Apple’s policies aren’t written with “users writing code” taken into account. They are written expecting all code to be reviewed, by them, and rejected if they don’t like it. So - this is a new case.
Yes, with loadstring() and sockets you could grab code from the internet and execute it. You can do it without loadsting, incidentally - you’d just need to write an interpreter in lua. But - you can also cut and paste arbitrary code. So the ‘apple reviews everything’ days are over anyway.
It would be fun to have. Let’s see what apple says.
The problem with that is that’s a whole development cycle that’s basically thrown away. I think most of us, you included, would rather have the features coming up in 1.3 than to throw away a cycle showing that indeed, Apple doesn’t want this.
Our best hope for sockets, IMHO, is the appeals process - I am hoping that once Apple realizes that the vast majority of their users are not criminals or android-users out to ruin their business model, they’ll lighten up a bit. We’ll see.
Just what bad things can we do with Codea? And what did Apple say about trying to make the iPad educational? I don’t think that limiting coding apps will help those coders who want to learn… I’m learning coding (and still in middle school) and barely know what sockets, SQL, etc. even is. Have I made this face too many times to apple: X(
I don’t want to get iLuaBox pulled (because the App Store isn’t a compitition to make others loose jobs), but it’s not fair that thy get sockets and SQL and we don’t get to share their fun… Yet
The bad things we could do would not be considered bad by you, or me - only by Apple.
Example: with sockets, I could write an app to give you a menu of other apps, and download and execute them if you paid me (via paypal, perhaps) - direct competition to Apple’s store.
Or - I could write a tethering app that let you use the 3G on your ipad for other computers on your wireless network.
Both of these are silly, at best, but that’s what Apple fears - anything that might be seen as a threat, no matter how slight or unrealistic, to their app store, or their vendor relationships.
I haven’t looked at iLuaBox, but I actually hope that one of the many arguments TLL can make with Apple when they go do their appeal is “Look - this other app has sockets (and code sharing) , and has for months - and the sky hasn’t fallen.”