As reported here and here, Apple has updated the language in the latest release of their iPhone/iPad developer tools to explicitly disallow development with other tools and languages:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

I’m happy that Apple is being explicit about this sort of thing, rather than their previous passive aggressive stance that gave more wiggle room for their apologists. This is a big “screw you” to Adobe in particular, who had been planning to release a Flash-to-iPhone converter with Creative Suite 5. I understand why they’re doing it, but in the broader scheme of what’s at stake, why pick a fight with one of the largest software vendors for the Mac?

In addition to being grounded in total, obsessive control over the platform, the argument seems to be that the only way to make a proper iPhone/iPad experience is to build things with their tools, as a way to prevent people from developing for multiple platforms at once. This has two benefits: first, it encourages developers to think within the constraints and affordances of the platform, and second, it forces potential developers to make a choice of which platform they’re going to support. It’s not quite doubling the amount of work that would go into creating an app for both, say, the iPhone and Android, but it’s fairly close. So what will people develop for? The current winner with all the marketing and free hype from the press.

To be clear, developing within the constraints of a platform is incredibly important for getting an application right. But using Apple’s sanctioned tools doesn’t guarantee that, and using a legal document to enforce said tools steps into the ridiculous.

Fundamentally, I think the first argument — that to create a decent application you have to develop a certain way, with one set of tools — is bogus. It’s a lack of trust in your developers and even moreso, a distrust of the market. In the early days of the Macintosh, it was difficult to get companies to rework their DOS (or even Apple II) applications to use the now-familiar menu bars and icons. The Human Interface Guidelines addressed it specifically. And when companies ignored those warnings, and released software that was a clear port from a DOS equivalent, people got upset and the software got trashed. Just search for the phrase “not mac-like” and you’ll get the picture. Point being, people came around on developing for the Mac, and it didn’t require a legal document saying that developers had to use MPW and ResEdit.

The market demanded software that felt like Macintosh applications, and it’s the same for the iPhone and iPad. On the tools side, the free choice also meant that the market produced far better tools than what Apple provided — instead of the archaic MPW (ironically, itself something of a terminal application), Think Pascal, Lightspeed C, Metrowerks Codewarrior, and even Resorcerer all filled in various gaps at different times, all providing a better platform than (or at least a suitable alternative to) Apple’s tools.

But like this earlier post, it seems like Apple is being run by someone who is re-fighting battles of the 80s and 90s, but whose personal penchant for control prevents him from learning from the outcomes. That rhyming sound you hear? It’s history.

This Wall Street Journal piece sounds a lot like a controlled leak:

Apple Inc. plans to begin producing this year a new iPhone that could allow U.S. phone carriers other than AT&T Inc. to sell the iconic gadget, said people briefed by the company.

The new iPhone would work on a type of wireless network called CDMA, these people said. CDMA is used by Verizon Wireless, AT&T’s main competitor, as well as Sprint Nextel Corp. and a handful of cellular operators in countries including South Korea and Japan. The vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T, use another technology called GSM.

(Paranoid emphasis my own.) Apple (like any other major company) has been known to use leaks to their advantage, and there seems to be an uptick of next generation iPhone rumors (double-size screen, faster processor, thinner, Verizon) in the past week that seems to coincide with the announcement of several promising-sounding Android phones (big screens, fancy features, 4G and HSPA+ networks, thin, light, lots of providers). It doesn’t seem like Apple is terribly worried about Android, but aggressively keeping the Android platform from getting any sort of traction would makes good business sense.

I think this is the first time that I’ve seen such rumors appearing to coincide with Android launches (that you probably didn’t even hear about), which gave me some hope that Android might be going somewhere. (I use an iPhone and a Nexus One. I’m rooting for competition and better products more than either platform.)

