This morning I logged on to twitter to see that, adding insult to the injury that is the absence of Flash, Apple has decided to also ban the Scratch app from the iDevice line (iTouch, iPhone, iPad.)
Now I only recently got an iPhone, and I do like it a lot, but more and more my generative proclivites have found me running into walls, heading down dead ends, as I think up things I’d like to do with my phone.
Which led me to tweet this morning:
Simple, right? Let Apple know how cranky their users are at not being able to use some staple aspects of the web using their own mechanism. (Yes, “the web” – yes, I know it’s a format developed by a commercial firm.) Take it a step further – make the one thing the app can do is send an email to sjobs@apple.com with a polite request for their great line of products to start supporting Flash, Scratch and other ubiquitous and more generative environments.
Simple… if I had the chops to develop an iPhone app! Which a quick excursion into Apple Developer Land convinced me I do not, at least not anytime soon (though I’ll add it to the LONG list of things I would like to learn how to do, someday.)
But for an existing developer? Seems like it would be child’s play. Probably violates some part of the Developers agreement or would itself get banned from the App Store, but hey, that would make the point just as well. So – any iPhone developers out there want to take this up? Indeed – has someone already? Wouldn’t surprise me, it’s not that original an idea. But the vision of seeing the Top Downloaded App on the App Store be “iProtest” (feel free to use that 
really tickles my happy mutant bone. Let me know if you do build something like this – I’d sure download it, and spread the word. – SWL
Yeah, I’m with you there. In fact, I wrote a longer post on the subject of open web standards vs the iPad, which sums up what I think is the bigger problem.
And unfortunately I doubt Apple wouldn’t take the iProtest app into their walled garden.
These series of moves from Apple (I’m sure more are coming) reminds me of the NikeiD “Sweatshop” fiasco: http://shey.net/niked.html.
As much as I love using their products, their increasingly more draconian methods of control are pushing me away. Hope the karmic comeuppance comes soon.
I think there’s a lot of history to the Apple vs Adobe spat and I doubt if its going away any time soon.
Here’s a link to one article from CNET in 2004.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-5181434.html