Your logic is flawed in that you assume that "meta-platforms" can only produce crappy non-Apple like applications. This is simply not true.
The world is going cross platform and it's time to get on the bus. The risk Apple runs now is whether the iPhone becomes 'not worth it' to develop for anymore. Any developer knows that having to maintain X code bases for X platforms only hamstrings your productivity to your end users because of the overhead. I personally like to target more than one user set for my products.
It's interesting how the crack down came well AFTER the platform was an established brand, not when it launched. Had Steve Jobs only cared about purity of the platform they would have established the rules up front. They didn't do this because that would have been a huge roadblock to platform adoption and iPhone app base would not have grown to anywhere near the size it is now. Instead they choose to implement new rules now that they have an attractive user base and a "locked in" developer base. This is not about purity, this is singularly about control.
For some reason when this guy target multiple browsers using jQuery it's OK. But when other developers target multiple platforms he calls the end result "shit" and tells them to get the hell out of his AppStore.
jQuery is translating/interpreting that new language
for you. jQuery is more than just JavaScript it's an
interpreter/compiler for a new language.
That means jQuery has a built in interpreter. Now, if jQuery ever turns that selector text into a slightly more efficient internal representation before it gets executed, then it has compiled the selector language to some intermediate form.
Another example is regular expressions. For example, any time you use a regular expression, your expression gets compiled into a NFA or DFA. Your input text is then is "run" on that machine.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255858
I'd like to think that both sides are clear -
Steve Jobs - "We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform."
My point of view said well by the author of the article I linked - "Crappy developers will make crappy apps regardless of how many layers there are, and it doesn’t make sense to limit source-to-source conversion tools like Unity3D and others. They’re all building apps through the iPhone developer tools in the end so the situation isn’t even comparable to the Mac where applications can completely avoid using Apple’s frameworks by replacing them with others."
At this point I think we've reached the point of "agree to disagree", where neither side is going to change the other's mind.
After searching for 'fart', I stopped counting at 30 items. Are we supposed to believe that Objective C source code and Cocoa Touch style somehow turn this crapware into elegant masterpieces of 21st century design?
For all I care, this might be a maneuver to get rid of both the external competition (Android, WinMo, Symbian) and the internal one ... reducing developers on their platforms to mere contractors that are doing their bidding.
And you can't prove that I'm wrong because neither you nor I know shit about it.
So stop apologizing for them. If you believe their choices are for better quality, quality can speak by itself and nobody needs you rationalizations on the matter. It's as if you're defending your own choices and directions, which shows you have doubts.
On the other hand the bitching and moaning of mistreated customers (yeah, we are also customers) might do some good.
If Apple's policies are incorrect, people will switch increasingly to competing platforms. But that's not going to happen, because Apple makes great stuff! Other companies could do it, too - if they copied Apple's principles, and not just random features or random visual elements.