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By Chris Meadows

slapfight I wasn’t sure whether to cover this story, given that it does not seem to have a great deal to do with e-books on the face of it. But on the other hand, it relates to the viability of developing for the iPhone and iPad as a whole, and e-book applications (both reader apps and stand-alone encapsulated appbooks) have to be developed just like anything else.

Apple’s OS 4.0 SDK includes a new license agreement—new terms that developers must abide by. And one of these terms is a prohibition on “applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer”.

What this means in layman’s terms is that you can’t make iPhone or iPad programs with software development toolkits from other companies, such as the one Adobe is only three days away from releasing. You have to develop the programs using Apple’s own tools, or nothing at all. (Ars Technica has a great in-depth exploration of the whole issue.)

The change has been met by stares of disbelief all across the development community. The timing of it in particular makes it hard to see the announcement as anything but a slap in the face to Adobe, with whom Apple was already feuding over its continued refusal to implement Flash on the iPhone or iPad.

John Gruber thinks that it’s simply an extension of Apple’s already well-known desire for control over its device environments. It may be deplorable from the perspective of third parties who were coming out with development kits, but it makes sense from Apple’s point of view and lets them maintain both control and quality control.

He also notes that a lot of cross-platform toolkits produce fairly crummy applications because they are not custom-tailored to use the specific features in Apple’s hardware.

Adobe, meanwhile, having sunk millions of dollars into development costs for a platform that is suddenly barring the door, seems downright livid—or at least some of its executives do. Adobe’s Platform Evangelist, Lee Brimelow, posted a statement on his blog, vetted by Adobe legal staff (though it’s not an official Adobe statement), that called out Apple for its “tyrannical” restrictions on employees and developers, and concluded:

Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch compares this decision to Jobs’s similar decisions regarding the Macintosh—decisions that, Schonfeld says, ultimately led to the marginalization of the Macintosh against the PC environment.

The iPhone faces a growing threat from Google’s Android phones, which are the PCs of the mobile world. Only Apple makes the iPhone, but many phone manufacturers make Android phones just like many PC makers produce Windows PCs. Slowly but surely, those Android phones are getting better. And already Android sales are collectively catching up to iPhone sales.

He wonders if Jobs will be able to keep history from repeating itself.

In the end, Apple fanatics are going to continue to hold that Jobs can do no wrong, and Apple bashers are going to continue to insist that Jobs is the devil, and this probably is not going to change most people’s opinions one way or the other.

But I hope I don’t appear too hypocritical (as a happy iPod Touch owner and soon to be a happy iPad owner) if I say that I hope it serves as a reminder to developers of how capricious Apple is capable of being, and what their priorities are if they think anything might threaten their control.

I find myself hoping that Android is able to get its act together enough to challenge Apple for the smartphone market and developer mindshare. If Apple faces some serious competition, perhaps it will have to loosen some of its restrictions.

 
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