ID Software co-founder and technical director (plus also legendary games programming guru!) John Carmack has come out in praise of Apple's plans for developers and its iPhone. In a post over at Slashdot, he said that the upcoming ability for developers to sell their creations via iTunes' new AppStore is the key part of the strategy, which is outlined here.
"Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good - a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70 per cent royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good," he said.
Carmack added: "The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. "The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer/customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly".
He also said that ID had already applied to be an official developer, but didn't have any insider info as yet, adding: "I think Steve [Jobs, Apple CEO] is still pissed at me over some negative comments I made about iPod development tools a while ago".
Carmack had previously said that he felt Apple was "not supportive" of games on its iPhone, although clearly the new strategy will change that view. At last year's Apple yearly developer event, Carmack joined Jobs on stage to debut the developer's new Rage technology, which runs on Mac as well as PC. ID recently opened a mobile games division.
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