Comments on: Nope.

Nope.

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:12:38 -0800

Here's Why We Don't Allow Flash On The iPhone And iPad . An open letter by Steve Jobs. Some previous discussion here, here.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:16:42 -0800

Here's a handy way to send your thoughts back to El Jobso too.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:16:52 -0800

Nothing new in the letter. I think it's more interesting that he felt the need to write it.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:18:30 -0800

Does this mean that iPad and iPhone users can't access Flash-based porn websites?

By: jb

jb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:21:24 -0800

Ironically enough, the formatting of that page is not compatible with an itouch/iphone. Webpage people, maybe you answer this: is there any reason that HTML cannot wrap for small screens while still having a set readable width for large ones? or is the culprit here the inferiority of safari to firefox or opera?

By: DU

DU — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:22:32 -0800

"Allow": Here's Why I Don't Use Apple Products

By: chavenet

chavenet — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:23:17 -0800

My iPhone 3Gs' battery lasts for about 7 hours with no calling at all. And it's brand new. Man am I glad it can't run that Flash!

By: East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:24:32 -0800

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. oh really?

By: DU

DU — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:24:39 -0800

(Which is not to say I wouldn't like to see Flash dead and HTML5 take it's place. Just that Apple is being pretty disingenuous calling the kettle black.)

By: kuatto

kuatto — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:25:27 -0800

Steve Jobs, may you never die!

By: anti social order

anti social order — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:26:26 -0800

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. That he can say this with a straight face is amazing.

By: kmz

kmz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:26:36 -0800

Webpage people, maybe you answer this: is there any reason that HTML cannot wrap for small screens while still having a set readable width for large ones? or is the culprit here the inferiority of safari to firefox or opera? It looks like the page forces the main div to be 650px wide. Which is why it's not wrapping correctly on small browsers. Regular HTML has no problem wrapping correctly on large or small screens. I think the culprit is stupid CSS.

By: kuatto

kuatto — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:27:36 -0800

jb fixed width is just that, fixed :( There is no easy way for software to infer beyond the explicit intension of the developer

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:28:22 -0800

I really hate flash websites. I cringe every time one pops up in my browser and all of a sudden every fan in my computer is blowing full strength. I detest trying to navigate poorly implemented (but colorful! and animated!) menus. I really feel like the developer is condescending to me when I have to sit through a splash page, or an intro, or I can't find the information I came for because everything looks like something other then a webpage. Part of me feels like Steve Jobs is standing up for people like me. The other part of me doesn't really think he needs to be the daddy of the Internet.

By: le morte de bea arthur

le morte de bea arthur — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:28:53 -0800

Well, that's 0.1% of mobile phones Flash isn't going to be allowed to run on then :( I was also a bit confused about the 'There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.' part. Are there really more games for the iThings than there are for Windows? It seems unlikely.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:30:03 -0800

You know, I'm as much of an Apple fanboy as anybody (I woo-hooed a little this morning at getting my shipping notice for an iPad 3G), but we have a lot of open threads discussing Apple already, several of them already discussing Apple vs Adobe, mobile platforms vs Flash, and so on. Is this news, or an excuse to bump up the same heated exchanges that a dozen people here feel really strongly about? You know what's a lot more interesting and more world-changing than a Steve Jobs press release? HP bought Palm. Make an FPP about that instead.

By: idiopath

idiopath — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:30:40 -0800

I sure am happy that the proprietary technology vendors are sniping at one another. The more that Apple undermines Adobe and Adobe undermines Windows and Windows undermines Apple, the more breathing room open standards get. If Apple's refusal to play nice with flash means html5 rolls out faster and gets a better browser implementation, I can't help but cheer it on.

By: enn

enn — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:31:15 -0800

Webpage people, maybe you answer this: is there any reason that HTML cannot wrap for small screens while still having a set readable width for large ones? It can, using max-width.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:31:19 -0800

with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Yeah, okay, Steve. It's a neat gadget, sure, but your 9.7 inch slab o' plastic doesn't offer better video viewing than my 19 inch monitor and high end graphics card. Let alone better video viewing than someone with a nice monitor. If you want me to take your arguments seriously, try not actively jerking off while you explain your position.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:31:30 -0800

iPod won't run Java applets, either. I'm not taking to the streets over this.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:32:08 -0800

on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained Odd, most of my friends who have iPhones are lucky to get 10 hours unless they don't use the phone at all, much less play 10 hours of video.

By: SyntacticSugar

SyntacticSugar — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:33:47 -0800

And this just after Google pledged Flash support for Android 2.2.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:35:01 -0800

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. First falsehood, 4th paragraph. It's true that Adobe controls the direction that flash goes in, but actually flash itself is an open standard, and there are alternative implementations. You don't need to buy adobe's flash products to author flash apps. "Apple, you guys were the rebles, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But are you becoming the man" -- Jon Stewart

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:35:22 -0800

"And this just after Google pledged Flash support for Android 2.2." That feels a bit like Sun pledging support for every open-sounding standard they could back in the day just to have a stick to beat Microsoft with.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:36:25 -0800

H.264 is the one true video codec, anything else is bad because it's not open. Except Quicktime of course.

By: adipocere

adipocere — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:36:48 -0800

He goes through great pains to explain why their proprietary is bad but his proprietary is good. Apple is eventually going to lose this battle. The more the company takes a stand, the longer it will take them to catch up and the more embarrassing it will be for them when they eventually cave.

By: schmod

schmod — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:36:49 -0800

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. Okay. More like 99% (and he *does* address many Apple technologies being proprietary later on in the letter) If Flash was truly open, we'd have had a usable open-source alternative years ago. Instead, my reasonably powerful machine can't play a YouTube video the size of a postage stamp without stuttering, thanks to the hilariously-inefficient Flash 10. As far as I'm concerned, Adobe's digging their own grave. _{Yes, they've done a few cool things in recent memory. CS5 looks quite cool, and Lightroom has become an indispensable tool for any professional photographer. However, before Adobe purchased Lightroom (then RawShooter), it ran quickly, and on modest hardware. Now, the feature set has barely increased, and it requires a quad-core machine to run at acceptable levels. Being purchased by Adobe is the kiss of death for a product.}

By: Houyhnhnm

Houyhnhnm — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:37:28 -0800

Flash and Javascript are usually abused, anyway. I would rather just see text.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:38:57 -0800

Crap, I'm gonna need more popcorn again. This has been a good month for Orville Reddenbacher.

By: echo target

echo target — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:39:42 -0800

Are there really more games for the iThings than there are for Windows? No no, he said game titles. Steve's got a whole notebook full of killer platformers he's going to start working on any day now.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:41:56 -0800

Counting apps or games doesn't really mean anything. Lots of shovelware out there.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:43:11 -0800

Counting apps or games doesn't really mean anything. Lots of shovelware out there. Indeed, there are boatloads of near identical common games, and every time a new movie or product comes out there seems to be a corresponding app for it.

By: The Winsome Parker Lewis

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:43:13 -0800

I get the feeling Steve really wanted to end the letter with "...so shut up already!!!"

By: geoff.

geoff. — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:44:12 -0800

You know what's a lot more interesting and more world-changing than a Steve Jobs press release? HP bought Palm. Make an FPP about that instead. HP buys Palm? That's as yawn inducing as Honda and Ford announcing a Civic/Taurus hybrid.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:44:56 -0800

Apple went though the effort of building their own damn office suite rather than just shipping OpenOffice or something because they really really believe that native programs are better than cross-platform ones. And on the Mac, which is a powerful enough platform to be able to handle the overhead of things like XUL and AIR, this is still obvious when you put a Cocoa app beside one built with a cross-platform toolkit. On the iPhone the platform is much more limited. Having the shiniest Twitter app on the phone be one that doesn't use multitouch right, scrolls jerkily and heats the phone up and kills the battery would be platform suicide. Adobe could own the HTML 5 Canvas authoring market if they weren't so blind to the direction of the web.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:45:56 -0800

It's true that Adobe controls the direction that flash goes in, but actually flash itself is an open standard, and there are alternative implementations. It's an open standard in the sense that it's a published, free to implement standard, but effectively only Adobe can make changes to the specification. It's not like HTML where there's a large committee that works on it. As for alternative implementations: they're all terrible and incomplete. Gnash, for example, has only partial support for SWF 8 and 9, which suggests that its support for 10 is nonexistent. Swfdec is a dead project and only got up to version 4.

By: sveskemus

sveskemus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:47:53 -0800

Adobe could own the HTML 5 Canvas authoring market if they weren't so blind to the direction of the web. This.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:48:42 -0800

So Metafilter hates Apple now? Somehow I missed that memo. Can someone let me know when we stop liking Lady Gaga and Mad Men? Cause I don't want to be in a thread and be all "Mad Men is awesome!" only to be told I'm wrong. It's just so damn hard to keep up sometimes.

By: TheophileEscargot

TheophileEscargot — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:49:27 -0800

The important part seemed to me this:

Sixth, the most important reason. Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn't support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices. 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. Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe's goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.

This seemed to me the disingenuous bit. If the "third party platform" supplies a bad experience to users, missing out on the cool platform features, why not leave it to the user to abandon it or not? This isn't really for the benefit of the users. If users run cross-platform apps on the iPhone, then they're not tied to the iPhone. You start having open competition, where the users can move to another platform (Blackberry, gPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, whatever). It's for the benefit of Apple, to keep users tied to the platform.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:49:47 -0800

with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Caduceus, it is my impression that Apple products are designed to the demands of one man, Steve Jobs. I'm sure if you had a large computer manufacturing company at your bidding then you could also build something that you consider to be the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience EVER! If your wants and desires for computers are similar to Steve Job's wants and desires then you probably like OS X and the iPhone. If you want something else, well then you need to buy a different product.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:50:22 -0800

Having the shiniest Twitter app on the phone be one that doesn't use multitouch right, scrolls jerkily and heats the phone up and kills the battery would be platform suicide. And we need Apple to protect us from using crappy software? (And I've seen bad multitouch and scrolling in stuff that passed Apple's review process.)

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:51:14 -0800

I'm confused as to why H.264 is the answer. Beyond the fact Apple chose to support it in hardware a longtime ago. The article would be slightly more believable (like 2% instead of 1%) if he were talking about an open codec that didn't have to be licensed.

By: plinth

plinth — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:52:02 -0800

The most important reason he listed was "we don't like third party frameworks, because We Know Better". There is the biggest stinking lie in that document. For many years on the Mac platform, the *only* reasonable application kits were third party (TCL, PowerPlant, etc). In fact, after the glow has worn off the initial use of *any* toolkit, the developer has to rewrite key parts because the tools weren't up to his/her task. And if one of your goals is portability across platforms, you're SOL without a 3rd party solution or roll-your-own.

By: xthlc

xthlc — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:54:06 -0800

1) I agree that Adobe's bleats about "openness" are disingenuous. Flash is a closed platform, as is the App Store. However, Adobe's record at being a good citizen in the broader software ecosystem is much, much better than Apple's at this point. I'm glad Apple is pushing web standards; I'm not so glad that they're wielding them as a club. 2) "Full Web". 50k games in the App Store? Lovely. But I'm not so chuffed that Steve suggests I write my games from scratch, twice: once for the iPhone and once for desktops. Without even the option to use automated porting tools. 3) It's a laugh that Jobs is blaming Adobe for Flash's performance problems on the Mac and throwing FUD on its future on mobile devices. Apps written natively for the Mac crash a lot too; but because Flash is a platform, its crash stats aggregate those of all the shitty web apps and banner ads in existence. And given how hostile Apple has been towards Adobe in helping Flash run well on OS X, well... 4) Battery life: he's got a point. I do wish he'd stop going on about H.264 like it's a good thing though; it's horribly patent-encumbered, and risky for any business to base their revenue stream on something that could have its licensing fees jacked up as soon as the standard really takes off. 5) Touch: bullshit bullshit bullshit. The iPad and iPhone already have ways of working around mouseover and mouseclick events in existing JS webapps: touch to "hover", double-tap to click. An iPhone flash player would simply need to do the same. 6) Here's where the mask slips. It's OK that Apple is not interested in helping developers create content for anything other than their proprietary, locked-down platform. It's NOT OK that they actively seek to control not just what appears on the platform, but the entire engineering process (and therefore business model) of their developers. This has always been a delicate dance between Apple and their developers: Apple tends to demand more uniformity and architectural compliance from their apps, and we developers have usually been kinda sorta OK with that. However, with the App Store, Apple has become increasingly draconian in their demands for control over every aspect of application development. I think it's reaching the level of abuse, and they're pushing hard to see how far they can go by leveraging their monopoly on decent smartphones. Steve is clearly irritated that his serfs have started to grumble, and is trying to use his trademark blend of happytalk and alpha-geek FUD to herd us back in line. I'm glad to see he's rattled; he should be.

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:54:08 -0800

I agree with Jobs that Flash is not open source and there are no good open source options for playing Flash. Nevertheless, there is much content for it and it is too bad you can't access that on Apple devices. This is really about power. Apple is starting to develop some market power and wants to use it to muscle Adobe out of this space.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:55:32 -0800

Flash and Javascript are usually abused, anyway. I would rather just see text. Houyhnhnm, I agree. I know that I'm looking at a computer screen right now, just make it a good looking computer screen. I won't be fooled into thinking it's suddenly become a television, or the bridge of a spaceship, or the set of a game show.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:56:14 -0800

And we need Apple to protect us from using crappy software? Compare: pre-1984 video game market to what came later when releases were controlled. There's a good argument for ensuring a new platform is shown in the best light by its software.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:56:29 -0800

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 argument against third party development tools is completely ridiculous. Yes, if an OS adds some incredible new feature (such as copy and paste), third party development tools will need to be updated to support that feature. But that one downside of using a third party development tool in no way justifies Apple's policy of completely banning any code not created with their tools. Third party development tools, both proprietary and free (as in speech), have been a core part of every personal computing device ever. If computer manufacturers had always forced developers to use their own proprietary development tools, we wouldn't have languages like Python, PHP, and Ruby. And if web browsers had been created on locked down systems like the iPad, we wouldn't have JavaScript or any of the other various hacks that browser developers were free to put in to make the web better without clearing it with Apple or Microsoft first. Apple products are popular enough without Flash, but the fact that a manufacturer like Apple can dictate what kind of code can run on their computers will stifle the kind of unfettered innovation that led us to where we are right now.

By: ecurtz

ecurtz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:58:06 -0800

Anybody who thinks Apple is going to lose this particular pissing match is smoking crack. If they have to write a free vector animation program to add to their little productivity suite they'll do it, but they can probably just wait for some small, hungry developer to write the Flash killer they've just created the need for. I have done a lot of work in Flash, and believe me, it can't be taken behind the barn and put out of its misery fast enough.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:01:11 -0800

but your 9.7 inch slab o' plastic doesn't offer better video viewing than my 19 inch monitor and high end graphics card. He said a better YouTube experience, and I think he's probably right: my 30" monitor and high-end graphics card are great, but when it comes to YouTube all they're doing is throwing a mass of lego blocks at the screen, even in HD mode. I'm most surprised that Lightroom was a buy-in. I thought it was an internal skunkworks. Damn, the sole thing I admired Adobe for since, ooh, PS 5, and it's just chequebook dev. Shit.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:05:15 -0800

but your 9.7 inch slab o' plastic doesn't offer better video viewing than my 19 inch monitor and high end graphics card. He said a better YouTube experience, and I think he's probably right I'll give jobs that, output device quailty notwithstanding. The YouTube app automatically filters all the comments and feels like an integrated component of the iPxx rather than the clicky-box in the browser. Still, my plain PC can render 1080p YouTube just fine in full screen mode without any glitches, so there's that.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:05:19 -0800

I'm more torn about this than my above posts would indicate, I like the technical things developers are doing on Android getting Python and other hacker-y tools up and running, seeing what neat tricks they can pull off. And if I get a pot of play money sooner or later an Android device is on my wishlist. But there's still no comparison between the user experience between the two platforms. Especially how having a slightly out-of-date device seems to leave some Android customers stranded. So I can respect Apple not wanting to complicate the task of cultivating the best user experience, but if Android ends up being a good-enough alternative that can reach more users the way Windows supplanted Mac OS then so be it.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:05:44 -0800

Anybody who thinks Apple is going to lose this particular pissing match is smoking crack. What does "lose" even mean? Apple has complete control, like a dictator. This is just a fight for public opinion.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:08:07 -0800

Especially how having a slightly out-of-date device seems to leave some Android customers stranded. Apple seems to be going in the same direction, unfortunately. You can buy an iPhone 3G today, but it won't be fully supported by iPhone 4.0 which comes out this summer. Like you won't get multitasking, so all those neat apps won't be usable.

By: I Foody

I Foody — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:08:20 -0800

I don't have a problem with apple not supporting flash at the level of the browser. I wish there was a way to enable it selectively but the trade offs there make sense. What I don't like is not allowing flash as a cross platform development environment. I get that it will make apps that are in some ways lower quality than what is potentially possible, but there are already so many apps that are glorified rss readers, terrible clones of other apps, soundboards, and lazy accelerometer toys. Development tools hurt apple not because they create an inherently inferior product but because they allow for the creation of a product that is accessible to apples competitors.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:11:55 -0800

So Metafilter hates Apple now? Somehow I missed that memo. We don't hate Apple any more or less than we hate any other big corporation that makes toys we like to play with. What we hate are people being disingenuous assholes, which is what Steve Jobs is doing in this letter. That doesn't mean we're on Adobe's side instead.

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:12:07 -0800

Apple seems to be going in the same direction, unfortunately. You can buy an iPhone 3G today, but it won't be fully supported by iPhone 4.0 which comes out this summer. Like you won't get multitasking, so all those neat apps won't be usable. I can see this being because of technical limits of the 3G making it impractical to offer those features, though. I'm much happier with them offering us 3G owners what they can in an OS upgrade and not holding back arbitrary new features of a new OS as a way to push us to buy a new device.

By: schmod

schmod — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:13:23 -0800

I'm most surprised that Lightroom was a buy-in. I thought it was an internal skunkworks. Damn, the sole thing I admired Adobe for since, ooh, PS 5, and it's just chequebook dev. Shit. Not to derail, but you are partially correct. Lightroom started off as a skunkworks offshoot of Adobe Camera RAW. The Pixmantec acquisition provided much of the technology necessary to make Lightroom into a usable, sellable product, and also improved the quality of ACR's RAW processing by a bit. Unfortunately, they seem to have missed RawShooter's primary draw of being highly simplistic, fast, and multithreaded. Of course, this is still partially on-topic, as it provides yet another example of Adobe's general incompetence.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:13:27 -0800

This seemed to me the disingenuous bit. If the "third party platform" supplies a bad experience to users, missing out on the cool platform features, why not leave it to the user to abandon it or not? Oh yes. There are many times that I'll prefer a pure Cocoa interface over a hybrid. But while interfaces like Adobe, Mozilla, Microsoft, Java, and Opera are klunky under OSX, they still offer features that I need and/or want.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:15:11 -0800

we need Apple to protect us from using crappy software? Yes, for the same reason we need Facebook to disallow HTML coding in profiles. Have you ever seen the average user? They're stupid. At least they're stupid when it comes to computers. If Apple allowed crossplatform shitty apps most users wouldn't be able to tell the difference when looking for programs. "Well, this is a native app, so I can trust it'll have a better user experience..." isn't going to happen. The average user doesn't know what user experience is, or what a native app is. All they know is if they like the thing they're using or not. It was perfectly possible to use MySpace and create a tasteful, attractive profile. I have seen beautiful MySpace pages. But I don't think of MySpace as a collection of beautiful profiles. I think of it as a vast shitheap, because most profiles are really, really bad.

By: ecurtz

ecurtz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:18:58 -0800

And, since I'm in the middle of figuring out what we need to do about this whole SNAFU for work anyway... HTML5 canvas demos (require Safari, Chrome, Firefox?) Video Playback Processing Graphing Toy Tetris Another World

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:01 -0800

The page is blue, but this reads like another Cory rant.

By: zarq

zarq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:14 -0800

You know what's a lot more interesting and more world-changing than a Steve Jobs press release? HP bought Palm. This news affects a lot of people who depend on Apple mobile products, and knowing that Apple refuses to support a widely available web standard may influence them when they are making a decision to buy an Apple mobile product in the future. As someone in the market for an iPod Touch, I'm glad mazola made this FPP. Make an FPP about that instead. I don't mean to be rude, but is something stopping you from doing so?

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:16 -0800

Like you won't get multitasking, so all those neat apps won't be usable. Umm, my 3G runs apps just fine without multitasking. I'm not sure what you mean by this?

By: empath

empath — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:53 -0800

I loathe flash and love my iPhone, but here is the problem: When I buy a phone, it becomes MY phone, not YOUR phone, Steve. Everything else in your little essay becomes moot after that.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:54 -0800

Myspace's HTML was a (table based) mess. That's the main reason that the custom profiles were so awful, because making them look good was really, really hard. If MySpace had a sensible layout to start with, most profiles would have looked good. Most of the kids were using profile generators, not rolling their own HTML. Metafilter actually allowed HTML and CSS in profiles for a while, and the results were pretty good (it was removed over concerns about cross site scripting)

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:20:14 -0800

Of course Jobs can talk about Flash's proprietary nature with a straight face. Jobs builds a proprietary platform of course. But he also builds hardware, and he sells his shit straight to consumers through stores. Adobe's trying to make some sort of (bizarre) internet / computer freedom argument for being on the iphone and thereby makes themselves vulnerable to accusations about who the fuck they think they are. Honestly not everyone else is a stupid as mefis think they are. They know what flash is and they can make their own informed decisions about what they want on their phone. Personally I just wish Adobe would put up or shut up. Why didn't they release Air for Android before the iphone? Their freakout about Apple followed by, hey, don't cha know we're in a closed beta for android. Release some freaking apps!

By: zarq

zarq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:21:01 -0800

We don't hate Apple any more or less than we hate any other big corporation that makes toys we like to play with. What we hate are people being disingenuous assholes, which is what Steve Jobs is doing in this letter. That doesn't mean we're on Adobe's side instead. Yeah, please don't speak for the entire site as if we are all some sort of monolithic group that holds the same opinion.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:22:35 -0800

When I buy a phone, it becomes MY phone, not YOUR phone, Steve. Everything else in your little essay becomes moot after that. But is your phone just the hardware? the hardware+OS? or the 'experience'?

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:22:36 -0800

Umm, my 3G runs apps just fine without multitasking. I'm not sure what you mean by this? OS 4.0 adds new stuff to allow multitasking in apps. If any new apps use that for critical features, you won't be able to use them on your 3G.

By: graventy

graventy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:22:55 -0800

I've been on the App Store. Apple's going to have to do a lot of weeding if they want to protect us from crappy software.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:23:28 -0800

Holy shit. The Reality Distortion Field is in full swing here. First: so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Who the hell are you to determine what your customers can and can't run? How much more 'closed' can you get than that? An approval and vetting process is a great idea. A coerced approval process, on the the other hand, is control-freakish and anti-competitive; you're using your control over the app signing process to keep other App Stores, ones that could do it even better than you do, from coming into being. An App Store could be done a lot better than yours, but your control over the keys absolutely ensures that nobody can show you how to improve, and it turns customers into a captive market. I'm sure that hasn't escaped you. Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. Well, sure, but anyone can develop for Flash, and they can do it any way they want. Customers can choose whether or not to accept certain apps. Flash isn't really any tighter than any other operating environment; Adobe has no vetting process of any type. Now, it could be argued that some kind of voluntary vetting process would be a good thing, and I'd love to see one happen. But criticizing Adobe for being closed, sitting as the gatekeeper to the largest coerced software market ever invented, is well beyond disingenuous. we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Only when it's to your benefit. Your recent moves, for instance, to put language in your dev licenses forbidding all other development environments from running on your phone is disgusting. You only want open Web standards because you don't control the Web. Your desire for openness disappears the instant it's to your advantage. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren't missing much video. The fact that they're missing any at all is purely for your benefit, not your customers'. We don't want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. How about you let your customers decide that? It's their damn phones. If you don't want to approve Flash for your store, that's fine. You're entitled to have and share your opinion of another company's products. You're not entitled to keep them off hardware you don't own. In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices Again, that's up to customers to choose. They certainly don't have to install it. If they don't like it, they won't run it, case closed. Putting your weight behind the development of better standards would be laudable; trying to force those standards to exist, by using your customers as a coerced weapon, is not. Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. So, in one breath, you talk about all the H.264 video that's available for the iPhone, stating that iPhone users aren't missing much video, and then in the next breath, the video that isn't in that format is a terrible problem. Yeah, right. Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on "rollovers", which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple's revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn't use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Okay, fine. Let Adobe work that out. If Flash is really crappy, they won't run it. You don't have the right to make decrees. 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. No, what it really means is that cross-platform software becomes easier, making your competitors more attractive, and putting you in in a poorer position. Screw the customers, it's all about Apple. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Yeah, maybe. But we'll never find out. Adobe has no ability to add support for those features, and thus drive demand for those features in other phones. Not coincidentally, this helps protect Apple's market share. Color me unsurprised. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X. Yeah, Adobe kinda sucks. Sure, I buy that. But they DID just finally fix that problem, so criticizing them for it seems a bit late. If your development environment is really that much better, that provides a powerful advantage for Adobe competitors, like you, that use it. If it's really that important, you will gradually crowd Adobe out of their market. But you're not willing to compete fairly. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short. The mobile market is about whatever mobile customers want it to be, not what Apple wants it to be. If you think they want low power devices, touch interfaces, and open standards, then provide those things, and if they agree with you, you'll win. If they don't, you'll have to keep trying to convince them, instead of coercing them. Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind. Perhaps Apple should focus more on what's best for its customers, instead of what's best for Apple.

