Steve Jobs Offers Explanation About iPhone SDK Changes Restricting Adobe and Other Cross Compilers
Jobs reportedly points to John Gruber's analysis of why Apple might have implemented this. Gruber argues that Apple wants control over native iPhone OS development and cross platform solutions would dilute iPhone-exclusive and iPhone native apps.
If that were to happen, there's no lock-in advantage. If, say, a mobile Flash software platform -- which encompassed multiple lower-level platforms, running on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry -- were established, that app market would not give people a reason to prefer the iPhone.
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And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple's control. 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.
We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
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(View all)Steves latest comments do little to placate my growing sense of unease with apples stratergy. Never the less, this looks set to be a big show down in the mid to long term and like all good shown-downs there are two sides to this story, both of them probably in the wrong if we're being honest with ourselves -
Adobe are charging extortionate amounts for products that have hardly changed in 5 years (photoshop), and in the case of flash are probably acting more as an anchor to progress than a driving force. They just want to keep riding the gravy train.
just let it go adobe.... you're too bloated to keep moving forward.
You seem to think this affects only Adobe, which shows how little you know. =/
And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.
And Slepak said it best, "Crappy apps come from crappy developers" and not crappy tools.
Crappy Tools allow crappy developers to create crappy apps. The current set of tools weed out the developers too weak to learn how to use them.
If Apple is going to enforce these revised TOS/conditions, I hope they at least apply them uniformly, in concordance with their stated arguments as to why blocking third-party tools would be advantageous.
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