Did Ya See?

Shared by Mystech

What can I say developers, once you put your head in a noose, it only gets tighter.

The latest revision of Apple’s developer licensing agreement explicitly prohibits the use of third-party software to develop for the iPhone. [Daring Fireball]

Such software lets developers use programming languages that they already know, including easy-to-learn ones like Unity Script. It also lets developers create apps that will run on multiple platforms. The big target here is clearly Adobe — though Flash itself won’t run on the iPhone, the latest version of Adobe’s development suite can also spit out a non-Flash version of your app that will.

As an occasional developer, the prospect of this is enormously frustrating. It feels like we’re being told not to ‘port’ stuff to the iPhone without learning a new language and writing it again from scratch. To make a version that’ll also run on Windows, Linux and even Mac, for example, means redoing it with both Apple’s and Adobe’s (or Unity’s, etc) programming tools— ok for big companies and other large teams, but not for bedroom coder types. (I’ll admit I haven’t used the new Flash suite, so it might be the case that you have to substantially redo it for each platform anyway. But even then, you can still make all of them in the same language)

I’ve also spent the last week working on a feature on how the iPad’s innovative design helps, rather than hinders, certain creative endeavors. But it’s easy to see why people whose creative endeavor is development will remain unimpressed: Apple has very specific plans for them.

Joel Johnson suggests that kiboshing the translation of existing code to the iPhone (“Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.”) may interest the FTC. [Gizmodo]