By: nomisxid

nomisxid — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:23:33 -0800

At least it supports Green Lantern

By: ecurtz

ecurtz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:24:46 -0800

What does "lose" even mean? Apple has complete control, like a dictator. This is just a fight for public opinion. Sorry, I should have been clearer. I would consider it a loss for Apple if this Flash thing slowed down their inexorable crushing of the entire cellphone market.

By: verb

verb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:24:52 -0800

Who knew cross-platform would become a bad word?

People who have to use cross-platform Java apps.

By: zarq

zarq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:25:35 -0800

When I buy a phone, it becomes MY phone, not YOUR phone, Steve. Everything else in your little essay becomes moot after that. It isn't entirely your phone, though. Never has been. An iPhone is not a BlackBerry or a Droid. As an iPhone user, you're held to a stricter TOS agreement, which sort of makes it more of a lease. Apple has prevented their products from being unlocked by users, and they can brick "your" phone if you violate your TOS.

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:26:08 -0800

I'm also curious as to how people are getting such horrendous battery life on their iPhones. Just an example of my 3G, which I've had for almost 2 years now (so it's not like it's a brand new battery): Starting with a full charge at 8am yesterday, I surfed on 3G network for roughly 2 hours non-stop, and at another point I was on hold for an hour with Air Transat. I listened to about 4 hours of podcasts. And I still have 20% battery life left, 27.5 hours later.

By: callmejay

callmejay — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:27:16 -0800

Steve Jobs is like an architect who arranges it so that all your furniture is bolted down and it's impossible to change the color of the paint on the walls. I really love the look of his work, but damn, it's my fucking house. You just designed the thing.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:27:19 -0800

Compare: pre-1984 video game market to what came later when releases were controlled. There's a good argument for ensuring a new platform is shown in the best light by its software. Nintendo's idea of controlling what software could be published for their systems proved that manufacturing video game systems could be profitable, it did not make things better for the consumer or developers. Nintendo dragged their feet on releasing any new hardware for nearly a decade, and was only forced into it by competition from Sega, while the completely open world of computer game development was always the first to adopt innovations like realistic sound, 3D graphics, and network play. The FPS genre that dominates games today was created by small group of computer shareware developers who wouldn't have been able to get their games published by Nintendo. The modern game industry is often criticized for sticking to established IP and genres rather than creating new and innovative games, and in my opinion that's directly due to the focus on profits and the barrier to entry for small developers. If someday a kid has to solder a modchip into his computer to be able to run his own code, the software development world is going to look pretty bleak compared to today's.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:27:44 -0800

This will be moot when Apple buys Adobe just to prove a point. Then at the next Apple conference, Steve walks out thrusting an iPhone into the air as the speakers loudly blare: FLASH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!

By: unSane

unSane — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:28:24 -0800

Perhaps Apple should focus more on what's best for its customers, instead of what's best for Apple. Apple is a publicly traded corporation. It is required to focus on what's best for Apple, in the shape of a fiduciary responsibility to maximise return for shareholders. If it did anything else, it would be sued into oblivion. Seriously, don't like Apple products? Buy something else.

By: unSane

unSane — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:29:39 -0800

Also, he's dead right about Adobe taking a FREAKING DECADE to update the CS code from Carbon to Cocoa. Fuck 'em.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:31:47 -0800

If MySpace had a sensible layout to start with, most profiles would have looked good. Most of the kids were using profile generators, not rolling their own HTML. I dunno, Delmoi. My problems with MySpace never had to do with how information was laid out. My problems had to do with 24pt pale blue Comic Sans over a repeating background image of the galaxy. Tweren't tables what caused that.

By: unSane

unSane — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:32:09 -0800

(It would not surprise me at all if Apple *did* buy Adobe).

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:32:32 -0800

Also, he's dead right about Adobe taking a FREAKING DECADE to update the CS code from Carbon to Cocoa. Fuck 'em. But at the same time, people still bought Adobe products because even though they were not the best citizen on the Macintosh desktop, the alternatives were usually worse.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:32:54 -0800

Our 3G sure as he'll isn't my 3G.

By: euphorb

euphorb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:32:56 -0800

These are all excuses not reasons. One more falsehood. The Nokia n900 runs Flash. Flash Lite plays on numerous phones as well.

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:33:29 -0800

OS 4.0 adds new stuff to allow multitasking in apps. If any new apps use that for critical features, you won't be able to use them on your 3G. I guess I'm just not that creative, I can't imagine an app or a specific piece of functionality in an app that would be a *critical* feature making it completely unusable on my 3G. Not to say I'm not bummed that my 3G won't support multitasking, but I imagine it would run terribly slowly any way. Luckily for me, I'm an early adopting whore, so maybe when the new iPhone gets announced this year I'll decide to pick up one of those :) Or, maybe I'll decide to switch over to the Android platform, or Windows Mobile 7 Phone Mobile Series 7 Series Mobile Phone Edition.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:35:13 -0800

The mobile market is about whatever mobile customers want it to be, not what Apple wants it to be. If you think they want low power devices, touch interfaces, and open standards, then provide those things, and if they agree with you, you'll win. If they don't, you'll have to keep trying to convince them, instead of coercing them. Apple coerces its customers? Seriously? Seriously? Your suggestion is that Apple should compete for it's customers instead of .... whaat? Talk about a reality distortion field.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:36:13 -0800

Yeah, please don't speak for the entire site as if we are all some sort of monolithic group that holds the same opinion. Really? Of all the things you might be doing with your time, and you're bothering to take offense at my speaking in generalities? I'm really sorry, I didn't really think anyone would seriously consider me to be the spokesman for the entire site. 'Cause that would be stupid. But you're right, clearly everyone else reading this is an idiot, and automatically assumes I'm the Metatron of Metafilter if I talk like I am. I'd hate it if anyone isn't able to figure out that you if fact now do hate Apple and/or are on Adobe's side and/or love disingenuous assholes. My deepest apologies.

By: verb

verb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:36:14 -0800

But at the same time, people still bought Adobe products because even though they were not the best citizen on the Macintosh desktop, the alternatives were usually worse.

Which is why most of the iThing users I know use Apple products. Turtles all the way down.

By: chunking express

chunking express — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:37:52 -0800

Does this mean that iPad and iPhone users can't access Flash-based porn websites? PornHub works on the iPad (and the iPhone). Those forward thinking pornographers.

By: The Winsome Parker Lewis

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:39:20 -0800

I've been a Mac guy since I was, literally, three years old. These are the computers I grew up on: Macintosh II, SE, LC III, Performa 475, Power Mac 7200, and a 2nd-gen gumdrop iMac. In college I had a PowerBook G4 and a 1st-gen Mac Mini. Nowadays I use a MacBook at home and a new iMac at work. My phone is an iPhone. My router is a Time Capsule. Mac geek cred established? My family and I have given Apple a lot of business over the years. I've never owned a Windows PC; I bought XP once for dual-booting when Apple switched to Intel chips and only use it to play a handful of games. That said, I'm not really the flag-waving apologist type. I've stuck with Macs because it's what I know, and what I like. 22 years on one platform is long enough to be a pretty freaking hardcore power-user, and I'm frankly a lot more productive in a familiar environment. (Incidentally, I develop for both LAMP and BlueDragon/IIS platforms, so I'm no stranger to the non-Mac world. I still prefer OS X though, for plenty of subjective reasons.) Anyway, I'm really disappointed with lockdown approach Steve & Co. are taking these days. Information and software want to be free; DRM only hurts the consumer. There is zero benefit to me, the end user, of using artificially restrictive systems. But I'm in this tight spot, because I've gotten myself dependent on Apple products, and I still love them more than I hate them, but they're getting worse. I don't like what Apple's doing to the tech world. It's smothering innovation and competition. It's becoming as evil as the eternal villain we love to hate, Microsoft (though it arguably always has been, and was just too small to draw the same kind of ire). Apple's not coercing anybody. I'm free to leave. But I still love the product... I'm just not such a fan of the company. The best solution for people like me is for lots of us — especially ordinary, non-techy people — to start jailbreaking iPhones/iPods/iPads, removing iTunes FairPlay DRM, and building or buying hackintoshes. This shouldn't be the exclusive realm of open source geeks (like me), but should be the standard course of action for any thoughtful consumer who wants to unshackle Apple's software without kissing it goodbye. In my opinion, that's the best path to take, better than killing Apple, and better than letting it continue down this path believing its customers support this kind of thing.

By: jadepearl

jadepearl — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:40:28 -0800

The story of Be and NeXT is great but this is one of my favorite quotes: Gassée begged Red Herring, "For God's sake, don't compare us to NeXT. We want to be a better tool for developers, not to be tasteful. We don't cost $10,000. We have a floppy drive. We do not defecate on developers."

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:40:30 -0800

One more falsehood. The Nokia n900 runs Flash. Flash Lite plays on numerous phones as well. Jobs didn't say Flash doesn't run on any mobile devices. He said it doesn't run well, which is of course quite subjective. I'm not familiar enough with the device to say whether it runs well or not. Anyway, the n900 runs Flash 9.4, whereas the latest stable release for the major platforms is version 10, which is evidence of Jobs's point that the cross platform nature of Flash means that Flash for iPhone/iPod/iPad may well lag behind Flash on other systems. Flash Lite is a joke.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:41:13 -0800

My problems with MySpace never had to do with how information was laid out. Have you ever looked at the actual HTML? It's not about how it was laid out on the screen, it had to do with the technical aspects, using nested tables instead of <div>s meant that trying to change the styling on any individual element had to be done by indexing it using the nesting structure, which was very difficult. You couldn't just change the font size and color in one section, you couldn't easily change the padding or spacing between elements at all, etc. So trying to make your myspace profile look good would be like trying to remodel a car with a baseball bat. Even if you used a custom tool to precisely aim the bat, it's not going to work very well. On the other hand, if myspace's layout had been better designed from the start, it would have been a lot easier for people to edit it, or create editing tools. I'm sure you'd still see some ugly pages, but I think the results wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:42:39 -0800

By: xorry

xorry — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:44:59 -0800

> Steve Jobs is like an architect who arranges it so that all your furniture is bolted down and it's impossible to change the color of the paint on the walls. I really love the look of his work, but damn, it's my fucking house. You just designed the thing. Actually.. here's a Frank Lloyd Wright house where that's exactly the case.

By: Ber

Ber — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:46:15 -0800

Appholes. God I love the Daily Show.

By: Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:47:30 -0800

The more the company takes a stand, the longer it will take them to catch up and the more embarrassing it will be for them when they eventually cave. posted by adipocere at 7:36 AM Have you ever paid attention to Apple? Two button mouse? Surely they'll cave. Getting rid of the floppy? They'll regret that! Maybe they'll lose this one. I don't know. But neither do you. A lot of people hate flash, and alternatives are becoming more prevalent. Steve is clearly irritated that his serfs have started to grumble, and is trying to use his trademark blend of happytalk and alpha-geek FUD to herd us back in line. I'm glad to see he's rattled; he should be. posted by xthlc at 7:54 AM on April 29 Rattled how? I think it was a good move. Sure, we've heard all these points before, but not in one easy to digest list. I think he was more frustrated at having to answer the same question over and over again. So now, here's your list. Agree or disagree. Whoever said it should have ended with 'now shut the fuck up already' has it right. Apple seems to be going in the same direction, unfortunately. You can buy an iPhone 3G today, but it won't be fully supported by iPhone 4.0 which comes out this summer. Like you won't get multitasking, so all those neat apps won't be usable. posted by smackfu Oh bullshit. Android has differences in their OS depending on what you buy today. The iphone 3G is 2 years old now. That's ancient. And anyone that bought a 3G are coming up on their upgrade discount. But if I keep my 3G multitasking is about the only upgrade in the OS I'll be missing. We don't hate Apple any more or less than we hate any other big corporation that makes toys we like to play with. What we hate are people being disingenuous assholes, which is what Steve Jobs is doing in this letter. That doesn't mean we're on Adobe's side instead. posted by Caduceus I don't have much to say except I think it's precious you believe you speak for all of metafilter. :)

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:47:42 -0800

Actually.. here's a Frank Lloyd Wright house where that's exactly the case. There's no pictures inside the place. Flash probably not allowed...

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:47:43 -0800

Have you ever seen the average user? They're stupid. That's the Apple attitude, in all its patronizing glory. It's also its biggest weakness in connecting with customers. Sure there's a sizable chunk of the market that doesn't want to be bothered to learn how to do anything, they just want their email, but that chunk is a minority: 1 in 6, if you believe the general computer market figures, perhaps 1 in 3 if you believe the smartphone market ones. Still, the majority of the markent doesn't want Apple (and Mr Jobs) deciding what's kosher for them to do. Jobs doesn't edit books, he doesn't design fuel injectors, he doesn't try to analyse sales data from a trillion-entry database. He does sit on the couch to read books, watch movies and listen to music. He apparently doesn't play "casual" games either. The negative reactions here and in every other iPad/Phone thread are coming from that majority of people who want to do things that Jobs doesn't do and hasn't thought of. The risk to Apple is recreating the Mac split all over again. Is the iPhone/iPad going to be a high-price, high-status system with limited market penetration? Is the iPhoneOS turning into a niche programming platform? Jobs seems to be on that track right now; closed API, niche first-class languages. It's a real problem for Apple if Apple is the best developer for the device.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:48:45 -0800

It occurs to me that you may have been referring to the ship date for Flash on a smartphone slipping. There are a handful of smartphones that run Flash, although the n900 is really more of a tiny computer as it runs a full-blown OS. It is nonetheless the case that the ship date for the smartphone OSs that account for the vast majority of the smartphone market has slipped. This applies to Android, WebOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. So Jobs may be technically incorrect in that there is a device that is categorized as a smartphone that runs (an out of date version of) Flash, but that vast, vast majority of smartphones cannot run Flash because Adobe can't deliver it even if the smartphone maker wants it.

By: Ajit AP

Ajit AP — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:48:49 -0800

I think banning flash from the iPhone makes sense to me for all the reasons that Jobs listed. Has anyone here used a Flash app ported to the iPhone? If you have, you would see Apple's point of view. It turns your iPhone into some kind of cheap Chinese rip-off. I'm more concerned about apps being rejected from the app store. More transparency and consistency is needed. I've noticed this on other sites as well but Apple haters are always the first ones to post comments. They seem more passionate about Apple than the Apple fanboys.

By: phaedon

phaedon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:49:00 -0800

I think this is just another case of Apple calling out another company on their bullshit waaayy before anybody thought they would or could. Adobe rather innocently creates an export app for CS5 and gets told to pack its bags by a company it seemingly has a good relationship with. Why all the hostility? But the truth is that Flash is a shit product; maybe not exactly worthy of being obsolete, but definitely shit. They have made Flash a more feature-rich dev environment since 2005, but have done little to address some of its bigger underlying problems. Two things stand out to me: Adobe should have never bought Macromedia in the first place, and Apple's done playing the lowest common denominator game.

By: misha

misha — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:49:04 -0800

I get that Jobs is being really high-handed with his, "We know what's best for our customers," letter. But that doesn't negate the fact that Adobe IS a huge, huge power drain, that it is responsible for a lot of crashing macs, and that it is lagging way behind the market with updates, etc. And I absolutely agree that it is a hassle to run a third-party app when the support just isn't there. But I still want the right, even as a stupid user, to choose to do so when, for example, Open Office meets my needs as well as an expensive office suite I can't afford. So, this letter isn't going to keep me from buying Apple products, which I enjoy, or make me a big fan of Adobe, which I wish wouldn't slow my mac all the hell down whenever I want to use it. But it also isn't going to convince me to just shut up and take whatever Apple gives me just to make Steve Jobs happy. And please get my iPhone the hell off of AT&T already.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:49:19 -0800

TheophileEscargot: This seemed to me the disingenuous bit. If the "third party platform" supplies a bad experience to users, missing out on the cool platform features, why not leave it to the user to abandon it or not? Gruber had a piece that touched on this a while back (indeed, this letter from Jobs almost reads like a rehash of some of Gruber's think-pieces). In particular, scroll down to the paragraph beginning "Maybe you don't believe..." and read a few paragraphs from there. This isn't really for the benefit of the users. If users run cross-platform apps on the iPhone, then they're not tied to the iPhone. You start having open competition, where the users can move to another platform (Blackberry, gPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile, whatever). It's for the benefit of Apple, to keep users tied to the platform. You're assuming that if compiled Flash apps were made available through the App store, that Apple would not wrap them in their own DRM. I don't think that's a safe assumption.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:49:28 -0800

Sure the hardware and software are closed, but the letters are open. And that's what really matters.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:51:31 -0800

Play it safe: hate everything. 'cept The Wire, right?

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:51:53 -0800

flash itself is an open standard No, it is not.

By: xorry

xorry — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:52:09 -0800

There's no pictures inside the place. Flash probably not allowed... Finally found a gallery: http://www.samara-house.org/edgall1.htm

By: xorry

xorry — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:52:22 -0800

Grrr http://www.samara-house.org/edgall1.htm

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:53:55 -0800

Why can't Adobe leave the source code for Flash in a bar so that Apple can implement Flash properly?

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:54:48 -0800

Apple's not coercing anybody. I'm free to leave. Only if you abandon your expensive hardware and spend a ton of money to replace it. You do not own your iPod, iPhone, or iPad, even though you 'purchased' it. If you were really free to leave, you could run anything on that hardware you wanted. Two button mouse? Surely they'll cave. They did cave; it's called multitouch. Multitouch is far more complex than multiple buttons. But they had put so much political capital into the one-button idea that they weren't willing to back down from the ledge until they could pretend they hadn't.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:54:51 -0800

'cept The Wire, right? You're allowed to hate the main plot line involving McNulty in season 5, if you really must. But if you do so you had at least better respect that it was done to illustrate the confluence of media and law enforcement and the problems therein. Any other "The Wire" related hate will result in banination

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:54:51 -0800

adamrice: "You're assuming that if compiled Flash apps were made available through the App store, that Apple would not wrap them in their own DRM. I don't think that's a safe assumption." Apple can do whatever they like with the App once it's in their store. It wouldn't stop developers doing another build that targets Android/Blackberry/WinPhone7/Symbian. Regardless, we already have Android OS on an iPhone. Anyone want to take bets on how long it'll be before someone ports the flash-enabled Android build to an iPhone, or how long after that video is leaked before Apple has the developers arrested?

By: Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:55:27 -0800

Jobs sort of circles around the main issue which is, from my own perspective as heavy web user and web developer: though Flash may have been necessary in the past to provide functionality in the browser that wasn't possible using JS, HTML, and CSS, that is no longer the case. Those open web technologies have matured (or will in the near future) and can do most or even all of what is possible with Flash. For 95% of all cases, Flash is, or will soon be, obsolete because there is a better way to do it that's more accessible, more open, and more "web-like". kottke

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:55:29 -0800

I right click all the time on my Mac. It's fun.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:56:36 -0800

Does anyone have an HTML 5 Tower Defense game? Because I have some time I'd like to burn, and I've played all the good flash ones.

By: Dennis Murphy

Dennis Murphy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:57:24 -0800

Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash, in Flash. :)

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:57:34 -0800

So trying to make your myspace profile look good would be like trying to remodel a car with a baseball bat. Even if you used a custom tool to precisely aim the bat, it's not going to work very well. I'm not talking minor things like placing items on the page. I'm talking choices of color that had nothing to do with HTML and everything to do with an appalling taste. Rather: An apathy towards developing taste. Most users are apathetic toward learning to find native applications. They simply don't care. So banning cross-platform applications makes sense, because it makes a choice for users that most users aren't educated enough to make. (I wish there was an "expert mode" on my iPod and on the iPad that let seasoned users make more choices. But I completely understand Apple's disregarding the tech elite in favor of the casual user.)

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:57:56 -0800

Can we replace the FPP link with this one? I find it's a big improvement.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:00:47 -0800

Rory Marinich: "Most users are apathetic toward learning to find native applications. They simply don't care. So banning cross-platform applications makes sense, because it makes a choice for users that most users aren't educated enough to make." Most readers have poor taste in books. They simply don't care. So banning bad books makes sense, because it makes a choice for readers that most readers aren't educated enough to make.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:01:08 -0800

Malor, just don't buy one, ok? Steve Jobs can't hurt you if you don't let him.

By: CarlRossi

CarlRossi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:01:20 -0800

I dislike both Flash and Apple, but, like Premiere, wouldn't it be something if Adobe pulled Photoshop from Macs and cancelled CS5 support as a response?

By: euphorb

euphorb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:02:00 -0800

Anyway, the n900 runs Flash 9.4, whereas the latest stable release for the major platforms is version 10, which is evidence of Jobs's point that the cross platform nature of Flash means that Flash for iPhone/iPod/iPad may well lag behind Flash on other systems. Uh, Flash for the iPhone will lag behind other systems by virtue of it's not being available at all. Jobs is making sure of that. The rest of us believe that half a loaf is better than no loaf at all. Flash Player will be available on Android and WebOS later this year or early next and then we'll see if it sucks horribly. Then maybe Jobs will be seen as having been prescient. I'm not so sure.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:03:30 -0800

So... when Apples talking about the open HTML 5 it's actually talking about the video tag and canavas. Video is just a container for a codec they happen to like. And the iPhone deals with it by giving you a link to Apples propriety video player. Whether that's some amazing leap forwards in web standards is kind of debatable. Certainly it seems a lot more like the web before Flash video players became ubiquitous. Canvas is of course apples baby, and though it's theoretically becoming part of the open HTML 5 standard you can bet that they are going to be taking a proprietary interest in it and performing all kinds of tweaks just like they did with Quicktime when it became a standard. Also Canvas is slow and kind of dumb - you can't apply accessibility features or anything else semantic to anything on the canvas because there's nothing really there - it's just a big block of pixels that you draw on using a set of commands that would be familiar to anyone who did any graphics programming in the early 90s. But the funniest thing is that CANVAS benchmarks really poorly on iPhone and iPad. We can't compare it with Androids flash support, of course, but Android does canvas significantly faster than the iPhone and iPad does - video here, iPhone is towards the end. So basically there a lot of problems with the arguments for HTML 5 as an awesome replacement for Flash on Apples phones. Use an App instead. It's what Steve wants.

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:03:41 -0800

Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash, in Flash. Yet another unnecessary use of Flash. :P

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:03:55 -0800

The iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are closed platforms. Apple makes it clear from day one. If you don't like that, don't buy it. You can buy a MacBook if you want something more open from Apple, or you can go for another company's hardware. If I were in the market for a smartphone, I'd get an Android powered one, most likely. I like that openness. I'm kind of thinking about picking up something like an iPod touch, but nobody seems to make something like that, without the phone, that is quite as good. I've read about the Zune HD, and its browser sounds lacking. Any suggestions?

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:04:19 -0800

Are there any frameworks out there for JS/HTML/CS that a high school kid could pick up in a few weeks and make a game with? Or is our proto-developer going to have to sit down with a few shelf-feet of manuals and then still write their own pixel blitters? Until that happens, Falsh is going to continue to be dominant.

By: Combustible Edison Lighthouse

Combustible Edison Lighthouse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:05:44 -0800

Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash, in Flash. Scrollbar arrows in the wrong place, non-proportional thumb, scroll wheel has no effect. Definitely Flash.

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:05:44 -0800

Marco Arment of Tumblr suggests something interesting: Establish Flash (the tool) as the premier tool for creating rich HTML5 content, the same way Photoshop is the premier tool for image manipulation and Illustrator is the premier tool for vector drawing. Adobe is in the tools business, first and foremost. Make Flash (the tool) cross-compile between Flash Player binaries and HTML5/Javascript. Then use Flash Player as a legacy compatibility layer for browsers that don't fully support the necessary standards, including Internet Explorer and Firefox.

By: qxntpqbbbqxl

qxntpqbbbqxl — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:03 -0800

tl;dr summary: "We have always been at war with Eurasia." But seriously... the platform needs to be closed and tightly controlled in the name of openness? What a load of shit. Apple's one and only true reason for excluding Flash from the iPhone is that it would let app developers bypass the Apple's stranglehold on the marketplace and development tool chain.

By: kmz

kmz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:12 -0800

It is nonetheless the case that the ship date for the smartphone OSs that account for the vast majority of the smartphone market has slipped. Did you even read the full article, especially the update? An explicit link from Engadget, in case you're still confused.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:27 -0800

Until that happens, Falsh is going to continue to be dominant. Dominant? The product (air) at the heart of this brouhaha is not yet out for Android or any other phone. Adobe seems to be in the business of producing whines lately, which I suppose is why they found unlikely common cause with web standards nerds.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:37 -0800

Bonehead, I get the feeling Jobs wants him to write it as an App. Which is ironically very proprietary, since you're not going to play it on a Droid. It'd be interesting to see if something like the Unity development suite came out with a compiler to make games in HTML 5. I think it can already export the same game to Web (via plugin), iPod touch, and Wii IIRC.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:07:46 -0800

Flash is proprietary, what few versions of it run on mobile devices are slow and wasteful, and Adobe is slow - glacially slow - to adopt new and better technology that Apple puts into its products. That is all bad news for iPhone and iPad users. In those major respects, Jobs is correct about almost everything in his letter. That detractors, people who wouldn't care to use Apple products anyway, get into such an apoplectic fit over his observations only underscores why the iPhone and iPad have been and will continue to be successful and the driver of most of the innovations that will end up in your Android or Kin.

By: 256

256 — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:08:39 -0800

There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world. You what platform has more game titles available for it than the iPhone? Any platform that can run Flash.

