Gizmodo not only ruined it for Apple and the engineer, it also ruined the fun for Apple fans like myself anxiously looking forward to the rumored-filled days just before the next device unveiling in June. :-/
"(CNN) -- Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps."
I think what you mean is "productive" not "creative." If thats what you mean, I am with you. Obviously the more abstracted out low level details are, the more easier it is to churn out code, thus making you more productive.
But, given that you are using the same APIs (or using wrappers that utilize the same API, which is the same thing), I fail to see how you can do things differently in Scheme or some other language that you couldn't do in objective-c.
As much as I'd like to agree with you, that is simply not going to happen. Do you seriously think companies/developers like EA, Cultured Code, Omni Group etc are going to leave the app store just because apps written in Scheme or Actionscript or .Net are not welcome on the app store?
Again, as much as I'd like to agree with you, none of the prominent app developers are going to be leaving anytime soon. And, as for people who make Farting apps, they probably wont care anyways because use Objective-C or Actionscript, the apps are rather simple anyways. The efficiency of writing code probably wont matter to them.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that people unwilling to learn 'Objective-C' are lazy people. Instead, my argument was that if someone is so keen on developing apps for the platform, learning Objective-c (or C, C++ for that matter) is a no-brainer. Plus, chances are, you could make far better quality apps using QuartCore or CoreAnimation than you would using any Flash API/feature.
However, I do acknowledge the fact that objective-c, given its verbosity, is far from ideal for someone who is looking to churn out multiple apps every other week.
While there are a lot of hobbyists on the app store, there are a lot of people doing actual business -- and they make up for a majority of the noteworthy apps (apps like Things, Tap Tap Revenge, games from EA come to mind). I doubt their quality would go down, as you suggest.
While I understand his arguments, I fail to understand how not letting people use x or y language hinders innovation. If they were blocking people from using certain APIs (which they are btw, but its their platform -- they do what they want), I can understand that you wouldn't be able to make so and so products...but not letting people use .NET or actionscript, I dont see how it really affects people's creativity.
This will be the third time I will be downloading the 2.2 GB SDK on my slow-*ss network in just the last seven days. First the 3.2 GM, then the 3.2 official version, and now 4 beta. Phew.
As you begin your 3rd year, here are a few things I wish for you:
1. May you be able to work with your brother, Google Apps, to allow SSL support for custom domains.
2. May you be able to lift your 1 MB cap per urlfetch request to at least 10 MB so that your users can write some cool apps using the YouTube API.
3. May you inherit some snazzy search skills this year from Google Search, your grand daddy, and allow your users to whip up custom search engines for their apps in the blink of an eye (or the press of a button, rather).