Is that a shame?

On the one hand, we can see this as a reduction in the range of development tools available for the iPhone/iPad platform. Apple is not alone in this; Microsoft’s WP7 also has only a limited range of development tools available. If you want to work in Pascal and program for the iPhone, you’re simply out of luck. Just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it should be done. The same applies to Flash.

For the pessimists, it is worth looking at the successes of applications created in AIR on Mac OS X. AIR offers small utilities such as Twitter clients and clients for working with eBay accounts, which are mostly rarely used because native applications can do the same thing and look better. A notable exception is Amazon Kindle for Mac, an application for reading Kindle books on a Mac. The application is completely out of step with the Mac environment; it looks different, is used differently, and is… well, awful.

In contrast, Kindle for iPhone is a native application controlled entirely within the iPhone environment. That’s roughly what Jobs is talking about. Users prefer applications that are controlled in the same way as the surrounding environment and other applications in that environment, rather than trying to use applications that look the same on mobile phones, PCs, and tablets. Each environment has its own conventions and is optimized for something different. For example, AIR is criticized for not properly supporting multitouch and other gestures that are completely normal and natural on the iOS platform. The user then tries to control the application in some way, and it does not respond consistently with the environment. And this argument is another major objection to Adobe’s efforts to push AIR everywhere. It doesn’t fit everywhere, says Apple.

The context of this story

Is that a shame?

Table of contents