By: euphorb

euphorb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:08:54 -0800

Note: Help maintain a healthy, respectful discussion by focusing comments on the issues, topics, and facts at hand—not at other members of the site.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:10:17 -0800

So Metafilter hates Apple now? Oh, I think you'll find that anyone pulling a dick move of the magnitude that Apple pulled off and then making a bunch of lame excuses would be likely to get the same reaction.

By: phaedon

phaedon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:11:19 -0800

And in related news...

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:11:25 -0800

Blocking Flash from their platform makes a lot of sense for Apple in one major way: it hides what's shaping up to be a big deficiency in RAM compared to a lot of the upcoming competitors' hardware. Apple makes a lot of phones, and if they can cut corners by only giving them 256 MB of RAM then it helps them maintain their obese profit margins. Flash can be RAM-hungry and would make their iPhones look very bad in a side-by-side comparison with any of the Android phones that are loaded with 512 MB and up. I could be wrong, but pay attention to how much RAM the forth-gen iPhone has. I suspect they won't upgrade it this year.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:12:13 -0800

Rory Marinich - It would perform really badly as soon as it did something complicated, because it would be in canavas, and then everyone would blame Adobe. Yay!

By: Rory Marinich

Rory Marinich — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:13:20 -0800

People saying the market wants more freedom in their phones apparently haven't been following the iPhone for the last four years. Because that shit was selling before they even had an app store, and now it's selling even better.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:13:31 -0800

Also, he's dead right about Adobe taking a FREAKING DECADE to update the CS code from Carbon to Cocoa. Fuck 'em. Bingo. As far as I'm concerned, Adobe's been throwing Apple in the backseat for years, which is fine, it's a smaller market, makes sense for Adobe. But they really don't have a moral leg to stand now that Apple has 85 million devices (and growing) doing just fine without Flash. It's been almost FOUR years since the iPhone came out, why hasn't Adobe hacked an iPhone and made Flash the best damn environment on the thing? 'cause they've gotten lazy and arrogant and feel everyone should be using Flash just because, even the platform they've been treating as a second hand citizen. Put up or shut up Adobe. I'd respect and be rooting for them if, when Apple pulled the latest move of shutting down the Flash bridge to iPhone, they had publicly and unanimously said "look, we have a failure to communicate. We would like to see Flash available on the iPhone, what can we do? We have this demo running, which we think shows massive improvement and would be a win win for everyone, what are the specifications you need to allow Flash to run on the iPhone OS. Tell us what they are, publicly, and we pledge to not only match, but exceed those specs." Instead, we got individual Adobe employees crying and bitching all over the web in one of the most unprofessional tantrums I've ever seen. Unreal. I've had an iPod Touch for years and I haven't missed Flash except in a few video instances. In those cases, I left the website and made mental notes not to go back. Make of that what you will. Note to Apple: I don't mind you slapping Adobe around a bit, they need it, but frankly so do you. Get your crap together on the App store and publish some clear rules about what you will and won't allow. Stop restricting books and cartoons, if you need to make rating system with parental controls, but quit being such an asshole about letting stuff into the App store, it won't scale and you need to scale if you want to pull this off, ok?

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:13:56 -0800

Did you even read the full article, especially the update? An explicit link from Engadget, in case you're still confused. Of course I did. It's all well and good if Adobe ships the runtime to OS companies in the first half of 2010, but that doesn't mean it will be in the hands of users. The OS companies still have to integrate it into an OS update, and in the case of some platforms that update has to be vetted and pushed out by the phone company. And the engadget article you linked notes that only the Android platform was specifically mentioned for 1H2010.

By: eggplantplacebo

eggplantplacebo — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:14:20 -0800

As an iPhone owner, I want to thank Steve for not letting the App Store turn into a stinking swamp of shitty Flash ports. There's already enough crap in there as it stands. And unless you're a Mac owner, you can't really appreciate how badly Flash sucks in OS X. I just bought one of the brand new MacBook Pros, and Flash still crashes on me all the damn time (yes, even when I'm watching YouTube videos, so don't try to blame this one on sleazy ad-banner developers). I hate Flash and I hope Steve kills it.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:14:25 -0800

Blocking Flash from their platform makes a lot of sense for Apple in one major way: it hides what's shaping up to be a big deficiency in RAM compared to a lot of the upcoming competitors' hardware. Remember that screen resolution comes out of RAM - so the iPAd might theoretically have the same 256Mb as you 3GS, but actually it's less.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:14:44 -0800

Dominant? For phones, sure. The market is still to immature for anything to be really dominant. But for the web, what are young developers and artists doing? Putting up short animations and games on places like newgrounds or kongregate or whatever. Student licence to Flash and off they go, no gatekeepers and they can even make a few bucks if they're lucky. Plus they have a portfolio to show to companies when they interview. Total out-of-pocket outlay maybe $50 bucks if they don't just pirate Flash in the first place. There was a iPhone developer on local news recently, they'd made a game which had gone to #1 on the Japan App Store and was doing well elsewhere. Their average development budget for an iPhone game was $80,000 to $100,000 for what amounted to a casual game. Even considering the free labour a student would put in, that's a huge barrier to entry.

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:15:37 -0800

152 comments and no one is talking about erotic fart apps

By: zarq

zarq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:16:13 -0800

Flash is proprietary, what few versions of it run on mobile devices are slow and wasteful, Au contraire. My BlackBerry runs YouTube videos in both H264 and Flash through Windows Media Player with no problem. The image doesn't fill the screen, but they play. My understanding is that Winamp Remote/ORB also streams Flash on BlackBerries, but I haven't tested it yet. Also, a standalone flash player is coming to Blackberries in the second half of this year.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:16:54 -0800

The only flash game I've ever loved http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/blix.jsp It would be awesome on a touchscreen phone. But I already went through 300 levels of it when it first came out like 7 years ago so it's hardly a factor in my purchasing decisions. Thought I should be fair though, and honestly, take it from someone who's been pro-Jobs in this whole debate: it's a good game.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:16:59 -0800

There are plenty of free fart soundboards online. Flash would kill the market. Think of the great American fart app entrepreneur, Adobe!

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:17:15 -0800

You what platform has more game titles available for it than the iPhone? Any platform that can run Flash. Is there something like the App Store for Flash? I'm asking seriously, because one of the things I like about the App store is that I don't have to hunting all over the web for a game, there's one specific spot for everything. Flash could use that, if it isn't already there.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:17:22 -0800

Erotic fart piano in HTML 5 would be high quality and appstore worthy, whereas if it were in Flash it would be of such low quality that users should be protected from it.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:18:17 -0800

The only flash game I've ever loved That's a Shockwave applet, you monster!

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:19:36 -0800

Kongregate is a pretty good gathering of flash games. Not really a store, but it's formated well enough that I think it wouldn't be a pain on a touch screen.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:19:40 -0800

pay attention to how much RAM the forth-gen iPhone has Almost no major cellphone maker whose products you see on the shelves of Verizon or AT&T makes RAM a selling point. Very few cellphone buyers know or care what RAM is, let alone begin to understand its relative import when there are so many other features they care about - camera, keyboard, price of the service plans, etc. RAM is a non-issue for pretty much everyone shopping for a phone.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:20:27 -0800

Is there something like the App Store for Flash? There are bunches. Here are a few: www.jayisgames.com www.newgrounds.com www.kongregate.com

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:21:06 -0800

That's a Shockwave applet, you monster! Fudge!!! I didn't click through to play it. I could have sworn it was flash. It's been a long time as I mentioned. I had blocked ever using Shockwave from my memory.

By: phearlez

phearlez — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:21:23 -0800

If you're going to make that comparison, bonehead, be consistent. $50 for a student Flash license or $99 for an iPhone dev license. The fact that average game budgets in corporations is so high has no bearing on what the barriers are for someone who wants to cobble something together in their garage.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:21:41 -0800

Is there something like the App Store for Flash? I hope you like IN YOUR FACE ADVERTISING!

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:23:18 -0800

"Allow". As others have said, that's the key word, and the reason I would never pay for an iPhone. I worry that the success of the evil Trusted Computing model on the iPhone will encourage it to spread, as many powerful entities in the industry very much want it to, to real computers. But more than that, it offends me at a deep level that "my" device isn't really mine. It's Apple's device, you just pay them for the privilege of pretending it's yours and using it for a while.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:23:46 -0800

There are bunches. Here are a few: Thanks, could you tell me what the difference is between the various portals?

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:24:29 -0800

My girlfriend won't care about any of this—just that when I'm talking about something cool I found on the web, she'll ask, "Does it use flash?" and if I say yes, she can't see it on her Touch.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:24:49 -0800

Their average development budget for an iPhone game was $80,000 to $100,000 for what amounted to a casual game. That may be true of that company, but the development budget for an iPhone game consists of the following: an iPhone or iPod Touch (at the low end, $50 for a refurb 3G to $200 for a new iPod Touch) a Mac ($500 for a refurb mini to $550 for a new mini at student pricing) So that totals up to well under $1000 even if you opt for new gear and have to buy a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. If you go for a MacBook it'd still be well under $2000. And of course you need a computer to make a Flash game (not necessarily a Mac, but still) as well as the student version of Flash, which is something like $250, more than the cost of an iPod Touch. The $80-100k development budget is for paying developers, artists, sound and music composers, etc. A student doing everything on his or her own time can make an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app for the same price as a Flash program.

By: ecurtz

ecurtz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:25:47 -0800

But the funniest thing is that CANVAS benchmarks really poorly on iPhone and iPad. We can't compare it with Androids flash support, of course, but Android does canvas significantly faster than the iPhone and iPad does - video here, iPhone is towards the end. From the page of Artw's benchmark link: Update (23/3/2010): For those whose browsers crash on the Flash test I have a feeling that the flood of setInterval calls might be causing it, so you can try the versions of the tests that are rate-limited to 25 FPS [I'm pretty sure the snark writes itself]

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:26:22 -0800

Argh, I forgot the dev license. Anyway, the overall point stands.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:30:47 -0800

From the page of Artw's benchmark link: Yeah, you can write bad actionscript as easily as bad javascript, that's certainly true. The issue of running too fast is certainly one you are never going to hit with canvas.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:30:54 -0800

>> Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. > > That he can say this with a straight face is amazing. > posted by anti social order at 10:26 AM on April 29 [24 favorites +] [!] Belial notices that Beelzebub is actually pretty creepy

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:33:30 -0800

[A few comments removed. Please cut it out with the interpersonal sniping and the calling out people who haven't commented in the thread yet.]

By: rfs

rfs — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:34:06 -0800

If Jobs was really concerned about the user experience with Apple software he would do something about iTunes for Windows. Isn't Apple using some kind of cross-platform middleware to develop it ?

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:35:49 -0800

You know, though the horrendous UI of iTunes on windows is accentuated by the Apple skinning, most of the UI blunders are fully cross platform and horrendous on PC and Mac. And let's not even talk about the store... yuck. Worse with every iteration.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:37:02 -0800

Anyone remember when Apple were doing that brushed metal effect on their stuff? Now some of the ports of QT from back then were really horrendous.

By: acb

acb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:38:45 -0800

So Metafilter hates Apple now? Somehow I missed that memo. It wasn't a memo in its own right, but a rider on the hipster-hate memo.

By: haveanicesummer

haveanicesummer — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:40:08 -0800

If Jobs was really concerned about the user experience with Apple software he would do something about iTunes for Windows. Isn't Apple using some kind of cross-platform middleware to develop it ? posted by rfs I honestly think iTunes for Windows is considered a promotional tool for Macs. They must expect users who don't know the difference to run iTunes on their PC, have it run horribly, and then see it running great on their friend's Mac and make the switch. I uninstalled all iTunes related software from my PC and started using Winamp to manage my iPod Classic instead, and it works quickly and perfectly. Also it didn't crash my computer when I tried to add my mp3 folder to the library. Now if only someone would get rockbox to work on the damn iPod classic, I'd be thrilled.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:42:40 -0800

I installed windows Safari on my work computer a couple of jobs ago, and for some reason the network didn't like it, so the stupid thing kept trying until my user account got locked. That was awesome. Sticking with the G5 for Safari testing now.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:43:08 -0800

Also, I wanted to add one more thing to my prior comment, in reference to this: For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X. What you carefully aren't pointing out there is that, until quite recently, Carbon was fully-supported under OS X; it was supposed to be 'the way forward' from OS 9. Cocoa has always been better, but Carbon was an integral part of the feature set. And Adobe's products are almost certainly the most complex applications running under OS X. Between the mixed signals you guys were sending, and their enormous codebase, of course they were the last developer to fully switch over. It cost them more to do it than anyone else, even you guys. Carbon wasn't officially put on the hit list until WWDC in 2007, when they announced that there would be no 64-bit support. Siracusa says:

Perhaps the most painful part of this for developers with large Carbon code bases (poor Adobe... ) is that Apple did, in fact, port Carbon to 64-bit. There were sessions on it at WWDC 2006, and the code appeared in Leopard seeds. The decision to drop 64-bit support for Carbon was obviously a hard one to make, but eventually it was made, despite the work already put into the effort

So Adobe didn't even know that they were supposed to go Cocoa until 2007. It's really only been three years since you guys dropped the bomb, and it's not particularly shocking that Adobe would wait to integrate full Cocoa support with the 64-bit transition. They are, after all, managing three platforms; 32-bit Windows, 64-bit Windows, and OS X. Keeping releases in sync, when one codebase is changing so dramatically, is not an easy thing to do. Further, I'm pretty sure OS X itself continued to use Carbon into Leopard. IIRC, Quicktime was the biggest culprit. Expecting the single largest outside developer to completely switch over to your technologies in under three years, when you yourselves took at least eight years to do so (OS X Server was released in March of '99, and Leopard came out in October, 2007), is both unreasonable and rather disingenuous.

By: acb

acb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:46:30 -0800

I think Google may have just made a huge mistake in vowing to integrate Flash into Android, for the reasons that Jobs articulates. Flash UIs invariably look shitty (they make Java Swing look good), and unless Flash seriously lifts its game, it's going to chew up resources, drain batteries and make Android phones unstable and insecure. Having said that, Adobe have a spectacular opportunity here. If they get a team together, add hooks into Flash for the whole Android API stack, and write Flash-based resident apps for phones (things like organiser tools, messaging tools, &c.), they stand a chance of taking over the Android platform (in the way that the population of Brazil took over Orkut, another Google property) and making it into a substrate for a Flash-based mobile environment. Of course, then they'd have to make it not suck.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:48:05 -0800

Apple is a publicly traded corporation. It is required to focus on what's best for Apple, in the shape of a fiduciary responsibility to maximise return for shareholders. This is a myth.

By: weston

weston — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:48:24 -0800

Adobe could own the HTML 5 Canvas authoring market if they weren't so blind to the direction of the web. CS5 can target Canvas. My understanding is that it's somewhat limited (you can't do everything you can do in Flash) but if there are rockstar canvas-targetting tools out there kicking Adobe's trash, I'd be interested to hear about them, and I think it shows they certainly have some awareness. I also think it's fair to say that Adobe has not exactly ignored the market for authoring HTML content in general in the past (you may have heard of Dreamweaver, you may or may not have heard of PageMill and GoLive). If they [Apple] have to write a free vector animation program to add to their little productivity suite they'll do it Isn't Quartz Composer halfway there? Gassée begged Red Herring, "For God's sake, don't compare us to NeXT. We want to be a better tool for developers, not to be tasteful. We don't cost $10,000. We have a floppy drive. We do not defecate on developers." As great as BeOS was, Gassée overplays his hand in this comment, just like Be did in negotiations with Apple. Yeah, Jobs' aesthetic obsessions were on display in the hardware, but it was priced fairly enough for its time, the developer tools were widely considered pretty great, and they were arguably the womb of the world wide web.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:48:24 -0800

OK, so, that search bar in the top pane, that's sort-of contextual even though it looks like it shouldn't be? And that from the podcasts view searches podcasts you already have rather than looking for new ones? Every damn time I click on "podcast directory" in the lower sort-of-contextual pane and get taken to the podcast homepage in the iTunes store I expect it to search for podcasts, not do a general iTunes store search. That gets me every damn time.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:49:19 -0800

This is really about power. Apple is starting to develop some market power and wants to use it to muscle Adobe out of this space. It's quite funny, really. If I were to buy a Mac, it would immediately be filled with Adobe software. I suspect I am not alone in that. While Apple likes to market itself as the computer brand for creative types, well, no, actually, it's the Adobe software that makes it so. If Adobe were to just take their ball and go home, Apple would be royally fucked. Steve Jobs should be kissing Adobe's ass.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:50:27 -0800

The iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone are closed platforms. Apple makes it clear from day one. If you don't like that, don't buy it. You can buy a MacBook if you want something more open from Apple, or you can go for another company's hardware. It will be interesting to see what happens if Apple ever plugs up the holes that allow jail-breaking, or start banning users that use exploits like Microsoft did with modded XBox 360s on XBox Live. I think a lot of power users are happy right now that Apple's closed platforms aren't as closed as Apple wants them to be. But yes, if there will always be popular alternatives to Apple's locked-down systems then it's not a big deal. Apple customers will miss out on the kinds of technology and software that Apple doesn't want them to use, but that's a trade-off that many people are willing to live with. The problem is if Apple's business model of tightly controlled apps and no third party development tools becomes that standard instead of the exception. Going back to video games, the Commodore 64 came out around the same time as the original Nintendo did. You could go to a store and buy Skate or Die for the C64 or NES and they were more or less identical. If a kid had a Nintendo system, that's all they could do, because it was a closed system and Nintendo decided who could sell games for it. If a kid had a C64 though, BASIC was built-in and they could write their own games. Ask most professional developers today that grew up in the 80s how they got started, and they will most likely tell you it was on a C64 or similar home computer. They didn't have to buy a special dev machine or pay for a license to do it, and when they started they didn't even know how to write code or that they even wanted to. If you give a bunch of people the power to create things, innovation happens. It doesn't matter if that innovation is profitable or even legal, if it's possible someone will figure out how to do it. You get things like BBSes, the demoscene, new types of games, new programming languages, and the web as we know it today, that would never have been created by major established companies. If todays kids grow up playing PS3s and surfing the web on an iPad, always consuming media rather than being given the tools to create fundamentally new things, we're going to lose out on the kinds of innovation we've seen in the last 30 years as personal computers took off.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:51:30 -0800

Heh. I have never been strongarmed into putting flash onto a site that damn well didn't need it by anyone other than a Mac-based developer/designer.

By: wcfields

wcfields — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:52:49 -0800

I'm torn between my hate of Flash and hoping that it disappears as a bygone era of "Web 2.0" just as VRML and Vivdas VIV are no longer in use versus my hate of Apple making it so I have to root my phone to make it usable. But then again, there's way more important things to be focused on than first world geek shit problems.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:54:22 -0800

I'm not talking minor things like placing items on the page. I'm talking choices of color that had nothing to do with HTML and everything to do with an appalling taste. Rather: An apathy towards developing taste.

Well, I think that's a minority view. I've never heard anyone else complain about the colors people chose; rather it was the layout and the fact that everything was a horrible cludge. Most people can at least pick good colors, it's pretty intuitive. The problem was that while myspace allowed you to "tweak" things it didn't allow you to do it in a way that made sense, even to developers or graphic designers. The result: Disaster. Besides, there's an example of a site that lets users pic whatever colors they want: Twitter. You can have whatever color you want for the background, text, links, sidebar. True you can't change the white background on the tweets, but anyway I've never heard anyone complain about it.

Remember that screen resolution comes out of RAM - so the iPAd might theoretically have the same 256Mb as you 3GS, but actually it's less.

The iPad only has 256mb of ram total.

Almost no major cellphone maker whose products you see on the shelves of Verizon or AT&T makes RAM a selling point. Very few cellphone buyers know or care what RAM is,

The more ram you have, the more complicated your programs can be. An average user might not see the connection, but its there.

By: ecurtz

ecurtz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:57:09 -0800

Yeah, you can write bad actionscript as easily as bad javascript, that's certainly true. The issue of running too fast is certainly one you are never going to hit with canvas. posted by Artw The Safari Results, which seem a lot more relevant to the iPhone / iPad discussion, don't entirely agree. Flash still performs better overall, but only on the tests with extra particles. This is probably related to the scanline painting algorithm that Flash uses, the more overlap of opaque particles Flash has the better it is going to do relative to the other methods.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:57:46 -0800

Is there something like the App Store for Flash? Yes, the internet.

By: fartknocker

fartknocker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:59:36 -0800

Although I still use it to do the family Xmas card each year, I've always hated sites built in Flash. Even while building them at the day job, I've secretly (actually, not so secretly) been cursing them under my breath. Glad to see a hopeful sign that Flash's inevitable marginalization has finally begun. Long overdue in my opinion. I can't remember, did people get this worked up when Apple decided to stop supporting the floppy disk?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:00:41 -0800

If Adobe were to just take their ball and go home, Apple would be royally fucked. Adobe would be stupid to let all that money go and leave themselves room for a competitor. The Mac market may be smaller for them, but it's sizable one and they'd be utter fools to leave that market to anyone else. They're not fools.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:01:45 -0800

I wish I could make an iPhone app that would give a huge, painful electric shock to anyone from Apple or Adobe who uses the words "open" or "closed." And it would give a slightly smaller shock to anyone in threads like this who tries to argue that one or the other company's technologies is open, closed, partly open, open-ish or mostly closed. Unless we're talking about technology that is 100% alterable in any way by any person -- or 100% locked down -- those words are vague and open (heh!) to personal interpretation. "Open" means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, and so it becomes a mindless bit of bullshit spin. I can make content in various tools that runs in the Flash player, but I can't alter that player itself. Nor can I influence the non-existent committee that decides which features to implement or optimize in the next version of the Flash player. I can't even look at the Flash player's code. I can't write apps for the iPhone, unless I'm willing to use HTML5 (which is limited in terms of how much of the iPhone's power it can harness and has no connection to the app store), and, for non-HTML5 apps, I MUST use Apple's authoring tools. And if I spend months developing an app, it may be rejected on a whim. At which point I have no reasonable way to deliver it to iPhone users. On the day that Apple or Adobe makes the above-two paragraphs false, they will MAYBE be allowed to use the word "open" again to describe their technologies. Until then -- Jesus -- respect my intelligence and shut the fuck up.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:03:11 -0800

Carbon was fully-supported under OS X; it was supposed to be 'the way forward' from OS 9 Carbon was always a stopgap for transitioning OS 9 applications to OS X Cocoa, which was available as far back as NeXT. If Apple wants developers to start using Cocoa, then upgrading Carbon to support new technology (e.g. 64-bit support) makes about as much sense as Microsoft putting a priority on having full-time developers write support for full-screen DOS apps in Windows 7. At some point the technology needed to move forward and Adobe chose to drag its feet. It was Adobe's choice to allow its products to languish on OS X, even those it deigned to bring over from OS 9. Perhaps it is now starting to reap the fruits of those long years of general neglect.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:03:50 -0800

Yes, the internet. That's like saying "skip the supermarket, you can find all the food you need in the forest!"

By: haveanicesummer

haveanicesummer — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:05:18 -0800

That's like saying "skip the supermarket, you can find all the food you need in the forest!" posted by Brandon Blatcher You need a specially trained pig to sniff out twinkies though.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:08:20 -0800

That's like saying "skip the supermarket, you can find all the food you need in the forest!" Cool metaphor, bro!

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:10:03 -0800

I honestly think iTunes for Windows is considered a promotional tool for Macs. They must expect users who don't know the difference to run iTunes on their PC, have it run horribly, and then see it running great on their friend's Mac and make the switch. haveanicesummer, how strange, I think the same thing is going on with every version of Microsoft's Office for Mac. I can't even have Excel open for more then an hour before it crashes, hard.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:11:28 -0800

My nephew has been playing nintendo handhelds for almost a decade now. It's a shame he's been contributing to the end of innovation.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:19:26 -0800

Here's a metaphor, kind of. For something.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:19:39 -0800

Blazecock Pileon: That detractors, people who wouldn't care to use Apple products anyway, get into such an apoplectic fit over his observations only underscores why the iPhone and iPad have been and will continue to be successful and the driver of most of the innovations that will end up in your Android or Kin. By the way, just FYI... I'm one of the loudest detractors, and I've owned four Macs. I use a Mac every goddamn day. I owned an iPhone, back when I thought AT&T was the villain in the lockdown, but it broke, and by then I'd figured out that replacing it wouldn't be a good idea. I want to buy a new iPhone, but I want to put whatever the heck I want on it, without having to go through the contortions of a jailbreak. If it was a more open platform, I'd definitely own one, and I might have an iPad, although probably not. There's (very poorly substantiated) rumors floating around that they may lock down OS X the same way in 10.7, and should they do that, I'll abandon the platform completely. But I don't want to. I like Apple products. I don't, however, think they know better than I do what's good for me. I support the overall idea of the App Store, and I'd happily pay for apps. I just want an easy escape hatch.

By: graventy

graventy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:20:18 -0800

Here's 516 for ya, BB.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:23:18 -0800

That would be the site I would use to find good flash content.

By: phaedon

phaedon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:24:22 -0800

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:24:56 -0800

Here's 516 for ya, BB. Eh, not really a supermarket, you know? I'm thinking most people just want to go to one or two places to get their Apps, they're not keen about wandering all over the internet, unless there's some great deal or service to be had.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:27:26 -0800

ere's (very poorly substantiated) rumors floating around that they may lock down OS X the same way in 10.7, and should they do that, I'll abandon the platform completely. Oh, you mean those rumors that Steve explicitly denied?

By: dobbs

dobbs — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:29:10 -0800

I won't be fooled into thinking it's suddenly become a television, or the bridge of a spaceship, or the set of a game show. That's why you've won a brand new toaster oven!

