fantastic!!

Very nice interface, very, very slick.

However I would imagine, despite his demonstrations, that it would be quite horrendous to actually control any game that requires quick reflexes.

But still, nice interface

"It actually makes sense from a security perspective as you could theoretically get some virus apps thrown in with the legitimate stuff..."

No, it does not. The EULA with the Apple SDK does not allow emulation, and it has nothing to do with security. Emulation by design protects against attacks like that.

It has everything to do with Apple's control of what goes on the iPhone. If emulators were allowed on the iPhone it would dilute interest in the App Store, where the real money is made. This is the same reason that Flash is not on the iPhone, either (I know Apple claims performance issues but this is bullshit). There would be less motivation for people to buy games when the could just play the 1000s of free Flash games out there.

Eventually there may be enough pressure to force Apple to finally support Flash on some level, but they will do everything possible to stall this and emulation.

^
Interesting angle. I was just quoting the Kotaku article from where I found it, but what you say also makes a LOT of sense. Having gotten my iPhone this past Friday, I was somewhat bummed that flash is not supported...

Original article here:

http://kotaku.com/5298652/iphone-c64-emulator-submitted-denied

@ ponceleon:

Honestly I don't know what Manomio was thinking when they submitted this emulator to the App store. They knew it would be rejected. Apple is being very iron-fisted about this policy because it protects their revenue stream.

Only at the risk of killing a revenue stream will Apple ever lift this policy. About the only way that will likely happen is if other vendors remain open to the point where they become more attractive options to customers.

The closed nature of Apple is why I refuse to purchase their products. I don't evangelize my choice, though... people should buy what's works best for them. For me, that would be Windows Mobile for the most part... but that platform has become stale as far as the UI is concerned. I'm really hoping that Windows Mobile 7 is a big enough change to make it worthwhile again.

^ Tis a double edged sword. I held out from buying an iPhone for quite some time. Alas, the base convenience of what the product does is just astounding to me. In principal, I definitely agree with you that their attitude towards the nature of their development is somewhat lacking. Still, I find myself getting older and have to admit that I just find it so intuitive in it's design that I had to give in...

Great posts though, Razor. Good to get more info on the more technical aspects of stuff.

@ ponceleon:

It is that intuitive UI that makes the iPhone. In reality, Apple made a device that from a technical standpoint did nothing new (despite Time magazine calling it invention of the year). In someways, it was even backwards... I still don't get why copy/past didn't make the first release... prolly API issues. But it tied everything together in a slick and intuitive UI, something Palm, RIM and Microsoft have not done as well until recently.

These devices, PDAs and smartphones, were originally targeted to businesses. Features came first and the UI second. Apple esentially took the same technology but wrapped it in a UI that made it accessible to average consumers. This, more than anything, made it a success.

RIM, Palm and Microsoft are now playing catchup, although the Palm's Pre is looking very solid. The next gen of Palm hardware will prove extremely competitive, especially as it is designed for multitasking.

Hopefully continued competition will continue to bring better devices and features to market.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

This would be fun for nostalgia's sake for about 15 minutes. Then I'd be good- and would want to return to games from this century.

>> ^dag:
This would be fun for nostalgia's sake for about 15 minutes. Then I'd be good- and would want to return to games from this century.


Spoken like a true acolyte of the Apple. They can do no wrong! NO WRONG!!!

iPhone will never have business market penetration. Only consumer as usual per Apple strategy. It's a shit phone to use for business applications.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^It's a slippery slope. You let this in, next it's MAME - then how about a DS or PSP emulator?

PS. I gave Jobs a lobe of my liver.

>> ^dag:
^It's a slippery slope. You let this in, next it's MAME - then how about a DS or PSP emulator?
PS. I gave Jobs a lobe of my liver.


Letting Apple decide what is good for you as a consumer is not a good position to hold.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^Yes- but have you seen how shiny it is?

^You're such a magpie.

^dag
^It's a slippery slope. You let this in, next it's MAME - then how about a DS or PSP emulator?