Microsoft was always good at using pre-announcements to kill competitor’s products (“oh, I can wait a couple months for the Microsoft solution…”), which is of course different than just leaking. Microsoft often wouldn’t ship the product, or would ship a far inferior version to what was announced or leaked, but in the meantime, they had successfully screwed the competitor. I think it’s safe to assume that there will be a new iPhone (or two) in June like there have been the past several years.

And now, back to playing with data… rumors are clearly not my thing.

I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about the iPad and the direction that Apple is taking computing along with it. It’s really an extension of the way they look at the iPhone, which I found unsettling at the time but with the iPad, we’re all finally coming around to the idea that they really, really mean it.

I want to build software for this thing. I’m really excited about the idea of a touch-screen computing platform that’s available for general use from a known brand who has successfully marketed unfamiliar devices to a wide audience. (Compare this to, say, Microsoft’s Tablet PC push that began in the mid-2000s and is… nowhere?)

It represents an incredible opportunity, but I can’t get excited about it because of Apple’s attempt to control who creates for it, and what they can create for it. Their policy of being the sole distributor of applications, and even worse, requiring approval on all applications, is insulting to developers. Even the people who have created Mac software for years are being told they can no longer be trusted.

I find it offensive on a very basic level, because I know that if such restrictions were in place when I was first learning to write software — mostly on Apple machines, no less — I would not have a career in the field. Or if we had to pay regular fees to become a developer, use only Apple-provided tools, and could release only approved software through an Apple store, things like the Processing project would not have happened. I can definitively say that any success that I’ve had has come from the ability to create what I want, the way that I want, and to be able to distribute it as I see fit, usually over the internet.

As background, I’m writing this as a long-time Apple user who started with an Apple ][+ and later the original 128K Mac. A couple months ago, Apple even profiled my work here.

You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!

There’s simply no reason to prevent people from installing anything they want on the iPad. The same goes for the iPhone. When the iPhone appeared, Steve Jobs made a ridiculous claim that a rogue application could “take down the network.” That’s an insult to common sense (if it were true, then the networks have a serious, serious design flaw). It’s also an insult on our intelligence, except for the Apple fans who repeat this ridiculous statement.

But even if you believed the Bruce Willis movie version of how mobile networks are set up, it simply does not hold true for the iPad (and the iPod Touch before it). The $499 iPad that has no data network hardware is not in danger of “taking down” anyone’s cell network, but applications will still be required to go through the app store and therefore, its approval process.

The irony is that the original Mac was almost a failure because of Jobs’ insistence at the time about how closed the machine must be. I recall reading about how the original Macintosh was almost nearly a failure, were it not for engineers who developed AppleTalk networking in spite of Steve Jobs’ insistence of keeping the original Macintosh as an island unto itself. Networking helped make the “Macintosh Office” possible by connecting a series of Macs to the laser printer (introduced at the same time), and so followed the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-80s. Until that point, the 128K Macintosh was largely a $2500 novelty.

For the amazing number of lessons that Jobs seems to have learned in his many years in technology, his insistence of control is to me a glaring omission. It’s sad that Jobs groks the idea of computers designed for humans, but then consistently slides into unnecessary lockdown restrictions. It’s an all-too-human failing of wanting too much control.

Only available on the Crapp Store!

For all the control that Apple’s taken over the content on the App Store, it hasn’t prevented the garbage. Applications for jiggling boobs or shaking babies have somehow first made it through the same process that delayed the release or update of many other developers’ applications for weeks. Some have been removed, but only after an online uproar of keyboards and pitchforks. The same approval process that OKs flashlight apps by the dozen and fart apps.

Obvious instances aside, the line of “appropriate” will always be subjective. The line changed last week when Apple decided to remove 5,000 “overtly sexual” applications, which might make sense, but is instead hypocritical when they don’t apply the same criteria to established names like Playboy.

Somebody’s forgetting the historical mess of “I know it when I see it.” It’s an un-answerable dilemma (or is that an enigma?), so why place yourself in a situation of being arbiter?