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:33:25 -0800

There's (very poorly substantiated) rumors Rumors that were denied by Apple, in very clear language. I guess that's how those myths start though, when they get repeated.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:34:12 -0800

The Safari Results, which seem a lot more relevant to the iPhone / iPad discussion, don't entirely agree. Dude, the OS X tests are not going to be relevant to be more relevant the iPhone / iPad disscussion than running it on the iPhone / iPad, where you hit single diget framerates at the low end. If you are moving a lot of stuff about on screen, like the hypothetical HTML 5 tower defence game, it's going to die on it's ass on mobile, Apple mobile most of all.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:34:38 -0800

Apple would never deny something then go ahead and do it.

By: polymodus

polymodus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:39:35 -0800

There are some arguments saying that whether to use Flash on an iWhatever should be the users' decision. However, it's really in the context of the iPhone/iPad's user base: Apple really does know better than the majority of technology consumers they are selling to, at this point in time. Because if these people get frustrated with a cross-platform app, they won't blame Flash--they'll blame the iProduct hardware. Flash is not only bad; it's also a weed. Allowing its existence in Apple's Walled Garden will slow the growth of the newer, more advanced development frameworks. And as everyone knows, in IT, timing is everything. Because as demonstrated in other news, most consumers will keep having the Tropicana for breakfast.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:40:20 -0800

newer, more advanced development frameworks Sorry, those are banned.

By: haveanicesummer

haveanicesummer — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:41:18 -0800

haveanicesummer, how strange, I think the same thing is going on with every version of Microsoft's Office for Mac. I can't even have Excel open for more then an hour before it crashes, hard. posted by Hoenikker That's probably just Microsoft's incompetence. Their manipulations of the userbase are anything but subtle and well planned.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:43:07 -0800

God there's so much in this thread I want to comment on. I'm going on a response diet or I'll get nothing done today. Compare: pre-1984 video game market to what came later when releases were controlled. There's a good argument for ensuring a new platform is shown in the best light by its software. There are precious few games I can stand playing anymore, and a good deal of them are classic arcade games, all pre '84. Yet if I let myself I could rant for hours about the problems platform control has produced in the console video game development industry. (I know I've done so here, on multiple occasions.) Anybody who thinks Apple is going to lose this particular pissing match is smoking crack. Anybody who attempts to handwave a complicated situation into a superficially-obvious conclusion by saying those who disagree are smoking crack, is smoking crack. I like the technical things developers are doing on Android getting Python and other hacker-y tools up and running, seeing what neat tricks they can pull off. This. Except Python is not really a hack thing, increasingly it is an important tool. It's important enough that OS/X installs it automatically. A friend who has looked into iPhone development says that Apple is standoffish even about using user-rolled, proprietary scripting on the platform. It was perfectly possible to use MySpace and create a tasteful, attractive profile. I have seen beautiful MySpace pages. But I don't think of MySpace as a collection of beautiful profiles. I think of it as a vast shitheap, because most profiles are really, really bad. By your own logic, we would get neither the crappy pages or the beautiful ones. It would be like being denied the Daily Show because there exists Fox News. Malor, just don't buy one, ok? Steve Jobs can't hurt you if you don't let him. Just like Bill Gates couldn't have harmed you, through say creating poisonous market conditions, if you personally didn't buy Windows?

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:45:38 -0800

I think Jobs makes a solid point in regards to the write-once-run-anywhere dream that Adobe's been selling with Flash CS5 porting to mobile devices. The iPhone has full multitouch, accelerometer support, GPS support, push notifications, system-wide search, a camera (sometimes with full-motion video support), and a whole host of new & fun things coming along with iPhone OS 4 - not to mention the next iPhone. If Adobe was building a sort-of interpreter/compiler that can package full apps across mobile devices, you'd probably lose a lot of that. It's my understanding that, for instance, there's not a shipping Android phone with full multitouch support. What it comes down to is that giving an end user the choice to use apps that don't work the same way natively-developed apps work becomes a black mark on the whole system. If you download a photo viewing app that were made in Flash but didn't support multitouch, you'd be confused as to why you can't suddenly pinch-and-zoom. Or, maybe that the accelerometer isn't working correctly. Enough of these kinds of apps get pushed through, and a user starts to think that only Apple's own apps have these bells and whistles and maybe everything else is just substandard crap. They might avoid the App Store entirely, or toss their iPhone for thinking it's just overhyped crap. Furthermore, which APIs would Adobe be tapping into? How can Apple be sure Adobe's not using (or allowing access to) private APIs? What if Adobe made a mistake in the backend of their compiler code that opens up a huge security hole? You could end up in a scenario where 1000s of apps made w/that compiler will need to be removed from the App Store by their developers, re-compiled with a freshly-patched version of CS5 and then re-submitted to the App Store again. How many developers are going to do that in a timely fashion (or at all)? The whole thing just sounds like a nightmare. Keeping everything under the Apple umbrella makes a HUGE difference in customer support. If you call Apple with an iPhone issue (provided it's not jailbroken) they can tell you what's wrong, and/or they'll replace it (under warranty, of course). There's no malicious apps in the App Store that will brick your iPhone, cause it lock up or crash, fuck w/the internals in any way, or alter low-level system code. What is lost in the freedom of branching the codebase out and allowing 3rd parties to come along and muck around in the internals, or bypass Apple's tightly-controlled system, is made up for in security, stability, and some pretty rock-solid performance.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:47:23 -0800

Rumors that were denied by Apple, in very clear language. I guess that's how those myths start though, when they get repeated. posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:33 PM on April 29 You seem to aggressively defend Apple whenever it is attacked. Do you work for Apple?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:47:46 -0800

Apple would never deny something then go ahead and do it. It's a different business relationship with software developers on OS X, I think, and one Apple is unlikely to want to disturb too much. As one counterexample, Steam would probably never happen within an App Store model, where Apple takes 30% off the top of Valve's Mac sales. I'd imagine Valve would just walk away, and they'd be right to do so. The ecology of iPhone and iPad apps, how they are made and sold, is in its youth. The classes of computers are different, how and where they are used are differences, and so there is an App Store set up for the touch devices.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:47:52 -0800

Going back to video games, the Commodore 64 came out around the same time as the original Nintendo did. You could go to a store and buy Skate or Die for the C64 or NES and they were more or less identical. Argh, another reponse.... In fact, the C64 was largely obsolete by the time the NES rolled around (although it doggedly persisted for a few more years), so Skate Or Die for the '64 and the NES cannot be strictly called contemporary with each other. Also, the NES ports of 8-bit computer games were, generally speaking, quickly and sloppily developed in order to cash in on a trendy platform. I can't speak for Skate or Die's implementation exactly, but I can tell you that no one should play the NES port of M.U.L.E.

By: qxntpqbbbqxl

qxntpqbbbqxl — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:48:58 -0800

grumblebee: I wish I could make an iPhone app that would give a huge, painful electric shock to anyone from Apple or Adobe Sorry, Apple does not allow third-party developers to access the torture device drivers.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:52:45 -0800

You seem to aggressively defend Apple whenever it is attacked. Do you work for Apple? No, I do not work for Apple. When the same people on Metafilter aggressively attack Apple whenever it is mentioned, however tangentially, should I ask them if they work for Google, etc.? Or should I just assume we're all interested in discussing the subject and deal with the substance of their comments?

By: graventy

graventy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:52:49 -0800

Eh, not really a supermarket, you know? I'm thinking most people just want to go to one or two places to get their Apps, they're not keen about wandering all over the internet, unless there's some great deal or service to be had. If you want a gaming portal, then head to Kongregate. It has a lot of great flash games (and achievements! I have a problem). There's a lot of shitty flash games, of course, but hey, they're free! (or freemium, at worst). I linked the posts on Mefi because you're probably going to pick games to play in part based on how well they are scored by the players. I consider a flash game posted here to be a pretty trustworthy seal of approval.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:52:50 -0800

Eh, not really a supermarket, you know? I'm thinking most people just want to go to one or two places to get their Apps, they're not keen about wandering all over the internet, unless there's some great deal or service to be had. The Apps Store model isn't really like a supermarket, because although people can't choose what foods a supermarket sells, they can choose to get their food from wherever they want. A better analogy would be that the company that Kroger gives you a license to live in your house also requires you to only buy food from their supermarket, and they decide which types of food you can buy. They will never let you eat hot dogs in your house, for example, because hot dogs are bad for you and have you seen how they make hot dogs it's disgusting and kids choke on them all the time, all of which is outlined in an open letter from the CEO of Kroger. But they brag about all of the other food you can eat in your house, all prepared using their proprietary Kroger food preparation process and verified by Kroger, so that people can't just sell you regular old food that you could buy somewhere else. That doesn't include basic ingredients like flour or sugar of course, because you could prepare your own food with that stuff which would be totally against the rules. Some people disable the food security systems in their houses even though it's technically a violation of the lease, but Kroger has publicly stated that this is major safety violation and is working on fixing the problem. And the houses are really nice, and they have plenty of food in their supermarket, and most people don't like cooking, and hot dogs are overrated, and if you don't like it you could always lease your house from someone else, so what's the problem?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:53:22 -0800

Eh, not really a supermarket, you know? I'm thinking most people just want to go to one or two places to get their Apps, they're not keen about wandering all over the internet, unless there's some great deal or service to be had. Weird. There are a couple of major sites that work like an 'app store' for flash games, kongregate is one. I think the idea that picking your own "app store" is too much work for people, so they need to have that choice taken away is kind of weird.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:53:30 -0800

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:54:16 -0800

an iPhone or iPod Touch (at the low end, $50 for a refurb 3G to $200 for a new iPod Touch) a Mac ($500 for a refurb mini to $550 for a new mini at student pricing) So that totals up to well under $1000 even if you opt for new gear and have to buy a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Technically, you don't actually need an iPod/iPhone/iPad to develop for one. Hell, almost NONE of the iPad apps in the App Store were ever even tested on an actual iPad. Furthermore, anyone can download the full Dev Kit from Apple for free. I've done it. I was making little test iPhone apps before I even bought an iPhone. Total cost of development : $0. Sure, you still need to do all the development on an Intel-based machine (for the latest SDks) running OS X, but you could cobble together a Hackintosh for the same price you'd have paid for whatever computer you'd have used for flash/php/whatever development. The true cost of development is in the time it takes to learn a given platform/language. I'm a js/css/php guy (with a lot of Actionscript 2 knowledge, but I loathe AS 3), so getting into this whole Objective-C thing is a mindfuck for me. But, hey, that's my own shortcomings.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:54:38 -0800

The Apps Store model isn't really like a supermarket It is in communist Russia!

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:59:24 -0800

I've loved my iPhones and the iPods I've given as gifts and the Apple laptops I've borrowed over the years and the experience of browsing in Apple stores -- but I've never really considered myself an Apple fan, despite how much I've enjoyed their products. And I want to categorically state that the irrational Apple rage here has NOT changed my opinion -- and I've never seen the need to get so worked up about a consumer product, even when it comes to things like openness and all those other things that I'm not technical enough to get worked up over. But Christ, what an asshole. My aforementioned stolen iPhone is increasingly likely to get replaced by something else. (The seeming double standard when it comes to gay cock in the app store... or really the censorship in general... also has something to do with this...not that I'm looking to use an app for that (no, seriously, I like it in person or on bigger screens) but it's the principle, I tell you, the principle.)

By: Silvertree

Silvertree — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:59:56 -0800

Why do I have a feeling that "iPhones/iPads don't multitask" will quickly become the new "but Apple only has one button on their mouse!"? I am not sure about my punctuation grammar and I have to get to a meeting.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:00:02 -0800

The Apps Store model isn't really like a supermarket, because although people can't choose what foods a supermarket sells, they can choose to get their food from wherever they want. I don't think most care about getting their Apps from another place, they're happy to do one stop shopping. There are a couple of major sites that work like an 'app store' for flash games What about non-game Apps for Flash, are there portals for those?

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:02:16 -0800

Artw: The Apps Store model isn't really like a supermarket It is in communist Russia! In Soviet Russia, Party App Store writes Yakov Smirnoff joke for you.

By: antifuse

antifuse — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:02:47 -0800

Why do I have a feeling that "iPhones/iPads don't multitask" will quickly become the new "but Apple only has one button on their mouse!"? Umm... Except in iPhone OS 4, they *do* multitask.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:02:58 -0800

Apple is anti-customer. But when someone says: hey, I like this feature (app store) of Apple, the response is: here's something else you should like better. This thread raises so many questions...

By: xthlc

xthlc — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:03:18 -0800

Dennis Murphy: So now, here's your list. Agree or disagree. Whoever said it should have ended with 'now shut the fuck up already' has it right. That would be a really awesome attitude to have towards app developers, the people around whom Apple has built their entire marketing strategy and value proposition for the iPhone.

By: AlsoMike

AlsoMike — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:05:08 -0800

Apple is a monarchist. Open source is fascist, dressing up their programmer dictatorship in populist libertarian ideology. Which is worse? At least we know how to behead a king.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:05:32 -0800

Umm... Except in iPhone OS 4, they *do* multitask. Technically, no, but they'll just have specific ways of running background processes. It's a good idea, IMO, for Apple to still supposedly be able to manage battery life, while providing a semblance of multitasking, but it's not true multitasking (developers feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:06:03 -0800

[appstore witejokein: SovietRussia recpient:YOU]

By: polymodus

polymodus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:06:59 -0800

Sorry, those are banned. I was referring to HTML5, in comparison to Flash. You are referring to various cross-compilation frameworks. And those should be banned--that is, by Apple, for its devices. Mobile devices are not general purpose computers. When developers write to these meta-compilers as opposed to unique APIs of different mobile devices, it is a loss to consumers. Maybe one could argue that incentives are better than banning. But Apple's stance on disallowing cross-compilation at a time when mobile technology standards are still nascent--I can see that

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:06:59 -0800

From what i can tell OS 4s multitasking is actually a hell of a lot like Windows Phone 7s not-multitasking.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:07:35 -0800

I want to buy a new iPhone, but I want to put whatever the heck I want on it The interesting thing about Apple is how very quickly they raise the baseline. It wasn't too many years ago when you couldn't get a single phone that wasn't a frustrating exercise in bullshit. Now that there's really a pretty great one, it's all "yes, but it isn't open". If you care so much about your ability to put what you like on the phone, pay the $99 and get to put whatever you like on the phone, no jailbreak required. It's how I got iProxy, for instance. If you don't want to support them, then go to Android or Palm. Just please god everyone with similar complaints stop girning about this. It's not a surprise; it's not going to change. Apple watchers have known since at least 1997 that this is how it'd be. If you want the shiny, put up. If you don't, go elsewhere. Some high-profile Mac people went to Linux when DRM became too onerous on OS X. Ogg worshippers shunned the iPod. What didn't happen was Apple changing tack.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:08:59 -0800

"I don't think most care about getting their Apps from another place, they're happy to do one stop shopping." Yo dawg, I herd u liek iPhones so we made your car so it can only drive to one store.

By: Caduceus

Caduceus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:11:35 -0800

I don't know that many people particularly paid attention, and rightly so, but for what it's worth, I engaged in some threadshitting above, and I apologize for that. Carry on.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:12:03 -0800

Eh, Apple isn't going to change on this because it's one of their selling points in regards to the business plan for their mobile devices. And they are making money hand over fist on the proposition that their app store distribution model greatly reduces the risks of malware or software that makes your system unusable through bad configuration. Likewise, Adobe isn't going to change on this, because they make their millions on the idea that you need Flash and their tools to produce cutting-edge web content. Of course, it annoys those of us who don't like aggressively-managed software environments. But that's aside the point.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:16:15 -0800

Yo dawg, I herd u liek iPhones so we made your car so it can only drive to one store. They're not going TELL you it only goes to one store, they'll just build such a gorgeous road to their beautiful store and you'll never wonder about other stores. Nyah nyah.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:20:18 -0800

A lot of people hate flash, and alternatives are becoming more prevalent. I can't wait for <canvas> pop-up ads to become more ubiquitous.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:20:46 -0800

I must say that the sheer drudgery of managing iTunes music (I live in Canada, and iTunes is the only option to purchase music online) has pushed me to start downloading torrented files. Of course, for now I'm only download music that I've actually purchased first off of iTunes or in the store, but it would be nice if Apple actually cared more about customer satisfaction rather than customer entanglement.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:22:10 -0800

I live in Canada, and iTunes is the only option to purchase music online emusic.com.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:22:17 -0800

Blazecock Pileon: That detractors, people who wouldn't care to use Apple products anyway, get into such an apoplectic fit over his observations only underscores why the iPhone and iPad have been and will continue to be successful and the driver of most of the innovations that will end up in your Android or Kin. By the way, just FYI... I'm one of the loudest detractors, and I've owned four Macs. I use a Mac every goddamn day. I owned an iPhone, back when I thought AT&T was the villain in the lockdown, but it broke, and by then I'd figured out that replacing it wouldn't be a good idea. What never fails to amaze me is how this particular exchange always crops up every time there's a discussion of Apple with one or more evangelists involved. There has to be some repetition of the incestuous litany of "I'm mainly a Mac user!" before an opinion is worth even deigning to acknowledge, let alone take seriously. I don't own Apple products, because I have serious problems with their pricing models, hardware setups, software development ethos, and interface design. When I've had to use them, I've found them counterintuitive and underpowered, and that the layers of obfuscation get in the way of getting any real work done. However, since I don't own Apple products, all those complaints are apparently meaningless. All the "detractors" are people who "wouldn't care to use Apple products anyway", ignoring entirely that maybe the reason they don't use Apple products are the same things they're objecting to here. I'm just a hater. For my opinion to have weight, I have to use Apple despite what I see to be deal-breaking flaws. How fucked up is this mindset?

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:22:56 -0800

It understands what an album is, but as far as I can tell there is no way to directly burn an album to CD - you have to set up a playlist. WTF, obsessed-with-playlists-UI?

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:23:24 -0800

I must say that the sheer drudgery of managing iTunes music Can you elaborate on this?

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:23:27 -0800

I can't wait for The wonder of iAds!

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:24:15 -0800

Turn this sentence from Jobs: "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." Into this: "We cannot accept an outcome where our apps are blocked from using innovations and enhancements because Apple doesn't approve." Just sayin'. (source)

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:25:44 -0800

This is meant to please any non-techies wondering about it, I think. What's interesting is that Jobs hardly mentions what I think must be the real reason for wanting to kill Flash: because Adobe insists on keeping it to a 32-bit binary, whereas Apple seems to be looking to move to an exclusively 64-bit platform. I imagine Steve's talked to Adobe about fixing this and helping him move ahead, and he was apparently unsatisfied with whatever their answer was ("uh, we'll work on it" or "we'll get to it when we get to it") - which would be why he's made some cracks about them being lazy and unwilling to move their products into the next generation of devices. There's a very well-written rundown of the possibility that Apple is dissing Flash because of its desire to boost hardware speed over here. Steve Cheney points out there that Apple's own metrics might be showing them that iPhone OS 4.0 could boost processing speed by 50%. That would be pretty much an insane jump in speed, noticeable to all users. So I have a feeling Steve's trying to push forward in this area in order to get to the point where they don't have to wait for Flash to catch up with the architecture.

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:28:13 -0800

s the iPhone/iPad going to be a high-price, high-status system with limited market penetration? Is the iPhoneOS turning into a niche programming platform? Jobs seems to be on that track right now; closed API, niche first-class languages. It's a real problem for Apple if Apple is the best developer for the device. I think what may be going on here is that fragmentation on these devices causes some problems, such as your users getting confused over the distinction between plugins and content, not to mention the notorious instability of Flash and other plugins on certain platforms. I think the Mac is more a platform Jobs sees as being simple enough for everyone. The "elite" part just comes from the design and relative absence of cheap quality - and prices. A major source of frustration for pc users is the fragmentation, because many users do not care whether the platform is open or not. They mostly do not have opinions about computer design philosophy and just want it to do the things they want it to do. A loud minority exists - myself among them - who wish for something more, for open platforms and low barriers to entry for developers, mostly technical and/or professional users. But most people are going to be far more concerned about whether they get frustrated in trying to use their computer or gadget. Unfortunately, this also means focus on power users and productivity is not as emphasized. You can still get a Mac tower if you want a powerful, open desktop platform. But the iPad is an appliance, like the iPhone, introduced at a high price point to help cover the initial high costs of manufacturing and R&D, which will come down, meaning sales go up as it becomes more broadly adopted, and everyone talks about it and everyone wants one. It's not a desktop, and to give Jobs the benefit of the doubt, I think he's probably on the right track.

By: graventy

graventy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:35:19 -0800

I don't know that many people particularly paid attention, and rightly so, but for what it's worth, I engaged in some threadshitting above, and I apologize for that. Carry on. We noticed, but we forgive you.

By: weston

weston — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:35:53 -0800

Unless we're talking about technology that is 100% alterable in any way by any person -- or 100% locked down -- those words are vague and open (heh!) to personal interpretation. "Open" means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, and so it becomes a mindless bit of bullshit spin. I don't entirely disagree with this comment -- people do abuse "open" to mean what they want it to mean, and this whole discussion really does get confounded by the different platforms here -- but I can't agree that (a) there are no useful and important distinctions between 0 and 100% for a platform and (b) that it's impossible to make a meaningful comparison between different platforms and assign either relative positions or scoring (and it's important to note that in this discussion, it's not really Apple's platform vs Adobe's platform, it's three different platforms: Apple Mobile, Flash, and the open web-ish HTML/JavaScript/CSS). Regarding (a): there are some fairly relevant standard questions about openness. Is there a published spec? Is there an accessible community or standards body working on the spec, or is it largely one person/organization? Is the source to the runtime or a reference runtime available? Can it be forked? Is there open source for targeting the runtime, or is it all vendor controlled? Can the targeting tools be forked? Is there any way in which the vendor inserts themselves between the developer and the end user? How much each of these matters is going to vary from person to person -- I think they're objective questions, but the value of the answer may differ in weight depending on your perspective, and I suspect that's one big source of the fluidity surrounding discussion of "openness," possibly as significant as any weasiliness going on. But I still think they're useful guides between 0 and 100%, particularly if you know how you weigh answers to those questions. Now you can take those questions as a guide, and as long as you lump in the Open Web with Apple or Adobe (as Jobs did with his letter), you're going to be confounding things. The fact is that both Apple and Adobe support it in their products to some extent, but it's neither their platform and it probably should be compared against their platforms as much as with them. When I run through those questions, the conclusion I come to is: 1) The Open Web is more open than Flash or Apple Mobile. Surprise. Participatory standards bodies, even ones weighed down with near monomaniacal players, are hashing out ideas, there's a bunch of different runtimes, at least two that are open source, and anybody can target. 2) Flash has a single vendor largely dictating spec and controlling the main (closed) runtime. But on the other hand, the runtime is in theory re-implementable, even if in practice it hasn't been done right, and it's definitely targetable by a number of different tools, some of which are totally open. There is no insertion of the vendor between the customer and the end user. In practical terms, that means that a developer can do pretty much any damn thing they want on the platform, short of addressing shortcomings in the runtime itself. 3) Apple mobile has a single vendor largely dictating spec and controlling the main (largely closed) runtime. The runtime might in theory be re-implementable and the GNUStep folks will probably try to do it and be completely ignored by 99% of the industry. The runtime is in theory targetable by a number of different tools, but because the vendor inserts themselves between the programmer and the end user, and requires the use of their toolchain (and in fact, a limited subset of languages and libraries) among other restrictions, some of which may have good reasons, others of which may be totally arbitrary, you're limited to their tools no matter what else you or anyone else can build. The Open Web > Flash > Apple Mobile in terms of open-ness.

By: Baldons

Baldons — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:41:16 -0800

Hey, Apple detractors: If you're right, if the user always knows the right thing if he can make hard choices in order to be free, then he'll flock to Android or other open environments. Apple will have to adapt or die. If Apple's right, if the user needs to be guided, if he doesn't always know what he needs, then the iDevices will prosper, and Android will remain a minority choice for tinkerers, customization-lovers, open source advocates. Simple, no? We'll see. I like to have a choice. A choice between an open, messy environment and a closed, quality-controlled one. For now, I choose the latter. Why do you think I shouldn't have that choice?

By: weston

weston — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:44:12 -0800

Oh, and RE: Adobe's trip from Carbon to Cocoa. Anybody know when iTunes completed that journey? Is it actually done yet? Just sayin'.

By: Silvertree

Silvertree — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:47:22 -0800

Umm... Except in iPhone OS 4, they *do* multitask. My point exactly. That statement will become the BS line that is trotted out instead of the whole "one button mouse" statement that people always bring out in a flame war.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:49:16 -0800

How is Apple refusing Flash like a writing desk?

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:50:16 -0800

I'm just a hater. For my opinion to have weight, I have to use Apple despite what I see to be deal-breaking flaws. How fucked up is this mindset? Totally agreed. I think the underlying argument is, "but they just don't understand how much better it is. Apple products are so good that only those who are unfamiliar with the product would criticize." It's a way of dismissing the arguments without actually dealing with them, kind of like the old conservative canard, "oh, he's just a liberal"... ie, you can ignore him safely without any of that inconvenient thinking. In actual fact, I know Apple products very well. I like their laptops in particular. I find the hardware engineering to be compellingly better than competitive offerings, and the tradeoffs (slow video, mostly) are generally worth it. And I was quite fond of the iPhone, although the limitations bugged me. I was very excited when the dev kits were first announced. I had all kinds of ideas for things to do with it. Talk about crushing disappointment when I found out how awful the terms were. And, in all honesty, it continues to mystify me that people can seriously argue that an inescapable software ecosystem is somehow better for them. Ecosystem, sure. But locked hardware? Did they buy DRMed music, too? I mean, what the heck are they thinking? If you only want to use Apple-approved software, I can totally buy that. It makes sense to me. But why on bloody earth would you accept Apple's continued absolute control over hardware you've bought and paid for? Why would you trust that any corporation will always do things that you agree with, and will always make decisions that are in your best interest? Why would you ever make yourself dependent on any corporation to not be evil, especially when they're already being evil right in front of you? Sometimes, I find people's thinking processes to be exceptionally alien.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:52:20 -0800

So, what's a good non-Apple alternative to the iPod Touch? I want a PDA-MP3 Player hybrid that doesn't come with a phone. Anything that runs Android? I'd particularly like the ability to browse the web and watch Youtube.

