Apple Against the World

Jason Snell, on Apple’s moves to maintain control over the App Store and native iPhone app development by prohibiting the use of third-party meta-platforms:

Sounds good, but the develop-once-run-anywhere philosophy is something that makes more sense to bean counters and development-environment vendors than it does to platform owners and discriminating users. In the ’90s we were told that Java apps would be the future of software, because you could write them once and deploy them anywhere. As someone who used to use a Java-based Mac app on an almost daily basis, let me tell you: it was a disaster. Java apps didn’t behave like Mac apps. They were ugly and awful and weird, but hey, at least they ran on the Mac.

It’s the same way I feel about Adobe’s AIR environment today.

★ Monday, 12 April 2010