Another banned application was a version of Dope Wars, a game that dates back to the mid-80s. Inappropriate? Maybe. A problem? Only if children have been turning to lives of crime since its early days as an MS-DOS console program, or on their programmable TI calculators. Perhaps the faux-realistic interface style of the iPhone OS tipped the scales.

The problem is that fundamentally, it’s just never going to be possible to prevent the garbage. If you want to have a boutique, like the Apple retail stores, where you can buy a specially selected subset of merchandise from third parties, then great. But instead, we’ve conflated wanting to have that kind of retail control (a smart idea) with the only conduit by which software can be sold for the platform (an already flawed idea).

Your toaster doesn’t need a hierarchical file system

Anyone who has spent five minutes helping someone with their computer will know that the overwhelming majority don’t need full access to the file system, and that it’s a no-brainer to begin hiding as much of it as possible. The idea of the ipad as appliance (and the iPhone before it) is an obvious, much needed step in the user interface of computing devices.

(Of course, the hobbyist in me doesn’t want that version, since I still want access to everything, but most people I know who don’t spend all their time geeking out on the computer have no use for the confusion. I’m happy to separate those parts.)

And frankly, it’s an obvious direction, and it’s actually much closer to very early versions of Mac OS — the original System and Finder — than it is with OS X. Mac OS X is as complicated as Windows. My father, also an early Mac user, began using PCs as Apple fell apart in the late 90s. He hasn’t returned to the Mac largely because of the learning curve for OS X, which is no longer head and shoulders above Windows in terms of its ease of use. Surely the overall UI is better, clearer, and more thoughtfully put together. But the reason to switch nowadays is less to do with the UI, and more to do with the way that one can lose control of their Windows machines due to the garbage installed by PC vendors, the required virus scanning software, the malware scanning software, and all the malware that gets through in spite of it all.

The amazing Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic, puts things in terms of Old World and New World computing. But I believe he’s mixing the issue of the device feeling (and working) in a more appliance-like fashion with the issue of who controls what goes on the device, and how it’s distributed to the device. I’m comfortable with the idea that we don’t need access to the file system, and it doesn’t need to feel like a “computer.” I’m not comfortable with people being prevented by a licensing agreement, or worse, sued, for hacking the device to work that way.

It Just Works, except when It Doesn’t

The “it just works” mantra often credited to Apple is — to borrow the careful elocution of Steve Jobs — “bullshit.” To use an example, if things “just worked” then I’d be able to copy music from my iPod back to my laptop, or from one machine that I own to another. If I’ve paid for that music (whether it’s DRM-free or even if I made the MP3 myself), there’s simply no reason that I should be restricted from copying this way. Instead we have the assumption that I’m doing something illegal built into the software, and preventing obvious use.

Of course, I assume that as implemented, this feature is something that was “required” by the music industry. But to my knowledge, there’s simply no proof of that. No such statement has been made, and more likely, it’s easier for Apple fans to use the “evil music industry” or “evil RIAA” as easier to blame. This thinking avoids noticing that Apple has also demanded similar restrictions for others’ projects, in a case where they actually have control over such matters.

Bottom line, when trying to save the music collection of a family member whose laptop has crashed is a great time, and it’s only made better by taking the time to dig up a piece of freeware that will let me copy the music from their iPod back to their now blank machine. The music that they spent so much money on at the iTunes Store.

Like “don’t be evil,” the “it just works” phrase applies, or it doesn’t. Let’s not keep repeating the mantra and conveniently ignoring the times when the opposite is true.

It’s been a long couple of months, and it’s only getting longer

One of the dumbest things that I’ve seen in the past two months since the iPad announcement is articles that write about the device comparing it to other computers, and how it doesn’t have feature x, y, or z. That’s silly to me because it’s not a general purpose computer like we’re used to. And yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of that statement if you take it too literally. I am in fact complaining about what’s missing from the iPad (and iPhone), though it’s about things that have been removed or disallowed for reasons of control, and don’t actually improve the experience of using the device. Now stop thinking so literally.