By: chavenet

chavenet — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:52:28 -0800

Antifuse: Starting with a full charge at 8am yesterday, I surfed on 3G network for roughly 2 hours non-stop, and at another point I was on hold for an hour with Air Transat. I listened to about 4 hours of podcasts. And I still have 20% battery life left, 27.5 hours later. Mine does that too! It's only when I pull the plug out of the wall that the battery lifespan drops to +/- 7 hours. And that's with no talking, and not much surfing. Seriously, maybe it's like a muscle: I need to use it more to get the battery life up.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:52:34 -0800

Arrow keys are the new arrow keys.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:53:35 -0800

What about non-game Apps for Flash, are there portals for those? I don't think there are really many stand-alone flash apps that are not games. There are site-specific apps that integrate with a particular website, but you need to use the website to know about them anyway, so it's rather moot.

The interesting thing about Apple is how very quickly they raise the baseline. It wasn't too many years ago when you couldn't get a single phone that wasn't a frustrating exercise in bullshit. Now that there's really a pretty great one, it's all "yes, but it isn't open".

You couldn't really get an open phone IN THE US. Mainly because the carriers wanted to keep their locked-down ringtone markets. I think there were a few expensive "serious business" phones that technically could be programmed (like windows mobile/blackberry) but they weren't consumer focused at all. But people in other countries had lots of options.

This is meant to please any non-techies wondering about it, I think. What's interesting is that Jobs hardly mentions what I think must be the real reason for wanting to kill Flash: because Adobe insists on keeping it to a 32-bit binary, whereas Apple seems to be looking to move to an exclusively 64-bit platform.

64 bit machines aren't faster then 32 bit machines unless you're dealing with programs that use a lot of 64 bit integers. Most programs use 32 bit integers for everything. The performance boost you do get is being able to index more then 4gb of ram. But the iPad/iPhone only has 256 megs of ram. So it's really a non-issue here. Also, that makes no sense. When you cross compile for another architecture, like ARM, it doesn't matter if you compile to 64 or 32 bit instruction code, you have to do the same amount of debugging. If Adobe is going to start targeting different platforms, they'll need to make the player work on all of them. So I don't think the 32/64 bit thing is a big issue.

By: hellojed

hellojed — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:55:05 -0800

I once e-mailed Steve Jobs, I asked him what his favorite color was. He never got back to me.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:55:32 -0800

ALERT THE CONSUMERIST!

By: Dee Xtrovert

Dee Xtrovert — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:56:42 -0800

People bitch and moan, but I love all the Apple stuff I've ever bought (I currently own an iMac, an iPad, a MacBook and an iPod) and have had no real problems (ever) with any of them - the sole excpetion being I can't currently watch hulu.com stuff. No big deal. Every non-Apple product I've worked with has been, in comparison, a piece of crap. Nobody and nothing is perfect, but I'm going to save my complaints for the many more grievous things on Earth than Apple products and propaganda. And my new iPad? I watched streaming movies from Netflix for more than 14 hours without plugging it in - not all at once, of course! And when I did plug it in, it said I still had 27% of my battery life left. Several times I've found the truth behind Apple to be better than what they advertise - that's one example.

By: yiftach

yiftach — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:58:30 -0800

Adobe's response.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:01:36 -0800

I agree that there are degrees of freedom that users and developers have with various technologies. But I think we need a distinct term for what I think of as "open." It doesn't need to be the word "open," but we need some word for it, so that when companies claim they have open technologies, we can say, "do you mean [term]?" and it will be unambiguous what they mean. To me, open (or whatever you want to call it) means three things: 1) the spec for the source-file format is published so that anyone can build tools and compilers that process it. 2) the spec for readers/interpreters is published so that anyone can build a reader/viewer/interpreter that takes the above source format as input and give you the expected output. 3) there is an independent body that monitors both specs and certifies new features as canonical or not. HTML is a good example. The spec for the format in open and anyone can build a reader for it. One problem in this debate is that almost all parties -- people here and people in the companies involved -- want to simplify things that are actually quite complicated. The truth is, both Apple and Adobe are tying to satisfy at least three distinct groups of people: stockholders, developers and end users. And there isn't just one sort of end user. There's hipster, tech-savvy guy and there's grandma (and there are many other types). On top of this, top-level people in those companies have various philosophies (independent of their business strategies) about how technologies should work. On top of THAT, there's the day-to-day mess of running companies, which involves mistakes, missed deadlines, bad predictions and all sorts of other random events. So nothing is pure. Is Apple dedicated to X? Partly. Is Adobe going to implement Y? Partly. Yet we get statement after statement, from both insiders and outsiders, claiming that Apple IS this sort of company and Adobe's agenda IS blag blag blah. Those companies agendas are to maximize their profits, to look good to their customers, to please their developers, to please their stockholders, to take care of their employees and to realize the visions of their decision makers. When two or more of those goals contradict each other, the result is messy and somewhat unpredictable. On top of that, there's a huge layer of spin that words stolen from ethics. So and so is evil. So and so doesn't care about users. So and so believes in blah blah blah. Such language takes the chaotic truth and tries to fenagle it into a simplistic mythos. And what amazes me that though people are entrenched in their various sides, they all seem to agree on one thing: to collaboratively build the mythos. It's like none of us can handle the realities of capitalism, so we require this veneer to ride on top of it.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:04:39 -0800

But why on bloody earth would you accept Apple's continued absolute control over hardware you've bought and paid for? It doesn't seem that big of a deal at this point. I honestly can't see why you're so worked up about it. Why would you ever make yourself dependent on any corporation to not be evil, especially when they're already being evil right in front of you? You could ask that question of any company, from the one that makes the pen I'm using, or the clothes I have on or the one that farmed the orange I'm about to eat. I don't consider Apple's actions evil. Arrogant and headstrong, sure? But far from evil. They're attempting to make a walled garden, for lack of a better term, I'm aware of that and the fact that are things outside of the garden (which is good, IMO). I just happen to like their garden and don't see the walls as a barrier.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:07:18 -0800

Adobe's response. I'm dying to hear what Adobe will say, 'cause you know they'll say something.

By: gum

gum — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:10:46 -0800

I just happen to like their garden and don't see the walls as a barrier. I finally understand Apple. It's a company that makes products for people who don't see walls as barriers!

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:11:34 -0800

Flash can be RAM-hungry and would make their iPhones look very bad in a side-by-side comparison with any of the Android phones that are loaded with 512 MB and up. Heck, even the web is pretty RAM hungry. Load up The Big Picture on an iPad and see it stop showing photos about halfway through. It's pretty bad for a brand new device with no upgrade ability. And if you use multiple tabs, it almost always has to reload the content when you switch, since it doesn't have enough RAM. Really the big problem with skimping on RAM is that it means apps can't properly cache, which causes performance issues.

By: pentagoet

pentagoet — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:13:32 -0800

I don't care what anyone says, Betamax IS the better platform.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:13:59 -0800

Baldons: I like to have a choice. A choice between an open, messy environment and a closed, quality-controlled one. For now, I choose the latter. Why do you think I shouldn't have that choice? See, that's a false dichotomy; you've bought the party line that the walls are required for the garden to work. This is not at all the case. You can have exactly what you want, exactly what you want, without impairing my use of the device in any way. Apple just needs to give me a buried Control Panel setting somewhere to disable enforcement of signed apps, and then to absolutely forbid any App Store app from changing it. Since they review all the apps in their store, they can do that. Voila, we both have what we want. Everyone's happy. You get a closed, quality-controlled environment, and so do I. I can take advantage of the exact same benefits that you can. But then I can go outside it, should I choose, to get non-QCed apps, without needing to spend extra money.... $99/year to take partial control of your own device, especially on a $400 piece of hardware, is more than a little ridiculous. My ability to go get non-approved apps in no way affects your ability to stay within the garden. You just don't change that setting, and you have exactly the same protections you already do. You get precisely what you want. But..... you can also change your mind later. If you decide, say, that you'd really like Google Voice on your iPhone, you can do that, whatever Apple's opinion might be. This is pure win for you, with no cost.

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:16:15 -0800

Adobe's CEO responds in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:18:08 -0800

Malor: The counter-argument (playing devil's advocate here) is that the traditional design of computer systems is already evil. It's insecure. It's user-hostile. And it's possible for smart people to break the system through routine and reasonable actions. I've spent about 8 hours this week trying to figure out why World of Warcraft has such miserable network performance on a fresh install of Windows 7 with nothing but drivers and security patches. Is it the software firewall? Is it Microsoft anti-virus? Is it a failing network card? Have the many community-suggested tweaks that were made deep within regedit, the command line, and the control panel made the situation worse? And the thing is, I've argued the other side as well. Computer systems are not complex because, in the arguments of Gruber and other iPad boosters, software developers are sadists who want to make their customers suffer. Computer systems are complex because they've attempted to capture complex, messy, and ambiguous real-world tasks. Microsoft Word is bloated because it tries to grab 50 years of business communications, and adds some the incredible complexity of analog page design as well. But apparently there is a critical mass of people who are willing to trade off complexity for the deceptive safety and simplicity of a locked-down business model. And as people willing to deal with an appliance model of mobile computing are making Apple millions of dollars and growing, there isn't a strong argument for them to change.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:19:38 -0800

I find it amusing, honestly. Flash is an open specification Ah, language is a beautiful thing. :)

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:20:15 -0800

I don't consider Apple's actions evil. Arrogant and headstrong, sure? But far from evil Shutting out Google Voice from the App Store is 100% pure evil.

By: Wood

Wood — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:24:19 -0800

Why would you ever make yourself dependent on any corporation to not be evil, especially when they're already being evil right in front of you? I'm no more dependent on Apple than purchasing a nintendo dsi makes me dependent on Nintendo. To be clear: none of my data is in any way dependent on Apple. Apple even helpfully provides an xml version of all of my (critically important) song ratings and playlists.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:24:52 -0800

it continues to mystify me that people can seriously argue that an inescapable software ecosystem is somehow better for them. Ecosystem, sure. But locked hardware? Did they buy DRMed music, too? I mean, what the heck are they thinking? Do you listen to the arguments for it, or just sit open-mouthed going "but ... you can't think that! I don't agree!" Hell, people live in gated communities, and that's far more onerous. I bought DRMed music, sure: I like that musicians get paid, even if it's only the trickle they get after the record companies get a cut -- I'd have bought DRMed music from them direct, too. As for the locked-down system; well, it's yet to feel really constraining to me, to be honest. And the rewards in terms of finally having a phone I don't hate are so huge that the trade-off seems minimal. Especially when $99 gets me virtually everything else. If the open world can produce a competitor that is more open without sacrificing any of the iPhone's advantages, then sure, I'd be wise to switch to it. As would everyone else. But that doesn't seem to be happening (though HP is a really interesting development). What I'm not going to do is switch out of ideology or a huff that I can't run Perl scripts on it. It's the old "you want the bug fixed get coding" open source retort turned back on them. If they want a great open phone, make one, or keep clutching Google's skirts and hoping it'll keep doing it for them. There's no alternative: what the market is showing pretty clearly is that the "is very open" feature checkbox is really low down the priority list. Same as it did with the iPod, btw. How are those iPod killers coming along?

By: jedicus

jedicus — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:26:05 -0800

You can have exactly what you want, exactly what you want, without impairing my use of the device in any way. Or, you can get what you want by buying an open device and others can get what they want by buying a closed device. So long as there are neither laws nor (probably antitrust violating) agreements between device manufacturers that forbid open devices, then what's the problem? If people value openness then open devices will win in the market. It's not like Android is struggling in the marketplace.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:26:43 -0800

You can have exactly what you want, exactly what you want, without impairing my use of the device in any way. Also, this continues to be bullshit, like it was on the previous thread. If users can get around the walled garden, then developers can require it. The guy behind the Facebook app hated the App Store. What's to stop them saying "to install the Facebook app, just go into settings, click the Malor switch, and then click this link"? Then suddenly the biggest app on the iPhone is totally outwith Apple's control. And the people who liked the benefits of Apple's vetting have lost those benefits, all so you can have a feature that somehow won't affect them.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:28:19 -0800

Then just don't install the app. It's very simple. If you want the walled garden, then don't leave it.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:29:18 -0800

Shutting out Google Voice from the App Store is 100% pure evil. Rwandan genocide was 100% pure evil. Not letting a particular application into the garden? Shitty, but far from evil, IMO.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:29:47 -0800

Vote with yer cash, peeps.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:30:07 -0800

Shutting out Google Voice from the App Store is 100% pure evil. I wouldn't disagree that a more consistent and transparent app approval process would be better, but using the term "100% pure evil" is quite strong. As when a Google VP compared users of Apple devices with people living under the North Korean regime, past a certain point, you'll start to lose the ears of reasonable people.

By: KirkJobSluder

KirkJobSluder — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:31:00 -0800

bonaldi: It's the old "you want the bug fixed get coding" open source retort turned back on them. If they want a great open phone, make one, or keep clutching Google's skirts and hoping it'll keep doing it for them. There's no alternative: what the market is showing pretty clearly is that the "is very open" feature checkbox is really low down the priority list. Which is why Open Source has had problems getting traction beyond server-side technologies. Given a choice between Software Freedom and a paycheck, people take the paycheck rather than wait for Software Freedom to finally address that critical feature request.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:31:34 -0800

Then just don't install the app. It's very simple. If you want the walled garden, then don't leave it. That doesn't work if the walled garden empties out, does it? Jesus. you can't have a walled garden with a bloody great hole in the wall.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:40:16 -0800

If you're right, if the user always knows the right thing if he can make hard choices in order to be free, then he'll flock to Android or other open environments. Apple will have to adapt or die. If Apple's right, if the user needs to be guided, if he doesn't always know what he needs, then the iDevices will prosper, and Android will remain a minority choice for tinkerers, customization-lovers, open source advocates. Yes, the invisible hand of the market always ensures that consumers get what's best for them. The fact that tons of people shop at Wallmart proves that they are right about not giving their employees health insurance. If consumers want a choice between companies that do good things and companies that do bad things, why shouldn't they have that choice? Honestly I do think that locked-down computing devices are probably the way things are heading. It disappoints me that Apple is the one taking the lead on that front, because they have done great things like basing OS X on Unix that have been popular with the exact same "tinkerers, customization-lovers, open source advocates" that they are currently alienating. Software developers in general tend to fall into that group, which leads to the ironic situation that the people Apple is expecting to write all of the apps for their devices are also in that minority group who would like other more open devices. And as that minority group gets smaller and smaller, I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly there aren't very many people around who write great software that make any of those devices worth buying.

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:48:35 -0800

HTML5 is a nice idea. I think it has a lot of promise. But it's simply not on par with Flash yet, even in the narrower world of video (obviously HTML5 is a lot more than just the media tags). We're in a position now like other HTML standards have been in -- nobody is implementing the spec as written, partially because the spec is in flux. You have to tweak it per browser. You can't go fullscreen in most browsers (Chrome, for example). Buffering is inconsistent. etc, etc. There's no solution for secure streaming (like it or not, some content owners will not offer content without something like rtmpe). Ad content is all in Flash, and that will also take time to get support for (since it's a large ecosystem). These issues will work themselves out, yes. But not yet, and that's why Jobs, for example, points to the apps over the web in many cases [also, they control the apps and not the websites, so of course Apple often thinks the apps are better]. For those complaining about Flash 10 performance on video, I'd also suggest checking out Flash 10.1 (it's available as beta, obviously there could be issues). It's noticeably better. Even if you prefer HTML5, right now you're still going to have to choose between Flash or nothing in many places, and 10.1 is a nice improvement. (And there's no inherent reason HTML5 will perform better or worse than Flash -- it will be a nice race for the consumer, and unless you have an ideological issue with one or the other, this is great).

By: flif

flif — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:52:41 -0800

64 bit machines aren't faster then 32 bit machines unless you're dealing with programs that use a lot of 64 bit integers. This isn't true. Intel 64-bit mode includes e.g. more registers and non-execute bit (reference): it is more secure and faster for most apps (even on Vista). In addition to this, Mac OS X adds more security for processes in 64-bit mode.

By: AlsoMike

AlsoMike — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:55:14 -0800

But I think we need a distinct term for what I think of as "open." It doesn't need to be the word "open," but we need some word for it... We also need to clarify that when something is "open", its not really open to all. Much is made of the fact that open source is in principle open to all, but no-one seems to be bothered by the fact that in practice, most people can't take advantage of it because they aren't programmers. The normative claim is that we should have the right to freely determine how our technology operates, instead of having it imposed on us from corporations who may not be aligned with our interests, and that's why we need open source. But open source only delivers this ability to a tiny minority. Few open source projects take the needs of their end users very seriously -- how many do user research or study how people use their software? In practice, what's the difference between the tiny minority of business types who control proprietary software and the tiny minority of programmers who control open source software? From the perspective of non-programmers, open source is actually more closed than proprietary software. As a customer, a software vendor has at least some incentive to listen to what I want; but open source software projects have less incentive to listen to end users, because the coin of the realm is bragging rights that can only come from the programmer subculture. The truth is that programmers are as much an elite class as corporate elites, with the same potential problems that occur when elite interests diverge from those of ordinary people . The main difference is that programmer elites have co-opted the populist democratic rhetoric to justify their elite position, in much the same way that the Tea Party co-opts the language of freedom to justify white privilege. This is how the conflict between open source partisans and Apple should be understood, as a conflict between which elite class has the power.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:01:10 -0800

"We also need to clarify that when something is "open", its not really open to all. Much is made of the fact that open source is in principle open to all, but no-one seems to be bothered by the fact that in practice, most people can't take advantage of it because they aren't programmers. " I don't understand how cars work. Ergo, cars are useless!

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:03:01 -0800

but open source software projects have less incentive to listen to end users, Um, I think you're referring to a certain type of open source project. Many of them are started by and heavily financed by corporations, which certainly do have an interest in making their product useful. IBM and Google, for example, both do this. Google wants Android to succeed -- you can certainly debate the merits of Android usability, but everything you describe for proprietary software exists for something like Android.

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:05:22 -0800

I don't understand how cars work. Ergo, cars are useless! Surely magnets are the better example here. Fucking magnets.

By: unSane

unSane — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:05:50 -0800

Just don't buy the fucking phone/pad/whatever. Jeez.

By: Pogo_Fuzzybutt

Pogo_Fuzzybutt — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:09:33 -0800

The problem with the app store is that there is only one, and it's Apple's way or the highway. It sucks to search, the apps are mostly crap, and it's the only real way to distribute your work - throw it in the bin with the rest, and hope someone notices. It seems like Apple would have done the universe a favor and allow other vendors to have their own App store. Then I could subscribe to the Amazon App Store, and the Walmart App Store and whatever. They'd still be able to exercise some control, but they'd be buffered against all responsibility for all idiocy related to app store offerings. This would solve a problem organizations have, whereby they want to readily distribute an app, but don't want to put it on *the* app store. They could get a license from Apple and make thier own. Or - especially in our case as a tax exempt entity, we want to use apps from the app store, but getting the tax refunded is an exercise in futility because Apple just doesn't know how to deal with it (with regards to the app store). An App store for orgs like us sure would be sweet. And this leads me what really frustrates me with Apple. The stuff they make is 80% awesome and 20% WTF were they thinking. Steve Jobs' obsession with control gets the best of him sometimes, and this turf war with Adobe is no exception. Sure, his reasons are OK, but there are better ways to have handled it, and the userbase is the worse for his lack of grace here.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:16:33 -0800

"We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash." "Speaking about Mr. Jobs's assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something 'to do with the Apple operating system.'" Above is why both companies -- or at least their spokesleaders -- are fuckheads. There's a REAL WORLD that EXISTS. In it, apparently, Macs crash. Why? Maybe it's because, though OS X is incredibly well constructed, Adobe's products are doing stupid things which would thwart any OS, even one that was incredibly well made. If that's what happening, Jobs needs to make it clear. He needs to explain exactly what Adobe's products are doing and why they shouldn't be doing it. If, as Narayan, suggests it's an OS problem, then he needs to explain what sort of problem. He needs to explain why he's so sure it can't possibly be his company's products that are it fault. And so one here can say anything intelligent about this, unless he really understands the technical issues involved. We get a lot of yadda yadda about Adobe being lazy and Apple being secretive. WHY ARE ADOBE APPS CRASHING MACS? Unless you know, for sure, that it's because of some specific thing that Apple or Adobe has done wrong, you should keep your mouth shut about it. And by "you," I mean (partly), Jobs and Narayan. If either of these men are unsure about why Adobe apps are crashing Macs, then they should be upfront about that. "Huh! Another crash... well, there must be a problem with the OS, a problem with the app, or some odd problem that is created when the app meets the OS. What can we do to solve it?" I am a software developer. I write code that's WAY simpler than OS X and Photoshop. When something goes wrong, it's often really hard to tell if it's my bug or a bug in the platform that's hosting my app. So what I don't do is start pointing fingers and saying, "Hey, it's not my fault! It's the browser that's fucked up!" Computer Science has the word "science" in it. Jobs and Narayan need to learn how to be scientists. Scientists tests before they place blame. Maybe they've done these tests. If so, can we see the results?

By: cmonkey

cmonkey — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:19:12 -0800

What's interesting is that Jobs hardly mentions what I think must be the real reason for wanting to kill Flash: because Adobe insists on keeping it to a 32-bit binary, whereas Apple seems to be looking to move to an exclusively 64-bit platform. $ file /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/browser-plugins/libflashplayer.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, stripped I don't understand why you think Adobe is insisting on keeping Flash as a 32-bit binary when they've had 64-bit binaries available for the top three platforms for years now.

By: Baldons

Baldons — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:19:42 -0800

The stuff they make is 80% awesome and 20% WTF were they thinking. 1. It's a resounding success, for the time being. 2. The average quality of the apps is arguably better than the more open Android Store. It has more apps too. More app stores? It would be confusing, conflicting, chaotic. It wouldn't help at all. Let Amazon and Walmart create their own smartphones, if they want to control the openness of their software.

By: Pogo_Fuzzybutt

Pogo_Fuzzybutt — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:29:34 -0800

2. The average quality of the apps is arguably better than the more open Android Store. It has more apps too. More app stores? It would be confusing, conflicting, chaotic. It wouldn't help at all. Let Amazon and Walmart create their own smartphones, if they want to control the openness of their software. Yeah, the 938,473 fart apps have excellent font rendering, there is no denying that. And, it's funny everyone brings up how confusing it would be to get apps if there were more than one place to get apps.... From a computer that is populated with Apps not bought from Apples App Store. Would these people starve to death in a town with more than one restaurant ?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:29:34 -0800

The problem with the app store is that there is only one, and it's Apple's way or the highway. It sucks to search, the apps are mostly crap, and it's the only real way to distribute your work - throw it in the bin with the rest, and hope someone notices. If you're just hoping people notice your app, that's not a good way to make money. You set up a website, offer screenshots and feature lists, and a link to the App Store. You advertise, if it makes sense. Etc. It's not perfect, but the good stuff usually rises to the top either through word of mouth from other iPhone users you know, bloggers who talk about apps they use, or the storefront itself. That said, there are a few real ways to distribute your work that do not involve the App Store. You can use Cydia to sell your work, or if you're a business of sufficient size you can get a license to distribute your own apps, or if you're into open source models, you can distribute source code and let users compile apps for their own phones.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:40:02 -0800

And, it's funny everyone brings up how confusing it would be to get apps if there were more than one place to get apps.... Compare to the people who told me after it was announced that the App Store would go nowhere because it was already dead easy to put apps on Symbian and WinMo phones, just choose a link from the many great online app sites. Right.

By: Baldons

Baldons — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:41:56 -0800

And, it's funny everyone brings up how confusing it would be to get apps if there were more than one place to get apps.... From a computer that is populated with Apps not bought from Apples App Store. Oh, I'd love an App Store for the mac. With my credit card account and automatic update notifications across the board. Just like Steam, which is coming to the mac! Of course, Apple couldn't - and wouldn't - ban all non-app store programs on the mac. That would be a very bad thing, and very different from creating a platform that is closed and controlled from the start.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:44:51 -0800

Yeah, the 938,473 fart apps have excellent font rendering, there is no denying that. What's a real gasser about this trope is that Apple initially rejected fart apps and got grief on the Internet for not being open to fart apps. Then they accept fart apps and get grief on the Internet for having fart apps. Apple will clearly get their share of griefers, either way.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:45:59 -0800

Just like Bill Gates couldn't have harmed you, through say creating poisonous market conditions, if you personally didn't buy Windows? JHarris, so you're saying Microsoft hurts me, even if I don't have a copy of Windows? I believe you're right, because friends are constantly asking me to look at their cheap Windows XP laptops that they can't get the wireless networking to work on, and I have to enter their 128bit WEP key in hex, which is such a secret that it needs to be starred out, making error correction impossible, but that's okay, because Bill Gates saw fit to make me confirm all 26 of those characters in another starred out box! Seriously, that's a painful error message that you typed it wrong, can't see where, and have to start over again.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:50:26 -0800

Er, I'm really not finding the ability to play well with wireless networks a strong feature of Apple products.

