Ok, so a new clause in the Terms of Service for Apple’s newly announced iPhone OS 4 is understandably causing some consternation around the internet:
“3.3.1 … Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”
The common understanding is that this is a shot across Adobe’s bow, but also aimed at people creating emulation environments. Potential justifications for this could include performance concerns (given the new multitasking feature in 4), wanting to avoid shovelware ports from other platforms with no iPhone-specific features to make their platform stand out, or sheer bloody mindedness and wish to tie developers directly to their APIs to minimise the chance that they’ll deploy on competitors machines.
As a general principle, I don’t like this sort of thing - telling developers what they can and can’t do is stifling. But, I had to take away one positive from it - a company telling people to use native code, instead of the opposite which I’ve seen too much of lately. In recent years, the likes of Microsoft have insisted that developers use their intermediate VM layers to deploy on some devices (XNA, Windows Phone 7) - regardless that these environments have about 20 years less maturity (in terms of libraries and existing code) than what I already have in C & C++. Having them tell me that no, despite all these great battle-tested libraries that I’m used to using, instead I have to use comparatively immature ports and replacements of varying quality, just because they tell me so. That drives me nuts - sure, let’s throw away and re-invent hundreds of functioning & tested libraries just because…well, just because! They’re old and we’re new and awesome! Hmm.
So while Apple telling developers what they can and can’t use is still very wrong from a point of principle, I’m actually glad that someone is championing native code for once, rather than pushing a VM environment. I’d prefer they didn’t mandate anything at all, but I can’t deny a certain urge to fist-bump when native code was the one to get the seal of approval, after getting the impression from other companies that they’d rather no-one had access to the underlying workings of the machine. I like native code, there’s a certain purity about it - and maybe it’s like a sad old gear-head going on about how great the old V8’s used to be, but I don’t care 😀Mostly it’s about my frustration with being forced to discard perfectly good native libraries and look for / build replacements for no good reason.
PS For the record, OGRE on iPhone isn’t affected by this new ToS because we’re 100% native, baby. 😀
[edit]For those pointing out that C# and such eventually run on native code anyway - that’s not the point. The point is that on certain devices - XNA and Windows Phone 7 - you simply cannot use libraries that were not written in .Net originally, meaning that years worth of dev libraries are inaccessible and need to be (pointlessly IMO) rewritten in .Net. And yes, this is exactly the same as Apple are doing here (but in reverse), if you interpret it in the strictest sense that you’re only allowed to use code written in Obj-C, C and C++. I’m just taking a perverse delight in the fact that it’s C/C++ libraries from the last 20+ years that are on the winning side for a change, instead of being the ones that are excluded (which frankly I’m completely sick of).