What a day. I sometimes don’t know how to feel about Apple. On the one hand they do great things for the cause of HTML5:

• They gave us Canvas, and CSS transforms, and …
• They brought us WebKit, and now WebKit 2
• By blocking Flash on their mobile platform, they force people to take HTML5 video seriously
• iAds shows off HTML5, and Jobs was sure to let us know about that.

Great technology. Great for the Web.

Then we see the section 3.3.1 change to their developer terms which has people thinking that the Flash compiler is toast just before CS5 is about to come out.

This same change to the terms may also affect some of our own. For example, the Titanium crew. PhoneGap appears to be safe by the letter of the law, since they link to the iPhone OS WebKit engine. I hope that Apple responds wrt Titanium.

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).

Some on the Apple side are arguing that:

• Objective-C apps are good. Anything else is crap. When folks try to go meta, they shouldn’t be allowed
• And hey, Apple can do whatever they want.

Although I can see how this could in some ways help the Open Web (less Flash, more HTML), I can’t ignore the other feeling. The Web is so special as it isn’t owned by a single vendor. This means that this kind of crap can’t happen. One company can’t change the rules in one fell swoop. There isn’t that one company that can become misaligned with the interests of certain developers and Do Bad Things.

I continue to look forward to what Apple does to help the Web. But I am very glad indeed that the Web itself isn’t run by them, or any one group.

I hope that the Web becomes the unified platform on mobile…. and that folks like Titanium have the opportunity to do their best. Developers should be able to use the languages and tools of their choice, and let the best apps win.

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