By: Hoenikker

Hoenikker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:05:18 -0800

By: howling fantods

howling fantods — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:05:22 -0800

There are a lot of comments to the effect of, "it's my phone, so I should be able to put whatever I want on it." OK, but if people could and did put whatever they wanted on their iPhone, and then it got slow and crashy and the battery kept dying, who do you suppose they'd blame? Not Adobe, not themselves, but Apple. I have no illusions that Apple's first priority is their own self interest and profit, but if a side effect of that is that I get a more stable, more reliable, and better user experience, I'm willing to sacrifice punch-the-monkey ads¹ and the occasional flash-only site. ¹ That is, until the inevitable punch-the-monkey iAd.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:09:23 -0800

Troublingly, that will be more of a "touch the monkey" situation by definition. Touch it. Tooooouch iiiiit.

By: The Winsome Parker Lewis

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:10:16 -0800

AlsoMike: I'm not getting the "open" vs. "open to all" distinction here. There's a difference between opening a door, and walking through it. Are you suggesting that OSS developers need to provide a layman-readable flowchart representing the logic of their code for every release, in order to be considered truly open?

By: mrgrimm

mrgrimm — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:15:54 -0800

they'll just build such a gorgeous road to their beautiful store and you'll never wonder about other stores. I don't understand this perception. The iTunes Store has some great applications. The iTunes Store itself is a HORRIBLE application. People saying the market wants more freedom in their phones apparently haven't been following the iPhone for the last four years. Because that shit was selling before they even had an app store, and now it's selling even better. Really? Depends on how you look at it. Android marketshare grows while iPhone market shrinks Apple iPhone Market Share Slips In 4Q The iPhone grabs/loses market share There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world. ... You what platform has more game titles available for it than the iPhone? Any platform that can run Flash. Yeah, that claim threw me the most ... there are more game and entertainment titles for iPhone/iPad than any other platform?!? Windows?! Flash?! I can't fathom that. Kongregate alone has 25,000+ Flash games. And if you're gonna include iFart or "Sexy Exotic Ladies" as "entertainment" titles, then Windows has literally millions of those shitty things. Hell, American Greetings screensavers provide as much "entertainment" as some iPhone apps. Seriously, don't like Apple products? Buy something else. Better yet, don't buy anything.

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:18:47 -0800

Of course, Apple couldn't - and wouldn't - ban all non-app store programs on the mac. That would be a very bad thing, and very different from creating a platform that is closed and controlled from the start. Why shouldn't they? All you have to do is read some of the comments in this thread to find out that requiring users to get all of their applications from the App Store is vastly superior than allowing users to create and install whatever software they want. If any of the small minority of tinkerers, customization-lovers, and open source advocates don't like it they could go buy some other computer and let Mac users enjoy the great benefits of a completely locked-down OS. For example, did you know that most of the plugin crashes on Macs are caused by Flash? The best solution to that problem would obviously be to prevent all Mac users from installing Flash, but since they stupidly allow any joker like Adobe to whatever kind of crazy Mac software they want, that's not an option. Hopefully in newer versions of Mac OS they'll fix this problem and protect their users from installing things that they shouldn't really be installing.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:24:39 -0800

Baldons wrote Of course, Apple couldn't - and wouldn't - ban all non-app store programs on the mac. That would be a very bad thing, and very different from creating a platform that is closed and controlled from the start. Nonsense. That's the ultimate wet dream of both Apple and MS, a completely closed environment in which everyone has to play by their rules, all authors have to pay them a fee just to play, all apps are completely under their control, and the DMCA is there to make a criminal out of anyone who tries to get around their controls. That's Trusted Computing, and both of them have been pushing for it since the concept was first proposed. They can't have that, yet, because the public wouldn't accept it. Yet. But the iPhone is a foot in the door for Trusted Computing. People see the benefits, and there are benefits to TC, they see that there's third party apps out there, and they're less resistant to the idea of TC on their home computer or laptop. But don't doubt for a moment that both MS and Apple really, really, want to do exactly that on regular computers. No paranoia involved, both have stated repeatedly that it is their desire.

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:25:44 -0800

The CEO also disagreed with Jobs' claim that Flash is the No. 1 cause of crashes on the Mac, suggesting that the issues are instead related to Mac OS X. He also said claims about Flash draining battery life of mobile devices were "patently false." I doubt he has seen Safari's plug-in isolation, which can let the flash plugin crash, without affecting Safari itself. It also shows a nice "Flash Plugin" just crashed dialog. Also, I will begin to believe Adobe's opinion's on OS stability when they can: Write a proper installer (and not 'extend it' and break it [self link]). Understand the MCX framework and use it Not have an updater create a file in my Library folder called "Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat." Save to a network share

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:26:07 -0800

I'm for once just glad I live so far in the sticks that I don't get any data reception, making all of this moot.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:29:57 -0800

Artw, I didn't say it was. All I said was that entering a 52 character password might not be a part of the most user friendly interface. I had to do this yesterday, and I screwed it up about a dozen times. Maybe I'm just not a good enough typer for real computers. Yeah, anyone who wants to use the wireless router at my place has to that, the one comcast provided us with. It particularly sucks on iPhone. Also sometimes Apple stuff just decides not to work with it at all. So yeah, WEP kind of sucks.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:30:32 -0800

Brandon Blatcher: It doesn't seem that big of a deal at this point. I honestly can't see why you're so worked up about it. In my head, that totally came out in HAL 9000's voice, with a ", Dave" at the end.

By: Baldons

Baldons — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:38:43 -0800

Will Trusted Computing also control the free and increasingly flexible html standards? Right now I can install the Ibis Reader webapp on my iPhone. It could contain porn, insults hurled at Steve Jobs, etc., and it still couldn't be blocked by Apple - unless by shackling the entire World Wide Web. Open web standard are just going expand. This doesn't look like a prison. You do have choice.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:40:53 -0800

WEP? You might as well not bother running encryption at all.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:41:31 -0800

What's funny in this debate between Jobs and Narayen is that the word "open" seems to have become a big PR weapon. I mean, honestly, I have a hard time believing that either side really cares about open standards. It does benefit Apple to decrease the number of frameworks they have to accommodate themselves to in designing their machines, and Jobs is right that Adobe is 100% proprietary (despite Adobe's halting attempts to dress up here and there like they're an "open" company) - but I don't know how much room Apple has to make that argument, given how incredibly proprietary and closed their systems are in general. They're using the word, but it really doesn't matter to the debate at all. Apple wants to shift architectures. Adobe wants to remain the major player in web media frameworks, and to keep monetizing it. I start to feel as though RMS was spot on in his objections to the nouveau term "open source." It's just way too easy to twist the words until they don't mean anything anymore to anybody who doesn't know all that much about the technical details. I just can't imagine Jobs and Narayen insisting to everybody that their products are free, can you? Maybe Eric S Raymond was wrong - maybe we should've stuck with the old nomenclature. "Free Software."

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:43:38 -0800

WEP? You might as well not bother running encryption at all. TBH I wonder why I bother turning on the password. It mainly seems to be security against me or anyone I know using it, whereas anyone who wanted to fuck with it could in an instant. Really i should bug them for something better. I guess I am just extremely lazy and have low expectations when it comes to Comcast customer service.

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:48:17 -0800

> Really i should bug them for something better Get something simpler... Just the basic router, and your own WAP that supports WPA encryption and actually has updates. I don't have high expectations of performance from a device that is either given as free or for $1/month as part of a service contract. Let alone a networking device from a cable company.

By: Baldons

Baldons — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:49:38 -0800

Jobs is right that Adobe is 100% proprietary (despite Adobe's halting attempts to dress up here and there like they're an "open" company) - but I don't know how much room Apple has to make that argument, given how incredibly proprietary and closed their systems are in general. But Steve Jobs doesn't avoid it: "Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open." Its position is that cross-compatible proprietary isn't good, because it can slow new features adoption, makes the programs lowest-common-denominator, etc.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:50:49 -0800

Probably should. Fucking thing stops working all the time as well, but that's more of a Comcasts-internet-sucks-in-general thing. Comcast are very lucky that I am so very lazy and hate making phone calls, as my every interaction with them seems to lead to disappointment in the end.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:56:33 -0800

The 2Wire "residential gateway" that ATT UVerse sent us has WPA, supports just about any kind of WiFi device, and has loads of management features, and even had BitTorrent pre-populated as an app for passthrough in the unit's firewall.

By: Crabby Appleton

Crabby Appleton — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:17:11 -0800

The truth is that programmers are as much an elite class as corporate elites, with the same potential problems that occur when elite interests diverge from those of ordinary people. Well, you know, AlsoMike, I can't imagine a profession (or pseudo-profession) with lower barriers to entry than programming. And you know what? You can't bullshit a computer. You can't schmooze a computer. It simply does exactly what you tell it to. Relentlessly. You can either make it do what you want, or not. These days, I think the Python programming language is a good place to start. There are lots of tutorials and beginners' programming texts based on Python. So have at it! Take back programming from the evil elites!

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:19:43 -0800

[obligatory Hypercard mention]

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:22:08 -0800

*lights a stack on memory*

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:27:54 -0800

Its position is that cross-compatible proprietary isn't good Well, except for where they're fine with it (h264 is the only codec they support in Safari), so I don't agree that's a consistent position.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:28:43 -0800

Baldons: “Its position is that cross-compatible proprietary isn't good, because it can slow new features adoption, makes the programs lowest-common-denominator, etc.” True, but Apple keeps plenty of things closed which might increase innovation and improve the quality of software and hardware. For example, the architecture of their computers. So - that bit is fair enough, and I agree with him on it, but it's also clear to me why he's saying it - because it helps Apple to win market share by improving the speed of their devices.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:29:06 -0800

I can't imagine a profession (or pseudo-profession) with lower barriers to entry than programming Writing has a lower barrier to entry, but YouTube comments are what we get.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:30:13 -0800

10 SAY DUMB 20 GO TO 10

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:31:26 -0800

Actually to be proper YouTube programming it should probably have some of the line numbers spellwd wrong.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:39:21 -0800

Every single one of the slowest, crashiest, ugliest apps for iPhone and iPad was made in Xcode. Guess it'll get banned next.

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:40:02 -0800

To lighten things up : A conversation I have every month or so* *where "I" = Dan Wineman

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:40:31 -0800

Those apps just lacked a white background.

By: KokuRyu

KokuRyu — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:48:11 -0800

>I must say that the sheer drudgery of managing iTunes music Can you elaborate on this? - iTunes can a system hog on Windows machines - music purchased on iTunes cannot be played on any MP3 player - machines have to be registered to play purchased music - although it is possible to convert music purchased on iTunes into (lossy) MP3s, it takes a lot of time and energy - music purchased on one iTunes account is difficult to share across multiple iPods and other devices Why can't I just buy some songs on iTunes, download it onto a hard drive, and then transfer these to my (non-iPhone) phone, MP3 player, etc.? I'm sure there will be folks in this thread who say I'm an idiot, but why can't purchasing music be simple? Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple folks have the skills and knowledge to make it simple, but they don't.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:55:11 -0800

- iTunes can a system hog on Windows machines I have a Mac, but I can guess this may be true. music purchased on iTunes cannot be played on any MP3 player Any MP3 player which can play AAC can play iTMS purchased music. - machines have to be registered to play purchased music Nope. Not true since April 7, 2009. - although it is possible to convert music purchased on iTunes into (lossy) MP3s, it takes a lot of time and energy Not sure why you would want/need to do this. Any modern digital audio device can play AACs. - music purchased on one iTunes account is difficult to share across multiple iPods and other devices Not since since April 7, 2009.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:03:24 -0800

I just got back from work, I can't say where because it's under NDA but it's a multibillion dollar IT firm. I spent the whole day wrestling with one of our proprietary in-house products, written primarily in Flash, targeting WinXP and running in IE6. Millions of dollars of work is done in this software every month, at sites all over the US. This is idiot-simple GUI stuff, bare bones software. And I spent most of the day reloading the app and waiting for it to launch, then waiting to see if it was hanging this time, or if it would eventually recover, or whether it would crash. And when it finally DID work once in a while, I had to step through work I'd already done, over and over, just to get to the new bits I hadn't finished yet. Flash must die. It is rubbish. Even in the hands of skilled professional programmers, the results are always crap.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:09:01 -0800

Even in the hands of skilled professional programmers, the results are always crap. Even in the hands of Adobe itself the results are crap: witness the various Flash installers and particularly the unbelievably awful CS5 sales app. I mean, really, even the most atrocious companies are good at selling their own stuff. Oh, wait: The last tech company that sucked at actually selling its wares? Sun

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:10:15 -0800

Well, you know, AlsoMike, I can't imagine a profession (or pseudo-profession) with lower barriers to entry than programming. And you know what? You can't bullshit a computer. You can't schmooze a computer. It simply does exactly what you tell it to. Relentlessly. You can either make it do what you want, or not. I don't know. I once worked with someone who was a Visual Basic coder by profession. Somehow, I think he managed to bullshit a computer.

By: AlsoMike

AlsoMike — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:29:47 -0800

Are you suggesting that OSS developers need to provide a layman-readable flowchart representing the logic of their code for every release, in order to be considered truly open? Not at all. As I said, openness means the ability to determine for yourself how technology should behave rather than having it foisted on you, right? But a door that only programmers have the keys to is not an open door. If open source projects made efforts to engage their non-programmer users in determining which features get built and how they look and behave, this would go a long way to achieving true openness. They could do this, through standard UX techniques, and some open source project do, like Firefox, but this tends to happen only when there's a financial incentive. A clear-cut example is when 2 UX designers tried to get involved with Drupal. Open source, right? Get involved, make a difference? A large part of the developer community lost their shit, leveling all kinds of accusations, that the UX team was destroying Drupal, etc. It seems like it got pretty nasty. Some developers were very supportive, but many weren't and this ultimately killed the UX redesign project. From a blog post:

The changes that are required to the interface to really achieve the goal that we were tasked with – to really make Drupal understandable to [non-tech users] has the consequence of making Drupal a less efficient and enjoyable place for Drupal developers to build cool stuff.

The reason they got this reaction was not because devs are assholes, but because they (the UX designers) fundamentally misjudged the purpose of an open source project. In large part, it exists for devs to be able to work on stuff without the interference of clueless managers, marketers, sales people and other pointy-haired types, including UX designers, which I can sympathize with. So the goal of redesigning Drupal to make it easy to use for non-tech users runs counter to the reason for Drupal to exist at all, at least from the perspective of a large section of the developer community. The point of this example is to illustrate that there are barriers to entry to participate in an open source project, and those barriers are enforced. Many open source projects discourage non-programmer participation - passively by not seeking out input from their end users (and throwing a fit when someone tries to do it), and actively, when the guiding principle of OSS is "scratch your own itch", which you can't do unless you are a programmer. They're wrapping themselves in all this freedom and democracy rhetoric, but what we find in reality is an elite group defending their own prerogatives. Given all that, it's deeply hypocritical for OSS partisans to attack Apple for their lack of openness, when OSS's embrace of openness is so opportunistic. There are lots of tutorials and beginners' programming texts based on Python. So have at it! Take back programming from the evil elites! Thanks, but I know how to write code. I just think it's absurd to expect everyone on the planet to be a programmer. The truth is, I'm OK with having experts do things for me, I don't need the source code to my microwave. I'm OK with a elite class of programmers (or Apple product designers or doctors or what-have-you), but they should know that if they abuse their privileges, we're ready to drop a guillotine on their necks. Elites dressed up as populists is what's truly dangerous, because they do an end run around these natural checks and balances, but Apple adopts their elite position out in the open, so I think this is basically a trustworthy thing.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:44:39 -0800

Call them what you like, but open source developers are putting out code for everyone to use. Even if you're not directly getting value out of the stuff that's being developed by the 'elites,' they're protecting ideas from being claimed by for-profit companies that would love nothing more than to be able to charge rent on the obvious.

By: charlie don't surf

charlie don't surf — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:04:42 -0800

Oh, wait: The last tech company that sucked at actually selling its wares? Sun Yeah, don't remind me. All our software that isn't Flash, is written in Java. It's all browser based and runs on servers with a Solaris version from 1994. I have tried to plant the rumor with Management that Oracle is planning to discontinue Java, now that it's bought Sun, but my rumor campaign doesn't seem to be taking hold. A couple of hotshot kids with fresh CompSci degrees could rewrite everything we run in a month or two in some modern language, hell it would be more stable even in PHP, ferchrissakes.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:08:36 -0800

charlie don't surf - TBH it sounds like you've got some problems there that go beyond the particular peices of software.

By: breath

breath — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:08:59 -0800

I think the danger of Flash on the iPhone is greater than just a few apps. If Flash were at all a reasonable choice on the iphone, developers would essentially be forced to use it; it'd be financially foolish to not choose something that gave you three platforms from one codebase, even if you knew you could make a better app by doing it custom for each platform. Under such conditions, it would not be too long before most new apps were Flash, and Flash was the dominant factor in iPhone app development. The short-term economics virtually guarantee it.

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:13:53 -0800

Open != open source. One type of open thats very useful to non programmers is the ability to install any program they want. Like they can on a MacBook, Windows, Android, Windows Mobile, Linux, etc. Notice that both closed and open source products are in that list. A lot of the attack on Apple's openness is unrelated to source, it's their closed platform. That being said, the nice thing about OSS, at least in theory, is it makes it very hard for the developers to institute Apple-style lockdown, since someone can pick up the code and make a tiny change to remove that lockout. Only one dev has to do this, not every user of the device. It doesn't even have to be picked up by the main distribution, it can be available elsewhere. I don't think most OSS people expect everyone to tinker with the source code, even most developers who use OSS products don't look at the source code (I've never looked at the Linux kernel code despite using it for 16+ years, just not something I'm interested in).

By: wildcrdj

wildcrdj — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:15:22 -0800

If Flash were at all a reasonable choice on the iphone, developers would essentially be forced to use it So it's better to have no option? Right now you either write an App, in which case you're locked into the iPhone, or you write a web app, which can't be as powerful as Flash. There's no cross platform way to replicate Flash, HTML5 isn't there yet. The closest would be Java but that's even more inconsistently supported.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:21:05 -0800

Wait, wait, wait... Apple make phones now?

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:29:10 -0800

I don't see why people are confused by Apple's stance that their appliances (as opposed to their general purpose computers) should be locked down, but that the web that they access should be as open as possible. If you want to develop for their appliances, you've got to go through them, or write for everyone. Remember that they didn't have any way to develop native apps, originally.

By: ZeusHumms

ZeusHumms — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:35:13 -0800

Holy shit. The Reality Distortion Field is in full swing here. Yup, both flavors - pro and anti Apple.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:52:27 -0800

$99/year to take partial control of your own device, especially on a $400 piece of hardware, is more than a little ridiculous. Someone should tell Microsoft this, concerning the XNA developers club. Rwandan genocide was 100% pure evil. Not letting a particular application into the garden? Shitty, but far from evil, IMO. There is a tremendous difference of degree here, many, many orders of magnitude, but it's still evil. And when you multiply a tiny fragment of evil across many victims, you do end up with measurable quantities. Joel: "Evil works best when it's subtle. For example, what do you think about Hitler?" Crow: "Well I hate him, yeah." Joel: "Okay, now what do you think about the band Styx?" Crow: "Oh I don't know, they had a couple of good songs but-- oh my god Joel, you're right!!" JHarris, so you're saying Microsoft hurts me, even if I don't have a copy of Windows? I believe you're right, because friends are constantly asking me to look at their cheap Windows XP laptops [...] I didn't mean it quite in that sense, but I'll be happy to take credit for it! What's a real gasser about this trope is that Apple initially rejected fart apps and got grief on the Internet for not being open to fart apps. Then they accept fart apps and get grief on the Internet for having fart apps. Apple will clearly get their share of griefers, either way. A. Your pun has not been approved by the joke police. Prepare to have your humor license revoked. B. Come on now. People complaining about the lack of fart software is not the same thing at all. But there is the fact that, by choosing to exert editorial control over the software that can run on their platform at all, it has put Apple in the position of preferring to simulate flatulence over 8-bit computers. AND NO YOU MAY NOT MAKE A JOKE ABOUT THAT I MEAN IT 1. It's a resounding success, for the time being. I put it to you that you are mistaking the reasons for that success, that the App Store is doing well despite Apple's policies instead of due to them.

By: Pyry

Pyry — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:03:37 -0800

Knowing advanced mathematics is a prerequisite (and a strong barrier to entry) for publication in peer-reviewed physics journals, but I don't think anyone is calling physicists fascist elites because of it, and I suspect most people support the idea of peer review even if they cannot themselves participate in it. Programming is the literacy of software. If you're illiterate, you'll find that the exchange of ideas fostered by free speech is largely closed to you, although you'll benefit in many ways indirectly. Perhaps in some sense physics, writing, and programming are elite activities. But even if you aren't able or are unwilling to participate in these elite activities, you can still support transparent and open processes for the elite who do.

By: malusmoriendumest

malusmoriendumest — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:28:52 -0800

On one hand, even after reading every comment, I never had a chance in hell of understanding the complex computer-related reasons why everyone's seems so angry about this issue. On the other, I got cool mental images of armies screaming towards each other, one in white Apple-esque armor waving aesthetically ergonomic rifles, and the other in custom-built performance-enhanced exoskeletons covered in crazy symbols. Which is a net win for me.

By: fallacy of the beard

fallacy of the beard — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:45:28 -0800

i'm not really interested in the technical aspects of it all. my impression has been that apple keeps the system closed in large part for quality control. i don't particularly agree with their content control (though i understand some of the reasons for it), but i kinda get the idea that third-party stuff that doesn't meet their standards has the potential to mess up their stuff; and when some fucked-up third-party app fucks over their system, apple gets the call from some angry dude with a fucked-up system, and that angry dude wants apple to fix it or replace the phone, and if apple tells them to call the third-party people, the third-party people are going to be all 'that's not us, angry dude, promise" and then there's the general impression that apple's shit is unstable because it can't handle third-party stuff, and then apple has to consider putting in it's own fixes so somebody's fucked-up app doesn't fuck over their system, putting apple in jeopardy when, say, some 14-year-old kid about to get his face blown off can't get through to 9-1-1 because he can't beat the high score in bejeweled (and don't lie, you know you were totally going to write that shit); not to mention that then every time apple does it's own updates it has to get caught in the middle of the fight when a whole bunch of apps that people paid for all of a sudden don't work, and the vendors are all "don't blame us, apple changed such and such and it broke our app," and then apple's name is shit because they don't play nice with developers and fucking consult every one of them before they make changes to their system because they don't know all the fucked-up nonconventional ways they're writing their shit, and next thing you know you're walking around with a 500 GB drive duct-taped to your iphone to hold the operating system and all its patches. i'd rather not deal with that shit. and as a user, i just want the phone to work when i turn it on. and my iphone has worked every time i've turned it on. it does all the stuff apple told me it would do, and some stuff apple didn't tell me it would do. and but didn't everybody always know it was a closed system and that apple controlled the apps running on it? did they wait for like millions of people to buy the phone and then spring that bit of news on everybody? it's not like people bought ipods and all of a sudden everybody's upset that they can't write their own player software for it. everybody knew the iphone didn't do flash and didn't have plans to, and had some vague idea why; and now everybody is all pissed afresh that apple won't put flash on the iphone? does this maybe go some way to explaining divorce rates, that people can suddenly revise their expectations and expect the other party to comply? do you like accuse your wife of being the gestapo when you all of a sudden want to invite a third party into bed, and she's all "no way, i control my body and what gets installed there," when you always knew that she felt that way, no matter how much you were hoping she would change her mind? if that's what you wanted you should have gone out and bought a flashy whore who would let you do anything you wanted. i kinda suspect that at first developers were like "i'm not getting the iphone because i want full control of my devices" but then the iphone kept getting awesomer and people were flipping their shit over it, much to the chagrin of the stubborn developer, and then it's all like apple is somehow keeping them from that magic app-hungry demographic, although apple is still doing exactly what they said they were going to do. it's like resenting apple for being who they said they were, resenting other people for liking them (and a lot of that going around these days), and being upset that their stuff works so good and people are happy with it, when really, a big reason it works so good and people are happy with it is likely that apple didn't give you free rein to fuck it all up.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:47:32 -0800

Alsomike: I'm OK with a elite class of programmers (or Apple product designers or doctors or what-have-you), but they should know that if they abuse their privileges, we're ready to drop a guillotine on their necks. You do realize that these so-called 'elites' provide you with absolutely everything you need to replace them completely? If they're trying to use their code as a weapon to make you dependent on their services, they're doing a remarkably bad job of it. You get everything, absolutely everything. You can recreate the system entirely from scratch, if you wish. You're not dependent on them if you don't want to be, and the vast majority of free software has real competition from other free software projects. The Linux kernel team, for instance, has the reputation of being very unfriendly, but you can use any of the BSDs instead. (they actually just had a recent thread on this on Linux Weekly News, and by most reports, the Linux dev team has improved markedly over the last few years, so this may be an obsolete "truism".) And teams like Debian maintain their stable OS releases for very long periods, 5+ years, meaning you don't have to quickly change much of anything, if you don't like the direction a software package is going. Pretty much the entire job description of a free software programmer is to make him or herself non-essential to your computing future. They want to be IMPORTANT, but not ESSENTIAL. And yes, they do tend to scratch their own itches first, but then you get distros like Ubuntu that have a much sharper focus on end-users. They really do a pretty good job, overall. Ubuntu is highly usable, even for non-techies. It still occasionally has weird polish problems in spots, but on the whole it really works well. The nature of this kind of software development is that the early iterations are primarily for the people writing it. Later iterations add things for non-core developers. Very gradually, the universe is expanding, providing new functionality for less and less technical people. The main drive of the entire ecosystem is to NOT make you dependent on any one company or project. I think you've completely, utterly missed the point. If you don't like a particular batch of 'elite programmers', they've given you absolutely everything to either fix it yourself or form a new group to take it in a new direction, if you're not capable of handling it on your own. When free software projects get abusive, like the XFree86 project did, they fork. X.Org has essentially killed off XFree86. They forked and killed the old project because the management was trying to be assholes. If you're unhappy with Apple, well... they certainly don't give you the tools you need to remove them from your life. You are not, in any way, dependent on these people unless you want to be. You seem to have convinced yourself that you're at their mercy, but that's about as far from the truth as anything could be. I'm not aware of any proprietary software companies that give you everything required, except brainpower, to compete with and/or supplant them.

