one, but I know its certainly legal to use quicktime to compress whatever you want.
Is Apple or their stance perfect, absolutely not. I personally would have liked to see support for .ogv, and support for decent scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and the like. As for MonoTouch, if it does not add some sort of cross platform abstraction layer (which Miguel DeIcaza says it does not), then I’m all for having MonoTouch on the iphone.
Oh, and the fundamental problem with Flash is not necessarily the code, is interpreted or compiled with rather the runtime. You see, flash is fundamentally an animation program, so the runtime creates lots of very very high resolution timers, basically, it signals the OS to call flash every MS and then the runtime looks to see what frames to animate and so forth. Sort of similar to a polling loop in game. Well, other then the CPU hogging, it sort of works on on desktop PC as long as you don’t use Linux or Mac, but forget it on mobile devices, there is no way around the event model, short of a complete redesign of flash.
That is the problem. Flash polls. It sucks the life out of a battery very quickly! Async event notification is the only way to go on mobile devices.
And Flash isn’t known for being the most robust software out there. Long live HTML5!
Nope, Handbrake uses X264 which is a free and open source H.264 encoder (very possibly the absolute best one) but this means that it’s not legal in places where the H.264 patents are upheld. Handbrake itself is perfectly legal in these places as it can also produce Theora video files (though in Matroska only), but X264 and thus the H.264 compression is not. That, of course, assumes you care about such ridiculousness as software patents in the first place, obviously.
So, we are left with the cost of a Mac, about $599 or so for a Mac Mini.
You cannot seriously be suggesting the Mini is a reasonable hardware choice for a serious developer????
Uh, yes, yes it is. They are pretty amazing machines. With plenty of RAM how is it not an affordable yet powerful developer machine? It’s not a MacPro, but then it’s one quarter the price.
I’ve developed Mac and iPhone apps on a Netbook running Leopard and now Snow Leopard. A Mac Mini would be an absolute luxury 😉
Yes I own a slew of Mac hardware of various vintages (MacBook being the newest and only Intel) but I’m NOT taking a £900 MacBook on a train every day!! My little MSi weighs next to nothing and takes up half the space.
What about the people that invested time and money into CS5? Screw them because Jobs has been throwing a tantrum over all things Adobe?
I’m not convinced that Flash has systemic problems when it comes to animation. It’s not the most efficient engine but not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The real problem has been with video rendering where there is unneeded processing taking place in cases where only basic video is needed. That and poor optimization for alternative systems, including alternative browsers in Windows. They are improving in this area and I suspect Google will take it even further when they integrate Flash into Chrome.
CS5 converts Flash into native code which means you don’t need the extra processing required for a plug-in. For all we know CS5 could actually optimize animation in iphone games by making use of animation algorithms that the typical iphone developer is unaware of.
It’s annoying that you have to install Flash for basic video but when it comes to animation it has been unfairly maligned.
Flash beats HTML5 in animation benchmark on nexus one
http://phandroid.com/2010/04/01/speed-test-flash-vs-html5-on-the-ne…
I don’t know why every one is against apple. Im all for it, i’d rather have open standards like HTML5 etc and whatever the case may be for H264 than flash which is owned by the one company.
Apple have been one of the larger companies to push for more open standards. They give back quite a bit via CUPS and various other projects, what has adobe ever given back? Apart from incredibly poor flash plugins for the mac which run the processors at 100%, and software ports so bad that im amazed anyone still uses Creative Suite, im sure if there were some viable alternatives people would move away in groves.
Even Microsoft have seen the way the tide is going, we are now having a multitude of internet connected devices which all need to communicate, open standards are the way. I know they had to pay bu the Samba team managed to do rather well getting the Microsoft file sharing protocol, could you imagine any company getting that information 10 years ago?
The other thing i would like to add is that Adobe have said that they are going to target the Android platform. Now as above im not a Adobe lover as you might tell, however this is the great thing about choice, the only way companies will listen is when other companies and people vote with their feet. If flash is popular then im sure apple will relent.
Edited 2010-04-22 09:08 UTC
*facepalm*
This isn’t about Flash. The code outputted by CS5 for the iPhone is… Fully compatible with the iPhone SDK. CS5 does not put Flash applications on your iPhone. It puts compliant code on your iPhone.
I dislike Flash as much as anyone else, but I am amazed at how easily Apple manages to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes by shouting “FLASH! FLASH” a couple of times. Either Apple is genius, or the people that fall for it are idiots.
Or both.
Yeah, surprised by the disconnect in this thread. We are talking about Adobe compiling ARM code; not a literal porting of the Flash runtime to iPhone.
I agree with Apple not allowing plugins, but I don’t agree with Apple arbitrarily disallowing developer’s choices in development tools; especially since all Apple get for review is a binary and what tools that were used is irrelevant.
I’m on Adobe’s side in this case and I think Apple is wrong. However, what Adobe should be able to do is compile to C-code that could then be compiled by xcodebuild instead of compiling directly to a binary. Apple couldn’t stop that, could they?
Thom, I’d say both.
Apple is a master in gilding cages. That is the major thing which strikes Apple of my list for purchasing. The higher price might be justifiable. They do design a lot more than the competition after all. But it is the level of control freakishness coming from Cupertino I can’t stomach. I also don’t get the hordes of people screaming “Beads and mirrors! Beads and mirrors!”, while Apple shackles them in their walled garden.
Then again, I’m probably the weirdo here. Most people don’t care about the how and what, as long as Mai Ling gives them their happy ending.
The real issue is not the Flash application, as Thom said the CS5 iPhone development tools deliver native code compliant with the iPhone SDK. So bringing in HTML5 is just a red herring.
The real reason are quite simple and Mike Chambers sums it up quite nicely in his blog: “The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants”
And the reason Apple don’t want this is simple: “Because this is Flash, it is rather trivial to port games created with Flash that target the iPhone to target other operating systems, such as Android.”
It simply has the power to make the iPhone/iPad into just another device, not something special and exclusive. If developers start getting good tools making it more efficient to deploy on all mobile platforms, it’s a game changer and will level the field. Then a new application in iStore also gives a new application in the Android store, and the Apple product are not so special any more.