But as I understand it these people have a license from Commodore. Nintendo and Sony would never allow a license for a DS or PSP emulator.

@ Arg:

A license is beside the point. Apple will do whatever it takes to protect its revenue. It's not a technical limitation, or a legal one. It's about money, plain and simple.

^Razor
A license is beside the point. Apple will do whatever it takes to protect its revenue. It's not a technical limitation, or a legal one. It's about money, plain and simple.

I understand and agree with your point. I was just replying to Dag's slippery slope argument. There would be no slippery slope towards emulating more up-to-date hardware without a license from the copyright/patent holders. In the case of the DS or PSP a license would not be forthcoming.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

^It might. It would certainly be another revenue stream for Sony or Nintendo.

Apple innovated the hell out of the iPhone and caught the traditional phone companies with their pants down. I admire their disruptive chutzpah. Why are they not allowed now to protect the profit model they invented?

(of course if we were talking about MS - I would be on the other side - I freely admit my bias.)

@ Arg:

I seriously hope dag was joking when he mentioned the slippery slope... I assumed he was. Any thought that Apple is protecting people or companies from illegal software or copyright infringement is ludicrous at best. It's all about money.

@ dag:

At least you are aware of your bias Objectively speaking, however, what Apple is doing currently has much in common with past business practices of Microsoft.

As a consumer, we vote with our wallets. My reasoning for not allowing Apple access to my money has many reasons: FUD practices, bloated software like iTunes, invasive software updates and installs like Bonjour... the list goes on.

In relation to the iPhone, though, it is because of how Apple's practices will stifle innovation. A good example is how submitted apps cannot reproduce existing functionality of the iPhone. So if I want to buy or develop a better browser than Safari I'm essentially fucked by the EULA and/or TOS. Emulation is forbidden. The approval process for apps is far from transparent.

Limiting innovation is never good for consumers. It leads to higher prices, fewer choices and market stagnation.

Plenty of people are willing to ignore these issues. Proof is the number of iPhones that have been sold. I, however, am not willing to compromise on this. I expect freedom in both purchasing and development in whatever platform I support.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Oh comeon - FUD? Really? I wouldn't say Apple is a FUD producer. Certainly not on the scale of MS.

You could say that Apple is limiting innovation- but you could also say they are enabling it. The API for accessing the different bits of functionality in the iPhone is unprecedented and certainly robust and supportive of external developers. You can't say that Apple hasn't enabled good development on the iPhone. Compare that to how other smartphone vendors are handling external Apps - and Apple comes out smelling pretty good.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I feel that Sifters are innately suspicious of anything that is commercially successful.

That's why you love VideoSift.

@ dag:

Mac vs PC commercials are a great example of FUD tactics. This has been argued on other forums ad naseum and I will avoid repeating what has already been heavily debated. FUD on any scale is bad; I really could care less how Apple's compares to Microsoft or Sun or any other company. But combine FUD with the Apple RDF and it only serves to make consumers more stupid and companies richer for hurting the market =P

Moving on... As for the iPhone SDK and API, I'm only in partial agreement with you. I'm not sure if you are are low-level (assembly) programmer, dag, but to call the API for the iPhone unprecedented and robust is not accurate and really depends on what you code. It is, in fact, very limited from a more general viewpoint. This is in part due to the EULA and TOS (don't forget, Apple tells you what you are allowed to release for the iPhone) but also because of what access the APIs provide to the hardware.

That access, in fact, is none. The SDK and API are heavily abstracted from the hardware. This incurs a serious performance penalty that prevents certain applications from being practical. John Carmack, lead programmer of id Software made commentary regarding this while developing a version of Doom 3 for the iPhone:

“If you look at it in raw hardware horsepower, the iPhone should be better in performance than the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable,” Carmack said. “But the truth is, you can’t exploit it all because of software inefficiencies.”