By: Malor

Malor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:56:19 -0800

did they wait for like millions of people to buy the phone and then spring that bit of news on everybody? They kind of did, actually. The original iPhone was a pure appliance. It could be jailbroken, and there were dev kits starting to be built, so that you could use it as the nice little general-purpose computing device it is. Most folks assumed the lockdown was AT&T's fault. So, when Apple announced a real dev kit, that was pretty exciting. But then the other shoe dropped, that they were retaining near-absolute control, and that you were NOT ALLOWED to use their dev tools unless you paid them for a key, and you couldn't distribute to more than just a few people unless you went through an approval process. Even then, lots of people thought it must be AT&T driving that requirement.... but then we got the new iPods and the IPad. Even without cellular hardware, even on a device that connects only to your own networks, Apple decreed that they retained ownership of the computer forever. And that did, indeed, catch a lot of people by surprise.

By: fallacy of the beard

fallacy of the beard — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:58:45 -0800

well maybe it's me, but the term 'jailbroken' it would seem to imply a level of functionality that apple did not promise or give expectation for.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:55:41 -0800

AlsoMike: “Given all that, it's deeply hypocritical for OSS partisans to attack Apple for their lack of openness, when OSS's embrace of openness is so opportunistic.” Whoa there, bub. I didn't attack your precious Apple, okay? So don't act like you're better than me just because your computer has a fruit on it.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:57:32 -0800

*puts banana on Dell laptop, basks in a sultry atmosphere of superiority to koeslitz*

By: graventy

graventy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:12:01 -0800

Someone should tell Microsoft this, concerning the XNA developers club. That's not really fair, is it? I mean, no one finds the XBL community support anything but embarrassing at best. (Although, to be fair, it has just as many shit awful apps as the App Store does.)

By: verb

verb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:46:21 -0800

Programming is the literacy of software.

That's a profoundly flawed analogy: programming is the literacy of creating software, perhaps. But pretending that the ability to write one's own software is essential is, at the end of the day, a profoundly egocentric vision carried around by -- coincidentally -- people who write software. Programming is the advanced mathematics of software. If you're building a bridge, you need it and you need it something fierce. But if what you need is a bridge to drive over, and that bridge is there, you don't need to understand the math that went into building the bridge. We can talk about how it's essential to understand the full stack, from the high level abstractions to the underlying frameworks to the low level OS to the hardware to the manufacturing processes to the network protocols to how the routers work to how TCP/IP works and so on, but at the end of the day it's chefs arguing about the best way to grill a steak. There are certainly right and wrong answers to that question -- I'm not suggesting that all visions of how software should work, be distributed, and be licensed are equally good -- but at the end of the day the people who want dinner want dinner. And if the steak cooked the "right" way tastes like shit, and the steak cooked the "wrong" way is delicious, there is no question which cook people are going to return to. I write, troubleshoot, deploy, and train people to do the same with open source software. Every single day. I came from the closed source world, working with the MS stack. Before that I was a Mac guy. Before that, I used an 800XL. I speak and teach business owners on how they can leverage open source and be good citizens of the ecosystem. But at the end of the day, fundamentalist wankery inside the 'open' community (OSS, open platforms advocates, whatever) is the biggest advantage that closed platforms have. I've talked to valued colleagues who compared "not being able to write your own software" to being obese. There is only one way to convince people they should use open systems: make the open systems do what those people need to do better than closed systems, and let the people who will be using the tools define what 'better' means. That is difficult. Very difficult! Open systems are by definition more chaotic, more difficult to control, and more difficult to direct towards a clear vision. But to people who want a tool and want it to work, being told that they now possess a tool building tool, and that its clumsiness as a first-order tool should be excused because they can do anything they want with it, including bake their own tool or use someone else's half-finished tool, or wait for someone else to make an even better tool... "open-ness" is not a virtue, it's a warning. I want open systems to be better than closed ones. For the time being, though, many are only "better" for homebrew developers and ideologues.

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:51:14 -0800

do you like accuse your wife of being the gestapo when you all of a sudden want to invite a third party into bed, and she's all "no way, i control my body and what gets installed there," when you always knew that she felt that way, no matter how much you were hoping she would change her mind? if that's what you wanted you should have gone out and bought a flashy whore who would let you do anything you wanted. Well, truth be told, I ... Wait a minute. Are we still talking about Apple?

By: Sukiari

Sukiari — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:05:53 -0800

Lee Brimelow, the Adobe Evangelist who told Apple to screw itself over the SDK language change, has been quiet so far. Wonder how long that'll last or what other Adobe developers or evangelists will say this time. Google Sidewiki to the rescue! Disabling comments on a blog is cowardly, but thankfully there is a platform-independant way to respond to news articles and rants which do not allow comments.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:17:50 -0800

Update on the HTML5 video tag codec battle: Microsoft announces that the IE9 video tag will be H.264 only.

By: fallacy of the beard

fallacy of the beard — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:40:28 -0800

I want open systems to be better than closed ones. For the time being, though, many are only "better" for homebrew developers and ideologues. and i imagine that if apple had not gotten into the music player and phone business, the same developers wouldn't have this whole app sandbox to play in, at least this early; they created a common and reliable system that allowed for rapid, wide adoption of the technology. i guess in a way those critical of apple for their closed, proprietary ways should be grateful to apple for the privilege of having something so exciting and promising to hate them for. otherwise, they might still be whining about big bad microsoft.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:09:16 -0800

"Speaking about Mr. Jobs's assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something 'to do with the Apple operating system.'" Above is why both companies -- or at least their spokesleaders -- are fuckheads. There's a REAL WORLD that EXISTS. In it, apparently, Macs crash. Why?

An OS shouldn't crash, period. In fact, I don't think the figures reflect entire OS crash numbers, as opposed to application crashes. Apps crash every once in a while, that's just how it is. I can't remember the last time windows (Vista 64) crashed (meaning blue screened) on me. I think it's only happened only twice since I've built this machine.

Yeah, don't remind me. All our software that isn't Flash, is written in Java. It's all browser based and runs on servers with a Solaris version from 1994. I have tried to plant the rumor with Management that Oracle is planning to discontinue Java, now that it's bought Sun, but my rumor campaign doesn't seem to be taking hold. A couple of hotshot kids with fresh CompSci degrees could rewrite everything we run in a month or two in some modern language, hell it would be more stable even in PHP, ferchrissakes.

Bad programmers will produce bad code no matter what language it's written in. Good programmers will produce good code regardless of language, but probably won't waste their time with COBOL or Visual Basic, or whatever.

i'd rather not deal with that shit. and as a user, i just want the phone to work when i turn it on. and my iphone has worked every time i've turned it on. it does all the stuff apple told me it would do, and some stuff apple didn't tell me it would do.

So has my android phone! And my PC! (And all my previous PCs, for the most part)

By: omegar

omegar — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:26:50 -0800

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:04:42 -0800

This, 1000000 times this. Then it makes perfect sense for Apple to do whatever it takes to ensure Adobe doesn't become a major provider of Apps.

By: Hiker

Hiker — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:28:46 -0800

It's quite funny, really. If I were to buy a Mac, it would immediately be filled with Adobe software. I suspect I am not alone in that. While Apple likes to market itself as the computer brand for creative types, well, no, actually, it's the Adobe software that makes it so. If Adobe were to just take their ball and go home, Apple would be royally fucked. This is a chicken/egg argument though, as Adobe's success largely rides on Mac users who are firmly entrenched in their love for their computers. If Adobe took its ball and went home and made users choose between Photoshop and their MacBook, both companies would surely go under. You don't always love or even like your family, but walking away generally leaves everyone miserable.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:02:06 -0800

If Adobe were to just take their ball and go home, Apple would be royally fucked. Apple has money to burn. If Adobe were to take their ball and go home, Apple could buy them, burst their ball, and then knock down their home to boot (bye, CS for Windows)

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:04:55 -0800

Also, he's dead right about Adobe taking a FREAKING DECADE to update the CS code from Carbon to Cocoa. Fuck 'em. Isn't iTunes, Logic, and Final Cut still Carbon? Hasn't Final Cut been around for a FREAKING DECADE? So Fuck Apple too?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:06:56 -0800

So Fuck Apple too? Yes, Apple should totally get into a public feud with itself.

mazola — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:16:32 -0800

Why Jobs hates Flash.

By: verb

verb — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:26:40 -0800

To take your chef analogy about steaks, the chefs are making steak (for free) to impress each other, or to advance state of the art steakcraft. If left to their own devices, chefs will make things that impress chefs.

That's absolutely correct. As one of those chefs cooking to impress other chefs, I know how that goes. However (and this is where it gets important) it's impossible to deny that the number of 'diners' is much larger than the number of 'chefs.' If you actually don't care whether anyone else eats your steak that system works fine. Once most open source projects make it over the initial hurdle of recognition and success, though, they start getting seduced by comparisons and competition and beating the closed source alternative. And that's where things get tangly. Because if you are trying to grow, or compete, you are not building something exclusively for your own satisfaction anymore.

You shouldn't expect the "open cooking movement" to hand you a steak done to your specifications for free.

As advocates of open systems, though, we can't have our cake and eat it too. We can't berate people for not caring about openness, then tell them 'Do it yourself' when they talk about what their pain points and priorities are. 'Openess' is a feature that we happen to value highly. If most people outside of the active internet commentariat don't care about that, that means we are a niche -- not that everyone else is foolish.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:30:49 -0800

I have a question. It's an honest question. I'm not trying to downplay Apple's philosophy or HTML5 as a video-delivery platform: can HTML5 currently (or will it be able to in the near future) play streaming (as opposed to progressive) videos? Can it play live videos? Before I can even think about dumping Flash for HTML5, I MUST be able to use it to play video from a streaming service (including live video). This is about 50% of my work. I hear Apple talking about the fact that most videos are now H.264, so you don't need Flash to play them back (as you did when they were FLV), but it sounds like they are talking about progressive files, not streams. If they are talking about streams, they should make that clear. I'm sure there's a lot more progressive video on the web than streaming video (or live streaming video), but the major players (e.g. TV networks) demand streaming. In case the distinction is obscure to you, progressive video and streaming video both play before they are fully downloaded, so it's not about whether or not you have to wait before it plays. The difference is this: a progressive video ultimately downloads all its frames, as a file, to the end-user's computer. So if you look in your temporary-internet folder (or whatever it's called for your browser), you will see it in there. Streaming servers, on the other hand, download frames, and those frames are never saved on your machine as files. Streaming is much more like a traditional TV broadcast. TV networks (and many other companies) demand streaming, because they don't want end-users caching the whole video. So if I told my clients I was going to ditch Flash and use HTML, the first thing they would ask me is whether they'd still get to deliver their videos as streams.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:56:52 -0800

Streaming is served to the iPhone (Apple calls it HTTP Live Streaming); I'll be surprised if there isn't support for something very similar in HTML5. Like you say, it's a real dealbreaker with TV companies. That said, perhaps I wouldn't be surprised: too many people are treating this like it's just a simple change and the big sites should get with the programme already. Gruber's definitely one, with his "yes, you'll just get left behind then" rhetoric. People seemed to understand that newspapers and the like needed serious CMSs to plug in to their print workflows, they didn't go "here's wordpress, that'll do". But with video, they think it's just a minor codec change and a different plugin on the site. There's a whole world of back-end technology out there that's geared around Flash, and it's non-trivial to replace. (I think it should be replaced, but there's a lot of time and a lot of money invested here, and the iPhone and iPad alone aren't enough to convince corporations they aren't being betamaxed. Yet.)

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:00:28 -0800

As I understand it, it should just handle whatever you put in SRC, and it's up to the browser what to do with it - obviously that's a huge area of blurriness right now as far asthe actual HTML 5 spec goes. Might be worth peeking at the HTML 5 version of youtube and seeing what they do.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:40:22 -0800

grumblebee: “Before I can even think about dumping Flash for HTML5, I MUST be able to use it to play video from a streaming service (including live video). This is about 50% of my work.” Well, er - this isn't really an issue that comes down to HTML5 or Flash at all, frankly. It comes down to the codec the video is encoded with. Some codecs can be played in chunks; some can't. H264 is one of those codecs. If you're wondering about the specifics of how this looks, you should do what Artw recommends and go check out the Youtube HTML5 beta. It is precisely the same, visually, as normal Youtube (there is no "download" button, nor is there a right-click "Download" option) if that's what you're wondering. Also, as far as I know most Flash video does indeed cache on the user's computer; at the very least, it doesn't come through in "frames," although I guess maybe you're being metaphorical there. It's trivially easy to grab the original .FLV file as it's being cached; that's the principle on which FlashGot functions. The only reason streaming offers an appearance of security is because most users don't appear to know how to grab the file. I have seen players that actually cache video files in smaller chunks, but those seem to be quite rare; Youtube and the rest of the major players don't use them. But I have a feeling you already know all this; and anyway, somebody who knows more about Flash than me would probably be able to speak to this better.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:43:38 -0800

Also: live video? I don't know much about real-time streaming. I would've though that flash just progressively transcoded to .FLV when it did things like that, in which case HTML5 should be able to do that just as easily, I imagine. But I have no idea - you don't see true "live" video much, I don't think, although maybe I just don't know...

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:50:58 -0800

TBH I'd be able to tell you more about what it's doing if it were available for Firefox – I can look at it in Chrome but I don't really have the same set of tools. Certainly all the HTML 5 video I've seen seems to begin playing before the file is fully downloaded, and to me that looks like streaming, but as you say that might not actually be the same thing.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:54:38 -0800

I can tell you that when i view source i don;t seem to see an actual <video> tag... just a whole bunch of DIVs, so I guess they are getting the video onto the page via some kind of Javascript.

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:07:16 -0800

The h.264 codec supports streaming (ie, not progressive downloads, but actually streaming), the difference is you need the content to be served from a streaming server, over RTP (or RTSP), instead of HTTP. It appears it is as simple as calling rtp://yourserver.com/video.mp4 to have the codec process the streaming, vs calling http://yourserver.com/video.mp4 (which would start the progressive download of the video file).

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:47:33 -0800

We are removing flash from OSX.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:11:02 -0800

No, streaming has nothing to do with whether or not the video is playing before it downloads. That's a common misconception. The reason you can download videos from youtube is because they aren't streaming, they're progressive. Open up Firebug while you're watching a YouTube video and you'll see, in the Net panel, the video gradually downloading. Once it's done, it's on your computer. If, on the other hand, you watch a show on abc.com (which also uses the Flash player), you won't see anything gradually loading in Firebug. That's because only a tiny bit of the video is being cached, the data for the frame you are currently seeing and a few frames around it (so that there's a bit of a buffer). You can't download and save a video that's streaming like that -- at least not with one of those download extensions. There's no file to download. I'm not an expert on how this works, but it uses a technology called RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol), which I think is based around socket connections. It requires a specialized server, such as the Flash Media Server or Red5. It's not HTTP technology. Like I said, the majority of videos on the web, such as those on YouTube are not streaming. It's very expensive to set up a stream, which is why people use progressive download instead (which also plays AS its downloading). But the major media holders, such as the networks, insist on streaming.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:12:59 -0800

It appears it is as simple as calling rtp://yourserver.com/video.mp4 That's awesome if it's true. It's not that easy even in Flash. You have to set up and instantiate live connection and streaming objects. Do you have a source for your info?

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:06:38 -0800

> Do you have a source for your info? Originally from stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1735933/streaming-via-rtsp-or-rtp-in-html5 Some more googling shows apple's developer notes (so that may be safari specific), with references to RTSP. These guys appear to have rtsp working in an html5/ipad situation as well, http to deliver the .m3u file which references the streaming server. Again, Apple has a technote on HTTP Livestreaming for iPhone/iPad. And here is the RFC for h.264's rtp based streaming, but it appears that HTTP live streaming is the preferred method.

By: euphorb

euphorb — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:48:01 -0800

Gregory Maxwell, of Xiph, responds to Jobs' claims: Because many knowledgeable people have heard of the problems faced by these patent-soup standards [like the MPEG], they may extrapolate these risk to codecs developed under a different process where these problems are less considerable. This is a mistake, and I'll explain why here. I'm not sure that he fully does but it makes for some interesting reading.

By: Malor

Malor — Sat, 01 May 2010 03:44:42 -0800

I saw a post on Ars Technica that claims that Quicktime, Logic Express Pro, and a third product that didn't stick are still using Carbon. The last major developer for OS X to ship Carbon apps, holding you in the 1990s by their sheer organizational incompetence, would appear to be Apple.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:31:56 -0800

...Quicktime, Logic Express Pro, and a third product that didn't stick are still using Carbon. So what? If this is just a counter to Jobs' statement about Adobe being the last major developer to switch from Carbon and that was the only example of Apple having to wait for a third party to write or rewrite applications for its platform, you might have a point. But there was Metrowerks PowerPlant framework and it's lateness in switching to Mac OS X, Quarkxpress's problems in doing the same, Motorla's low yield of Power PC chips, Adobe shipping the CS suite for Intel on its timetable, not Apple's and so on and so on. The point here is not that Apple still has rewritten some of its applications, but that the company has seen and felt the effects of third party companies holding back its platform and Apple is trying to avoid that now, at seemingly all costs. ...holding you in the 1990s by their sheer organizational incompetence, would appear to be Apple. I know right, they can't ship anything on a regular schedule.

By: Malor

Malor — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:38:35 -0800

Dammit, do you deliberately misunderstand? Apple itself isn't transitioning away from Carbon in some of its leading applications, and yet they're demanding that third parties do so? And right up until 2007, they were promising to bring Carbon forward to 64-bit? Don't you see the hypocrisy there? Don't you see how disingenuous that argument is?

By: weston

weston — Sat, 01 May 2010 08:22:41 -0800

Also, Malor, I'm pretty sure iTunes still isn't off Carbon either. And the Finder wasn't until Snow Leopard.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 01 May 2010 08:46:32 -0800

Don't you see the hypocrisy there? Don't you see how disingenuous that argument is? Nope. It's one thing to be held up because of late projects of your own, it's an entirely other thing to be held up by a third party you have no control over.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:29:05 -0800

That makes fuck all sense.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:09:57 -0800

The difference is that Apple is always right. When other people haven't switched to Cocoa, Apple is right and they should have switched years ago. When Apple is still shoveling out Carbon software, Apple is right and there's a good reason for it and it's still everybody else's fault somehow.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:25:13 -0800

Apple is right and there's a good reason for it... It's astounding isn't it. Adobe's reasons aren't good enough but Apple's are. Apple just had some other stuff to do, Adobe apparently didn't. I mean offering up InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, and the lot was so crass of them because just like Apple's own Final Cut and other applications, it was coded in Carbon and they were under the illusion that there'd be a Carbon 64 but that was changed. How fucking dare they.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:40:44 -0800

That makes fuck all sense. Actually, you're right ArtW, in a way. I was responding to an moral and philosophical view of Malor's, that Jobs is being hypocritical in his letter about Adobe converting its applications to Coco late, yet Apple still has a few major applications it hasn't converted. From a business perspective, I don't see a problem with Apple's stance, having a major third party supplier of software lag behind probably does suck, while Apple's efforts aren't as big a deal to itself. Hypocritical, sure, but hardly surprising IMO. Adobe's reasons aren't good enough but Apple's are. I'm sure Adobe feels the exact opposite.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:51:29 -0800

I'd also question the longterm business sense of Apple going out of it's way to fuck with 3rd party supliers of software as well, TBH.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:53:42 -0800

Adobe's reasons aren't good enough but Apple's are. I'm sure Adobe feels the exact opposite. Adobe more likely feels, justifiably, that applying a double standard is ridiculous. Up until the announcement that Carbon 64 wasn't going to happen, Adobe was developing for that. I think it can be safely assumed that Apple, as the entity making that decision, had a bit of advance warning that Cocoa migration was a necessity. And here we have Apple, as the platform developer and sole source of first-party software, still working in Carbon for their headlining products. Adobe has a better excuse than Apple for not moving to Cocoa, and when Adobe's moving to Cocoa and Apple isn't, for Apple to whine about Adobe being slow to adopt is hypocritical and insane. If the Windows version of CS5 needed to be run in compatibility mode for Windows XP if installed on a Vista or 7 system, that wouldn't be good. But if Microsoft Office 2010 did too? Then no, Microsoft doesn't get to bitch Adobe out for it.

By: empath

empath — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:56:38 -0800

I'd also question the longterm business sense of Apple going out of it's way to fuck with 3rd party supliers of software as well, TBH. I mean by far the biggest market for macs is 'creatives', and without Adobe software on OSX, most of them would have windows machines. Apple's needling of Adobe really makes me think that apple is going to abandon OS X, which makes me sad.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:08:28 -0800

If they do that and go down the Strossian path then it would seem like 3rd party developers would be forever relegated to being makers of toys and novelties, but never any really big or serious applications.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:01:04 -0800

I mean by far the biggest market for macs is 'creatives', and without Adobe software on OSX, most of them would have windows machines. The iPhone OS and associated devices account for 40% of Apple's sales, so I don't think creatives hold a big sway over Apple these days. ...apple is going to abandon OS X Of course, that's should be pretty obvious by now, I'm guessing it's a 5-10 year time frame. 3rd party developers would be forever relegated to being makers of toys and novelties, but never any really big or serious applications. True, Pages, Notes and Numbers aren't serious applications.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:06:45 -0800

Well, they're definately not 3rd party.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:09:30 -0800

empath If Stross is right, Apple may be looking to get out of the desktop/laptop computer business completely in the next decade or so. Or at least seeing the desktop/laptop computer side of their business become largely irrelevant to their strategy. I've still got my doubts on that one, but if Stross is right then pissing off Adobe to completely lock down their ownership of the app ecosystem, even at the cost of Adobe ending support for its Mac products, may be considered perfectly acceptable. Artw Well, for their moneymakers anyway. Even assuming Stross is right in all particulars I'm doubtful that we'll see thin client Photoshop equivalent software coming out for the slate computers anytime soon. That will be handled by his predicted dirt cheap, low profit margin, remnant desktop/laptop market, a market which presumably won't be completely a walled garden and software developers still have a degree of freedom. One does wonder, in Stross' scenario, what sort of niche Apple and its imitators will demand for themselves as the owners of the walled garden. Apple has already demonstrated that it will kill anything that competes with its software, so the question is: how much of the software market will Apple claim for itself? The argument that Apple will build its own business necessities software (word processing, spreadsheets, etc) makes intuitive sense, but I think there's an argument to be made that it would be more profitable for Apple to eliminate much of its own software development costs by allowing third parties to make such software and collect rent to make a higher profit than they could making the software themselves.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:49:48 -0800

And here we have Apple, as the platform developer and sole source of first-party software, still working in Carbon for their headlining products. Adobe has a better excuse than Apple for not moving to Cocoa, and when Adobe's moving to Cocoa and Apple isn't, for Apple to whine about Adobe being slow to adopt is hypocritical and insane. I think that was a stupid jab by Jobs in the letter -- Carbon was a fully supported API until very recently. But it's not negated by the fact that FCP and iTunes are carbon -- it kinda is the whole point, in fact. Apple still have apps written in Carbon isn't a problem for Apple: if they need to kill Carbon in 10.7 they can do so, and can throw a shitload of devs at their internal apps so they're ready in time. They've already done this once, when they abandoned Java for OS X (this is pre 10.1) and rewrote all their own apps into Obj-C. Adobe still having apps written in Carbon is a problem for Apple, as it means some sort of Carbon support needs to hang around until new versions of CS are out and enough people have upgraded.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:23:36 -0800

I saw a post on Ars Technica that claims that Quicktime, Logic Express Pro, and a third product that didn't stick are still using Carbon. Jesus, are people still harping on this? QuickTime X is now mostly Cocoa. In the near future, the API will be wholly Cocoa. Real developers never have to worry about this because the innards are hidden from them when using the Cocoa API. Apple keeping Carbon around for internal use when they have control over the lifespan of whatever remaining pieces of that framework they need to update is an entirely different logistical matter from keeping all of it updated and working indefinitely for third-party developers who drag their ass in updating their code. Hating Apple for this shows a ridiculous disconnect from the reality of how software is written and managed.

By: weston

weston — Sat, 01 May 2010 17:25:05 -0800

are people still harping on this? That particular discussion seems to have started with people harping on Adobe as some kind of large dysfunctional weight hindering Apple's progress because they were still using an ostensibly well-past-expiration-date API like Carbon. The point isn't that Apple sucks for continuing to use Carbon, the point is that if Apple has had good reasons for slowly moving some applications to Cocoa and continuing to use Carbon right up through the present, it's only reasonable to concede that Adobe might have good reasons too.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:14:36 -0800

...it's only reasonable to concede that Adobe might have good reasons too. What's reasonable for Adobe may not be reasonable for Apple, they have different goals and business interests. I don't think either is wrong in what they want, just that Adobe is being a bit of whining crybaby about it and Apple is being dickishly arrogant about it. So it goes.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:22:18 -0800

To be honest, sometimes I have a hard time believing that Flash and CS are made by the same company. It's kind of like Rod Stewart before 1974 and Rod Stewart after 1974. Really? The same person? Not possible. That's not to say that Flash is horrifyingly bad at its core - it's perfectly serviceable, and frankly the best thing out there for rich web development - but if it's possible to screw that up by layering shit all around it, Adobe seems hell-bent on trying. And it's to be expected that Apple - who clearly wants to move into a future where they have more and more control over what happens on their platforms, given the particularities of this iPhone OS they've tied their fortunes to - will do all they can to remove any other player who threatens their dominance there.

