Unity

David Helgason on the Unity weblog:

Unity learned of these changes with the rest of you just last Thursday and today, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about these changes being final and what we may need to do to comply.

We’re meeting with Apple next week to discuss the matter, and our engineers have been discussing possible technical solutions as well.

New games made using Unity are still being accepted, so a finger in the wind suggests Unity is going to be deemed kosher.

The latest revision of Apple's developer licensing agreement prohibits the use of third-party software to develop for the iPhone. [Daring Fireball]

Such software makes it easy for developers to use programming languages that they already know, including relatively easy-to-learn ones like Unity Script. It also lets developers create apps that will run on multiple platforms. The big target here is clearly Adobe -- though Flash itself won't run on the iPhone, the latest version of Adobe's development suite can also spit out a non-Flash version of your app that will.

As an occasional developer, the prospect of this is enormously frustrating. In effect, I'm being told that I can't 'port' stuff to and from the iPhone or build for it in the amateur-friendly language that I already know. Instead, I have to build bespoke apps for the iPhone or iPad in Apple's own development environment.

I've spent the last week working on a feature on how the iPad's innovative design helps, rather than hinders, certain creative endeavors. But the fact remains that if your creative endeavor is iPhone and iPad development, Apple has very specific plans for you.

Joel Johnson suggests that explicitly prohibiting the translation of existing code to the iPhone ("Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited.") may interest the FTC. [Gizmodo]