Where will apple draw the line? A look at 3.3.1
I know everyone is sick of hearing about apple but I thought some people might be interested in this little thought experiement.
Apple is notorious for leaving their terms fuzzy and undefined. You can’t help but wonder how they are going to enforce their newest controversial rule (3.3.1 if you don’t know go ahead and google it). As much as I want to go on a rant about everything that is wrong with Apple, I will try to focus on clarifying what is meant by “originally written”. This post is not meant to be extremely informative in itself, rather give you questions to think about. After reading it try to draw your own conclusions (feel free to post it in the comments). I’ll try to keep this away from complaining and as original as I can.
Bad Ass Smiley App... would probably be rejected for lack of functionality :(
Lets start with a base case, the obvious target of Apple’s addition, Adobe’s Flash CS5 AS to IPhone compiler. I don’t think anyone would doubt that is against the rule, it doesn’t even go through objective-c or c++.
The next step up would be a script that directly translates AS to ObjC/C++. This is where you need to start thinking about the definiton of “originally”. It was in one of their predecined languages before it was compiled right? That doesn’t really fit the definition of originally but you might be able to stretch it.
What if it was a scripted but was translated once to maintainable code (pretend for a moment that this was possible) and any updates were done to the ObjC/C++? Does the language it was originally written in transfer over? Technically it was originally written in AS.
What if it wasn’t a script but was written by hand? Does that change anything? It really shouldn’t but if apple’s goals are to get apps that feel native this method should make them happy.
After thinking these over it seems that there are two main definitons of “orignally”.
The first would be the form in which it is in before it is compiled, this would disallow the adobe flash but not much else.
The other one I see is the language that the program was concieved in. The problem there is how do you find that? What is considered a new project with the same concept vs a program translated to another language? Aren’t all programs “originally” ideas in our head? The ideas then have to go through many layers to be translated into a computer language. How are our thoughts representing the code and being translated any different than a computer language that represent the idea being translated to ObjC?
Yes I realize what I just said was a little out there and not even close to what apple intended. I’m simply attempting to reveal how arbitrary the whole thing is. Of course it’s all futile in the long run because apple will do whatever they want regardless.
I say that all my programs are “originally” written in the human body’s proprietary format made up of chemicals and organic materially. Guess I shouldn’t make anything for the app store then.
I look forward to seeing some comments from both sides on this. The discussions in my head are usually pretty biased :P
