Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch
computinged.wordpress.com
computinged.wordpress.com
Apple has always been a world apart, with a strong philosophy and its own priorities. But the culture around its products was all about fostering creativity.
I used to say to friends: get a Mac if you want an hassle-free computer to make things (music, graphics design and even programming. Does anyone remember HyperCard, which at one point was bundled with every mac?).
The argument that the iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch is not a computer is really myopic. It's the culture that has changed.
(I say that as a long time Linux user... I would never give Linux to a non-techie.)
It is so much easier for non technical people to install applications with all those comfortable package management frontends alone. I recently have successfully "deployed" such an environment on an absolute beginner's PC. I would clearly say that everybody who was able to use WinXP is easily able to use a modern major Linux distribution. I have been an enthusiastic osx user for many years now but then again I originally came from BSD world and I am somewhat married to my workflow now.
IMHO Linux is a great option - certainly for casual users and programmers.
That's why they have parents.
I'm not sure how directly applicable that critique is to the analogy, except to say that I am well within my rights to be outraged at my own employer for many reasons, whether or not I have the opportunity to start my own business. "Love it or leave it" is generally a cheap argument for dismissing folks who are pushing for progressive change in a system.
Is this statement true or false?
> Being outraged at Apple policies when the web is free is like being outraged at your employer when you are free to start your own business.
Does this statement say you are not entitled to be outraged at Apple or at your employer? Or does it merely say that being outraged at Apple when you have alternative target platforms is like being outraged at your employer when you can start your own business?
Making money from the web appears to be more difficult that making money from iPhone software. Starting your own business appears to be more difficult than working for yourself.
Don't these statements support the simile?
I support your choice to push Apple for "progressive change." But just as you may choose to push them to change, I choose to push developers to change. I hope you accept the direct comparison I am drawing.
I think I did jump to reading it as a "love it or leave it" argument, though recognizing you are more on the "come and join us on the outside". But maybe you can see it was easy to ready it as "it's a waste to get riled up about this".
Anyway, I'm quite sympathetic to the build-alternative-institutions as opposed to work-within-the-system approach. I rewrote this response a dozen times and then realized I hadn't figured out what really rankles me about this whole conversation (the larger one).
I think it's that Apple makes really good stuff, when so often it's the people making marginal or crappy stuff that are making regressive moves like these. So I get torn, because there are real efforts being made on their part to make technology human, to meet people where they are, efforts that have gone further than a lot of others. And I can't see any basic link between the closed approach and that success.
I don't have a point to make, but it is interesting that we are both far more free to start our own businesses than we are to develop iPhone applications in Flash.
see: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Sorry if it's been seen before...
A polite but forceful email to Jobs is on the way...
http://www.cooltechzone.com/2010/02/23/apple-loves-playboy-s...
...snip...
And when they came for Smalltalk, there was nobody left to stand up for me.
No, it's because (as far as I can tell) the Scratch iPhone app was acting as a Scratch interpreter which is explicitly not allowed on the App Store to begin with.
The authors of the iPhone app (http://www.mobilewikiserver.com/Scratch.html) made a nice post in the developer forums (https://devforums.apple.com/thread/46425) pleading their case for any you with access to the forum and an interest in digging deeper.
That said, if their app really was an interpreter, I'm surprised it made it into the store in the first place. And if anything, the typical Scratch output of a crayon-drawn animation designed by a 13-year-old only bolsters Jobs' point about cross-compilers bringing down the average app quality. But I'm very impressed that they had Scratch working on the platform and I hope Apple can find a way to incorporate that educational mission into their world-domination strategy...
I'd bet there are others.
Which goes to show, once again, that this policy is really stupid and that it doesn't affect exclusively developers, but also the educational potential so vehemently touted by all the iPad/iPhone/iTouch fans.
No, of course they won't. Because those titles bring in big bucks and are from the types of developer Apple wants to develop for their device.
It the capricious and selective enforcement of the SDKs T&Cs that is the biggest problem for developers. It's not that Apple are against interpreters, they are just against interpreters when it is not financially beneficial to them.
Of course, all these products were put into the app store before rule 3.3.1.
When the C64 emulator was released, that "or" was an "and". Now they don't allow non-Apple interpreters at all. (Unless they feel like it.)
I don't know of anyone else who has.
I believe he meant as a web app.
"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world."
Source: http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet-apple-...
The iPad is no Dynabook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook.
Perhaps a better name would have been:
-UndynamicBook
-iStade (See: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stade )
The fact that Apple has provided a particular implementation of the concept, even with all the software restrictions etc., is a step in right direction. Competition will certainly follow.
To clarify, I wouldn't expect an academic to patent his work. He wants his works to be freely available to everyone. It's Steve Job's/Apple's right ethically and legally to leverage that. I meant it more lightly that it felt disrespectful that years later Jobs isn't paying homage to the source of inspirations.
I love Apple, they are killing it out there. I don't take nearly as much issue as everyone else does with most of their controlling terms. I come from the game's industry where Apple seems like the most gracious host compared to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and their approval process.
But as a Tools/Interface developer it's so frustrating to not be allowed to commercialize say an IDE that utilizes multi-touch to make software editing/navigation more efficient or enjoyable.
There's no reason why you can't implement an IDE on the iPhone/iPad. The only restriction is that you can't compile arbitrary code. I don't want to say too much here because I'm working on a similar idea, but there's really no reason why the current iPad can't be used for development work.
That's a pretty freakin' huge restriction for an IDE to have.
This would work fine for say editing a web app's code and then hitting refresh on each save. Until multi-tasking is released in iPhone OS 4.0 this will really require another device with a browser to view the updated code in a browser.
But again, this isn't what I'd call an IDE, it's more of a code editor. No debugging, profiling etc, unless you are connected to a runtime else where. But again this is far less desirable than being able to run/test code without a good networking connection or any connection at all.
Many other interactive environments other than squeak would be possible without these constraints, such as the Code Bubble IDE project: http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm
God forbid you use JSON to communicate with the server in your app and parse it yourself, that's too close to Javascript-parsing and you can only use the approved Javascript interpreter for that.
It's starting to look a bit like a joke.
Yeah, of course, typing this on my MacBook Pro... It's a weird love-hate thing with Apple these days.
On some level, the iPad isn't really a Turing Machine.
If you want Scratch for your students, you can use ad-hoc install for them? Buy a $99 dollar account, sponsored by the school, and install it for them? What is the problem?
I understand, and I wish Apple did not put such restrictions, but they've put them. Yet, still there is a way.
It's not like with Sony and the latest Ps3 firmware, where even if you want to pay (And I've already paid $69 for YellowDog support) I can no longer get it, or I can't use the Sony Service...
edit: this isn't the iPhone source...
So true.