While Steve Jobs thinks that content written witht he help of middleware is not good, Unity CEO, David Helgason, disagrees arguing that Jobs doesn’t know shit. Helgason’s remarks came during his keynote presentation at Develop, when he was challenged with the assertion that Jobs thinks games/apps made with middlewares are not great. his response:
“He doesn’t understand the economics of game development fundamentally,” says Helgason, saying that while pure native code development might suit simpler apps, it’s simply not an option for many game developers.
He also said that the popularity of iPhone games developed using Unity shows that middleware isn’t responsible for creating “crappy” games, as has been suggested.
Most interesting comments on the article at Gizmodo:
Odin
If we put aside the fact that the man is a buffoon…
Steve Jobs likely doesn’t even understand software these days. He’s been on the business end of Apple for too many years and whatever knowledge of computing he had has degraded and become outdated. It happens to any sort of professional who ceases to apply their skills in favour of further investing their time in business management.
Tech moves fast and if you don’t keep up then you get left behind. I doubt that Steve Jobs is even capable of writing an iPhone app let alone voicing an opinion on the matter that could be considered as coming from an expert.
At any rate Helgason is spot on: Jobs is a foolish twerp who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He just doesn’t want to admit that the developer agreement changes were purely about tightening their already iron fisted control on the platform and cockblocking Adobe regardless of collateral damage like Unity.
Interestingly enough Unity is now available for Android. Good job Jobsy boy, keep pushing one of your most important assets (developers) right into the competitions hands.
Charles Keledjian
Apple is doing the mistakes of the 1980s and 90s all over again. They had excellent products. They had fans. They were pricey, but now the difference is less. They catapulted the market interest in more powerful devices (computers, then, smartphones now). Competitors started to catch up with products of similar capabilities, but cheaper and much more open. Apple insisted in keeping themselves closed, while competitors provided much more flexible developing platforms. Applications started to multiply for competitors. Market abandoned Apple. Their lack of ability to work with others all over again. Apple against everybody else, again. I can see Android and other more open platforms to quicker than expected eat into Apple’s market share, especially since people change cellphones much easier than computers and because there aren’t killer applications that would keep us loyal to Apple. Apple hasn’t ever won an existing market. They just created products for markets of lackluster options (mp3), or niche markets that weren’t targeted before (smartphones for individuals, not corporations). When others take the smartphone from Apple, were will they go next? How long can they create markets that didn’t exist before?
Alexandru Blidaru's blog 