All That I Know (About Technology)

Apple has decided to pick a fight with developers. In a recent change to the Terms of Service (TOS) for their new iPhone SDK, Apple has indicated that apps developed with third party software, such as MonoTouch, Titanium, or the upcoming version of Flash, will not be allowed. The new TOS also blocks the use of third-party analytics software, such as Flurry. The details of these changes are well documented by Joe Crawford and Erik Kerr. These changes basically mean that developing an iPhone app using a language other than the native iPhone language, Objective-C, or a C-based languages (C, C++), and collecting user data and device data is no longer allowed. NOTE: Some of the above companies believe that they are compliant with these changes and/or are actively seeking clarification from Apple (see Jeff Haynie’s blog post).

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I’m a big fan of TV comedies. One of my favorite new shows is Modern Family on ABC. The show focuses on the lives of three families; each episode typically has 3 story lines that are woven together. On last night’s episode (called Game Changer), one of the three story lines focused on the iPad. One of the main characters on the show, Phil, was planning to stand in line this Saturday to buy an iPad, the latest gadget from Apple. Since it was Phil’s birthday, his wife offered to stand in line for him but she fell back asleep, thus not making it to the Apple store in time. Eventually, the family figures out how to get Phil the iPad so all ends well. But during the closing scene, Phil proclaims his love for the iPad as his wife walks behind him, which she mistakenly takes as a complement for her.

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The demise of Flash has been prognosticated ever since Steve Jobs showed off the new iPad and explained that Flash support is not planned for the device. Instead, Apple chose to go with HTML5. This sparked a debate battle between Flash and HTML5. From a technology point of view, Flash is behind the times (in the same way that Google Gears is behind the times) because the HTML5 technology solves the problem of having a separate application to support rich media. But from my perspective, the death of Flash will not be driven by technology alone.

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