Apple’s new restrictions governing the code origin of apps for App Store have been widely discussed. My position, in brief, is that it’s unquestionably Apple’s prerogative to do so, but it’s just more fuel for the fire. Especially when the collateral damage is to such plainly non-threatening apps as Scratch, an app designed for accessing the eponymous introductory programming language backed by none other than Alan Kay.
Because such a program obviously accesses, and in fact has its roots in, the foreign APIs and code that Apple finds so abhorrent, it was removed from the app store. Right. I’m not saying Apple shouldn’t apply its own rules on a case-by-case basis, but this is exactly the kind of constructive, rich app that people have been saying will be blocked by the 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 restrictions. I can’t muster any outrage, only share in Kay’s disappointment that a platform he envisioned and engendered decades ago will not be able to be used to its full extent.
Kay is quoted as having said to Jobs, after the iPhone event, “Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.” Unfortunately, a world ruled by Jobs isn’t exactly what we all envisioned it to be a few years ago.
[via Wired Gadget Lab]