Ummmm how about giving me that choice and not leaving it up to Apple…If I want Flash I can enable it..if I don’t I can dissable it..Apple just wants control over content plain and simple…get your head out of your a##$pple..

Also with the blocking of CS5 Apple simply wants 30% of each app sold (current program). Imagine what will happen when all the Flash developers start developing really good apps and hand them out for free. iTunes will be flooded with good free apps and no one will buy the pay apps so, Apple will not make a cent…that’s why they also want to push iAds…so they can get a cut from the ad revenue in the free apps…Apple is really starting to stink..I used to like Apple and detest Microsoft but now…

If Apple improves its IDE, I would definitely be jubilant… a shame about nixing the Flash crossover tool as I am proficient in Flash and increasingly so with ActionScript 3, but it’s all good…

Hopefully Dreamweaver CS5 will incorporate HTML5 support. While HTML5 will end up splintered between various web browsers like everything else, I do fathom it eclipsing even Flash in the future. But Flash isn’t going away either.

Lastly, sites like the one below show that Apple keeps Adobe out of the APIs needed to improve Flash performance on the Mac. Reading that, I’m going to stick with Flash development for the time being. Silverlight isn’t frame-based, but the development tools are pricey and have a steeper learning curve.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/doeshtml5reallybeatflashsurprisingresultsofnew_tests.php

Makes me feel ashamed to be a Mac supporter at the same time. Apple should know better, especially as MANY professional developers use Macs. If Apple goes too far, they will lose their own customers. Especially if Adobe plays hardball and drops OS X. (In which case, we should do a class-action suit against Apple as well.)

So there is no difference (oh, except that Objective C is years behind the .NET world in terms of language and tooling). Banning MonoTouch can only hurt users because of all the good apps that won’t get developed. I don’t get why Apple would make such a nakedly monopolistic move. Hopefully, they will clarify and allow MonoTouch apps.

I am an independent developer who has invested a large amount of sweat creating my first IPhone app using MonoTouch. I submitted it to the app store for approval earlier this week. I have bought an expensive Mac and IPhone to do this development. I will be a stick in the eye from Apple if they kill MonoTouch!

The important thing to remember in this discussion is that the new TOS is NOT ONLY BLOCKING ADOBE its blocking translator/compiler apps from a variety of different producers based on many languages other than Actionscript.

I will refuse to buy any of their products. Anyway, the HP Slate gives me way more for my money than the POS, overpriced, underperforming iPad.

I mean even Microsoft did not force you to buy one of their over-priced computers in order to develop for their other products.

Apple is the epitome of closed source.

The agreement applies once you agree to it. If you have downloaded 4.0, you had to agree to this first. The agreement comes into effect immediately: i.e. you cannot develop 3.1 apps using AIR either.

So your choices are to not download 4.0 and use AIR, or to download 4.0 and not use AIR, even for 3.x.

Of course, since Apple can reject your app for any reason whatsoever, they can start doing it now, whether you’ve agreed or not.

You guys should try developing for games consoles. Microsoft and Sony make Apple seem like a dream to work with.

How clear do you want it?

And what if Apple’s new standard fails? Like when Sony tried to make the UMD a standard for portable movies and music. They don’t make UMD movies and music anymore, sure you can still find them, but they’re used or several years old. HD-DVD failed too.

They need to learn that it’s not what they want, it’s what the consumer wants. Apple is going to screw themselves pretty royaly with this. If you’re a developer, are you going to learn all new standards to comply with one device? Or are you just going to tell them to screw themselves and use the same standards that 5 other people you develop for use because you’re not going to do the same thing twice, or you’ll do it later down the road but not right away. If people want Flash and Apple isn’t going to give it to them, then people will take their business else where, which will hurt Apple.

This just shows that Apple wants people to conform to their standards. If you’re going to bring in a new stardard, gradually do it, don’t just slamit down and say that this is how uit’s going to be and it’s effective right now.

The way I see it, Apple is at the bottom of a hill, armed with a wiffle bat, while all those developers and whatever are standing at the top of the hill, with chain guns. The developers don’t have to conform to Apple’s stardards, they can take their business elsewhere if Apple doesn’t want to be open.

Face it. Version 4 is, from Apple’s standpoint, all about the iAds revenue generation model. Everything else is just keeping up with the Jones’ (barely); the bare minimum they have to do to keep the devices in the same ballpark as the competition. Follow the money.

Also, why do Apple fans blindly agree with everything they do as if they are mistake free? Anyone remember the “our processor is faster than Intel” arguments? - Written from an Mac w/ an Intel processor

They get stuff wrong.

This is a horrible decision and play by Apple. I look forward to some filings against them soon. They are absolutely violating some laws here. Microsoft early 2000′s anyone? There was some lawsuit this reminds me of.

Very well said! What’s interesting/crazy is that 3.1.x and 3.2 don’t contain that language so Mono Touch is, and CS5 will be, able to generate apps for the current OS. 4.0 is still in beta and no apps can be submitted under 4.0 until June/July when it ships anyway. That makes it largely irrelevant at this point as anything other than a corporate tool — either as a scare tactic or leading indicator of Apple’s intent come June/July.

