

Steve Jobs just ruined the iPhone for Clojure - va_coder
http://fulldisclojure.blogspot.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-just-ruined-iphone-for.html

======
dkarl
The first comment is apt: _"This is NOT thinking differently Apple."

It's not? Can you give another example of a similarly idiotic restriction
imposed by some other company?_

On the bright side, this confirms that Steve Jobs is in reasonably good
health. Nobody would establish this kind of Orwellian control unless they
believed that they or a blood relative would be around to pull the strings.
Right? He wouldn't be working to bequeath a death grip on the iPad software
ecosystem to his successor at Apple.

~~~
aerique
Maybe Jobs's brain has gotten infected by whatever disease he is suffering
from.

------
allertonm
FWIW, despite being the author of a Clojure/Cocoa bridge, I was never under
any illusion that this would ever be able to run on the iPhone.

(See "Why is this a terrible idea?" at
<http://github.com/allertonm/Couverjure>)

~~~
francoisdevlin
Yeah, you've got some good points. My main concern is long term, when Clojure-
in-Clojure really takes off. That's the dream that was just shattered.

------
jeandenis
I think Apple's got better things to do with their time than to police against
the 3 Clojure iPhone/Pad developers out there using some kind of cross-
language compiler.

Plus, if Apple did start enforcing against Clojure->Objective-C, it'd be sort
of cool. Imagine Clojure in the big time... the HN headlines: "Functional
programming keeps Steve Jobs up at night" or "Steve Jobs and Rich Hickey seen
outside coffee shop in Cupertino -- Eric Schmidt feels lonely". Right, not
gonna happen, keep cross-compiling away.

(There is a warm space in my <3 for all that is Clojure and I haven't touched
another language in 2 weeks)

~~~
docgnome
It's not really an issue of if you can get away with it. It just betrays the
fundamental attitude that Jobs has shown since first introducing the
Macintosh. He appears to firmly believe in a closed, tightly controlled
platform. I wonder how the world would be different if Woz had taken over and
Jobs had wandered off to do something else. And stayed there I mean. Who am I
kidding. People would probably be fighting each other for NeXT machines
instead of Apple boxes.

~~~
abstractwater
I for one would be happy with that scenario :)

------
baddox
This should be a relief to any Clojure (or other non-iPhone language)
developers. This completely removes the major headache of worrying about
Apple, the App Store, etc.

~~~
lmkg
It's a good thing to think of problems as opportunities. I'm not so sure about
thinking of opportunities as problems...

------
jcromartie
There was no JVM to start with, and there was already a no-interpreters
clause. They had a long way to go.

~~~
pygy_
Interpreters were fine as long as the user could not download or create code.
A lot of games use a scripting language (Lua, Python, and other proprietary
languages (SCUMM for the Monkey Island remake, for example).

... and there's a CLR port of Clojure, so the scenario was not out of reach
(see Mono Touch)

~~~
jcromartie
Some apps have interpreters, yes, but they _are_ in violation of the
agreement.

~~~
pygy_
A truckload of games have interpreters, coming either from indie developers or
major publishers. None of these will be able to update their games to the new
SDK.

Regarding the interpreters, I used to be right, but it changed at one point.
Quoting Henk Boom on the Lua mailing list:

[[ I thought this was already the case. From an excerpt of the agreement on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_OS#Java>

"No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for
code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in
interpreter(s)."

I've read that the "or" in "downloaded or used" was originally an "and," but
that Apple changed it at some point. ]]

~~~
bombs
> None of these will be able to update their games to the new SDK.

The ban on interpreters significantly predates the new SDK.

------
patrickk
It's like Apple are just coming up with yet another reason for more
technically-literate people to either jailbreak (or not buy) the iPad.

------
pmjordan
I'm not aware of a Clojure runtime that'll work on the iPhone, but I'm
disappointed that apps written in Scheme (Gambit, etc.) won't be allowed in
future. Or at least, it'll be a lottery whether or not they notice that the C
code isn't human written, which means the risk is too high for anything
serious.

~~~
icey
I've heard some rumors that this will do it:

<http://xmlvm.org/overview/>

(Don't tell Steve Jobs about it though)

------
va_coder
I don't really understand the level of concern. I'm expecting a kick-ass slate
based on a more open platform like Android or Ubuntu to come out in the next
year.

~~~
api
... with a crummy user interface.

I'm posting this a lot, but I'm not just trolling. I'm trying to get people to
grasp the fact that UI is _the reason_ for Apple's success.

Everyone else treats the UI as an afterthought or for whatever reason is
incapable of designing a good one. The UI should be of primary concern.

This is particularly true of mobile apps. As your device and its screen gets
smaller, UI design becomes exponentially more important. A bad UI can be
tolerated on a 1920x1080 desktop, but not on a phone or a small pad.

~~~
krakensden
really? I own neither an iPhone nor an Android phone, but I've used both in
passing, and the iPhone was neither particularly intuitive nor particularly
snappy.

To honest, I think the goodness of their UI is often overstated.

~~~
marknutter
"I've used both in passing" is the key phrase here.

~~~
mkramlich
Agreed. I had used lots of cellphones and mobile devices BEFORE I tried
iPhone. iPhone & iPod Touch were just light-years ahead of anything I
experienced before. And it was all about UI/UX superiority.

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mhd
HCI experiments? You can still do those in Clojure. You just can't put them in
the app store.

------
marknutter
Change your subdomain to fullclojuredis in protest

