[drwr]

If you've been following the latest Apple chatter on the blogosphere, you've surely seen this:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/08/apples_iphone_4_sdk_license_bans_flash_java_mono_apps.html

This surprising new restriction not only definitively bars Flash apps, compiled or otherwise, from appearing on the iPhone/iPad, it will also disallow Panda apps written in Python. I suppose C++ Panda apps are still tolerated, but good grief.

This specific restriction on the language a developer is allowed to use is outrageous. Time will tell if this restriction holds up.

David

[castironpi]

By my reading, the prior verision prohibited this too, by the "private APIs" clause.

Original, according to the link:

[Mindblighter]

This is actually pretty typical Apple behavior. They're attempting to stomp multiplatform developing so that devs will have to make their apps for iPhone alone and this maneuver is just about the closest to that goal they can get. Sad, but not surprising

[castironpi]

I would think that behavior would be so unattractive that they would lose all their customers. Why would you develop for Apple when you could develop for *everything else*? Sunken costs, people, come!

[texugo]

Jobbs take some lessons of management with Gates?

[rdb]

Does this also apply to frozen Python applications? Technically, that doesn't contain actual Python code, just CPython bytecode.

[treeform]

I think this turns into an interesting human/non human thing.

So I write a game in python. Then have rdb translate it to C++ on the iphone. I guess thats ok? Why? But what if we replace rdb with freeze? Now thats not ok?

I think so, I would argue that rule actually bars all apps even the ones written in C,C++,ObjC,Js.

Say I write an app in the shower. I don't have the source but the idea and how the data structures look like and UX. The I translate this "mind app" to either c,c++,ObjC or JS. I use the editor, debuggers (just like i used freeze before). I cant use it on the iphone os 4.0.

I don't think i can write iphone apps because i cant dream in objectiveC.


Needless to say i am not buying any thing apple again.
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[castironpi]

No treeform, your shower app is still OK; it is still "originally written" in C++/etc; even though it did exist in human thought prior.

But your rdb translation is not.

However, if someone else wrote it before you in a forbidden language, then it was "originally written" in *that*, so then it's not OK again.

However, you *might* argue that its original "form" was human thought, *not written*, so therefore it is not originally written *at all*. This may have been treeform's shower example's point, I couldn't tell.

Does "originally written in C" mean:

- In C in its original form, or
- In C in its first-ever written form

?

New version:

[drwr]

[croxis]

And people thought Microsoft was a bad, evil monopoly. Apple is sometimes even worse.
_________________
David - Proud to be saving the world sense 1984

[skeptic]

I wasn't going to say this for fear of heading in an offensive anti-apple direction.. But this is my biggest reason for thinking Android phones > iPhones. Not python specifically, but the general closed vs open mindset.

It does bring up a question I've been wondering about. Do current smart phones, ie the Droid/iPhone, have enough power and resources to run smallish panda3d apps?

[ThomasEgi]

most modern smartphone processors have enough processing power to run an entire desktop OS. their 3d-acceleration might not be compareable to a modern gforce. but it's still good enough to run a wide range of games. the tegra chips which are now starting to find their way into those devices are especially intresting.
_________________
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[castironpi]

What are Apple's motives?

Microsoft lets you write "other programs", programs in other languages or with other APIs, for computers its OS runs on.

Apple does too.

Just not its phones. So why phones?

Also: Can you link with someone else's library, if they're both in C? Would that count as an "other API"? Or does all your code have to be your own?

It reminds me of the movies, where the pet has to choose between the boy and his master.

Lastly, I believe your code can also be in JavaScript, it just can't directly link against the Documented APIs.

We, the consumers, are a party to every sale Apple makes. So why do we keep them in business, if they act like this? If you could put one company out of business first, would it be MS or Apple?

[Gogg]

Just in case I can shed some light on this... I happen to be in the iphone developer program. After reading their docs and fighting my way in the community forums for quite some time I'm very familiar with their line of thought. They have always been obsessed with memory usage. That's why they didn't allow multitasking in the first place, so that the user doesn't have dozens of apps running in the background. That way he/she only has one, and when you switch app, you free all the memory allocation cause the app dies.

So I'm pretty sure they are banning python now because they are gonna enable multitasking, and they probably don't want scripted languages because they are associated with a bigger memory footprint. RAM has always been an obsession for them. I still think it's silly but I bet this is the reason. Other reason could be security, a full interpreter running on the machine means millions of lines of code relying on private apis, it's much more harder to secure the platform to prevent heap/buffer overflows leading to jailbreak this way. Also, maybe to overcome their fears of multitasking leading to freezes, they are gonna have some advanced memory management system with priority, scheduling, quotas, or something like that, and this would only be enforceable if nobody is using private apis (and if you use python you are using private apis indirectly).

