iPhone OS 4 license changes - How does it affect iTorque?

#41 I've shot an email over their way, and will probably call them soon. Hopefully, I get a little more than the "we can't discuss that" I've read of people getting.

Also, Marc, that approval request price would be a double-edged sword. While keeping a lot of the trash out, it also keeps out the less economically advantaged of us with actual good ideas (part of who I had thought the program was encouraging... now, however, it seems to be the same "big names" market that makes up the rest of the industry).

#42 A price to get an approval has been discussed before on the Apple forums, always shot down by the saner posters :)

#43 At a higher price for the approval request fee I would agree. But $100 is reasonable for anybody if he has an idea he thinks is worth bringing it to others. its even reasonable by my scales and I can't say that I made much money the past months (no funding for any kind of investment and basically paying many bills from savings)

Thats why the important point on it is that it remains low so its affordable to anyone that has an idea that stands any realistic chance to make money so people stop sending in every single pile of poo independent of its value. All the junk is there just because people "can".
Apple by now has at least partially realized this thats why the "retheme but the same app" builder type applications were banned already

The price tag of the fee is the important part behind the idea and what would ensure that flash would definitely not flood anything.
At the same time it would also ensure that the current trash gets cleaned significantly (cause by the OS4 release I expect that apple will require reapproval of everything to push through this ban. It would go in line with the recent itunes license agreement changes that you are responsible for backup up bought goods and that there is no entitlement for later redownload)


@Ronny: Possibly but its the only realistic way to achieve the target that apple likely has or finally is realizing that it should have it: quality over insane quantity of trash.
also this has really nothing to do with sane. Inviting thousands of trash spitters and offering them a large place to ... well you know ... will just ensure that they do it and you can't do much about it without an army for quality approval. adding a minimal fee thats yet still high enough to make the spaming a lose to them would ensure that many of them would stop spitting out the trash.
that this "trash" covers about 60% of all apps on the appstore is a sad truth and where the real potential of the solution comes from cause your exposure will be much better and the $100 investment, if you have a real thing will become an investment that you will be doing happily (book it as marketing investment if you don't feel fine counting it as dev costs)

#44 What pisses me off is I just renewed my developer contract. :p

I don't know about anyone else, and I'm not trying to tell anyone what to do, but even if this blows over and everything works out in the end iTouch is no longer near the top of my focus. In the end it's been profitable for me, but the potential for this situation to arise again and again will always be there. One of these times it's not going to go our way.

While Apple (probably) hopes that their new TOS will create a list of exclusives and first releases on iTouch it's had the opposite effect for me, and I'm sure at least a few others. I've moved my PC projects to the front burner and have begun looking into the possibility and practicality of porting to XBL, PSN, and WiiWare/DSiWare. Of course I'll keep iTouch somewhere in the back burner for ports until the day they finally decide to shut indies down. Anyone have a decent Android phone they want to get rid of? ;)

#45 Yeah thats my problem.
TOS like these between the devs and the platform controller are normally there to form a relationship not as a 1 way binding for slavery

I doubt that the way this all changes is something that anybody aside of mobile focused publishers can handle / accept in the longer go. The only ones that are not really affected by these are those that would best be gone first with real measures: the crap cannons.
Those that take examples and copy - paste their apps together.



There is no decent Android phone cause android itself is not decent I fear.
Even the most current one on a nexus one thats technically killing the iphone 3GS in most fields, is performing 50%+ worse than the 3GS. Not considering the lack of multitouch support.
Google is still worlds away from an OS thats remotely usable as a gaming platform.

#46 iGameRadio wrote an article with my response: Read Here

I'm still working on getting more information for everyone, so thanks again for being patient.

#47 How the heck did they get this silly! The apps go where the developers go. If the apps move to Android, then so too will the people who bought into the whole app scene. After this nonsense I expect to see the next Apple iPhone come out with an add saying "Want to navigate around the roads of london.....We used to have an app for that!"

#48 The problem here is that apple does not differentiate the whole stuff enough.

They put games / Immersive app type applications with the UIKit based applications.

I agree that the point of middleware like Titanium etc is really discussable cause they give you what you have just without control over what you get.


