Re: Goodbye Lua on iPhone?

[Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@...>]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Alexander Gladysh <agladysh@gmail.com> wrote:
> They say that Apple now prohibits using of any language other than
> Objective C to develop applications for iPhone.
>
> https://twitter.com/gruber/status/11837642274
>
> Can anyone more experienced with lawyer-talk and who has access to the
> latest version of agreement confirm if this is true?
>
> I wonder if this rules out C++ as well...

No:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250595

iPhone apps are really simple, the UI space is so small, you can't
build complex apps. Same for other platforms.

The downside of this for apple is that it means building layers that
allow the same app to be ported to other platforms easily isn't so
hard, we've seen lots of this, and I know some small companies that
have written in-house layers that allow them to deploy substantially
similar apps on iphone/ipad/android, and other competeing platforms.

But even easier than a port layer is to write your code in a general
purpose higher level binding, Corona, appcelerator, flash, etc., and
now you get trivial deployment to multiple platforms.

My read is that Apple doesn't want that. They'll try to tie devs to
their platform, and make the cost of porting as high as possible.

Eventually this will fail, but every delay or impediment they can make
in stemming a flood of apps moving out into the other
smartphones/devices will gain them a bit more time, profit, momentum,
and market share.

Cheers,
Sam