There’s small reason to rejoice today if you’re a software developer.  Apple has loosened up it’s no-interpreted-code policy in the iPhone SDK used for development of apps on the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad.

The old iPhone SDK end user licensing agreement (EULA) stated quite clearly and adamantly that, “No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).“  This prevented anyone from using languages like Adobe’s Flash or Sun/Oracle’s Java.  Or Python.  (My personal favorite language.)  Amongst many others.  It also prevented the use of third-party development tools such as Adobe’s iPhone packager, which converts Flash scripts into native iPhone machine code.  Or third party libraries such as .NET, Mono, Qt, etc.

It’s a limitation that many developers feel is not only senseless and needlessly inhibitive, but even has the government fighting (DoJ and FTC) for the chance of an antitrust investigation into Apple for their non-competitive practices.

The new iPhone SDK however has a change of heart.

Kind of.

Sort of.

Maybe.

Just a little bit.

A few minor changes of wording in the iPhone SDK leave a little bit of theoretical wiggling room.  Such as, “Unless otherwise approved by Apple in writing, no interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).“  Which makes it sounds as if, theoretically, you could request from Apple a waiver to release your interpreted-code app.

Maybe.

Because then that theoretical possibility of using an interpreted language is further qualified in the iPhone SDK with, “Notwithstanding the foregoing, with Apple’s prior written consent, an Application may use embedded interpreted code in a limited way if such use is solely for providing minor features or functionality that are consistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application.“  My own emphasis on the key qualifiers there.  So of course you still need to write the majority of your code in an Apple-approved language.  You still can’t use any third-party development tools, libraries, or languages.

It still doesn’t really fix anything.  Except for perhaps a few rare instances of development, quite possibly in minor things like spam filters, spell checkers, and small pieces of engines used in games.

But maybe it sounds a lot less closed to antitrust investigations perhaps?

We’ll see.

One thing is for certain, Apple does not equal Open.

AT&T, internet service provider to Apple’s iPad, was hacked.  The data breach released the email address and ICCID of each and every iPad owner using AT&T’s 3G networking, all 114,000 customers.  The list includes the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Needless to say, with heavy hitters like that on the list of victims, things are being done.  The FBI is already moving in to investigate.

AT&T is, of course, claiming that they’ve already plugged the very security hole used to hack them.  And apologizing profusely.

While even the FCC’s public safety office chief expresses concern over the breach.

As is anyone else who can posture.

Ah, politics.

I can’t even imagine what the illustrious Steve Jobs of Apple is saying right now, but I’m betting, behind closed doors, it’s nothing publishable.  I wonder just how much longer AT&T and Apple will be doing business together…

So a lot of people may just be wondering why Apple’s fight with Adobe is so important.  It all comes down to the interwebs.  Or specifically, the stupid ways in which we waste time surfing the net.  These days that’s mostly about watching dogs skate and ladies fart on Youtube or TV we missed on Hulu.  And such.  Video video video!  It’s all about the video.

You see, one of the biggest names in internet video is … Adobe.  Not because they really meant to be, but just because Flash was an easy tool to use in various ways to package, deliver, and receive streaming video.  Adobe Flash quickly became the defacto standard for internet video streaming.

And what is the one (okay, so one of many) things Apple won’t let you do on an iPad?  That’s right, anything related to Adobe Flash.

Of course it was happening before the iPad really, since the iPad is basically an iPod Touch, just bigger.  Or if that’s too complicated for you, a really big iPhone without the actual phone bit.

And, of course, websites like Youtube and Hulu can’t just go around not working on everyone’s newest darling gizmo gadget thingy du jour.

Enter HTML5, the open standards solution to Flash scripting.  Which isn’t really all that new, but being open often means relatively unloved by the world at large.  I don’t know why.  That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.  Okay, okay, so I kind of do know why, and it usually has to do with the lumbering speed of committee decisions as opposed to the zippy response of proprietary pushiness where you don’t have to get everyone (or even anyone really) to agree before you go ahead with your take on how to solve a problem.  Anyway, so HTML5 was slow on the uptake where Flash nabbed the market already.  Which is really the delivery portion.

Likewise there’s the actual video compression algorithm.  Enter H.264, the video codec everyone seems to want to use.  (Instead of the more open Ogg Theora … see how this aversion to open solutions works?)  There might be a lot of video out there already in the H.264 codec … but unfortunately it’s wrapped in Flash, not in HTML5.  So Apple lovers are still out of luck with their iPads.

So why doesn’t everyone just switch to using HTML5 instead of Flash?  Well as product video president Eugene Wei blogged, HTML5 “doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs.“  So what are those needs?  “Our player doesn’t just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user.”

Oh.

And so, according to Hulu, HTML5 is just not ready to replace Flash yet.

Not to mention that obviously for every single website that streams video to replace all of their Flash video code with HTML5 would, you know, take lots and lots of people lots and lots of hours, costing lots and lots of money.  Even if HTML5 were a solution that everyone could agree is ready for prime time.  Which they don’t.  Because it’s not.

Well what about going the other way then?  Instead of making every single video-streaming website redesign themselves to support HTML5, why not just have Apple support Adobe Flash?

That would be the question.  Because it would be a really simple solution.  So Apple, why don’t you support Adobe Flash like everyone else does?  Hmm…

As Jon Stewart on The Daily Show said, “Apple, you guys were the rebels, man, you were the underdogs. People believed in you. But now … are you becoming The Man?“  He continued, “Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one. But now you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes!”

And it’s an interesting point.  Apple has lately been far more acting like “The Man” than the once-upon-a-time fight they put up against just this very kind of behavior.  Apple is oppressing app developers enough to garner an antitrust inquiry. Apple is responsible for a raid on the home of Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen. Apple has banned a consumer from ever buying another iPad after he reached some secret limit. Apple is going after a company who beat them to the product name iPad. Apple demanded an apology from Ellen DeGeneres for a simple iPhone parody commercial. (As if Apple hasn’t been doing parodies of PCs for years in it’s Mac/PC ads?)

And this is not some random bit of events spread over years.  It’s all happening, right now.  It’s enough to stop and make you think.  Just what happened to Apple?

Maybe Jon Stewart was right.  Progressive geniuses?  Or appholes?  You decide.

For those of you miffed at the loss of your beloved apps because Apple is being mean to developers, fear not. For whatever Apple locketh up, you can jailbreak. The recent release of the Spirit from comex allows you to free up your Apple devices with firmware versions 3.1.2, 3.1.3, or 3.2, thereby allowing the world to share the love by making it possible to install all of those nasty apps that Apple has blocked because they were written in the wrong programming language. And such.

Not that I condone that sort of thing…

Yeah…

Also sharing the Apple love, or at least soon to be, is Cupidtino, a dating website devoted for hot Apple lovin’. It will officially launch in June, and will be available only on Apple platforms such as Safari or browsed to from your iPod, iPad, or iPhone. For those who care, that shouldn’t really be a problem. For the rest of us however, a sick bag may be in order.