Apple today announced that it is making several changes to its App Store developer policies and procedures, with one of the most significant changes being an easing of its earlier move to ban third-party compilers such as Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler it had built into Flash Professional CS5. Under the new policies, such third-party tools will be permitted as long as the apps generated by them do not download any code.

This is a good move that potentially opens app store development to a much larger community and should help get regulators off of Apple’s back.  I’m excited to see some of the potential tools that could arise, but I am still skeptical as to how Apple will handle this loss in control of the app development process.

Notes

• Apple’s Press Release

At Skype, we believe that better call quality and better availability which is achieved with an app capable of multitasking and/or making calls over 3G lead to increased call frequency and longer calls. We also believe that the mobile world is in a period of significant change, for example, with some operators starting to move to tiered pricing models.

In light of that, we no longer have plans to charge a supplement to make calls over 3G. We’re delighted to make it easier for you to talk for even longer and do even more together using Skype.

When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”

On a side note, my unconfirmed, completely fictitious sources say that following Microsoft’s time, Adobe will be allotted 30 seconds during which CEO Shantanu Narayen, already fuming from the Microsoft announcement, will receive a swift kick in the crotch by Jobs.

Update:  Microsoft has apparently shot this rumor down via its Twitter feed:

Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.

It’s easy to think that the grass is always greener away from AT&T, but keep in mind that these are cellular carriers: massive oligopolists that don’t give a s*** about us. Their phones are ARPU vending machines, first and foremost, not communication tools. Cellular carriers are only a small step above cable and phone companies in the contempt and disregard they show for their customers.

This sums up my thoughts on wireless phone companies.  I don’t think I could have said it any better.

(h/t Daring Fireball)

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.  – Steve Jobs

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out how the detail of the letter gives Adobe “little wiggle room” to respond.  Michael Gartenburg (via Daring Fireball) makes the equally good point that Adobe’s only real play here is to respond with a version of Flash that runs favorably in a mobile touch environment.

A lot of talk from the blogs is about how this hinders developer’s choice when developing for the iPhone OS.  This type of commentary drives me crazy.  Developers can choose whether or not to developer for a given platform.  If they don’t like the ground-rules, they can go play somewhere else.  Logic dictates that if Apple drives away developers, fewer apps will be published, which makes the platform less attractive for consumers.  The power of choice is still there.

The “problem” for developers is that the iPhone OS and it’s associated devices are the most sexy from a consumer perspective.  So as a developer, here is your choice:  do you stand on your principles (or lack of ability to evolve as a developer) and miss the market, or do you challenge yourself to learn something new?  In the end, if lack of Flash is why you choose not to create an iPhone OS app or iPhone/iPod/iPad optimized experience in the browser, you probably weren’t committed enough the platform to make a great app in the first place.

I’m an aspiring amateur photographer.  I just recently put down my 35mm SLR and invested in my first digital SLR.  I’m not all that good yet, but I love taking pictures and capturing unique moments. I am quite inspired by people who see things in everyday life and envision them as intriguing images. With that in mind, I found my way to a set of photos by Chase Jarvis (h/t Daring Fireball).  These are pretty amazing pictures on their own.  What is even more amazing is that they were all taken using his iPhone.  Jarvis’s opinion is that “the best camera is the one that’s with you,” and that in almost all cases even a camera phone can result in amazing images.

Jarvis announced Tuesday that he has released a book of his iPhone photos, appropriately named The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You.  He has taken it a bit further by releasing “The Best Camera” iPhone app ($2.99, iTunes link) that allows for photo processing and sharing all within the same app.  Along with the app is an online community for sharing photos at www.thebestcamera.com.  This is a really interesting project, and I can’t wait to see how it develops.

For more info, watch the introduction by Jarvis in the video below.

UPDATE:  Reviews in the app store for the iPhone app are generally good, but the biggest complaint is a watermark on images uploaded to Facebook with the text “Uploaded from Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera.” Users are rightfully upset that their images from an app they paid for were being tagged this way. Apparently it was a mistake. TheBestCamera.com acknowledges it on their support page:

We have discovered a bug in the app that affects Facebook captions in two ways.
First, if you do not write a Facebook when uploading your image via the sharing page on Best Camera, your caption says “Uploaded from Chase Jarvis’ Best Camera”. This text was created as dummy text in the development of the app and and was not intended to act as your default caption.
Second, if you do enter a caption for Facebook and then share your image to BOTH Facebook and thebestcamera.com, your Facebook caption is being replaced by the default caption. The current work around is to upload your image to thebestcamera.com and Facebook separately, thus retaining the Facebook caption you’ve entered.

We have built a 1.01 release which will correct both of these problems and is currently in the approval process at the App Store. We’ll announce as soon as the new version is available.

Why: Consumers who use Android, the Google-developed operating system for wireless devices, can’t use Skype, a leading Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. A pioneer in free Internet calling, Skype allows you to talk as long as you want without draining cellphone minutes.

Android users get Skype Lite, a watered-down version of the original that routes calls over traditional phone networks — not the Internet. As a result, long-distance calls are still cheap or free, but cellphone minutes are gobbled up every time a Skype Lite call is made…

…Google’s explanation would seem to suggest that T-Mobile requested the block on Skype, but the carrier says that’s not the case. “T-Mobile has not asked Google to block that service,” says spokesman Joe Farren, referring to original Skype [sic]. – USA Today

In both of these cases, it is clear that neither the carriers nor OS providers want to take the blame.  Maybe the FCC can break this problem open and make progress, but as stated before, “consider me skeptical.”

UPDATE: Apple says it acted alone in rejecting the app.  Something still smells fishy here, but if this is the case, bad Apple!

Steve Jobs hates the App Store for the same reasons I do: development for the iPhone platform is a distraction. It’s taking our eyes off the ball, and ignoring the bigger shift that’s happening beneath our feet. Developing iPhone apps now means postponing a better and more capable web until later, because so much energy is fixated on the cool whiz-bang effects in the iPhone platform that just haven’t been implemented in browsers… yet. We’ll look at this period as a great Dark Age that preceded the real next leap in computing — the age when we moved away from the stale metaphor of applications and moved to a world of ad-hoc connected identity agents living and feeding on a mesh of interwoven open data.