(Imagine if they’d left it out of the 4.0 beta and put it in the 4.0 final after devs had made tons of CS5, Mono, etc. builds targeting that).

Doing it now, so late for Adobe yet so early for 4.0 is telling… I just don’t know of what yet.

And absolutely, Apple could accomplish every result they have and be nice to developers and partners while doing so, but as a company they act remarkably personally even to their own detriment.

If Apple had allowed these tools to continue to be used, it would have made the iPhone an even more appealing platform for Enterprise IT shops, as existing (and widespread) skillsets in C#, Javascript and yes, Flash, could be leveraged. Forcing folks down a narrow path like this will not play in the Enterprise.

As it is, Apple is spitting on us, and blog posts such as yours merely claim that it is raining.

I disagree. Section 3.3.1 is so broad that MonoTouch would seem to violate two sections:

• “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript” — under MonoTouch, they are not originally written in any of these languages.

• “Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited” – MonoTouch is clearly an intermediary layer.

Even if MonoTouch only functions as a dumb preprocessor, it would stil be in violation of these section as written, though admittedly much harder to catch.

This is actually very very bad for the consumer who wants a choice in apps as it significantly reduces the developer base allowed to submit apps to the store. Besides the fact that development language alone does not a quality app make. You can have really horrible Objective C apps if the idea/implementation are bad. However the inverse is true as well. Teams with a great idea may have a very hard time bringing a product to market simply due to having to commit resources to learning a new language.

Hammer, nail, head……yep, I think you hit it!

@Rene (and everybody else so far)

You are missing at least two huge points:

1) After the Flash runtime was forbidden, Adobe spent over a year (and likely several million dollars, but, at the bare minimum, high six figures) developing a cross-compiler for Flash specifically to accomodate Apple’s rules. They did so publicly — tipb even covered it at least once — and announced milestones on the web every few months. If Apple did not want cross-compilers, they had ample opportunity to inform Adobe. A good business partner would have done this with a long-standing partner. Instead, they waited until after Adobe had spent all that time and money to accomodate Apple, and then quietly slips a change to the agreement in two working days before Flash CS5′s product launch. No, as far as I can tell, Apple did nothing illegal here, but that is besides the point — this reinforces to all of us that Apple is a company you have to do business with, not a company you want to do business with. After all, if Apple will deliberately act and time their actions to do maximum damage to a company whose products have arguably saved Apple’s very existence in the past (Pagemaker – then with Aldus, yes, and Photoshop), then they will do their best to **** anybody . The old saying may be “it is better to be feared than loved,” but at some point, fear runs out. Yesterday’s license change and timing dramatically upped developers’ fear factor, and got a lot more eyes looking at the Exit sign longingly for some other platform White Knight to arise.

2) Hewitt (and I) could honestly not give a damn about the Flash cross-compiler. (I personally do not think it is the right tool for the job, though, in that case, it makes little sense not to allow it, and laugh and it while it fails.) Section 3.3.1, however, goes well beyond banning cross-compilers; it essentially bans any language differential at all, or even developers choosing what they feel is the right tool for the job. Objective C is decent, but not the be-all-and-end-all of languages. Many apps in the App Store mix in other languages, or are written entirely in different languages — because they did the job better. These are now “illegal” — even if the end user could never tell any difference. Language experimentation — which, although slow, has inexorably done more to push the state of the art forward in CS and in end user products that just about any other field of software — is now “illegal.” Polygot programming — which has done more in the past two years to increase software quality and time-to-market than just about anything else — is now “illegal.” Apple will miss out on those benefits.

Neither of these are short-term issues, as Hewitt tweeted:

“It’s so hard to reconcile my love for these beautiful devices on my desk with my hatred for the ugly words in that legal agreement.”

I, too, LOVE my iPhoneOS devices — they are clearly better than anything else on the market, and I bet they will remain so for at least another year or two. While that continues, Apple has absolutely nothing to fear, and they can continue to run as roughshod as they like over as many business partners as they like. However, Apple’s business practices and legal department is breeding a lot of resentment among developers, and that resentment will boil over the second another platform reaches within spitting distance of the iPhone. Apple made a similar mistake 1988-1996 with developers, though it took almost 7 years for Windows 95 to reach spitting distance, but, as soon as it did, the floodgates opened and Apple nearly died. It is sad that, rather than learn from that mistake, Apple has doubled down on it.

@Ambient Rings: Have you lost your mind… scolding someone for proprietary software and defending Apple at the same time. Apple is the original proprietary douche company of the world and continue to be that. I own apple product and respect them for what they are but open is not one of them.

Do any of you read? It’s not blocking Flash on the iPhone. This goes way beyond that. This is simply Apple saying “screw you” to anyone who has any sort of Flash app and wants it to run natively on the iPhone through Objective C. It’s bad for consumers and bad for any one except Apple.

I’m all against Flash being on the iPhone and I’m a fan of open standards, but this is a blow to openness. With this change in the TOS, it also blocks off other legitimate types of development like Monotouch, which is C# development for the iPhone, C# being not that much different than Objective C.

Classic Jobs.