It's impossible to innovate except in those areas - all those languages, as implemented on the iPhone, have significant drawbacks, which shouldn't need to be explained to anyone with any history of programming in multiple languages.
Yeah of course, but languages which compile to C also have (huge, IMO) drawbacks, especially with regards to debugging and profiling, things that have a profound effect on the end user experience.
I'm not trying to defend the restriction or anything. It's Jobs' right to pull this shit and its everyone else's right to move to Android. I just think it's less about innovation in tools and frameworks and more about keeping the platform isolated for business reasons. This is just an extension of the "no interpreters" rule, which more severely (IMO) hampers language and tool innovation.
I dont get why people bring this up. It's Apple's right to ....
Of course its Apple's right. I don't think anyone's advocating lawsuits. But it's our right to bitch, moan, complain, and try to convince everyone in the world that if Apple doesn't reverse course in due time, they should be attacked with an avalanche of internet mudslinging that will make Microsoft look like Ghandi in comparison.
Apple of all companies knows the value of the tech and online community to their bottom line. I think its worth utilizing that to respond to their decisions and somehow influence them to move in the right direction.
