
Apple yanks C64 emulator from App Store - billpg
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/09/08/c64_app_store_no_show/
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jacquesm
That didn't take very long.

High time for a competing app distribution network for the iphone.

Just imagine, Commodore Basic on your Iphone... the dangers!

"Apple's logic was that this tool could allow users to run illegal copies of
games, holding it open to a charge of contributory copyright infringement."

That's what you get for trying to control a platform.

Imagine:

IBM Built the PC well before the Internet era, what would the world look like
if they had had the possibility to have all of us under their thumb the way
Apple does with the Iphone.

~~~
bitwize
_That's what you get for trying to control a platform._

What, a fuckton of money and all the user and developer mindshare you can ask
for? Closed platforms are the way of the future, man.

~~~
jacquesm
> Closed platforms are the way of the future, man.

I sincerely hope that you are wrong.

For now Apples app store acceptance policies have given it the biggest PR
headache in years.

~~~
tedunangst
Yeah, you should see the lines at Apple stores filled with people returning
their iPhones because they can't run C64 emulators. The app store is only a PR
disaster for the 200 people who read HN. Scratched nanos was a bigger PR
headache than this.

~~~
jacquesm
> The app store is only a PR disaster for the 200 people who read HN.

You are underestimating the HN audience by quite a bit.

Then there's reddit, digg, slashdot and so on.

Not to mention 100's of articles in the mainstream press, including business
week, the Washington post etc.

[http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en...](http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=app+store+)

~~~
unalone
Show me how that's impacted the iPhone's sales.

~~~
jacquesm
For that you'd have to have access to an alternative universe where all this
had not happened, so you are asking something that is not really possible.

But the Google voice fall out went so far as to get the FCC involved, surely
that would have some consumer effect ?

~~~
unalone
Consumers don't really care about legal issues. I'm at a school with a lot of
geeky people. They all use iPhones. We sometimes talk about how much we like
them. Nobody's mentioned the FCC before. I doubt most of them know what Google
Voice is.

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JMostert
The stark irony of this is, of course, that very few games on the Commodore 64
used or required BASIC, and certainly none of the popular ones. BASIC games
where the first generation, before people mastered assembly. Some games may
make proficient use of internal BASIC routines, but most will bank the BASIC
ROM out of sight and never look back. Without BASIC, you won't get that READY.
prompt and you can't enter LOAD "* ", 8, 1, but that hardly seems an obstacle.

The simple fact of the matter is that _any_ emulator, or for that matter _any_
programming environment that can be used to create one will allow users to run
"illegal copies of games" (though with slowdown that could be crippling,
admitted). They should ban emulators altogether, and anything that even smells
like custom code execution (subject to Apple's discretion, of course). I
propose "applications may not supply a Turing-complete environment to users",
though regrettably this may mean spreadsheets and anything using macros may
have to get the axe as well...

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lurkinggrue
Good thing they pulled it, god knows what script kiddies would have done to
the iPhone platform once they learned how to access the basic interpreter on
the C64.

sys49152?

Seriously, how insane are these people at Apple app approval department?

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davidw
Here's one for S60 that works pretty well:

<http://koti.mbnet.fi/~haviital/index.shtml?projects_frodo>

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blasdel
Typing in games from listings in magazines was annoying enough on a full-size
keyboard 25 years ago -- do they really expect people to do it on an iPhone?

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zandorg
My guess is it's RunStop/Restore key combination resetting back to the BASIC
prompt.

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gaius
Users should have kept schtum, shouldn't they?

