I feel sure that consumers can form their own opinions and make their own decisions.

I feel sure that users (as distinct from consumers?) can form their own opinions and make their own decisions.

I feel sure that readers of this coloumn can form their own opinions and make their own decisions.

Your style and rhetoric probably does not promote the arguments you espouse.

As an Australian, I can attest that this happens regularly here. I can’t buy the TV series Dollhouse here for example, or any number of Indie US films because of the distributors not seeing a market.

And there in lies the problem. Google wants to differentiate itself and have a one-up that Apple doesn’t. Selling Android phones requires marketing, feature points, and items that would make a potential buyer purchase Android over Apple/Palm/BB etc. And at the moment, the major differentiator that they have (that the average user can understand) is Flash. Google is not going to silence its trump card here.

That has been a big irk for me over this entire Adobe row, people make the judgement that all of Adobe hates apple because of this Flash hoo-haa. In fact, it is a very noisy few within Adobe’s Flash team that are spewing venom.

Here’s the thing you don’t seem to understand. 1) many iPhone *game devs* are coming from console markets where they already maxed out their sales and are simply trying to resell / port their content to milk more money. Why? Because where do you think 100k OpenGL-knowledgeable C programmers would suddenly materialize from?

2) Digital downloads are easier than mastering DVDs or cartridges with shelf packaging. Apple’s main innovation here (although Valve, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) all had it first, was to make publishing easier and somewhat automated. The major console platform publishers still have too many humans in the loop. I can’t just one-click submit a game to the XBox Marketplace.

But you are kidding yourself if you think this is a steady state situation. Devs which have developed games for the iPhone will have an almost irrresistable urge to port them to other platforms (android, nintendo, etc) as soon as the sales cycle runs out. The vast majority of games do not recoup the costs of development in sales on the primary platform they’re developed on.

It would be like expecting a film company to produce a US movie, but not distribute it internationally, or sell DVDs after the box office closes. Apple is trying exactly this, to lock devs onto the iPhone and prevent multi-platform, they want everything exclusive, and it just won’t work, the economics of the game industry don’t allow it.

No, it means they haven’t found anything greener on the other side.

I’m sure your “thoroughly paranoid” developers would also like, say, 50-50 split on revenue, better placement for their apps in the store, no-$99 policy, no Mac-to-develop requirement, Flash, Silverlight, Java, JavaFX and a side order of black beans too.

You do understand that Apple’s licensing agreement is protected by NDA and in fact, developers aren’t even supposed to discuss the terms in public, which is why most criticism of the T&C has been done anonymously. On top of that, there’s always the wrath of Jobs.

Let’s just boil it down to logic. We don’t need to take any polls, we just need to read the fine print.

“. 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).”

According to Unity3D, which produces a cross-compiler for iPhone/iPad in which you write C#, 12% of the top 25 AppStore titles are written in Unity.

Now, my question to you in this, should Apple ban these titles? Their own rules clearly state that they won’t accept games not written in one of the approved languages. Do you think that contracts should be clear and concise? That they should be enforced fairly, justly, for all? What is a guy, who maybe writes his game in Pascal, supposed to think as his App is banned, but a flood of C# games are in the market?

Are you just constitutionally unable to take off your blinders and see any wrong in Apple’s policies?

Now, if you want an argument by authority, or by anecdote, I will tell you that I have personally spoken to indie iPhone developers at both GDCs in the last 2 years who are thoroughly paranoid about iPhone development and are not loving the new iPhone 4.0 SDK agreement.

But yeah, the fact that there’s 200k devs registered clearly means, all developers love the T&C, no matter what revisions Apple makes to it. That makes perfect sense, as people who experience oppression instantly quit their job, strike, protest, leave abusive relationships, as a matter of standard practice. No one ever keeps their mouth shut in a shitty situation. Right…

I asked you to cite at least 10,000th of the 200,000 App Store developers who are objecting before you make absurd (and yes besmirching) remarks. I can’t respond to your imaginary scenarios.

It is a double standard, it introduces needless uncertainty into the development process. Factual and totally legitimate target.

The somewhat strange human powered porn filter, which bans satirical works of art, but allows lingerie apps, is just icing on the cake.

If I’m besmirching anyone, it’s this blog and commenters, who don’t seem to have a clue (except for Cak) of what’s really going on.