Is Appcelerator Titanium now banned on the iPhone?

Question

This question has been answered quite clearly for MonoTouch here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2604033/is-monotouch-now-banned-on-the-iphone

But what about Appcelerator Titanium?

The new TOS from Apple and their iPhone 4 OS:

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).

Titanium uses JavaScript but is not executed be the iPhone OS WebKit engine directly. In their Developer blog, Jeff Haynie says Titanium is on the clear, but I don't know if they are in denial.

It’s our belief that we are fully in compliance with iPhone OS 4.0 ToS as we interpret them.

I haven't found any official word by Apple, only opinions. And I'm quite confussed. I'm not writing another line of code for my App until... you know.

Answer 1

Yes, it is banned since it includes a language bridge. Also, the original coding languages can include Ruby and Python.

Apple will simply look for the signature of a Titanium project and reject application. It doesn't matter that Titanium emits Objective-C, I'm sure there's an easy way to find out from a compiled bundle if Titanium was used.

Edit: Due to recent changes, it seems as though Appcelerator, as well as other interpreted solutions and other compiled languages can be allowed.

Answer 2

Yes it has been, for now. I got an e-mail from them immediately after the announcement saying that nothing was final, blah blah blah, but because of NDA they couldn't actually say anything specific about what had been done, etc. If their blog is saying they are in the clear, that's good news, but I would wait until the ToS are official. It seems as though Titanium falls in a bit of a gray area because you write code in languages that are supported by the ToS but they aren't evaluated by the WebKit engine. I have a feeling this isn't over and things will likely change to either make it more clear that Titanium is not allowed or the opposite.

Edit According to this Engadget article PhoneGap which (based on my quick read over their website) functions similarly to Appcelerator is still considered to be kosher. PhoneGap uses HTML/CSS/Javascript just the way that Appcelerator does so this could be very good news. However I still haven't heard anything official about Appcelerator.

Answer 3

You won't know for sure unless Apple makes an official statement. Reasonable people could interpret that statement in different ways, and it's ultimately up to the individual reviewer to decide whether you've violated Apple's rules.

It's unfortunate that the approval process is such a black box. A little clarity from Apple on what exactly they're trying to accomplish would be helpful.

Answer 4

If you are looking for a more up to date answer: Apparently Titanium is either not banned or the ban is not enforced. See this posting from the Titanium forum: http://developer.appcelerator.com/question/42411/tos-iphone-os4-and-titanium

Answer 5

At the moment, Apple has already remove all their restrict on iOS third party development tools (include Flash). So, you're free to use any tools to write your iOS apps.

Answer 6

Not anymore.

See http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/09statement.html and http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2010/09/in-the-clear-apple-opens-up-ios-to-all-developers.html

Here is an excerpt from the apple statement:

we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.