Also, while I'm pretty sure one of these three (or several of them) are the technical justification, nobody can say if it's a genuine move or if they are just using it as an excuse to suppress other languages and consolidate their toolchain (or both.) Just like the technical justification for no multitasking is to prevent memory exhaustion, but it could just be so that nobody implements a skype daemon that can permanently be listening for incoming calls, etc.
_________________
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[drwr]

I don't buy that. If resource utilization (memory or otherwise) were the issue, that wouldn't preclude the use of any particular language. Sure, you could argue that some languages are less resource-efficient than others, on average; but that has nothing to do with whether any one particular application is sufficiently resource-efficient.

If Apple were only worried that no apps exceeded a certain memory usage, they would make that the restriction, not the language the app was written in.

Also, security doesn't make sense as an argument either. We're talking about userspace apps here. What difference does it make from a security standpoint if a portion of the code in my application happens to implement a Python interpreter? From Apple's point of view, it's all foreign code, whether I wrote it or Guido did. Python doesn't have access to any part of the OS that my own Objective-C code doesn't.

Similarly, I've heard (many) people argue that the motivation is to ensure a certain minimum quality for iPhone apps. Again, this doesn't make sense: although it might be arguably true that the average Flash-developed game (for instance) is of lower quality than the average custom-developed game, it's unreasonable to assert that all Flash-developed games are of insufficient quality to allow on the iPhone. If individual app quality were the issue, they would simply require a minimum level of quality on a per-app basis (and, in fact, they already do this, as many a frustrated developer can attest).

Also, remember that this license restriction is not a technical restriction: it doesn't say anything about the nature of the resulting code. All it restricts is the app's original language, regardless of any post-processing or language translation that might have been applied to produce the final result. As treeform and castironpi argued above, the "original language" isn't even possible to quantify technically.

I can see no rational technical explanation for this license change. But it is perfectly reasonable from a business point of view, as an attempt to dominate the market.

David

[castironpi]

-1 new license.
-1 proposed explanations.
-.5 good business*

In games of iterated cooperation and dominance, when the length of the game is known, it makes sense to defect on the last move, and therefore the second-to-last. In our intuition, this isn't transitive to the first move, but the expected best move deteriorates.

When the length is not known, e.g. the game has a fraction chance of ending each turn, the asymptotes do not deteriorate.

-1 Apple's outlook-- they are thinking too short-term, too mortal.
-1 Doing business companies with bad outlooks.

[Bradamante]

They want to restrict developers to the iPhone SDK instead of making Flash CS5 a valid alternative programing platform. And Adobe deserves punishment. Their application bundling policy for example. Taking ages for bringing their apps to Cocoa. Apple-Adobe relations have been better, but long gone is the DTP niche Apple felt comfortable in for way too long. Over are the days where whenever Apple introduced new hardware some Adobe exec had to endorse it. Flash has done a lot for Adobe, what did Adobe do for Flash? Flash on OS X is slow, instable and insecure. YouTube 1080p videos are unwatchable right now. 90+% of crashes on OS X are Flash-related. Flash in general and Flash/JavaScript (browser)games are the scourge of the internet. So I perfectly understand Apple if they don't want Flash on the iPhone or the iPad.

I mean c'mon, did you really think iPhone development was to become a marketing power horse for Panda? And for every little sensor change in the iPhone you update Panda? Which by the way is the same argument that people make regarding Flash.
I always thought that web deployment and a development tool suite are far more important. Sure it's sad to see some development effort wasted, but its obvious that this new regulation will not last long. Similar nonsense was brought down sooner or later in the past. They just brought up this wording to exclude Adobe and then they will figure out something more precise.

And oh look how Apple is bashed for this. Nobody blames Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo for dictating their development process. What's the implication here? Sony sucks because you can't deploy a Panda app on a PSP?
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[Gogg]

[drwr]

Right, I'm also assuming it doesn't restrict Panda/C++ development. Though it's not 100% clear.

David

[tallmystcarpet]

[Anon]

[castironpi]

The Windows 7 EULA reads,

"Thou shalt not have any browser before Internet Explorer."

[Bradamante]

[hobbit]

I am not so happy that Apple has decided that python is not acceptable to program with, but I can always learn yet another language and use it. I am concerned about what it says about having to have it originally created on one of the pre-approved languages.

[Gogg]

David, if you aren't already on it, could Disney somehow get confirmation from Apple on Panda/C++'s legality? I don't think it would be hard considering the relationship, though it may take time for Apple to make their mind on this. (I'm pretty sure they didn't have 3d engines in mind when making this policy, these don't have standard GUI elements and the "usability" justification doesn't apply.)

In the meantime, I'm pretty sure that it's allowed:

This is the controversial clause:

[Anon]