Comments on: Unity and the iPhone OS 4.0, update

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By: Robert Pattinson is a compulsive eater | linsayurbes

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By: Nobody beats the ecosystem « Eiler.dk

Nobody beats the ecosystem « Eiler.dk — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:49:01 +0000

[...] blog that Adobe will stop iPhone support in future versions in Flash CS, and the guys over at Unity post on their blog that the future seems uncertain for the Unity framework (possibly the best 3D framework for the [...]

By: Aras Pranckevičius

Aras Pranckevičius — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:49:56 +0000

@Bruce: as my comment just above your says… an update is here: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/05/11/unity-and-the-iphone-os-4-0-update-ii/

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:21:29 +0000

We are coming up on a month since this post was… posted. In my personal dealings with Apple I learned that this generally means one of two things.

1. Unity is an approved Apple development platform and they are considering the coporate purchase of Unity. Apple purchasing Unity would be a wonderful thing in my eyes. The product is powerful and surprisingly user friendly. And the corporate and public support is quite simpy, fantastic. They are then possibly discussing the terms and waiting to break the incredible news to us all.

2. Unity does not comply with Apple’s ToS. They are then attempting to discover a work around before telling the world. They may have to make some subtle or serious changes before it does comply with ToS, or they just don’t know how to tell us and their consumers that iPhone/iPad deployment is at an end.

Either way their is no courtesy given to those who are looking to build games and tools using the Unity platform. With the Apple purchase all will be forgiven, but if Unity does not comply then a courtesy note would be more in order as the backlash for keeping all in the dark could be damaging for the brand. Brand transparency today is more important than ever and at the moment I fear this is not the case with Unity. When things got hot for Apple with Flash, Steve took upon himself to speak out to the masses. Unity team… what are you going to do?

By: Aras Pranckevičius

Aras Pranckevičius — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:33:18 +0000

@doug and @Joel-Noel: Update on the situation two days ago: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/05/11/unity-and-the-iphone-os-4-0-update-ii/

By: Jean-Noel

Jean-Noel — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:08:47 +0000

It has nearly been a month since your update on this matter. I like many others I am sure are sitting on the fence of “should we purchase a licence or not”.

Did the meeting occur? How did it go? Should I continue developing in OpenGL Are you going to save me from this pain.

By: doug

doug — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:58:48 +0000

From the text:
” We’re meeting with Apple next week to discuss the matter ”

What happened ?

By: Joseph

Joseph — Mon, 10 May 2010 23:40:09 +0000

Hi there, is there any new news with Apple compliance? btw Unity3d is awesome!

By: Glenno

Glenno — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:11:11 +0000

Yep, I’m with Tonio, any further news? Even if its just to know that there’s some sort of talks/movement still ongoing. Or has there been a post elsewhere that i’ve missed?

By: Elder Game: MMO game development » Unity 2.6 for Indie MMOs? Yes! (But…)

Mon, 10 May 2010 08:06:19 +0000

[...] CEO has posted about this on the Unity blog, saying, in a nutshell, that Apple hasn’t explicitly told them personally that they are [...]

By: Sean Ramsay

Sean Ramsay — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:50:30 +0000

We are coming up on a month since this post was… posted. In my personal dealings with Apple I learned that this generally means one of two things.

By: Jose Luis

Jose Luis — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:28:04 +0000

Me too, Tonio. I’m waiting for a response from Unity people to buy or not.

By: Dean

Dean — Thu, 06 May 2010 07:56:46 +0000

It would be nice to have some kind of news. Any kind! I have actually people and contracts depending on this and the situation is getting ridiculous

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:49:20 +0000

It’s been over a week. Almost a month. How’s it going? *worried*

By: Dean

Dean — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:04:39 +0000

This is really getting ridiculous. I agree with Richard Brooksby. At least you could say “something”. People are waiting to spend money on unity and on apple too after all.

By: Tonio Loewald

Tonio Loewald — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:13:49 +0000

It would be kind of nice if you followed up on this post. The situation now is just as vague as it was when this was posted.

By: HH

HH — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:06:43 +0000

Here I just bought iphone pro for Unity. Hope Unity comments soon as I am starting to get nervous.

By: Richard Brooksby

Richard Brooksby — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:23:37 +0000

I think Unity really should post something on this blog about the situation, even if it’s “no news yet”. Silence is worrying.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:54:04 +0000

Any news on the matter? I am planning to jump into Unity with the single purpose to develop for Iphone, so any updated insight about Unity´s future on that platform would be appreciated.

