

How Apple Really Screwed Up With New License - mattculbreth
http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1271015736.html

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DLWormwood

        I actually predict that this will be a major problem for Apple in the
        future, but probably won't impact their bottom line for their mobile
        platforms. Programmers never forget things. They are notorious for
        not updating basic knowledge they believe and for spreading myths
        and rumors about technology for decades. I can actually see a situation
        building where programmers who maybe wouldn't have worked on an
        iPhone application would still avoid targeting Apple products simply
        because of the stories about Apple doing "A Section 331" on them.
    

This.

Despite my personally benefitting from the new policy change, (I write Obj-C
comfortably and will benefit from the reduced competition,) I think Apple is
making a grave mistake trying to extend their review checking process in a
manner that can only be done in reality by visiting each and every developer.
I'm not convinced Apple's in-house analysis tools will be able to capture
violations in a manner consistent with their current license wording.

It's just going to degenerate into a cat-and-mouse game with the larger and/or
more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to waste resources and R&D
money on license enforcement, driving down profits and adding significantly to
the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in the last few years. Apple
is _still_ living down past quirks and excess of their platforms, like "Cult
of Apple evangelism" and "one-button mice," that are no longer true, but hang
around their necks like a long decaying albatross. In short, this could help
cause Jobs to lose control of his platform's message to the masses if the
people able to recommend their hardware and platforms keep sticking
"asterisks" to their recommendations.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule. It's
meant to be a catchall clause. Most likely App store reviewers will first use
some subjective criteria like whether an app feels like a native app or
whether it fits certain performance requirements. If an app fails to match the
subjective criteria it will be submitted for further inspection. And just
then, if it fails to pass that one too, it will be "objectively" rejected for
a subjective reason.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_I don't think Apple have any interest in strictly enforcing this rule._

Stupid rules are not improved by selective enforcement. The randomness, the
unfair application of them makes it worse.

~~~
lurch_mojoff
I'm not defending the rule or the inconsistent enforcement of it. I'm just
pointing out why DLWormwood's apocalyptic prediction of "a cat-and-mouse game
with the larger and/or more tenacious middleware developers, leading Apple to
waste resources and R&D money on license enforcement, driving down profits and
adding significantly to the large pile of ill will Apple has accumulated in
the last few years" will most likely not come true.

------
akadien
I can't get the taste out of my mouth about 331. To the point that this is
actually making me study other platforms because of the spookiness of Apple's
propensity to be arbitrary. I'm two weeks into developing a game I had hoped
to port over to Android after releasing for the iPhone. Now, I'm looking
harder now at WebKit and Android (and have glanced a little at Windows Phone,
gasp).

------
lurch_mojoff
Although I am amongst the first to disagree, maybe not necessarily with
Apple's goal, but certainly with the language they are resorting to to achieve
that goal, I have to object to the following statement:

 _What I believe programmers are truly angry about is that Apple broke their
long standing promise of supporting multiple languages when they originally
attracted them to the platform. They're really saying:

"You told me if I bought a mac, and an iPhone, and an iPad, that you would
create LLVM and MacRuby and Python bindings so I can code in my favorite
language. You lied!"_

Nobody is really saying that because neither Apple nor any of their employees
have ever told anyone such a thing. On one hand the ban of interpreted code,
except for Javascript, has been there since day one, so no sane programmer has
had the illusion that they can use Ruby, or Python, or whatever to write
iPhone apps. And on the other hand there is absolutely nothing preventing
Apple from amending that clause in the license agreement once the technical
limitations, e.g. garbage collected Objective-C runtime, behind toll-free,
ahead of time compiled wrappers like MacRuby disappear. Especially since
MacRuby in particular is an Apple run project.

~~~
glhaynes
The ban that was there since the beginning wasn't against all interpreted
code, was it? It was against being able to run interpreted code _that wasn't
originally shipped with the app._ So I don't think (before the recent 3.3.1
changes) that Ruby or Python would have been against the rules. Please correct
me if I'm wrong.

~~~
glhaynes
Commodore 64 app is still on the App Store. It was taken off briefly when it
was found to be able to run interpreted code that wasn't originally shipped
with the app (specifically, code the user typed into the emulated C64's BASIC
interpreter).

So it's hard for me to see why an app that was written in Ruby or Python would
have been disallowed before the recent changes.

And it seems the C64 app (the one that's up now, that can't run arbitrary
code) will be disallowed after these changes go into effect.

~~~
steve19
Lots of other games are ports using VMs. Escape from Monkey Island is one
notable example. Another is the Frotz (interactive fiction) port for the
iPhone.

~~~
glhaynes
Yeah. It's going to _have_ to be reworded ... or, at the very least, a
statement issued clarifying what's meant to be included vs. what isn't (a
Steve Jobs "executive signing statement").

I'd sure like to hear ideas of how that could be worded. I strongly doubt
they'll back down and allow the Flash compiler at this point. But they
obviously want to keep Monkey Island, and perhaps even Unity 3D. How could
they possibly word a new version of the clause to make this distinction clear?
_Can_ a formal distinction be made?

------
tptacek
_In this case I think they could be sued or investigated the same way
Microsoft was regarding their unfair business practices in licensing._

No, they can't, because the predicate for the Microsoft enforcement action was
their monopoly position in the desktop market, and the cause of action was
their attempt to use that monopoly to create _new_ monopolies.

Apple has nothing close to a monopoly on smart phones (they are crushed by
RIM).

I'm also confused by the thesis of this blog post, which seems to be that
there was a bait-and-switch pulled on the Apple dev community writ large. The
vast, overwhelming majority of iPhone apps are written in ObjC, and Ruby is no
more a second-class citizen on OSX today as it was last year.

------
mjnaus
Are we still on this?

The curtain has closed; Apple is now evil... move on.

