Claws out
A clause in the terms and conditions of Apples newly previewed iPhone OS 4 SDK that appears to ban apps written on development platforms other than those approved by Apple has set the developer community alight over the weekend amid claims that it's needlessly restrictive.
Among the more impassioned protesters was Lee Brimelow - platform evangelist at Adobe focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities. He wrote a blog post entitled "Apple Slaps Developers In The Face", in which he accuses Apple of "...wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe."
Brimelow was referring in part to the continued lack of support for Adobe Flash by Apple, but mainly to the fact that this new clause seems to be aimed directly at the Flash to iPhone compiler to be included in Adobe CS5. He went on to rant about the "hostile and despicable move", but the most remarkable comment came at the end of his post in which he said: "Go screw yourself Apple."
There hasn't been a formal Apple response to all this kerfuffle, but developer Greg Slepak got a couple of short email responses from Steve Jobs himself. In the first, Jobs pointed to a blog post by John Gruber as a decent summary of the reasons behind the new clause.
In response to the accusation of limiting creativity with this rule, Jobs said: "We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform."
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Obviously Apple can set whichever rules it wants for its OSs and the massive success of its devices and platforms generally ensures developers will put up with them, however onerous. But will Android going from strength to strength and Microsoft, Intel and Nokia getting their act together, there's soon going to be a lot of choice for developers and consumers.
If the top developers start abandoning the iPhone and the best apps are then available elsewhere, it could have a profound effect on sales of future iPhones, no matter how shiny they are.