The thing that will be interesting about the iPad is the experience of using it — something that nobody has had except for the folks at Apple — and as is always the case when dealing with a different type of interface, you’re always going to be wrong.

So what is it? I’m glad you asked…

Who is this for?

As Teri likes to point out, it’s also important to note the appeal of this device to a different audience — our parents. They need something like an iPhone, with a bigger screen, that allows them to browse the internet and read lots of email and answer a few. (No word yet on whether the iPad will have the ability to forward YouTube videos, chain e-mails, or internet jokes.) For them, “it’s just a big iPhone” is a selling point. The point is not that the iPad is for old people, the point is that it’s a new device category that will find its way into interesting niches that we can’t ascertain until we play with the thing.

Any time you have a new device, such as this one, it also doesn’t make a lot of sense. It simply doesn’t fit with anything that we’re currently used to. So we have a lot of lazy tech writers who go on about how it’s under-featured (it’s a small computer! it’s a big phone!) or that it doesn’t make sense in the lineup. This is a combination of a lack of creativity (rather than tearing the thing down, think about how it might be used!) and perhaps the interest of filling column inches in spite of the fact that none of these people has used the device, so we simply don’t know. It’s part of what’s so dumb about pre-game shows for sports. What could be more boring than a bunch of people arguing about what might happen? The only thing that’s interesting about the game is what does happen (and how it happens). I know you’ve got to write something, but man, it’s gonna been a long couple weeks until the device arrives.

It’s Perfect! I love it like it is.

There’s also talk about the potential disappearance of extensions or plug-in applications. While Mac OS extensions (of OS 9 and earlier) were a significant reason for crashes on older machines, they also contributed to the success of the platform. Those extensions wouldn’t be installed if there weren’t a reason, and the fact is, they were valuable enough that it was the occasional sobs for an hour of lost work after a system crash to have them present.

I think the anti-extension arguments come from people who are imagining the ridiculous number of extensions on others’ machines, but disregarding the fact that they badly needed something like Suitcase to handle the number of fonts on their system. As time goes on, people will want to do a wider range of things with the iPhone/iPad OS too. The original Finder and System had a version 3 too (actually they skipped 3.0, but nevermind that), just like the iPhone. Go check that out, and now compare it to OS X. The iPhone OS will get crapped up soon enough. Just as installing more than 2-3 pages of apps on the iPhone breaks down the UI (using search is not the answer — that’s the equivalent of giving up in UI design), I’m curious to see what the oft-rumored multitasking support in iPhone OS 4 will do for things.

And besides, without things like Windowshade, what UI elements could be licensed (or stolen) and incorporated into the OS. Ahem.

I’d never bet against people who tinker, and neither should Apple.

I haven’t even covered issues from the hardware side, in spite of having grown up taking apart electronics and in awe of the Heathkit stereo my dad built. But it’s the sort of thing that disturbs our friends at MAKE, and others have written about similar issues. Peter Kirn has more on just how bad the device is in terms of openness. One of the most egregious hardware problems is the device’s connection to the outside world is a proprietary port, access to which has to be licensed from Apple. This isn’t just a departure from the Apple ][ days of having actual digital and analog ports on the back (it was like an Arduino! but slower…) it’s not even something more standard like USB.

But why would you artificially keep this audience away? To make a couple extra percent on licensing fees? How sustainable is that? Sure it’s a tiny fraction of users, but it’s some of the most important — the people who are going to do new and interesting things with your platform, and take it in new directions. Just like the engineers who sneaked networking into the original Macintosh, or who built entire industries around extending the Apple ][ to do new things. Aside from the schools, these were the people who kept that hardware relevant long enough for Apple to screw up the Lisa and Mac projects for a few years while they got their bearings.