Thx
Chris

By: Cascho

Cascho — Sun, 02 May 2010 15:10:25 +0000

I would like Unity to focus on Android as soon as possible…

By: Hayden Peake

Hayden Peake — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:21:10 +0000

I think Steve’s open letter should help to determine that Unity isn’t a problem. To repeat a section of the quote above for clarity:

“We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.”

Of course, this absolutely *doesn’t* describe Unity’s support for these devices. One of the key reasons I’m using Unity for my current project is that I can write any Objective-C or C++ code I want within the XCode project, and Unity just injects it’s stuff too. I can easily call out to that Objective-C code from any C# that exists within my Unity project. So I’m not even reliant on Unity supporting every feature of the underlying OS, although generally it does a superb job of doing so. The flexible way that Unity for iPhone is implemented effectively means that Unity can be view as a library (from the perspective of the XCode toolchain) — it doesn’t stop you as a developer doing anything whatsoever directly with the native tools, it just provides a collection of great, extremely useful, functionality.

Hopefully Apple are receptive to this important point when, surely, it is raised with them by the Unity team.

By: iBrent

iBrent — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:45:10 +0000

@cornchild,

Adobe has already let it go. –> http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/moving_forward.html

The question is, what is Unity doing about it.

iBrent

By: Matt McArdell

Matt McArdell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:42:53 +0000

Ah, that said, I do think developers should be able to choose a slower implementation if it suits their purposes and they get other benefits from doing this.

I guess that my point is that the behaviour coding for unity could be implemented in C++ rather than some other layer on top (again dependent on language features and libraries released by the mono project).

By: Matt McArdell

Matt McArdell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:38:00 +0000

All reasonable. C++, for example, is a language that can be compiled natively on many platforms and it would be a compliant (relating to the iPhone SDK agreement) and a faster approach to use C++ for coding our behaviours.
I guess some of the scripting languages have more extensive introspection features which I assume unity relies on for finding handler methods. Interfaces and registration mechanisms however allow better design and are faster.
Unity must compile and generate an xcode project anyway, it might as well just copy C++ source files over. I guess it might make it harder to limit functionality (ie the current custom plugin layer that allows punch through to access to OS features).

I saw mention of Unity meeting with Apple a couple of weeks ago. Any news on this?

By: David Whatley

David Whatley — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:17:30 +0000

Apple has said something official, right from Steve Jobs: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Steve talks about why No Flash. But here’s the part that seems scary for Unity:

== Begin Quote ==

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

== End Quote ==

Essentially this describes Unity3D as well. It’s cross platform (author once, play anywhere) and a layer between. (huge sigh)

This is not ideal for Apple. And their issues with Flash are spilling over. Either intentional or unintentionally… but they are.

– David
Author: geoDefehse, geoDefense Swarm

By: cornchild

cornchild — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:46:22 +0000

today Jobs made it clear that they are after Adobe and flash. BUT now the ball is in Adobe’s hand. Adobe can decide to let it go or sue Apple and take down the rest with them (Unity and others)

By: iBrent

iBrent — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:34:18 +0000

Looks like we have our answer from Apple –> http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

“If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.”

Bye Bye Unity for iPhone.

iBrent

By: Nobody beats the ecosystem - Valtech Blog

Nobody beats the ecosystem - Valtech Blog — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:29:21 +0000

[...] blog that Adobe will stop iPhone support in future versions in Flash CS, and the guys over at Unity posts on their blog that the future seems uncertain for the Unity framework (possibly the best 3D framework for the [...]

By: Dell Lawrence

Dell Lawrence — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:50:35 +0000

Before we all get too worked up over this Apple and Unity issue over the new dev agreement… let’s keep in mind that Unity and Apple have not made any official announcement. This means that is may very well be that Unity and Apple will soon come to an agreement beneficial to all parties.

If that is indeed the case and I still stand behind this as the most likely outcome of all… then the best course of action is to keep developing and not stop. Worst case scenario you can release your app for OS X and Windows and who knows how many other consumer platforms which will soon be supported by Unity.

If you design your app correctly you will be able to do this with the least amount of dev effort possible. This is smart to to regardless of what Apple and Unity do.

The sky is not falling…. Keep developing your app and move forward… Don’t waste anymore pixels and brain cells worrying about the low possibility of a negative outcome…

I read of people in this forum who are putting their development on hold until this issue is resolved. I think they are making a huge mistake. Also what about all the time wasted that could be used to further learn the process of developing apps with Unity?

So don’t listen to the naysayers, and keep developing. From a business and software dev standpoint this is the wisest course of action. You stand to gain in the short and long run by not overreacting to fears that are based on “What if company X does Y and we all lose?”… Really do you think that is what is going to happen? Really?? Think about it…

Keep calm and keep developing! Best, Dell