Folks,

This really get’s my goat…

I know that a number of good people work at Apple. If you’re seeking a more ethical company, Adobe is hiring: adobe.com/aboutadobe/careeropp -John Dowdell – http://twitter.com/jdowdell/status/11881181351

Well, I would really like to know what Mr. Dowdell considers to be unethical?

I suspect that this has to do with section 3.3.1 of Apple’s iPhone / iPad / Ipod Touch SDK. Prior to today’s release of the iPhone OS 4 SDK, section 3.3.1 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement read, in its entirety:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

In the new version of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement released by Apple today (and which developers must agree to before downloading the 4.0 SDK beta), section 3.3.1 now reads:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

What does this mean?  Cross-compilers such as Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler, MonoTouch from Microsoft, and possibly others are legally banned from being used to create iPod, iPhone, and iPad applications.

Oh my gosh, that’s unethical!!!  Is it?  It’s Apple’s hardware, and they have year after year said, these are the languages you can use (Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript).  They hold courses at WWDC, and there are plenty of books covering how to create iApps.  Why is this unethical?

Apple has stated time and time again, Flash is bad.  Flash shall not run on the iPhone.  So Adobe comes up with a method to create an emulation layer application that will take Flash (or decompiled Flash) and run it on the iPhone.  Even if it’s not really Flash related, even if it’s converted to an iPhone native application, is it right and ethical?

Well, yes.  But that does mean that Adobe could not support iPhone features that they don’t like…  After all, your relying on Adobe to produce your iPhone Application for you..  Isn’t it safer, and more beneficial for you to use the native tools that Apple provides?  I think so…

I did post to Twitter asking Mr. Dowdell what ethical issues he was referring to….  It has been several days, and I have not heard back from him…

So, I guess You will need to decide on what is the ethical issues at play here…