Is MonoTouch now banned on the iPhone? [closed]

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Closed 7 years ago.

A recent post by John Gruber notes that the following legalese:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

Has been revised as follows:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

And makes the following observation:

My reading of this new language is that cross-compilers, such as the Flash-to-iPhone compiler in Adobe’s upcoming Flash Professional CS5 release, are prohibited. This also bans apps compiled using MonoTouch — a tool that compiles C# and .NET apps to the iPhone.

Does this in fact ban the use of Monotouch for the IPhone?

Answer 1

Update:

New changes to sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 have made MonoTouch (and all other cross compilers/languages/etc) perfectly acceptable on the iPhone. See Apple's announcement

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Miguel doesn't seem to think so. See the tweet and Miguel's response. Lets not overreact here and say that Monotouch is dead, or stop developing with Monotouch until some clarifications have been made by all parties involved.

That said I would definitely start putting the heat on Apple for such draconian development policies. Things like this, and the nebulous process that is the approval policy of iphone/ipad/touch apps should strike fear into the hearts of developers. What's next, their license stating that the only Ad platform you are allowed to use is iAd? Not allowing the distribution of free apps without iAd? Slowly raising Apple's share of the revenue of app sales? As developers in a locked down eco-system, we are kind of frogs in a pot of hot water, and Apple is slowly turning up the heat. Now is the time to explore other mobile platforms, because as they get better, the main thing holding people to the Apple platform is lack of applications on other platforms.

Answer 2

oMany apps have been accepted within the last few days written with the help of monotouch and unity, whereas I also am using it as well as obj-c, since the announcement and change in the agreement, so GO FIGURE,...the good ol'WTF comes to mind. It is a bipolar piggybank it seems.

ALSO, the last Unity Game GiantMOTO, which is under HOT NEW GAMES - YESTERDAY, has on its splash screen onLoad in big letters, POWERED BY UNITY. So, all the conjecture, assumptions, etc. is really out the door. It might say all that in the new version, it is certainly NOT enforced. And montouch is the only development platf that FULLY exposes iPhone API and builds COMPLETELY into obj-c using XCode.

Answer 3

I hope Apple gets trounced for this ridiculous policy. Arrogance is not attractive and generally bad for business. This is one of the reasons I haven't started iPhone development.

Most hardware and OS providers are happy to have additional tools and audience to write to their platform. Apple is taking the stance that its (braindead) tools are the only game in town.

The "Big Brother" ad from 1984 is more and more relevant...

EDIT

The way it is written also seems to imply that if I wrote a .net to objective C/apple translator that the code isn't acceptable because the original code was not objective c. That is ludicrous (and unenforceable.)

Answer 4

Update -

This changed recently. MonoTouch should no longer conflict with the agreement. Any statements below are purely historical!

Yes, it seems pretty clear from their license agreement now that if the original application is written in C# then it would be violating the license:

...Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine...

They even hammer it in a little further:

Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited

Kind of a bummer, MonoTouch and the Flash CS5 -> iPhone converter are very cool.

Answer 5

The new license agreement is explicitly clear about that. So YES, it will be banned.

Advice, if you want to really develop for iPhone, try XCode. If you are already familiar with Java or C# or yet better C++, then learning Objective-C wont be that hard.

iPhone/iPad is Apples new successful business, and they will do anything to keep this business growing, maybe they will not ban Monotouch apps now, but who knows there next move? So if you are really really interested in iPhone dev, instead of having nightmares that your work might be just rejected. Just switch to XCode, at least that will lower your app reject percentage. Hence, my advice.

Answer 6

It's now months after the flash debacle and it's pretty obvious Monotouch and Unity are doing just fine.

As per "Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited"

Monotouch compiles code down to a native binary, there is no "layer". They're referring to somethign like a .NET runtime, Java JVM or Flash runtime.