Enough…

I am not a futurist, but at the end of it all, I’m pretty disappointed by where things seem to be heading. I spend a lot of effort on making things, and trying to get others to make things, and having someone in charge of what I make, and how I distribute it is incredibly grating. And the fact that they’re having this much success with it is saddening.

It may even just work.

The New York Times today looks upon the plight of poor AT&T, saddled with millions of new customers paying thousands of dollars a year. Jenna Wortham writes:

Slim and sleek as it is, the iPhone is really the Hummer of cellphones. It’s a data guzzler. Owners use them like minicomputers, which they are, and use them a lot. Not only do iPhone owners download applications, stream music and videos and browse the Web at higher rates than the average smartphone user, but the average iPhone owner can also use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user.

If that 10x number didn’t come from AT&T, where did it come from? Seems like they might be starting a “we didn’t want the iPhone anyway” campaign so that investors treat them more nicely when they (are rumored to) lose their carrier exclusivity next year.

The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand. Another result is outraged customers.

So even with AT&T’s outrageous prices, they can’t make this work? This week I’m canceling my AT&T service because it would cost $150 a month to get what T-Mobile charges me $80 for. (Two lines with shared minutes, texting on both lines, unlimited data on one, and even tethering. I also love T-Mobile’s customer service, staffed by friendly humans who don’t just read from scripts.)

With nine million users paying in excess of $100 a month apiece, they’re grossing a billion dollars a month, and they’re complaining about having to upgrade their network? They could probably fund rebuilding their entire network from scratch with the $15/month they charge to send more than 200 text messages. (Text messages are pure profit, because they’re sent using extra space in packets sent between the phone and the carrier.)

All of the cited problems, of course, would be lessened without carrier exclusivity. Don’t want 9 million iPhone customers clogging the network? Then don’t sign a deal requiring that you’re the only network they have access to. Hilarious.

But! The real reason I’m posting is because of the photos that accompany the article, including a shot of the AT&T command center and its big board:

A few thoughts:

1. If they’re gonna make it look like an orchestra pit, then I hope the head of IT is wearing tails.
2. Do they get night & weekend minutes because the lights are out? Wouldn’t the staff be a little happier if the lights were turned on?
3. And most important, I wonder what kind of coverage they get in there. It looks like the kind of underground bunker where you can’t get any signal. And if I’m not mistaken, those look like land lines on the desks.

Via this Slate article from Farhad Manjoo (writer of tech-hype articles with Salon and now Slate), I just read about Droid, the typeface used in Google’s new Android phones. More specifically, he references this Forbes article, describing the background of the font, and its creator, Steve Matteson of Ascender Corporation in Elk Grove, Illinois.

Some background from the Forbes piece:

In fonts, Google has a predilection for cute letters and bright primary colors, as showcased in the company’s own logo. But for Android Google wanted a font with “common appeal,” Davis says. Ascender’s chief type designer, Steve Matteson, who created the Droid fonts, says Google requested a design that was friendly and approachable. “They wanted to see a range of styles, from the typical, bubbly Google image to something very techno-looking,” Matteson says.

The sweet spot—and the final look for Droid—fell somewhere in the middle. Matteson’s first design was “bouncy”: a look in line with the Google logo’s angled lowercase “e.” Google passed on the design because it was “a little too mannered,” Matteson says. “There was a fine line between wanting the font to have character but not cause too much commotion.”

Another proposal erred on the side of “techno” with squared-off edges reminiscent of early computer typefaces. That too was rejected, along with several others, in favor of a more neutral design that Matteson describes as “upright with open forms, but not so neutral as a design like, say, Helvetica.”

I haven’t had a chance to play with an Android phone (as much as I’ve been happy with T-Mobile, particularly their customer service, do I re-up with them for two years just to throw money at alpha hardware?) so I can’t say much about the face, but I find the font angle fascinating, particular in light of Apple’s Helvetica-crazy iPhone and iPod Touch. (Nothing says late 1950s Switzerland quite like a touch-screen interface mobile phone, after all.)

