

A Calm, Reasonable Argument Supporting Apple’s Anti-Flash SDK Language - davidedicillo
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/11/a-calm-reasonable-argument-supporting-apples-anti-flash-sdk-language/
Actually the original post url is http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/04/11/gruber-a-voice-of-calm-in-a-mobile-world-gone-out-of-control/
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elblanco
You know the best part? The best part is that when some company retools itself
to use one of the anointed languages, at some considerable delays, expense and
likely with quite a bit of employee turnover -- and just for argument's sake
let's say they pick C++ -- Apple may decide they actually don't like C++ in
six-months and ban that as well.

Or even better, they may release some new "mobile optimized" programming
language and tool-chain that's completely different than anything anybody is
using, and force the entire development community to move to that in a year.

No matter how good the business reasons for it were, or how the decision made
strategic sense, it puts development shops on sand during an earthquake
instead of on mountains of their own devising.

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tptacek
Your argument is that Apple might next decide to abandon _Objective C_?

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elblanco
My argument is that "who knows"? By arbitrarily changing the rules without
notice whenever they feel like it, predictability goes out the window.

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tptacek
It's not just that applications will be better _today_ if they're written in
Cocoa Touch.

It's that Apple is moving the platform forward using Cocoa Touch. For
instance, look at how they built multitasking: as a series of Cocoa Touch
APIs.

The issue for them is that applications will be better _tomorrow_ because of
Cocoa Touch.

If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, and some small subet of
them become popular, Apple will have problems building new features directly
in Cocoa Touch. Those 1,000 applications might not have access to the new APIs
until Adobe supports them. That's an unacceptable scenario for Apple.

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cosmicray
If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, they are going to be
equally available on other mobile platforms. Apple would prefer that not
happen.

~~~
tptacek
That's _also_ true but orthogonal to my argument.

