Is Apple rotten?

The web has fizzed with debate on Apples new clause for iPhone SDK developers. Apple want to limit App developers to a select few programming languages, mainly C, C++ and Objective-C. With the iPad about to be released and new multi-App functionality on the iPhone is Apple spoiling the party?

Here at GeekyCreative we initially wondered what all the fuss was about, our first iPhone App development project is well under way and we've adopted the native Objective-C language to write it in. We were pondering - What is every ones problem?

Well not all agencies and developers are as flexible as us, maybe they have other development strands that use inherited code from 'other' languages. Legacy code can be costly and tricky to turn into a new language or platform. Maybe there are other developers simply not willing to learn a new language. More likely there are a lot of people with Apps already developed that are now wondering what will happen to their non-compliant Apps when the time comes to release upgrades, sell on, re-launch etc.

Apple already limits iPhone App development to Mac Osx 10.5.6 and above - meaning that you need Snow Leopard and a Mac with Pentium chips in it. This meant we had to upgrade our hardware and our Osx before we could even get the SDK installed. Now, two weeks later, the terms and conditions have changed... Apples not endeared themselves to us over the last few weeks we can tell you.

However, one look at the shiny shiny iPhone tells us all we need to know. People are fascinated by Apples user interface and the iPhone is here to stay. Our clients want Apps and we, well, we want to build them. The iPhone is a geeks, geekiest dream.

But, and there is a but, there are other companies out there whose technology is as cool as Apples and yet more open... APIs from Twitter, Google, Flikr, Yahoo and Facebook regularly make it into our developments. The jQuery library and Yahoo.UI have saved us from many a late night of coding... and they are all platform and language independent. As developers we love 'openness', mainly because it gives us a chance to take, add, amend and delete to our hearts content. We can explore some very powerful functionality through APIs and libraries.

However, the iPhone is not an API or a library, it is something like an operating system + API + library and we don't really blame Apple for locking down developers to languages that they are comfortable letting them use in their (Apples) environment. And what an environment it is... as developers we are happy enough to explore what IS on offer from Apple at the moment... the chance to build something for a product that is truly amazing. To do that we're prepared to learn a thing or two along the way. The books on Objective-C are already well thumbed and the coffee already nearly all gone.

We're sure that the debate will rage on and the purists maybe right, we don't know. All we can say is that we have never shied away from learning new skills and we plan on releasing our first iPhone App soon... with launch expected early May it will mean we have developed and written projects in VbScript, C#, ActionScript, PHP, ColdFusion, HTML, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, SQL, CSS and so on. Proving, we're more interested in the solution than the path we have to take to get there.

After all, the iPhone is Apples product, and if you want to build an App for it - buy a book and a lot of coffee; and, like us, prepare to learn.