Apple’s recent amendment to their developer agreement - which forces developers to write applications their way using their tools - has done three things:- isolated Apple even more from the wider technical community,
- wasted the time and money of companies and people who have invested in building iPhone compatible developer toolkits (and developers who have used them), and
- diverted industry attention to other smart phone technologies.
Number one on the Apple’s shit list is Adobe whose Flash technology (which allows for media rich applications to run within a web browser) has been ruthlessly evicted from the iPhone party. iPhone users have undoubtedly noticed the small, sad-looking blue Lego blocks where content is expected. And there are sad little blue blocks aplenty since it’s estimated that over 98% of desktop browsers have Flash installed creating a rich ecosystem of games, mini applications and multi-media stuff. In a desperate bid to sneak back into the hottest shindig in town, Adobe developed a toolkit allowing developers to create applications in Flash and export them to the iPhone – a process known as cross compilation. Enter Apple’s new developer agreement which, paraphrased, reads “if you want to come to my party and you aren’t prepared to dress up, behave and have fun exactly as we want, then you can sod off.”