More can be found here: http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/06/10/next-generation-iphone-game-doom-resurrection-debuting-next-week/

Those software inefficiencies he is referring to are a result of the API design, and is not an example of being supportive of all external developers. Don't get me wrong. The current API works well for a large amount of apps, as proved by the number present on the App Store. But really, how many of these apps really push the technological envelope? Alot of the apps on the stores are the technological equivalents of a basic .NET project: easy and fast to code (good) but not efficient (bad). This effectively kills one area of development: high end games. Kind of funny when you think about it. Apple is yet again limiting game development on another one of their platforms, although for very different reasons. I'm convinced (at risk of butchering something Steve Jobs might say) high-end gaming is not compatible with Apple's DNA.

I do understand Apple's reasoning behind this level of abstraction: control. This isn't necessarily malevolent control. An advantage of abstraction is that it can prevent nasty things from happening... your risk of crashes is reduced for example. But you will always lose performance due to overhead. There is simply no way around that.

Overall the iPhone's API philosophy was probably the right way to go in the very beginning. It's now been two years, though, and Apple needs to rethink their strategy when it comes to low-level access if they expect AAA developers to do anything remotely close what Tegra-based hardware can do when it hits the market. The iPhone will appear quite flimsy by comparison and only an API change will fix it.

Sorry for the long post, but game and assembly programming are passions of mine and I feel people are incredibly misinformed as to the true nature of the iPhone SDK and API. Good for some, but not for all.

Once a few nice phones supporting Google Android come out I'm definitely getting one. It's open source, anyone can make apps without approval. So lets get commodore and then MAME, and then lets point and laugh at all the iPhone users with their limited phones, that don't even support Flash

@ cybrbeast:

Could happen pretty soon, too:

http://gizmodo.com/5300800/flash-for-android-webos-landing-in-october

The last sentence in the article I would not count on for reasons I've already mentioned.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Good comment Rezor, you obviously have a lot more experience with it - when I said unprecedented- I meant for a phone. Though I know subsequently released Android has very similar hooks.

@ dag:

If unprecedented means easy to code then I'd agree. Apple's next step should be to provide an SDK native to Windows but I doubt it will happen. For now developers can use VMWare or dual-boot if they don't own or don't want to buy a Mac.

I'm not exactly expecting Google's SDK to be super easy to use but it does have the advantage of being open source. This will make it much easier for hackers to get close to the metal and squeeze nice performance out of the hardware. I've only a tad of hands-on with Android. The principle complaint I have heard is of stability, and like all things Google it will appear to be perpetually in beta =P But the UI looks good, so hopefully it'll add some good competition to the mix.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Commodore 64, iPhone, app, rejected' to 'Commodore 64, iPhone, app, rejected, c64' - edited by burdturgler

This has now been approved for the app store.

And *quality, because THIS IS WHERE I WORK NOW!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by gwiz665.

>> ^Farhad2000:
>> ^dag:
This would be fun for nostalgia's sake for about 15 minutes. Then I'd be good- and would want to return to games from this century.

Spoken like a true acolyte of the Apple. They can do no wrong! NO WRONG!!!
iPhone will never have business market penetration. Only consumer as usual per Apple strategy. It's a shit phone to use for business applications.


i use an iphone for business purposes and it works pretty well. we use lotus notes @ work, my phone connects via VPN, i have todos, calendar, mail, sametime (IM)... what do i need more? i'm not a big fan of the iphone itself but from a business perspective it has all one could wish for. the days that iphones were of no use for business users are long gone.

Why would anyone buy a stupid "smartphone" that doesn't even run .exe files???

Yeah, there is no way Apple could ever Ok this, the only way it's useful is if you violate other company's IPs. But I love the non-spercific controls, that's a very good use of the tough screen.

An apple product playing games? LOL

The app will likely just be remade for the Google phone anyway

>> ^Gabe_b:
Yeah, there is no way Apple could ever Ok this, the only way it's useful is if you violate other company's IPs. But I love the non-spercific controls, that's a very good use of the tough screen.


The IPs are licensed.

As I suspected, all they had to do was disable the "open emulator" aspect and just focus on the games themselves.

http://toucharcade.com/2009/09/05/c64-emulator-approved-by-apple-and-now-available/