> Why would you say "The restriction is undoubtedly effective at preventing even more crap from entering the App Store". Is there any evidence that Apple's restriction on languages is preventing more crap apps?Sturgeon's Law puts the burden of proof on anybody who doesn't think it would prevent more crap apps. (Crapps?) And practically speaking, I can't imagine allowing Flash-to-iOS apps not resulting in a deluge of more crap. The restriction also implicitly weeds out programmers who can't handle a C language requiring manual memory management. That doesn't mean you won't have crap programmers, but it probably boosts the average skill of iOS app programmers by a bit.
The downside to the restriction, obviously, is that it prevents not-crap apps from making it to the App Store as well. This seems to be your real issue, but preventing not-crap apps does not imply not preventing crap apps.
> Keep in mind this isn't about Flash (or at least, not just about Flash). It means iPhone developers can't use any other languages (Lua, JavaScript, Python, etc), interpreted or compiled.
Not true. You've always been able to use JavaScript, and you can use pretty much any other language provided you get approval from Apple and don't use it to build the bulk of your app. Plenty of game devs are using other languages for scripting or emulation.
> You've got to have your head shoved pretty far up Steve Job's reality distortion field to claim that this restriction anything other than an anticompetitive move to "lock" developers into the platform.
You'd have to be pretty uncharitable to think there couldn't be any other valid reasons. For someone who supposedly has his head up Steve Jobs' reality distortion field, I think developer lock-in is a plausible motive. But nobody except Jobs, Forstall, etc. has any ability to claim that it's the only motive, or even the primary one.