It really was just about Flash

There are a number of platform wars going on right now, on various classes of computers. One of them is over the market for applications on consumer mobile devices. At the OS level, there are Android, iOS, Windows, RIM, and others. There are also cross-OS platforms, such as HTML and Flash. It's a good time to be on the buying side of a mobile device. Extraordinary levels of effort are being put into making each platform appeal to users.

Sometimes, though, the moves are not in consumers' interest. Apple's ban of alternate programming languages on the iPhone is just such a move. Jobs can say all he likes that Flash apps are inherently bad, but few truly agree. A more precise statement is that Flash, many feel, isn't the best possible tool in general. Programmers, however, are more important than the specific tools. I'm sure that the best Flash apps that were banned are better than the worst apps currently being allowed. If the app store simply focused on quality itself, rather than implementation technology, then iPhone users would get an improved selection of apps to install.

Jobs knows this, and so he hasn't really been blocking all alternate languages from his platform. Just the Flash ones:

Other cross-platform compiler makers had had no such trouble, even during the monthslong stretch when the now-obsolete Apple policy had supposedly been in effect. Both Appcelerator and Unity Technologies, which sell iOS programming tools, stressed on Thursday that developers using their compilers had been able to get ported programs into the App Store since April.

Sick stuff. Happily, as word came out, the legality of the approach is starting to fray. Apple needs to either explicitly and specifically block Flash--thus facing anti-trust issues--or drop the bogusly general block. They've now chosen to drop the general ban, which is really the best thing for users.

A foreign film I'd love to see

Java 4 ever is a hilarious trailer for a made up movie. It has all the cliches from a Hollywood warm-human-tale kinda movie, but instead of being about forbidden cross-sect love, it's about open computer standards.

Beware that the trailer is R rated at one point.

HT Ted Neward

Apple trying to block choice of source language?

Much is being said about Apple's newly launched attempt to stop programmers from writing in a language they don't approve. Lambda the Ultimate is a good place to find lots of links.

This is a large grab. Apply is trying to control not only the technology used in the distributed software for an application, but also the methods used to make it. The requirements on those methods are not even that they be good methods; restricting the programming language does little to enforce good programming by itself. And the languages allowed aren't especially great for good programming.

Jobs claims--in the few terse comments Apple has made about this move--that he wants to prevent the iPhone from being commodotized. This is a standard lock-in kind of approach to doing well in business, but it's slightly odd given Apple's reputation for distributing quality software. One thing we can be sure of: if programmers aren't allowed to use good tools, they aren't going to make good software.

It's unclear whether this will be enforceable. Among other reasons, practically all software makes some use of its non-primary language, but presumably Apple doesn't want to ban all software from their market. Any configuration language is a programming language. The expression language of a spreadsheet is a programming language. If you do a web search for "cell phones -iphone", you're writing the query in a programming language. Heck, if the developers use use ant or make or Maven to build the program, they're writing their build rules in a programming language.

Little languages are just part of how software is written.