John Gruber on Flash Player for iPhone | Hacker News Reader

John Gruber on Flash Player for iPhone

daringfireball.net

38 pointsnickb24 comments

Key point of the article is insightful and generally applicable. The stronger Android is, the more likely features which everyone want but Apple resists show up on the iPhone.

I'm also patiently waiting for Linux to catch up to OSX in usability/UI.

"I'm also patiently waiting for Linux to catch up to OSX in usability/UI."

That gave me a chuckle. The first thing that the Linux world should do is decide on one UI to use but that will never happen. It is philosophically impossible.

As it was "impossible" for Apple to decide when all they had was the old Macintosh toolbox and NextStep UIs, but they did it. They made Carbon/Cocoa to look reasonably consistent despite huge internal differences.

Linux can do the same with Qt/GTK+/etc. It certainly possible to have high-level UI consistency between multiple toolkits, especially when they all share the same lower-level stuff (X11/Cairo).

"Philosophically." With Apple, they had mechanisms of corporate governance to simply declare a standardization plan and follow it, and require developers to follow suit.

Linux, not so much.

Linux is a kernel, so I think you mean the X11 window managers that exist...like GNOME or KDE.

Sorry, I used linux in the colloquial sense. I meant GNU/Linux, distributions of which I can install on my hardware. Anything that would replace OSX, Windows, etc...

"Think about it: If there were a Flash player for the iPhone, you could write games and other software in Flash rather than in Cocoa Touch. And you could sell games and apps directly for the Flash player, completely circumventing the App Store. Does this sound like something Apple would allow?"

But...

   No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an 
   Application except for code that is interpreted and run by 
   Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

Built-in interpreter(s), eh? Maybe something like the JavaScript interpreter in MobileSafari?

I see a loophole. Of course that doesn't matter since Apple seems perfectly willing to reject apps they don't like for arbitrary reasons.

Well, Apple can do what they want. It's the others that need to adhere to these rules.

The point that I was trying to get at without breaking any sort of NDA that I may or may not be under was that perhaps there's a way to embed some sort of Apple-sanctioned interpreter in an application...

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Web...

The problem being nobody knows what these rules are. Applications have been accepted that are incompatible with the NDA, and conversely, applications with no NDA incompatibilities have been rejected or pulled for frivolous/unknown/bizarre reasons.

When I look at all these complaints from iPhone developers about the NDA right now, it's not as much about how irrational some parts of it are (really, not letting pragprog publish an iPhone dev book?) but more about how other parts that exist to someone at Apple are not made public to developers and their clients/customers so they know what the actual limitations are. Effectively a black box. Fantastic way to get people to not spend money and time on an application they don't know will be approved or rejected until they're close to finishing up on an initial release.

Therein lies the problem: there are no published rules. You only find out that you've broken them after you've completed development of your app and submitted it to the app store. Say goodbye to several months of your life.

Seems like a gamble and some people are winning big. Gambling is not for everyone though.

Apparently it's pretty well-stated in the docs they give you.

The problem with that part of the NDA is that Frotz is available on the app store and has been for a month or two. Frotz is an interactive fiction application (arguably interpreted) and also open source (gplv2, http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/), two things technically incompatible with the NDA.

I don't really think Apple meant to include the likes of Frotz. Seems like the biggest issue is arbitrary rejection (as you mention), and not so much whether or not the NDA is strictly followed..exceptions made for applications that Apple sees nothing bad in. Of course, Flash would be a more direct threat to the App Store than IF, sooo...I have a feeling that even if there were some sort of loophole, Apple would reject it anyway. Shame, cause I'm not really interested in games, I just want to view some websites that don't have non-Flash fallback (sometimes for a legitimate reason) on my phone.

This also sucks from a developer perspective, but that particular issue has been discussed to excess everywhere without Apple yet doing something positive..

How would GPL make an app incompatible with the NDA?

I am just guessing, but it is currently against NDA for me to publish any source code to an iphone app that I write. If that app is based on GPL'd code, then I am obligated to make the source available, no? So the NDA and GPL would indeed seem to be at odds right now, unless I am not seeing something...

Ah, then I see the problem. Seems like it's no longer a problem though, saw some headline about the nda being dropped.

> against NDA for me to publish any source code to an iphone app that I write

Wow, that's awful.

The Flash Player in development for iPhone is not a port of existing standalone one. As they put it,the new player in development is something in between Flash Lite and Flash Player for desktop.

So this is going to be a watered down version of Flash Player. Chances are that Apple will approve a Flash player which is targeted only to render flash content on web pages as it will make the browsing experience on iPhone closer to that on desktop.

No, chances are (as John so eloquently argues) that Apple will do no such thing, as it would seriously water down the whole iPhone UI experience. Read the article!

There is a difference between running swfs on phone interface and rendering flash elements on webpages.

Allowing swfs to run directly on phone interface definitely interfere with iPhone UI experience,but rendering webpages along with flash elements in it only makes the browser experience closer to what is expected from the browser app. Its a good thing for Apple.

Unless you believe, as I do (and I think Steve Jobs does), that Flash is a business trojan horse, and is ultimately anti-open-standards and flies in the face of internet searchability, accessbility, etc.

On the other hand, would Adobe spend however much it costs to develop this product without assurances from Apple?

Yes. Adobe is an arrogant company and it has a history of attempting to force Apple's hand by ignoring what Apple's going currently. Whether it actually works is another question entirely.

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