3.3.1

It's weird to see a series of numbers mentioned so often in the tech press. These digits, 3.3.1, refer to a new clause in Apple's SDK license agreement for iPhone development that essentially says you can only use their published stuff to write software for the platform, and not any third-party frameworks or tools. The irony is that a great many apps are already written using third-party frameworks.

The immediate fallout of this is that Adobe is ready to ship software that packages Flash into something the iPhone can understand, making apps portable. That's a huge win, not just for Adobe, but I think for every person who owns the phone. While not a huge fan of Flash development, I'm certainly OK with having more people capable of developing for the phone, because it makes it more likely cool things will make it into the wild. Ditto for things like MonoTouch, which uses a derivative of .NET.

Apple justifies this (and the most religious of fanboys talk out of their ass and agree) by saying that there are performance and experience issues around this policy. If you've written code for anything, you know this is bullshit. Countless apps are already in the app store using third-party frameworks. Countless apps that suck and crash using only the approved tools are in the apps store. Even phone hardware can efficiently use good software.

What's interesting is that Apple will probably get away with it in the short term. You wouldn't think that would be the case. Consider the long-standing mountain of suck that Sony has been when accommodating developers for the various PlayStation models. Eventually, that caught up with them, when the PS3 came out and devs said it was too hard to write for and weren't getting support. Meanwhile, Microsoft was helping out shops for the Xbox, and Nintendo was just cranking stuff out themselves. The PS3 got off to an enormously slow start, and even now, most of the action is elsewhere.

The thing that makes Apple different is the enthusiasm of end users and the core use of their products. Sure, I love my Apple stuff because it's shiny, but I as an end user, the big reason is because the shit just works and does what I need it to do without a lot of hassle. The iPhone in particular has scored such critical mass that cheesed-off devs aren't going to create a dissatisfaction ripple up to end users.

I'm annoyed, because as much as I don't care for Flash, it's a lot easier to learn and use than Objective-C. Yeah, I want to go to the party too. I'm not going to take the time, however, to learn a shitty and antiquated language and muck around with a substandard tool like Xcode. If I build any mobile apps, obviously I'll give it a whirl on Windows Phone 7 since I already have those skills.

I love my iPhone, but this is disappointing if they actually enforce it. I hate having them be gate keepers to every damn thing about the phone.