By now, most of you have probably seen or heard about Apple iPhone SDK 4.0 and a little hidden gem in their freshly minted 4.0 Terms of Services, notably 3.3.1:
“Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.”
It’s clear that products like Titanium, Unity3D, Ansca, MonoTouch and others are now a bit in question for iPhone 4.0+ with this language. We’re all trying to get our heads around what this means and trying to reach out to Apple to get clarification.
Hang tight, we’ll try and give you more information as we can figure it out from Apple. We don’t want to make any false promises or claims – and most importantly, we want to make sure we’re abiding by Apple’s rules.
[NOTE: I have posted an update here]
Whilst I share the collective sigh at this latest bullshit, remember that Nokia and RIM are still way ahead of Apple in market share and Titanium is coming to BlackBerry.
2009 Smartphone Market
1. Symbian (mostly Nokia) .80 million 46%
2. RIM (Blackberry) …….37 million 20%
3. Apple (iPhone)……….25 million 15%
4. Windows Mobile……… 11 million 6%
5. Google Android……….7 million 4%
Stats thanks to @tomiahonen
[...] for the iPhone and other devices, such as Appcelerator’s Titanium, may be affected too, and Appcelerator says it’s still trying to figure out what this means. I asked Adobe to comment, and the company [...]
[...] for the iPhone and other devices, such as Appcelerator’s Titanium, may be affected too, and Appcelerator says it’s still trying to figure out what this means. I asked Adobe to comment, and the company [...]
Why not expose all Apple APIs to the Webkit engine? This would not violate ‘… or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, ….’?!
Assuming the new verbiage is what people are dreading it might be.. This would be a terrible way to show appreciation to a market of developers dedicated to supplying apple with quality applications to it’s market.
[...] for the iPhone and other devices, such as Appcelerator’s Titanium, may be affected too, and Appcelerator says it’s still trying to figure out what this means. I asked Adobe to comment, and the company [...]
This is an example of what i dislike about Apple, lately. Ridiculously restricted environment. This is not unlike forbidding you to patch run your car radio through an outboard equaliser.
While I’m not happy to see that Titanium may be in jeopardy, I am sorry I bit the bullet and decided to go the XCode route when the initial Titanium pricing was announced. It meant a lot more pain initially, but at least I know my app is safe.
I really wish Apple would lighten up a bit. They are controlling to a fault.
I can empathize to an extent with a lot of the comments, and I sincerely am not trying to sound like a smart ass. I’m a little bummed out when I’ve spent a lot of time with a technology only to find I might have to shift gears.
But if you want to create as efficient and stable an application as possible, why not learn Objective-C, as opposed to relying on cross-compiling and shortcuts? It’s not that hard, and having more tools in the toolbox makes you a better developer.
I don’t know, when I hear people lamenting Apple so much, I kind of want to say: name a mobile platform that does allow for multiple paths to native apps. If there is one, is it as/more stable that iPhone OS, does it offer the same level of UX, does it have the same reach, brand and revenue potential? If you honestly think the answer is yes…then why not move to that platform and stop complaining? No one’s forcing you to develop for iPhone OS.
Let the zealous, flame wars commence. Or continue. The developers I’ve known and respected over the years have looked at a platform, and if they wanted to be on it, they looked at the best tool for the job and learned it.
[...] from the PhoneGap Twitter account suggests they’re not worried. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as [...]
There are lot of innovative startups that are either bootstrapping or starting off with a shoe string budget. For them products like Titanium are an important tool in a fragmented mobile market place. They can build native apps for three important mobile markets (counting Blackberry) and a web application with one small programming talent pool. So from that point the ‘learn xcode’ is too simple minded.
Apple (or should I just say Jobs) keeps shooting itself in the foot! Just like with Mac it innovates and then become a niche player. In the case of iPhone first Android and soon others will catch up. Just the sheer number of applications in the app store is stupid statistic. The question is will popular and successful applications on iPhone have an incentive to go after other phone markets? Yes they will. Why would they not go after millions of customers on other phones, specially when they have a proven product and some money in their pockets.
Titanium has been frustrating at times but overall I must say it has been great. Keep up the good work.
Apart from calling Apple what else can we do collectively? Any other ideas?
@Gregir & the Objective-C sympathisers. I get where you’re coming from, but for me, the whole point of using Titanium is so that I can develop an app for the iPhone *AND* Android without learning 2 new languages+SDKs.
People seem to overlook this & only release their apps for the iPhone. Android might not have the same market share, but the share they do have is growing massively.
Titanium saves so much time for us that we’ll continue to use it as long as it’s accepted by the app stores.
Keep up the good work Jeff & co!
It is fine to restrict your end-users from doing certain things which might negatively effect the user experience. But restricting the devlopers which provide the base for the iPhone’s success is a big, big mistake. I for my self will stop developing for iPhone today and will not get back until Apple has committed to change this new policy.
[...] from the PhoneGap Twitter account suggests they’re not worried. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as [...]
[...] raken ook andere compilatietools en -diensten, zoals die van de Nederlandse startup Steape en van Appcelerator. Ceo Jeff Haynie van laatstgenoemde probeert zijn klanten gerust te stellen met de mededeling dat [...]
[...] tweet from the PhoneGap Twitter account suggests they’re not worried. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as out [...]
This is absolute absurdity. My guess is that this is to primarily attempts at blocking Adobe, and their Flash CS5 iPhone exporter.
Why not make titanium generate Objective-C code which the end user can then compile themselves. Apple doesn’t say that the code can’t be generated. However, if they get wind of this, there will probably be a new section in the agreement. hah!
at comment #1
I own a Nokia Symbian phone heck I live int the country where mobile phones populate 3x the population. It’s Finland the county where Nokia started with making rubber boots and tires. Nowadays named nokian and not a part of Nokia.
But the Symbian phones sux big time. And if we count smartphone marketshare Apple is nr 1.
My wife has an iPhone and so would I if i didnt’ have an company phone.
[...] and tools working at higher abstraction levels are out. This covers Scheme, Unity3D, Titanium, MonoTouch and many others. The ban also (unsurprisingly) covers Adobe’s upcoming Flash [...]
[...] — a tool that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. The folks at Appcelerator realize, though, that they might be out of bounds with Titanium. Ansca’s Corona SDK, which lets you write iPhone apps using Lua, strikes me as out [...]
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