iPhone / iPod

[Ian Price]

It's certainly appears to be anti-competitive. I wonder whether European laws could prevent such monopoly?

SEGA lost a court battle with the Darling bros (CodeMasters?) over creation of Megadrive software (MicroMachines IIRC). Admittedly they were using their own SDK and not an official SEGA one, but that has to be comparable. Unfortunately, by being such a small developer, you wouldn't be able to (or probably even want to) take this to court.

[Sokurah]

Hi,

I just registered to say that I've been thinking about switching from BlitzMax to GLBasic for a while now, and I really hope you're able to sort out these problems with getting things to work on the Iphone, because that's definitely something that could make me make the switch.

Good luck.

Btw, I saw that multitouch is working, but what about using other Iphone specific things like GPS, camera and the accelerometer?

[Kitty Hello]

accelerometer is in the joystick API, GPS and camera not, yet. Shouldn't be too hard, though.

[FutureCow]

Torque's iphone page suggests you can do all your development on the PC. It seems they may be breaking Apple's licence rules or have a different agreement with Apple.

you can prototype your iPhone game in TGB on PC or Mac

http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-2d/iphone

I just searched the licence agreement and there is no reference anywhere in it to the word "Apple", so it doesn't appear to be hidden in the fine-print.

[Kitty Hello]

easy to use C++ like scripting language

They do not need the iPhone SDK libraries. They have an interpreter and that's it.

[doimus]

@FutureCow - the key word is "you can prototype games", which doesn't exactly mean you can upload it to iPhone or Appstore from Windows.
Heck, you could prototype iPhone games in QBasic on MS-DOS if you want, nobody stops you.
That's just how Garage Games advertising works: a bit of truth-evasion never hurt anyone, right? 

[Kitty Hello]

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/ipod/touch.htm iPod Touch - the future of protable gaming?
Quite nice article. Short read: iPod Touch is a great peace of hardware for games. Excellent price/product ratio, but the iTunes program for the PC sucks. A lot. It sucks so much, I (Kitty) don't even use it at all. I just used it once to get the iPod running, then deleted it and the QuickTime player, too.
Best is the "buy now" option from the iPod, where you tap a game, enter your password and apple will send a bill that they transfered the money from your bank, every month. Much easier to set up and buy than on XBLA and what not.

[Sum41]

So why dont you just share the SDK and write into the license and agreements that you may only compile / run / use it if your running an apple licensed computer?
I mean... thats how bots for browser games are shared. Only for testing purposes...

[FutureCow]

So why dont you just share the SDK and write into the license and agreements that you may only compile / run / use it if your running an apple licensed computer?
I mean... thats how bots for browser games are shared. Only for testing purposes...

+1

[javiero]

So why dont you just share the SDK and write into the license and agreements that you may only compile / run / use it if your running an apple licensed computer?
I mean... thats how bots for browser games are shared. Only for testing purposes...

+2

[Kitty Hello]

I think I won't get this so easily. But, we're working on a solution that fits all.

[bigsofty]

I can't afford to buy an Apple, the wife would kill me!

Hopefully there is a solution that does now require this.

[Kitty Hello]

ahem. There is a way to install an OS-X on a < 199,- EUR Acer Aspire One.
Not that it's legal nor reccomended. But, yes, it works.

[MrTAToad]

I can't afford to buy an Apple, the wife would kill me!

Could always get an iPod Touch thingie - which, if Gernot can get everything up and running, is something I may do...

[Moru]

ahem. There is a way to install an OS-X on a < 199,- EUR Acer Aspire One.
Not that it's legal nor reccomended. But, yes, it works.

As long as you buy the computer and the OS, it's yours to install wherever you want to. There is no court that will stop you from doing that. They don't have to SUPPORT your installation though so if you run into problems you have to solve them yourself.

However if you limit your big music store to only be compatible with your own MP3-player as apple did, this is not legal in some countries:

Across Europe, consumer groups have been confronting iTunes, attempting to enforce interoperability.

Most significantly, in Norway, Apple CEO Steve Jobs' new stance on digital rights management (DRM) comes only a few weeks after a Jan. 19 ruling by the Consumer Ombudsman that the company's FairPlay system contravened the country's Marketing Control Act.

The ruling determined that, by restricting consumers' use of music, Apple's FairPlay DRM technology broke contract law in Norway.

Apple has until March 1 to outline its plans to resolve the various issues raised by the Ombudsman and has to implement those—or prove it is substantially on the way to implementing them—by Oct. 1.

Norway has sued Apple in some other case a few years ago but I can't find any references to it now and too warm/lazy to search :-)