A Twist in the saga of Flash exclusion by Apple, 13/04/2010 - Your reactions

[crispin]

Will new Apple dev terms mean removal of some top apps? In a twist in the ongoing saga over Apple's new developer Terms of Service, independent researchers have discovered that 30% of the current Top 10 App store games use technologies which could be banned by Apple's new Terms of Service that require that an App store application is written entirely in C, C++, or Objective C.
The three known violators among the Top 10 are Skee-Ball, which uses Unity 3D, and Diner Dash and Angry Birds, both of which use the Lua scripting language. According to the data compiled in the database linked in the article, maybe as much as 50% of the current Top 10 may run afoul of the new rules.
Perhaps most ironic is the discovery that Tap Tap Revolution, a very popular music game that has often appeared Apple's own iPhone promotional material, and even showcased in a presentation by Steve Jobs himself during the iPhone OS 4 unveiling, uses the contraband language Lua. Coming on the heels of Jobs' comments over the weekend that such technology leads to what he called "sub-standard apps", the discovery that Jobs himself has chosen to point to some such apps as examples of the iPhone's application dominance has given rise to speculation that perhaps Apple intends to enforce the new rules selectively, perhaps granting an exemption to games as a category, or to well-established developers.
Certainly an application that contains a Lua script is very different from writing a whole game in flash and cross-compiling it to dozens of platforms.

By crispin