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A Calm, Reasonable Argument Supporting Apple’s Anti-Flash SDK Language

10 points by davidedicillo 17y ago

Actually the original post url is http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/04/11/gruber-a-voice-of-calm-in-a-mobile-world-gone-out-of-control/

tptacek 17y ago
It's not just that applications will be better today if they're written in Cocoa Touch. It's that Apple is moving the platform forward using Cocoa Touch. For instance, look at how they built multitasking: as a series of Cocoa Touch APIs. The issue for them is that applications will be better tomorrow because of Cocoa Touch. If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, and some small subet of them become popular, Apple will have problems building new features directly in Cocoa Touch. Those 1,000 applications might not have access to the new APIs until Adobe supports them. That's an unacceptable scenario for Apple.
- cosmicray 17y ago
  If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, they are going to be equally available on other mobile platforms. Apple would prefer that not happen.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    That's also true but orthogonal to my argument.
- hvs 17y ago
  And if you trust that Apple is a benevolent dictator that knows what's best for developers and that no good ideas can come from outside of Apple, that's a perfectly reasonable argument.
elblanco 17y ago
You know the best part? The best part is that when some company retools itself to use one of the anointed languages, at some considerable delays, expense and likely with quite a bit of employee turnover -- and just for argument's sake let's say they pick C++ -- Apple may decide they actually don't like C++ in six-months and ban that as well. Or even better, they may release some new "mobile optimized" programming language and tool-chain that's completely different than anything anybody is using, and force the entire development community to move to that in a year. No matter how good the business reasons for it were, or how the decision made strategic sense, it puts development shops on sand during an earthquake instead of on mountains of their own devising.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Your argument is that Apple might next decide to abandon Objective C?
  - elblanco 17y ago
    My argument is that "who knows"? By arbitrarily changing the rules without notice whenever they feel like it, predictability goes out the window.

10 points by davidedicillo 17y ago

Actually the original post url is http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/04/11/gruber-a-voice-of-calm-in-a-mobile-world-gone-out-of-control/

tptacek 17y ago

It's not just that applications will be better today if they're written in Cocoa Touch. It's that Apple is moving the platform forward using Cocoa Touch. For instance, look at how they built multitasking: as a series of Cocoa Touch APIs. The issue for them is that applications will be better tomorrow because of Cocoa Touch. If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, and some small subet of them become popular, Apple will have problems building new features directly in Cocoa Touch. Those 1,000 applications might not have access to the new APIs until Adobe supports them. That's an unacceptable scenario for Apple.

cosmicray 17y ago
If 1,000 new applications are written using Flash, they are going to be equally available on other mobile platforms. Apple would prefer that not happen.
- tptacek 17y ago
  That's also true but orthogonal to my argument.
hvs 17y ago
And if you trust that Apple is a benevolent dictator that knows what's best for developers and that no good ideas can come from outside of Apple, that's a perfectly reasonable argument.

elblanco 17y ago

You know the best part? The best part is that when some company retools itself to use one of the anointed languages, at some considerable delays, expense and likely with quite a bit of employee turnover -- and just for argument's sake let's say they pick C++ -- Apple may decide they actually don't like C++ in six-months and ban that as well. Or even better, they may release some new "mobile optimized" programming language and tool-chain that's completely different than anything anybody is using, and force the entire development community to move to that in a year. No matter how good the business reasons for it were, or how the decision made strategic sense, it puts development shops on sand during an earthquake instead of on mountains of their own devising.

tptacek 17y ago
Your argument is that Apple might next decide to abandon Objective C?
- elblanco 17y ago
  My argument is that "who knows"? By arbitrarily changing the rules without notice whenever they feel like it, predictability goes out the window.