stevenN

I thought of doing the same thing with my Pl/M experience. Decided to learn new tool sets/languages instead:-)

You will find your self in serious trouble moving forward if you tie yourself to only knowing a single company's toolset and tying your future to the well being of that companies tool set. Especially Adobe's; a company as fickle as Apple.

But Apple is NOT the dominate OS.

1) Symbian 2) RIM 3) Apple 4) MS 5) Android

Android and MS might have swapped in the last month or so. They are close. As for choice, consumes don't seem to mind. You have tons of "choice" on Symbian, Android and WM for app selection. The AppStore is beating them all.

Developers will go where the money is. It is a job. You play by the rules or move on. Simple really.

"Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs."

Why does it really scare me when people that claim to programmers say stuff like that. If what you say is true, that you are "surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.", then you really should not be programming.

"However what will kill the iPhone 4G is the free apps for ads idea."

That idea started 1.5 years ago. Now you get Google ads in your free apps. Now, as an option, you can have iAds or Google ads. So all Apple did is open an option (read choice) for developers already doing ads in apps.

Choice is now bad? Or is it good?

OK. I come from a different background of programming than traditional consumer apps. In my "normal" job, I get a very small white list of programming languages. "C", "C++" (but no templates, multiple inheritance, no operator over-loading), "ADA", Assembly. Within each of these areas I am not allowed specific features. Recursion. OMG. I did that once and never again. Big nono. Even a simple things like:

   if (A && B)
   {
   }
   else if (A && !B)
   {
   }

is not legal as you can not fully test 1 of the four branches in the "else if()" case. Even "default" statements in "case" statements that can not be executed (because the switch statements cover 100% of the available options) can be an issue.

What I am getting at is, with programming there are rules. The rules Apple have are actually very minor and very easy to stay within. If you program to make political statements, choose Android or BB or Symbian. If you program to make money, pick the platform that will do that and follow the rules. If it stops making you money, move on. If you don't like the rules and don't want to abide by them, move on.

You can enjoy programming while still staying within the rules. Sometimes, it is part of the fun and challenge.