By Paul Davis

Flash Developers: lrn2fuckingprogramkthxbai

According to [1], there were 500 iPhone apps available for the iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008. According to [2] there were 180,000 apps available April 8, 2010. That's roughly (assuming 260 work days a year) 345 application approvals a day. Assuming a 100% acceptance rate. Given a review team of 100 people, that's roughly four (accounting for vacation, sick, etc days) successful apps a day. (I'm unable to source a number for an expectation of eight apps a day per review team member I recall reading but it would fit the order of magnitude.)

There have already been reports of automated analysis of AppStore submissions from November 2008 for private API usage [3]. The infamous Flash-to-iPhone packager works by compiling ActionScript to native ARM assembly [4]. This would quite assuredly break static analysis.

iPhone OS 4.0 now includes various API's for background processing. Assuming [5-6] are correct this is based on Grand Central Dispatch [7]. Given that applications are now allowed this freedom, it would make sense that the static analysis tests are going to be more stringent.

Who wants to bet against the idea that the new 3.3.1 isn't a lawyer's attempt at phrasing engineering terminology for what is testable?

If you only know Flash, then you're pretty much fucked. Flash won't be gone tomorrow. It won't be gone the day after. It will eventually be relegated to triviality [8].

If you're complaining about the APPL Gestapo [9], I would suggest a new tactic: buy a fucking book. Android is Java, iPhone is Objective-C. Pick one and belly up.

[1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/07/10iphone.html [2] http://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/08/apples-iphone-os-4-0-media-event-sneak-peek-into-the-future/ [3] http://gizmodo.com/5405978/iphone-apps-have-to-be-approved-by-robots-now-too [4] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/loggedin/abansodiphone.html [5] http://gravityjack.com/gravityjacknews/whats-new-in-iphone-os-4-0.html [6] http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/mobilemultitasking [7] http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Performance/Reference/GCDlibdispatchRef/Reference/reference.html [8] http://jobsearch.monster.com/COBOL-Programmer/get-jobs-5.aspx [9] http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888