If apple would differentiate the whole issue better and basically lock out middleware for UIKit applications where all is fine and programming anyway, it potentially would work out much better (still be a sad thing for RevMobile and MonoTouch though which both add a lot to the iDevice platform from the productivity standpoint) because expecting games to be created without middleware especially performant, bugfree games is something that requires quite some top class drugs and several people, impossible to come up with that on your own without them. This step is really working against their target on the game front, making games near granted worse, more bug ridden and less immersive and all in all they don't help the slightest bit on "we change something / introduce a new service and you adopt to it directly", cause people will not move over to apple services, especially not after such brain blasts

#49 I have everything to loose on this as I have given up my fulltime job and have family to support and have invested in iTorque. To port my game from iTorque to ObjectiveC and openGL es would take my several months extra :(

However, personally I don´t think we should worry to much about it. I think this change in the clause will be used as an "excuse" to filter out the really crappy apps. It is good thing for Apple and might be a good thing in the end for all us developers serious about our games as many people use cross-platforming to get out there games and therefor they can only choose whoever the should see fit to reject.

To forbid every singly highlevel tool like iTorque and Unity is insanely stupid as a lot of good games that has sold well on Appstore is made that way. Games released by famous and big companies as well.

I for one will continue to support iTorque and other Torque products in future as well as in the recent months working on puzzle prototype I´ve leartn that it´s amazing piece of tool :)

#50 Torque will be fine. The problem is the way the Flash to iPhone compiler works....it compiles the Flash application directly to the iPhone .IPA format, without ever having to use Xcode.

I'm not sure how Monotouch works, so that may or may not be ok.

#51 the way the flash compiler worked was never ever legal, any user using it is voiding his dev contract.
So that would not have required any action from apple to ban.

monotouch / unity have a static library and fullscale ARM compilation but the real compilation, sign and deploy happens through xcode and development in both is only possible on osx

and no if the enforcements are not changed, torque is not fine until torquescript is completely cut from iTorque

@Jonas: I doubt that apple will any longer have the freedom of case to case decision due to the to be expected court cases of unfair treatment. Apple is a good cash cow to milk and it will happen if they selectively disallow apps while both broke the same ruling.

#52 @Marc: torque is not fine until torquescript is completely cut from iTorque

in the end it can be enriching for torque it will make it faster and stable, although more difficult to work.

#53 I'm just going to hang around for the inevitable day that somebody files a class-action lawsuit against Apple. It's only a matter of time before they stir the wrong pot and make the wrong people angry.

#54 All rumor right now... but Apple vs. Adobe: the lawsuit.

#55 I hope that they only block the flash to iphone ports, and that is the reason for the working of the new agreement. If not then I just spent a lot of time developing an iphone game for nothing.
Such is life.

#56 I'm very upset over this situation on hand. Apple probably realizes they are screwing hundreds of developers over, and making them throw out thousands of dollars and man hours developing apps for their platform. Our company just purchased many brand new Mac's just to develop on the iPhone, and now they are making me realize why I hate Apple.

I really hope something gets done about this situation on hand.

#57 This sounded like an anti-Flash thing from the start. Adobe found a way to get Flash products onto the iPhone/iPad, and Apple has to throw a fit, rewrite the EULA. Everyone was originally shocked that the devices wouldn't support Flash in-browser, let alone as downloaded apps, but it makes perfect sense from their business perspective; why would anyone buy their flatulence machines from the app store when you can get them from a site? This certainly isn't about app quality, it's just app control.

I suppose the problem is that we want these cool mini-computers with advanced touchscreens, but they really just want to sell us a portable interface to the iTunes business model. If they could get away with allowing it to access only iTunes (ie, not accept your MP3s, no open web browsing) I'm certain they would, but that would make the other platforms too appealing.

#58 The problem with all this anti flash stuff is that this was never required.
Flash the way adobe did it was never even legal to use. While fine for Adobe, every single dev that would send in an app for approval with it would break his dev contract (they neither used xcode nor do they require OSX, two fundamental points) and not only risk to be rejected but to have his dev contracted voided.

#59 I think the points that Henry expresses are indisputable.

Maybe, there is something more, but I dont think there are any doubts that this is about monopolic control, more than anything else.

#60 What Henry just said is quite simply wrong and confusing.

Whatever CS5 generates still has to go though the App Store in order to get on an iPhone, iPod or iPad. Hence reinforcing the "iTunes business model".