John Gruber: “My reading of this new language is that cross-compilers, such as the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch and Unity3D — tools that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. It’s unclear what this means for tools like [Appcelerator] and [PhoneGap], but it sounds to me like they’re on the wrong side of this new rule, and the folks behind Appcelerator already realize they might be out of bounds.” – I’m not exactly sure how things like the Flash to iPhone App conversion stuff works but if they’re running running Flash code through something that generates Objective-C code, which is then compiled, is that breaking the rules?
Food for thought.
Phonegap: http://twitter.com/phonegap/status/11843827934
Appcelerator: http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2010/04/apple-4-0-and-titanium.html
These are the two I was looking into. Hopefully they work it out.
If I were you I’d just get XCode, learn Cocoa and Objective, and get to slinging code!
Zero limits on their toolchain. You can do C/C++/Objective-C.
I want to. But for a quick-to-market (with skills I already know) app I was trying to get by with doing a 95% mobile safari web app with Phonegap “framing” it. This is what the redbox and other apps do now.
Interesting on flash-to-iphone also:
http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler
Quickest/Cheapest way to market is using the same codebase for every platform. Why program basically the same app numerous different times? Time is money. If Apple sticks to this new policy, it really sucks. Everyone loses, especially the end user.
More on phonegap: http://twitter.com/phonegap/status/11845902722
Chris,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
Apple doesn’t want “cheapest way to market”, and neither do I for that matter. They’re trying to keep the quality of applications high.
I don’t think the end-user loses, I think they win. There’s no shortage of applications in the store, high quality applications.
You lose out if you’re a developer that doesn’t want to do things the Apple way.