Gizmodo not only ruined it for Apple and the engineer, it also ruined the fun for Apple fans like myself anxiously looking forward to the rumored-filled days just before the next device unveiling in June. :-/
All the discussion, rumoring, and conjecturing make the platform fun. A few guys take it seriously, but I think most of us just like to play in it for fun.
"(CNN) -- Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps."
I'm not sure just how poor and underprivileged they were; it sounds like not getting a job and doing a startup instead was a choice, and that initially at least there was a cushion of money. Lars Rasmussen got a PhD from Berkeley in 1998, and then by 2003 somehow ended up in Australia, where he founded a tech startup and sold to Google within the year. Most actual poor people can't buy a plane ticket to Australia!
On the bright side, we have launched probes out of the solar system. New Horizons will reach Pluto in 5 years.
The problem with human spaceflight is that humans are hard to keep alive in space. We need air, food, water, constant exercise (or artificial gravity), and protection from cosmic rays. All of this support equipment has mass. More mass means bigger rockets full of more fuel. The Saturn V only launched three guys to the Moon and it was 110 meters tall. It was practically a skyscraper built to explode in just the right way so that the top floor ended up on the Moon.
On the other hand, probes just need a radioisotope thermal generator or solar panels. Not to mention that probes don't mind one-way tickets. And family members don't cry when a probe is lost in an accident.
Barring new propulsion technologies (NERVA? Unlikely in this political climate.), humans won't be going anywhere.
A pie-in-the-sky solution would be to put a brain in a vat and shoot that into space. (A simulation of a brain would be even better, but's probably farther off.) A brain doesn't have bones that weaken in microgravity. 3lbs of brain needs fewer resources than 170lbs of meat. Also, I'd bet on brain-machine interfaces advancing before space propulsion.
Not in the short run. There is obviously no shortage of developers (who are willing the use the mandated languages) or apps. But I do think they may regret this eventually.
By excluding languages like Scheme, and many others, they are excluding developers who prefer these languages. One could argue that these developers are among the smarter and more creative ones. So, when competitors get their act together, and come out with a similar device that doesn't suck, and an app store alternative that does not have these restrictions, then this is where such developers will go.
Essentially, they're providing the competition with a sizable pool of (often disgruntled) developers. There is no real competition right now, but they're making it more likely that there will be, in a year or two.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, that is simply not going to happen. Do you seriously think companies/developers like EA, Cultured Code, Omni Group etc are going to leave the app store just because apps written in Scheme or Actionscript or .Net are not welcome on the app store?
Again, as much as I'd like to agree with you, none of the prominent app developers are going to be leaving anytime soon. And, as for people who make Farting apps, they probably wont care anyways because use Objective-C or Actionscript, the apps are rather simple anyways. The efficiency of writing code probably wont matter to them.
Expected. There's a three tier system- Tier A partners like EA, Tier B developers that are preferred by Apple, like Cultured Code, Omni, and TapTapTap, and Tier C developers, who Apple doesn't do anything special for. Kick ass for a sustained period of time and you can get into Tier B, be a multi-billion dollar company and you're Tier A.
Awesome thing is, though, that you can reasonably compete as a Tier C developer with Tier B and Tier A developers, it's just that they get a head start with being featured. That's surmountable, so it's not a big deal.
How am I supposed to catch up with them if they already are allowed to use features and languages and thought processes that I'm not? It makes no sense.
Don't be daft. What makes you think Businesses have to treat everyone fairly? If business A wants to do some special deal with business B that gives B special access or the ability to do things that no one else is allowed to, that's just life. It's by no means evil.
Selective enforcement implies a binary decision. This is rarely the case with legal matters: most of the time some discretion is required (even expected) as part of enforcement. This is what judges and juries are for under the common and statutory laws and in interpreting contract obligations.
This is a mistaken claim. Naughty Dog, for example, uses a precompilation phase in their games involving Lisp that builds into machine and graphics code. Most games, too, have a dynamic runtime in the form of a customized scripting engine in their game, tailored to the needs of their game. Sometimes this is done with a pre-existing language like Lua, sometimes it's built from scratch, like UnrealScript (Unreal1 - 3 engines). All of these are now banned.
While there are a lot of hobbyists on the app store, there are a lot of people doing actual business -- and they make up for a majority of the noteworthy apps (apps like Things, Tap Tap Revenge, games from EA come to mind). I doubt their quality would go down, as you suggest.
