Musician: Hey Apple, I just had to accept a new license agreement for your iTunes platform.
Apple: So what? You have been really reading through it?
Musician: It says that I have to use GarageBand if I want to see any music I produce on iTunes.
Apple: Correct.
Musician: Well but I do not like GarageBand. I would like to use Ableton Live.
Apple: Sorry but you are not allowed to use that.
Musician: But it is suited very well for electronic music.
Apple: Use GarageBand then. It is a magical and amazing product!
Musician: Okay fair enough, but what if I would like to play the piano? An instrument I have practiced since more than eight years. I think I am creating better music on a piano than with GarageBand.
Apple: Then you invested your time in the wrong instrument.
Musician: Okay. What about the Audiotool? Can I use it?
Apple: That application does not even run on our devices. Those developers are lazy.
Musician: Errr, okay. So if I use GarageBand I can do what I want?
Apple: No. If you use the F-word in a song for example it won’t be distributed via iTunes.
Musician: You are kidding. Why?
Apple: Because we think that it is not appropriate.
Musician: That must be a joke.
Apple: Not at all. Your child could listen to that song — think about it.
Musician: Well, I think I know best what’s good for my child. Besides, would some parental control system not help here?
Apple: Next question please.
Musician: Okay, assume I use GarageBand and that my content is “appropriate”. Can I be sure it will make it to the iTunes store?
Apple: First we will check it.
Musician: How long will that take?
Apple: Up to two months.
Musician: Are you serious?
Apple: Yes. There is plenty of music being created and we want to filter only whats best for our users.
Musician: And you think you can decide that?
Apple: Sure.
Musician: Okay, let me sum this up quickly: I have to use GarageBand to create any music for iTunes. It has to be “appropriate” and then you let me wait for quite some time to tell me whether you like it or not?
Apple: Now you make it sound like as if we were evil. Google is evil. We are the good guys! And look, the new iPad. Isn’t it beautiful?
Musician: Oh, yeah. I really want that overpriced product. Where can I buy it?
Apple: In our certified Apple retail stores.
Musician: And you will not pull me over this time like you did with the iPhone when you dropped the price dramatically two weeks after its release?
Apple: No. Not exactly. We will release an iPad with a webcam soon. And we will charge $200 extra for that.
[…]
Sounds strange doesn’t it? Thank god this was just a fictional interview and will never become reality.
20 Comments
@Adam H. – you may want to take a moment to understand what the iPhone packager does before basing you whole argument on the fact that code generation tools don’t give the same result as apps written by hand. If you had, you would know that the iPhone packager is NOT a code generation tool. (if it was generating Objective-C, then the new clause in Apple’s agreement wouldn’t be a problem). It compiles directly to the byte code just like Objective-C would.
Also all the arguments about how Flash spikes the CPU on new equipment are all moot. The iPhone packager doesn’t put Flash Player on the device. Flash player has nothing to do with it once it is compiled.
great :)
it’s time to open the eyes to see the real picture of Apple …
yes, I have an iphone, and I like it,
but I would like it much more if Apple wouldn’t be so restrictive!
I planned to buy a new one this summer,
but I think I will not support this any longer …
Straw man argumant. Your logic is fallacious.
@Stephen
I think you’re confusing a language with its target platform. I could write an Obj-C compiler that output to Flash natively, just as I could write an AS3 compiler that output ASM. The language is merely the syntactical preference of the compiler writer. The Objective-C compiler writer, ergo, is a weird maniacal nutcase on dope with a chip on his shoulder and a plan to piss people off or make them go nuts. Whichever comes first.
Oh, and his name is Steve Jobs…
Apple politcs just show that they dont respect the enviroment of developers – by many languages – wich, must of then, had filled their pocket with money. And this apple’s authoritarian way of conduct their business will probably knock out them one day.
Remember: the discussion is not about Adobe vs Apple. The discussion is about Flash, C# .NET, Unity, Ruby, etc etc, DEVELOPERS. And, come on, there is no “bad Flash” or “allways good JavaScript” products. There is bad developers and good developers. There is a lot of websites with so many Javascript throwing exceptions that NY has in cars. To keep the ‘good performance’ of the apps they dont need to exclude all ‘No C-Objective’ developers from the game.
The ‘nice and cool soul’ of Apple was builded with the help of many developers who like, use and recommends Apple’s products, not because Steve Jobs is a nice dude. Btws, he isnt. Apple is kicking out a very considerable number of important minds in global developers enviroment. And this all situation is just big and pure greed. Shame on Apple!
Don’t like it, use something else. Getting sick of the whiners!
Proudly posted from my iPhone.
