14 DAY TRIAL // It wasn’t long before application developers started praising Apple for its decision to relax the terms and conditions surrounding iOS development, but now we have an example of why Apple was half-hearted to ease up on those restrictions.
Historically, Apple did not wish to have programmers coding by their own rules, but all that changed last week, when the company issued a statement on the App Store Review Guidelines.
“In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code,” the company said.
“This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need,” Apple stated officially on September 9, 2010.
In April, the Cupertino, California based giant argued that "letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."
Now, AppTech Corp. reports “that Apple's recently announced policy of loosening restrictions on use of outside development tools should substantially assist AppTech in the execution of its plan to translate and port over iPhone apps to other operating systems, such as Google Android.” (emphasis ours)
By loosening up the restrictions surrounding iOS development, Apple’s main intention was to open the door for Flash developers to port apps over to the iPhone.
Surely Apple wasn’t hoping to help existing iOS developers jump ship. Android, as avid Softpedia readers should know, is rivals with iOS.
While being able to easily port an existing iOS app over to Android is great news for developers, the same thing cannot be said about Apple, which wants to retain as many customers as it can, by offering the best selection of apps out there.
Eric Ottens, CEO of AppTech Corp. stated, "Apple's loosening its policies on the ability for app developers to utilize third party tools is a strong positive step for AppTech.”
The executive acknowledged that “Apple has been such a dominant player in the app market that the previous rules restricted AppTech's ability to speedily bring apps to market on Google Android and Symbian, which are popular systems in emerging markets such as Brazil and Latin America that we wish to penetrate.”
“Apple's new policy will facilitate the opening of new markets for us and together with our technical partners, will expedite the implementation of the AppTech international marketing plans," the CEO concluded.
In other words, Apple's new policies are paving the way for developers to make their apps visible on other application stores, thus making more sense for customers to choose alternative products, such as Android-powered smarphones.
Not that diversity isn't good, but it's certainly not what Apple had in mind for the most prominent pillar of its business.
AppTech deals with translating and developing apps in emerging markets throughout the world, including Latin America, Brazil, China, India, Japan and the USA, the company’s about-us says.
The company is primarily focused on multi-platform apps designed to run on mobile operating systems.