Background Info:
For those not in the loop, Apple released updated SDK terms of service Thursday, April 9, 2009, that state that toolkits cannot be used to build apps for iphone that are not written originally in Objective-C/C++/C. This addresses cross-platform toolkits that not only allow development of iphone apps on a PC, but allow apps to be built that can then be modified slightly to run on non-Objective-C devices. For the last few months I’ve been one of the Flash CS5 beta testers. Flash CS5 is one of those cross-platform dev tools that’s allowing PC users to create iphone apps, and you can find two of my Flash-created apps already on iTunes.
MWINE is a mobile sommelier app that was originally created in Flash Lite with the failed/abandoned Adobe Mobile Packager.
THE WAITING ROOM #1 is my web comic packaged as an iPhone app, and was being converted to also work on the iPad. I can’t discuss the details of the beta any further than this due to NDA rules.
The Apple perspective, supposedly, is that this will create native apps that run better and take advantage of the native APIs in the ways they were meant to be used. In this series I’ll address what it’s been like trying to use Flash to develop for mobile devices as well as establish some patterns which have been repeated over the last year. I’ll also show how similar Apple is to Windows in a very specific way that has somehow been overlooked, as well as the more general despotic behavior they should be rightly known for.
After lots of stops and starts with the Adobe Mobile Packager (a tool that mimicked the version prompting and download of Flash on desktop computers and included the Flash player with a download), it was decided that it should be abandoned in favor of… that’s right, developing for the iPhone.
The Distributable Player Solution beta has ended and the program has been cancelled. The solution is no longer available and will not be brought into production.
If you are interested in continuing to develop mobile applications, we recommend taking a look at developing applications for the iPhone.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/distributableplayer/
Fun with Ports – The Jenna Jameson story:
This brought to head an especially frustrating development process wherein the pre-loaded Adobe partners for apps with the Packager included were rejecting my apps as being content they no longer supported (Nothing like waiting two weeks to find out if an app is approved only to be told that thumbplay is no longer selling Flash apps). We’ll call this example #1 of a portal banning Flash apps.
This left another option late in 2009 – selling Flash Lite apps on windows mobile devices. The best option for that stood as the Windows Marketplace (for Mobile). Unfortunately, Windows pulled a pre-Apple and changed THEIR TOS upon the release of Windows 8so that non-native apps were not accepted on the new Windows Marketplace (Link).
9. Applications may not run code outside Microsoft runtimes (native, managed, and widgets).
..possible to create software for the Windows Mobile platform in both native (Visual C++) and managed (Visual C#, Visual Basic .NET) code.
We’ll call this example #2 of a portal banning Flash apps; apps which ran extremely well in both hardware and emulator-based testing on the Samsung Blackjack and other Windows Mobile devices FWIW.
Now comes the news that Apple has taken steps to become example #3 of a portal banning Flash apps, just four days before the CS5 announcement is made by Adobe.
Me first and the Gimme Gimmes
What 3.3.1 says is that to be approved for sale on the App Store, programs must be originally written in one of three approved computer languages (C, C++, and Objective-C). It explicitly prohibits apps created with so-called cross-platform interpreters or compilers.
The immediate effect is to put a nail through the heart of the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in the upcoming release of Flash Professional CS5, Adobe’s (ADBE) back-door way of getting those hundreds of thousands of Flash ads and videos to work on Apple’s mobile devices.
I thought it was important to establish that Apple is not the sole entity to make this kind of move, although in future articles I’ll establish some key differences as well as a clear pattern of behavior for Apple hinted at here.
Tomorrow, Pt. 2: “Why I stopped using Macs 7 years ago in the first place” or “Apple fanboys forced to create an entirely new set of excuses for their super-trendy despot”.