Tap Tap Revenge is written with Lua, which is now apparently forbidden by Apple. So, people doing actually business, making noteworthy apps are going to be hurt by Apple's policys as well.
It isn't a fringe group that uses languages other than Objective-C on the iPhone, it is a large group of people.
Excellent point. It's my strong hope that facts like this (major apps already on the store -- used in the announcement yesterday, in fact) will cause Apple to have to significantly rewrite this part of the agreement.
So they rewrite it? so what? the restriction they impose stem from their business model.
So you will write a Obj-C app, and then apple will deny it app store access, you cant sell it anywhere else, your effort and investment are worthless.
Developers shouldn't cozy up to this new restriction nor should they accept the app store arbitrary model. you accept one its no surprise that the other one comes down.
Bottom line, developers bending over for apple should not be surprised when they get reamed.
While I understand his arguments, I fail to understand how not letting people use x or y language hinders innovation. If they were blocking people from using certain APIs (which they are btw, but its their platform -- they do what they want), I can understand that you wouldn't be able to make so and so products...but not letting people use .NET or actionscript, I dont see how it really affects people's creativity.
I think what you mean is "productive" not "creative." If thats what you mean, I am with you. Obviously the more abstracted out low level details are, the more easier it is to churn out code, thus making you more productive.
But, given that you are using the same APIs (or using wrappers that utilize the same API, which is the same thing), I fail to see how you can do things differently in Scheme or some other language that you couldn't do in objective-c.
Objective-C is a just a tool, and most of the time it is overkill for creating apps. If you are just creating a single app, you are right, it is not a big deal. But if you do iPhone contracting for a living, and the money you make correlates to how quick you can create an app, Objective-C isn't always the best tool for the job.
Also Dan isn't saying "I'm too lazy to learn Objective-C", he is saying "I don't want to be forced to use Objective-C"
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that people unwilling to learn 'Objective-C' are lazy people. Instead, my argument was that if someone is so keen on developing apps for the platform, learning Objective-c (or C, C++ for that matter) is a no-brainer. Plus, chances are, you could make far better quality apps using QuartCore or CoreAnimation than you would using any Flash API/feature.
However, I do acknowledge the fact that objective-c, given its verbosity, is far from ideal for someone who is looking to churn out multiple apps every other week.
If you are only able to make a profit by cutting corners on app development time, perhaps that means you aren't charging enough for your services.
At least one benefit of this change is that it levels the playing field for developers such as yourself - all of your competition is in the same position as you are, and you can't be undercut by someone who is building their apps using a Flash compiler or whatever.
If you need Lisp, Python, or Ruby to increase your productivity to cut corners on web development times, perhaps that means you're not charging enough for your services.
Yes, just completely change the context from one where the code runs at the user's expense, to one where it runs at the developer's, and my comment sounds like nonsense. Aren't you the clever one.
This assumes that a non-apple compiler will yield an inferior result. Unity3D is one example to the contrary. ActionScript may or may not be another, but efficiency is our secret sauce as developers. It is our inherent value.
I'm pretty certain that ActionScript is not an example to the contrary, and I'm fairly fond of it as a programming language.
I'd go so far as to suggest that the majority of the non-Apple tools that people are proposing to use instead of Objective-C will produce an inferior result, and that's why Apple is clamping down on them.
(BTW, love the kneejerk downvoting in this subthread, keep em coming.)
Do you believe that Electronic Arts would use LUA if it produced an inferior result? Do you think it would harm their efficiency and portability if they weren't mystically "excepted" from the policy?
Firstly, that's a call to authority argument, so automatically suspect. Secondly you don't present any evidence that EA uses Lua on the iPhone or that it receives an exemption from Apple to do so.
Maybe, maybe not. A common case I can think of is that it's easier for cross platform development requirements to not use Objective-C.
In any event, it's absurd to put in the user agreement. It seems like a rather transparent blow in the Apple vs. Adobe war in which developers and end users are caught up in the cross fire. It's obvious that Steve Jobs thinks very little of Adobe, but he's making his platform notably worse in the resulting ego war. Everyone loses.
Objective-C is inefficient to develop in. I ported my app from Objective-C to Titanium, and there was no loss in speed or functionality, only wasted developer time. I am reasonably sure I can write comparable javascript ten times faster than Objective-C.
On top of that, Objective-C isn't a portable skill. It's pretty much only used with Apple products. They should really drop this old, crufty NeXT baggage and develop something that doesn't suck to work with.