Ascender Corporation also seems to be connected to the hideously named C@#$(*$ fonts found in Windows Vista and Office 2007: Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia, Corbel, Cariadings. In the past several years, Microsoft has shown a notable and impressive commitment to typography (most notably, hiring Matthew Carter to create Verdana, and other decisions of that era), but the new C* fonts have that same air of creepiness of a family who names all their kids with names that start with the same letter. I mean sure, they’re terrific people, but man, isn’t that just a little…unnecessary?

I apologize that I’ve been too busy and distracted with preparing Processing 1.0 to have any time to post things here, but here’s a quickie so that the page doesn’t just rot into total embarrassment.

Slate this morning announced the availability of a poll tracking application for the iPhone:

I haven’t yet ponied up ninety nine of my hard-earned cents to buy it but find it oddly fascinating. Is there actually any interest for this? Is this a hack? Is there a market for such things? Is the market simply based on the novelty of it? Is it possible to quantify the size of the poll-obsessed political junkie market? And how is that market comprised—what percentage of those people are part of campaigns, versus just people who spend too much time reading political news? (I suspect the former is negligible, but may be tainted as a card-carrying member of the latter group.)

To answer my own questions, I suspect that it was thrown together by a couple of people from the tech side of the organization (meaning “hack” in the best sense of the word), who then sold management on it, with the rationale of 1) it’ll generate a little press (or hype on, um, blogs), 2) it’ll reinforce Slate readers’ interest in or connection to the site, and 3) it’s a little cool and trendy. I don’t think they’re actually planning to make money on it (or recoup any development costs), but that the price tag has more to do with 99¢ sounds more valuable and interesting than a free giveaway.

Of course, anyone with more interesting insights (let alone useful facts), please pass them along. I’m hoping it’s an actual Cocoa app, and not just a special link to web pages reformatted for the iPhone, which would largely invalidate this post and extinguish my own curiosity about the beast.

Update: The application is a branded reincarnation of a poll tracker developed by Aaron Brethorst at Chimp Software. Here’s his blog post announcing the change, and even a press release.

By way of Darling Furball, a blog post by Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic, on his personal opinion of Apple’s gated community of software distribution, the iTunes App Store:

Some of my most inviolable principles about developing and selling software are:

1. I can write any software I want. Nobody needs to “approve” it.
2. Anyone who wants to can download it. Or not.
3. I can set any price I want, including free, and there’s no middle-man.
4. I can set my own policies for refunds, coupons and other promotions.
5. When a serious bug demands an update, I can publish it immediately.
6. If I want, I can make the source code available.
7. If I want, I can participate in a someone else’s open source project.
8. If I want, I can discuss coding difficulties and solutions with other developers.

The iTunes App Store distribution model mangles almost every one of those tenets in some way, which is exasperating to me.

But, the situation’s not that clear-cut.

The entire post is very thoughtful and well worth reading, it’s also coming from a long-time Apple developer rather than some crank from an online magazine looking to stir up advertising hits. Panic’s software is wonderful: Transmit is an application that singlehandedly makes me want to use a Mac (yet it’s only, uh, an SFTP client). I think his post nicely sums up the way a lot of developers (including myself) feel about the App Store. He concludes:

I’ve been trying to reconcile the App Store with my beliefs on “how things should be” ever since the SDK was announced. After all this time, I still can’t make it all line up. I can’t question that it’s probably the best mobile application distribution method yet created, but every time I use it, a little piece of my soul dies. And we don’t even have anything for sale on there yet.

Reading this also made me curious to learn more about Panic, which led me to this interview from 2004 with Frank and the other co-founder. He also has a number of side projects, including Spamusement, a roughly drawn cartoon depicting spam headlines (Get a bigger flute, for instance).