New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others
Getting away from the frenzied rhetoric, my opinion is that what Apple <i>really</i> wants to prevent is people releasing multi-platform compilers. So taking Flash as just one example, if I can build one app and the compiler can make me an iPhone executable, an Android executable, and so forth, Apple don't want that.<p>In my experience so far with such "cross platform compatibility layers," they always produce results that water down each platform's individual strengths and differentiations. And of course, instead of the developer being locked into the phone platform, they are locked into the compatibility layer's platform.<p>Adobe's Flash compiler is a classic maneuver to "commoditize your complements," as Joel put it so well. Apple don't want to be commoditized, especially if it means having apps that don't take advantage of the iPhone's strengths.<p>Adobe want to lock developers into Flash and commoditize everything else as Flash-delivery devices. Apple want to commoditize applications and lock developers into their APIs.<p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html</a>