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I'm not saying the article is right, it's clearly not written by somebody particularly technically savvy. But, if the code produced by Adobe CS5 and the Apple

by tjogin 17y ago

I'm not saying the article is right, it's clearly not written by somebody particularly technically savvy. But, if the code produced by Adobe CS5 and the Apple sanctioned means of developing yields the same result, how could Apple possibly even detect that an app was developed using CS5, Unity3D or some other now forbidden "intermediary" tool?

daeken 17y ago
Strings in the resulting binary, library names in the app package, and other such things. It's very much possible to make it difficult to detect, but with current tools it's trivial.
ajg1977 17y ago
All of these apps will contain identical portions of code that are either included as a result of, or generated by, those tools. They're effectively like inadvertent watermarks. Once you identify these it's trivial to automatically scan executables and look for those signs. For something like a flash framework it may not even be necessary to look at the code. Just look at the data files for something that either has a flash header, or a header that's common to that framework.
- tjogin 17y ago
  That sounds very reasonable — with third party development environment like that of CS5, that would be expected. But how could it detect, say, various libraries that would pre-compile to C/Objective-C — not using a third party development environment with separate libraries like CS5, just direct other language-to-Apple's-environment compilers, like that of Apple's own MacRuby (sort of). I think what Apple want is for us to use their environment, their libraries, Cocoa Touch and all that. They don't want cross-platform "shovelware" they want apps to be uniquely designed for the iPhone. That's the key. I don't think they really care if the code was written in, say, Ruby or Clojure, using a compiler designed specifically to target Apple's specific libraries. Could they even detect something like that? I even expect Apple to try to get MacRuby, and similar tools for other languages, working with Mac and iPhone development. It's the generality of cross-compiled generic shovelware they don't like. Not "other" languages. Think about it: which do you think Apple likes more: cross-platform apps developed "originally" in C using Eclipse (no Apple-libraries) and released for every mobile platform under the sun. Or, apps uniquely designed and developed for iPhone using MacRuby with Cocoa Touch (whenever that's technically possible).

by tjogin 17y ago

daeken 17y ago

Strings in the resulting binary, library names in the app package, and other such things. It's very much possible to make it difficult to detect, but with current tools it's trivial.

ajg1977 17y ago

All of these apps will contain identical portions of code that are either included as a result of, or generated by, those tools. They're effectively like inadvertent watermarks. Once you identify these it's trivial to automatically scan executables and look for those signs. For something like a flash framework it may not even be necessary to look at the code. Just look at the data files for something that either has a flash header, or a header that's common to that framework.

tjogin 17y ago
That sounds very reasonable — with third party development environment like that of CS5, that would be expected. But how could it detect, say, various libraries that would pre-compile to C/Objective-C — not using a third party development environment with separate libraries like CS5, just direct other language-to-Apple's-environment compilers, like that of Apple's own MacRuby (sort of). I think what Apple want is for us to use their environment, their libraries, Cocoa Touch and all that. They don't want cross-platform "shovelware" they want apps to be uniquely designed for the iPhone. That's the key. I don't think they really care if the code was written in, say, Ruby or Clojure, using a compiler designed specifically to target Apple's specific libraries. Could they even detect something like that? I even expect Apple to try to get MacRuby, and similar tools for other languages, working with Mac and iPhone development. It's the generality of cross-compiled generic shovelware they don't like. Not "other" languages. Think about it: which do you think Apple likes more: cross-platform apps developed "originally" in C using Eclipse (no Apple-libraries) and released for every mobile platform under the sun. Or, apps uniquely designed and developed for iPhone using MacRuby with Cocoa Touch (whenever that's technically possible).