I am a flash developer/designer and apple lover… I was considering moving from pc to mac… But what next from apple, if you develop on a mac you can’t develop for any other platform. This has put a serious dent in my apreciation,as a whole, for apple and it’s direction in the future. Whether it be a design machine, my next phone or if I even buy the ipad… Adobe and apple have worked fine for so long why can’t they come together and both make flash work for the better of the web. Comes on guys let’s all play nice.
I’ve never been a huge fan of flash games and I am an artist/developer, but for the past year I have been using Unity and unfortunately this truly is sad to see them blatently alienate this platform.
Hey Steve thanks for putting educated engineers that have supported and looked up to you for years out of business during a recession. What goes around comes around. I’m not down and out because I have never placed all my eggs in one basket but others I know have.
Steve Jobs is a frigging jackass thats trying to sell units. Don’t buy into the rest of these PR stunts and lets let steve be the one thats looking for a job. I find some irony that all his devices start with “I” and his last name is jobs.
The part I don’t get is why people are so surprised that Apple is acting this way.
Developers Are Divas: http://bit.ly/bJ35G8
Yes, shoot all the developers in the foot and run your race alone, then the only place left is the first place, since there is no one other running with you! Good idea Apple.
But they soon will realize, this will make them only weaker and fortunately, nature takes care of the weak ones so only strongest will survive.
well, well, about lazyness in development … there’s lazy instantiation … is it bad ?
Ok, jokes apart,
@Pedro Paulo Almeida you’re right! there’s good and bad programming and it doesn’t mean flash is bad it means you have to do it right … like joa said on another post, optimise optimise optimise we’ve been thaught to do just that with flash.
@Adam Howitt, man are you serious ? do you work for Apple come on! if you did your research right you’d know that Apple has been blocking access to the low level apis to Adobe while the flash players works “better” in windows and takes advantage of the cpu, etc …, without those apis in Apple environment it can really be comparable ( check the post about it on Mike Chambers’blog ) and by the way it’s not just flash Apple is targeting with this campaign though i have to agree that yes it’s their ecosystem they might as well do anything they please with it and be called tyranical in nature.
General idea here … I want to develop in the IDE I choose, the way I think it’s best so the developer should be in control not the other way around,
first thing if Apple blocks my development fine … i move to another environment period ( like someone said the world is large enough )!
second thing stop flaming about Apple vs Adobe, or at least if you like flaming flame about everything this isn’t an Apple vs Adobe exclusive.
third, really … do you think Adobe’s business line is only iphone development ? last time i checked it wasn’t i recommend http://www.adobe.com go read!
fourth, adobe isn’t lazy, developers sometimes are, what did you want to create ? before iphone mobile sucked big time now that it came everyone’s cannons are aiming at Adobe for being lazy, mobile was lazy Adobe just delivered the means for the mobile development comunity it’s not Adobe’s fault, when they wanted to jump on the iphone bandwagon to deliver again they had the door shut on their face!
Fifth, Objective-c is just nextsteps implementation that Apple bought so what ? by the way did i mention Objective-C is slow ? there’s plenty of reference to that on the web just research.
For all of the people who are saying us flash devs are being sucks etc… please get a life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using flash to develop applications as you can see from the success of things like Adobe AIR. You’ve been brainwashed by Apple to believe the bs that they are selling for the sake of protecting their stakehold in the copious amounts of money that flow through thier nazi-germany style camp gates.. errr… itunes. If flash sucks or “isn’t good enough” because of it’s internal design then I guess C#/Java… uhh to make it short pretty much anything but C/C++/ObjectiveC sucks and we should all just become some form of C developer. Geeze yeah now that I think about it as I write this post I mean, what a whining baby loser I am for having the ability to publish my content with a single click to nearly any platform except iNazi based devices. I should just really re-think my entire life/career choices all because I am an idiot for spending years mastering a language that one man who has been nothing but a jealous underdog (and a failure at it, at that) feels is “stupid” or “crappy” because by chance he caught a market niche and suddenly thinks he is god of all things computer related including development. Yeah… man wow I feel stupid now having even written anything about this. I better quit my full time job as a flash dev and invest all of my time learning a language specifically for a single closed platform that is under the reign of an uber jealous superiority complex plagued closet nazi, consequently hanging my life and future (as far as feeding my kids, keeping a roof over their head and the very substance of my career) in his hands.
Why do people mention SWFs, Flash performance, websites, etc? What does that have to do with blocking developers from using other DEV tools that export to IPhone apps?
(People commenting here, that is)
hehehe I LOVE IT. all this talk reminds me of when Apple bought Emagic in 2002 and i lost the uses of Logic Audio for my home studio setup running Windows just to get down quick ideas to take over to main sutdio so just switched to digidesign Protools full time on both mac and win.
Loved it! So true… the situation all creatives find themselves in today… and if we are not careful it will even be more prominent tomorrow.
And you are not allowed sell open source software on IPhone.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_finally_pulls_vlc_app_over_gpl_violations
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