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:51:10 -0800

...apple is going to abandon OS X Of course, that's should be pretty obvious by now, I'm guessing it's a 5-10 year time frame. OK, now you're just making stuff up. Why on earth would Apple abandon the general computing platform that you need to make apps for their appliances? They're going to let Microsoft handle that for them?

By: weston

weston — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:53:57 -0800

What's reasonable for Adobe may not be reasonable for Apple, they have different goals and business interests. Sure, varying goals in the marketplace. But when it comes to logic behind how/when their software is composed, refined, and updated, I suspect the reasons why Apple and Adobe have been slow moving to Cocoa are pretty similar: the benefits can be marginal and often largely deferred while the costs are high.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sat, 01 May 2010 19:17:28 -0800

Churchhatestuckers: Xcode for iPad in two years, tops. You once needed a Lisa to code for the Mac, btw. Remember those? Exactly. The Mac's going into maintenance mode soon, will be retired in a decade. Hell, that's been Jobs's plan since 1996, when he told Fortune that Apple should "squeeze every last drop out of the Mac and move on to inventing the next big thing".

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Sat, 01 May 2010 19:34:49 -0800

The Mac's going into maintenance mode soon, will be retired in a decade. Bet you a quarter it isn't. (Compounded yearly at 2%.) I think what's more likely is an iP* based HTML/CSS/JS dev environment, so you can make the sites that the iAppliances are designed to access on the iAppliances.

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:26:49 -0800

Xcode for iPad in two years, tops. Heh. XCode is bad enough on one of the smaller laptops, on the pad it would be a horror.

By: ChurchHatesTucker

ChurchHatesTucker — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:35:36 -0800

Heh. XCode is bad enough on one of the smaller laptops, on the pad it would be a horror. Bad on the smaller ones how? Worked fine on my twelve inch PowerBook (as of Leopard.) But yeah, I could see it struggling on the iPad.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:54:43 -0800

I don't see Apple killing off OS X whatsoever, nor see them take their locked down iPod/iPad model to a desktop OS. I doubt it will ever crack the Enterprise desktop market in significantly large numbers and Linux will continue to grow in the Enterprise server market but OS X is a great OS, and is in demand by millions, and therefore generates revenue for Apple and third party software developers in numbers that, unless I'm in error, are higher than ever. Of course, unlike others, I don't see the desktop market being replaced by commodity consumption devices. The desktop is also pretty much a commodity anyway. I know people who don't understand there is a difference between a Mac or a Dell (in terms of being aware that software has to be native to one or the other outside of virtualization) when first purchasing. it's just a computer that doesn't define their identity and they don't give a fuck about openness, HTML 5, etc. and so forth.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:24:24 -0800

And somewhere in the recovery was a moment when Apple stood on a hill, before the setting sun, and shook its fist at the heavens and vowed that it would never be hungry (and powerless) again. Never again would another company decide whether the Macintosh lived or died. So, Apple supplanted Metrowerks and wrote its own IDE. It wrote Keynote to inform Microsoft and the world that, should Microsoft discontinue Office for Mac, Apple would be prepared to replace it without delay. It wrote Safari to ensure that it would have a Web browser option, come what may. This is the key to modern Apple. It's a big company, and it's now wildly successful. It assumes that it can write a successful software product in any niche. It's very talented and very confident. But always, at the back of its collective mind, is fear — the fear of depending on the kindness and competence of others, and the fearful memory of the days when it was cowering in a dark closet, waiting for the blow to fall, while the trade press laughed and jeered.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:29:18 -0800

Programming for the iPhone can be tricky. Developers have put together a wealth of third-party frameworks and libraries written for Objective-C that wouldn't come to an iPad version of Xcode without some serious work by Apple, and its pool of engineers is already overextended trying to deliver on making new features for the next WWDC, and the one after that. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it would be more like Touchcode than Xcode and would be a watered-down IDE, making watered-down apps. OS X and Xcode will be safe for a long, long time, I'd imagine.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sun, 02 May 2010 03:39:49 -0800

I think what's more likely is an iP* based HTML/CSS/JS dev environment, so you can make the sites that the iAppliances are designed to access on the iAppliances. This "iAppliances" stuff sounds an awful lot like the "it's a toy" dismissals of the original Mac. Which is an interesting parallel: it came out in 1984, but the Apple II was still the big money-maker for most of the 1980s. They didn't actually kill the Apple II line off until 1993 -- 9 years after the Mac launched. This transition could well be the same. Except it's already clear that the Mac is no longer the big money maker, it's not even close. Demographics is destiny. The next 10 years are going to change computing, again. It's barely been out a month, but already a sizable number of people I know with iPads have just sold or retired their laptops -- and some of those are devs. In a few years there will be a big-screen OS X touch model -- what will that do to desktops? It's already pretty evident that the pace of development on new Mac OS X apps is slowing way down -- most of the effort in Cocoa is going to OS X Touch. Project these trends into the future, and you end up with a Mac that's in a position not very different to the Apple II in 1989. Still selling, for sure, but ultimately irrelevant and shortly to be gone.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:27:23 -0800

Bonaldi--That's an interesting point, but the computing world has changed a lot since 1984: the computers have, and so has what we expect from them. The Macintosh was more powerful than the Apple ][, whereas iPhoneOS devices are less powerful than Macs. The Apple ][ (any home computer back then, really) was basically a hobbyist gadget that a very small audience. While the Mac may not have dominant market share, there are a lot of them around, and the desktop computer paradigm will be around for a while for use as a serious tool. I do think a lot of people will get an iPad or something like it over the next 5-10 years and say "you know, I'm fine with this. Why get anything more complicated?" I think iPad-like devices will become a mainstream platform, but not necessarily the mainstream platform. And it's especially interesting that you made your point by linking to the blog of a developer who publicly swore off iPhone development after releasing one app for it. As far as I know, he hasn't reversed this decision, and it points to one of the obstacles to the platform taking over: getting developers to sign on.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:40:09 -0800

True, but he's also one of the ones who has just sold his MacBook! A lot depends on what you mean by powerful, too: if you just mean hardware, well, give it a year or two. There's no reason a device running OS X Touch couldn't have the same specs and a similar form factor to an iMac (probably angled more like an architect's board, however). Also remember I'm talking about a decade: if in 10 years enough people have gone that way, as you suggest, I fully expect Apple to retire the Mac long before the End of The Desktop PC has come -- just as they did with floppies. They won't run it into the ground.

By: mccarty.tim

mccarty.tim — Sun, 02 May 2010 07:47:58 -0800

Can you imagine typing an essay on an iPad? If Macs are truly beginning to become obsolete, then the iPad is going to need a full-sized keyboard. And yes, I know about bluetooth keyboards, but I mean an in-box, hard to lose solution. The iPad is meant to be the Mac's answer to Netbooks. It lets you easily browse the internet and type short emails, and play a few 2D games. I predict in five years people will still have full-sized laptops and desktops for home use, but they will be much cheaper and commodified, and meant for doing work (outside of gaming and graphics machines). Macs will still be around, but they will be more about ergonomics, since people will be mostly concerned about if they can use it for days on end without developing carpal tunnel. BTW, why is it taking so long for the Android clones of the iPad to come out? I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of tablet computing, but the iPad is too expensive.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:16:57 -0800

mccarty.tim I disagree, actually, with the idea that the iPad/whatever slate needs an integral keyboard to become dominant. The lack of a keyboard is, I think, a major positive component in slate computing. Adding a keyboard would add weight, take up room, and in general detract from the appeal of a slate computer. Most people, regrettably, don't type. Not in any real sense of the word. They hunt and peck, and some do it pretty quickly, but they can do it just about as quickly with an anticipating text entry method such as the iPad features. Add in possibilities like Swype and the fact is that most people will likely be able to enter text faster without a real keyboard than they could otherwise. Us actual typists, of course, will leave them in the dust if we've got a real keyboard, but that doesn't much matter to the average non-typist. I'm enough of a geek/tinkerer that I'll want a real computer as well as a slate, but for the non-geek non-gamer crowd I think even the typists would be happy with a keyboard at home and using the touchscreen when away from home; or a portable keyboard if they're really dedicated to typing. Speaking as a typist I don't see the lack of a keyboard preventing me from buying a slate when a non-Apple (cheaper) model comes out. The purposes I want a slate for just really don't call for a keyboard, and if they do I can lug a portable as well as the slate. But I don't expect to be buying a portable keyboard.

By: tybeet

tybeet — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:25:56 -0800

John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds:

Watching two proprietary software companies deeply opposed to computer user freedom lob accusations back and forth about who is more opposed to freedom has been surreal, to say the least. But what's been crystal clear is that the freedom these companies are arguing about is their own, not that of their users. And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all—it is the ability to control those users. Adobe is mad at Apple for not letting Adobe control iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users via Flash, and Apple is mad at Adobe for suggesting that Apple is arbitrarily abusing its control over Application Store users... What's strangely absent from "Thoughts on Flash" is any explanation for why proprietary technology on the Web is bad, or why free standards are good... If he had said anything about why user freedom on the Web is important, his hypocrisy would have been explicit. In a nutshell, he says, "Don't use Adobe's proprietary platform to engage with information on the Web. Use Apple's." He doesn't want users to freely wander and creatively explore the Web or their own computers; he wants them to move from the fenced-off "Freedom Zone" based in San Jose to the one based in Cupertino... The definition of proprietary software is software which restricts users' freedoms to view its source code, run it for any purpose, share it, or modify it... Looking at the EULAs for Apple and Adobe, we can see that they look pretty much the same, and that "iPhone OS" and "Apple" could be substituted for "Adobe" and "Flash" in Jobs's own quote. His implicit admission of this, that "Apple has many proprietary products too," is a comical understatement... Jobs has hit the nail on the head when describing the problems with Adobe, but not until after smashing his own thumb. Every criticism he makes of Adobe's proprietary approach applies equally to Apple, and every benefit attributed to the App Store can be had without it being a mandatory proprietary arrangement. Apple can offer quality control and editorial selection over available free software, and encourage users to exclusively—but voluntarily—use their store. Instead, Apple chooses to enforce legal restrictions, the transgression of which is punishable by criminal law, on users who want to make changes to their own computers, like installing free, non-Apple, software... So, the correct decision in the dispute between Apple and Adobe is "none of the above." The past we need to leave behind is not just Flash, it's Apple's proprietary software as well. There is plenty of room for them to join us along with everyone else in the free world—but they must stop pretending that their little cages are the free world.

By: mazola

mazola — Sun, 02 May 2010 08:29:23 -0800

I do think a lot of people will get an iPad or something like it over the next 5-10 years and say "you know, I'm fine with this. Why get anything more complicated?" If the last 20 years of computing was about infrastructure/enterprise, the next 20+ are about consumption. At least that's the part that Apple cares about and that seems to be a high-growth, high-margin sector. If iPhone, iPod, iPad do well, the Mac will continue to do well. And yes, something like the iPad is ideal for many people I know: it's just as much technology as they need to do the things they would benefit in doing with minimal fuss. Is this the future of tech consumer? Looking at the history of say, the auto sector, the underlying technology of autos become more sophisticated but the demographics of the consumer sure wasn't restricted to mechanics.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:52:41 -0800

Theora lead developer Gregory Maxwell responds to Steve Jobs' weird and worrisome reference to an anti-Theora "patent pool."

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 02 May 2010 09:54:00 -0800

Meanwhile, in Linux land...

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 02 May 2010 11:11:49 -0800

Yeah, Ubuntu 10.4 is indeed freaking awesome thus far. There are a lot of great improvements, but most importantly to me they really seem to have ironed out the difficulties with sound support.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 02 May 2010 12:20:03 -0800

Suprised a major release like that hasn't earned itself an FPP of it's own, TBH.

By: caddis

caddis — Sun, 02 May 2010 15:13:45 -0800

Watching two proprietary software companies deeply opposed to computer user freedom lob accusations back and forth about who is more opposed to freedom has been surreal, to say the least. But what's been crystal clear is that the freedom these companies are arguing about is their own, not that of their users. And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all—it is the ability to control those users. Adobe is mad at Apple for not letting Adobe control iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users via Flash, and Apple is mad at Adobe for suggesting that Apple is arbitrarily abusing its control over Application Store users... yes, yes, and yes

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:20:11 -0800

'HTML5' now refers to a collection of related client-side technologies, branded together as a product. It is no-longer just a hypertext specification document, and everything that concerns document semantics is being ignored anyway. This is usage that Steve Jobs employed this week.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:30:48 -0800

'HTML5' now refers to a collection of related client-side technologies... Indeed. It is mildly annoying for the term being used beyond what it actually means but that's to be expected. I find it very bizarre that Apple and MS are being seen as primary movers to an open standards based web when web developers have been pushing for this for years, save the one's in basements or Microsoft heavy IT departments who don't care to know a thing about their own profession (see any code with class names like style1, style2, style3). Furthermore, the reduction in Flash use over the last several years has been primarily, in my experience (which may differ from others of course) because of Google. Google's search engine indexes HTML content, not Flash, and furthermore, responds well, if that's what one can say about technology, to semantic markup. This, more than anything else, has helped us convince clients to let us develop their sites without Flash (except for video because until HTML 5 and the codecs get settled (and IE) it is the best choice, and of course for animations), and use standards for better indexing by Google, not to mention the benefit of separating content from presentation keeping future redesigns cheaper and easier to deploy, and finally, an end user using a CMS can update HTML content far easier than Flash content. Sure, Apple's push, Microsoft's supposed push with IE 9, will help, and it's wonderful to have more high profile support even if most end users couldn't care less, but they are hardly at the forefront of pushing standards into place. I'd credit developers on the front line, Mozilla and Opera, and Google just as much if not more. Apple and Microsoft's support for only h.264 is fucking awful though.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:55:28 -0800

So, the correct decision in the dispute between Apple and Adobe is "none of the above." I hope that fair and balanced summary includes Google-sponsored devices and software. If not, it certainly should.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:08:27 -0800

Yeah, BP. I'm sure the operations manager for the Free Software Foundation is a huge fan of Google and everything they stand for. I'll bet his boss Richard Stallman, the guy who has said that Google search itself is too restrictive because all the code under the hood isn't released to users, is a closet Google lover.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:21:59 -0800

Google, Apple, etc. are all closed, secretive companies, selling closed products, relative to FSF's notions of openness. The take-home point is that if you follow FSF's edicts to the letter, there is no phone you would be able to use. At all.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:43:46 -0800

Blazecock Pileon: “The take-home point is that if you follow FSF's edicts to the letter, there is no phone you would be able to use. At all.” Look, I'm not Richard Stallman, and I don't know how much I agree with him; moreover I think I take your larger point that all the companies involved engage in aggressive business tactics, so it's really not reasonable to single out Apple as being unique in this regard. But you're saying that no advancement of the state of the art would happen at all without those companies and their aggressive business tactics, and I can't really see that being true. At the very least, at this point I'm pretty sure Richard Stallman could build a phone himself if he really wanted to; lately I've been digging into gawk and the work he did there, and I think that alone qualifies him as a great creator in the 20th century. This is only one of the whole cluster of programs that power the operating system that runs most of the millions of web sites in the world today. So I think we probably ought to accept the Free Software Foundation's assertion that without non-free sources we indeed would have phones and computers and all of this technology, even if you think those things might not be quite as snazzy as they are.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:09:08 -0800

You know what's fascinating is that nobody cares enough about Microsoft to be mad at them any more.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:37:19 -0800

empath I don't think that's the case, its more just that MS hasn't done anything particularly awful lately, while Apple has. MS is still evil, but that's yesterday's news. Apple is revealing to everyone what us geeks have always known: that it too is evil, and that's startling to many of the people who believed all that snazzy advertising about "Think Different" and all the other BS Apple has spewed about how it isn't evil.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:52:43 -0800

You know what's fascinating is that nobody cares enough about Microsoft to be mad at them any more. Microsoft doesn't seem the relevant in terms of doing much new, you know? Apple and Google are shipping interesting new OSes (iPhone, Android) while Microsoft has what? Windows 7? Some phone OS later this year? That may change once it ships and if it proves to be competitor to Apple and Google, but for now Microsoft seems like a cranky old grandfather: You know he's a little crazy, but pretty harmless these days. Apple is revealing to everyone what us geeks have always known: that it too is evil, and that's startling to many of the people who believed all that snazzy advertising about "Think Different" and all the other BS Apple has spewed about how it isn't evil. Actually, I'd argue that it's mostly only geeks who care. The general populace is probably thrilled to have decent phone and internet device, filled with useful and/or fun Apps.

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:01:55 -0800

Antitrust?

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:38:10 -0800

Apple is the new China.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:46:25 -0800

Antitrust? They've certainly done everything they canto bring that attention to themselves.

By: phearlez

phearlez — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:48:59 -0800

John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds: Watching two proprietary software companies deeply opposed to computer user freedom Woo, 11 words till he made me check out! I know some portion of the FSF folks simply cannot function without some portion of their brain looking at the world through their particular filter, but opening up with an attribution of motivation? You've lost everyone who has affection for the folks you're maligning and making people like me think that I can't trust anything you have to say. Sullivan could have opened with a simple statement of fact about the options those companies provide to customers, but instead he's fully in the grip of his disease and has to START with ideology. If I presume you open a discussion by stating your strongest positions and you choose to make that assigning unknowable motives to people... why should I listen to you? It's like the movie trailer that can't find 30 good seconds out of a 2h movie to show me. If this is your best then don't waste my time.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:55:21 -0800

They've certainly done everything they canto bring that attention to themselves. Right? How dare they decide what's best for their platform!

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:32:23 -0800

"Right? How dare they ~~decide what's best for their platform~~ harm consumers by abusing their position as the dominant mobile application platform to reduce competition in the marketplace!" ftfy

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:38:39 -0800

The general populace is probably thrilled to have decent phone and internet device, filled with useful and/or fun Apps. Apple Sells One Million iPads CUPERTINO, California—May 3, 2010—Apple® today announced that it sold its one millionth iPad™ on Friday, just 28 days after its introduction on April 3. iPad users have already downloaded over 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million ebooks from the new iBookstore. "One million iPads in 28 days—that's less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Demand continues to exceed supply and we're working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers." Go Apple!

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:40:15 -0800

Apple is the new China. Apple users are the new North Koreans

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:44:57 -0800

Corporate loyalists are the new flesh.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:46:16 -0800

The general populace is probably thrilled to have decent phone and internet device, filled with useful and/or fun Apps. Agreed. Steve's bit about open standards etc. won't get much traction from consumers, and they don't give a fuck about Flash and the issues with it either (I watched a Flash based video on my Eee PC Linux netbook today no problem, why would a consumer care?) Hence the wild success of the iPad/iPhone and the wild success of Windows 7 from Microsoft, Adobe software, etc.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:54:32 -0800

"Corporate loyalists are the new flesh." Meh, brand loyalists are no different than sports fans. I submit that there's little difference between and Apple fan and a Yankees fan.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:56:14 -0800

From the interview with Google's Andy Rubin As to when the number of Android phones sold would exceed the number of BlackBerrys and iPhones sold, Mr. Rubin said, "I don't know when its might be, but I'm confident it will happen. Open usually wins." Currently Windows outsells Macintosh by a huge margin, yet Apple is still quite profitable. We can see how Google is defining win, but I wonder what Jobs' definition is.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:25:16 -0800

Brandon Blatcher: “Currently Windows outsells Macintosh by a huge margin, yet Apple is still quite profitable. We can see how Google is defining win, but I wonder what Jobs' definition is.” People say that, but frankly I think that deep down Jobs' definition of winning isn't that different from Microsoft's or Google's. Profitable is great, but as far as I can remember the 1980s didn't end with Apple saying "gee, Microsoft, it appears that you're gaining the majority market share - but we don't mind, we're happy with our slice so long as we're making the computers we want to make." I mean, Steve Jobs certainly has more passion about computing, and he cares a lot about his product, which is something that we've all always wondered about with Microsoft. But if you asked him to answer honestly whether market dominance is something he wants, I think he'd have to say yes. And everything Apple has done since he took back the helm demonstrates that.

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:59:58 -0800

Not sure if it would get instantly deleted were this to be made into its own FPP, but if you're really that concerned about your iPhone being locked down and you want the ability to do just about whatever the hell is technically possible on a computer in your pocket.. there's a new Jailbreak out called Spirit. It works with EVERY iPhone device, all the way up to iPhone OS 3.2 - including the iPad and iPad 3G. I jailbroke my last iPhone and it was a prohibitively difficult and scary process. This new one is as simple as launching an app, plugging in your iPhone and clicking "jailbreak". The whole thing takes about about 10 seconds, then about another 45 seconds to reboot. Voila! (here's a screenshot of my now-jailbroken iPhone) Oh, and you should backup your SHSH file first (instructions are inside the Umbrella download), just in case. And here's how to grab your iPhone's ECID to use with Umbrella.

By: revmitcz

revmitcz — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:20:39 -0800

(oh, quick addendum to my comment a moment ago - BACKUP YOUR iPHONE with iTunes before you Jailbreak it. Some people have reported losing their camera roll just after jailbreaking, but a simple "restore from backup" brings them all back in without any problems, and the phone remains jailbroken. It's annoying, but it's an easy fix.)

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:49:25 -0800

I, for one, am glad the federal government is focusing its efforts on preventing a popular cell phone manufacturer from deciding what's best for their platform, especially when cell phones do not have a history of openness. Clearly, this is a much more pressing issue than media consolidation, domestic spying, corruption on Wall Street, torture, etc., etc., etc.,

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:09:55 -0800

"Clearly, this is a much more pressing issue than media consolidation, domestic spying, corruption on Wall Street, torture, etc., etc., etc.," Exactly. If only the federal government were capable of doing more than one thing at a time! Why are the feds ignoring the cleanup of the biggest oil spill in history to harass Apple? Seriously though, I'm glad we agree: when a platform is the dominant platform in its market, and the platform vendor decides that anti-competitive practices are what's best for their platform, I'm glad somebody is looking into that. Apple turning into the Microsoft of mobile computing isn't good for anyone, not even Apple.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:15:30 -0800

when a platform is the dominant platform in its market Apple has no monopoly in the cell phone business. Apple is not Microsoft. Apple is not doing the things Microsoft did in the 1980s and 1990s.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:33:27 -0800

BP: "Apple has no monopoly in the cell phone business. Apple is not Microsoft. Apple is not doing the things Microsoft did in the 1980s and 1990s." Apple responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009 You're right that Apple isn't doing things MS did. MS forced OEMs into restrictive licensing deals in order to stifle competition. Apple is forcing software developers into restrictive licensing deals in order to stifle competition.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:40:44 -0800

Apple accounts for 16.6% of smartphone sales There is no way to stretch the English language to turn Apple into a monopoly, and certainly 16.6% of the smartphone market is not a fraction that justifies the federal government wasting its time on aiding Adobe's very real, significant and damaging monopoly.

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:47:15 -0800

Apple is stifling competition FOR GOOD!

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:52:39 -0800

BP: "There is no way to stretch the English language to turn Apple into a monopoly" Why bring up smartphone sales? We're talking about mobile app sales, where Apple currently owns around 99% of the market. At what point would you be willing to consider that Apple might hold a monopoly there?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:04:15 -0800

Minor note/question: In America, monopolies are fine, as long as they're legally gained and maintained, correct? If so, the question is does Apple's restricting of the tools to build Apps to only the tool they make constitute an illegal method of maintaining a monopoly? Does the ability to make javascript/html/css apps provide a sufficient alternative? Interesting questions, indeed.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:28:54 -0800

BB: "If so, the question is does Apple's restricting of the tools to build Apps to only the tool they make constitute an illegal method of maintaining a monopoly? Does the ability to make javascript/html/css apps provide a sufficient alternative?" Let's step back and imagine that tomorrow, Microsoft released a patch that prevented any unsigned code from running in Windows (and let's say MS required a licensing deal, skimming 30% cut of gross revenue before they'd sign your code, and would arbitrarily refuse to sign any applications that interfered with their business model), and the alternative solution that Microsoft suggested for non-signed apps was recoding them in javascript and html. Do you think you'd be able to count the fine, in billions of dollars, on your fingers and toes?

By: weston

weston — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:34:18 -0800

It might be useful to recognize not all antitrust law is about monopolies specifically. I'm no lawyer, but it's my understanding that certain kinds of tying and restrictions on purchasing widgets only from a given vendor/supplier can run afoul of the law whether the party in question is a monopolist or not.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:54:12 -0800

At what point would you be willing to consider that Apple might hold a monopoly there? When Apple shuts down Google's app store.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:02:29 -0800

Blazecock Pileon: “Apple has no monopoly in the cell phone business. Apple is not Microsoft. Apple is not doing the things Microsoft did in the 1980s and 1990s.” Microsoft has never had any kind of a monopoly. That's not why people hate them. Apple, however, is indeed exactly like Microsoft in the 80s and 90s. Of course they are. They're not some kind of computer collective in the sky, happily churning out beautiful things for all the happy geeks of the world. They're a business, and being a business means sometimes you have to sacrifice cool gadgets and useful software in order to increase your profit margin. Steve Jobs cares about computers up to the point that it is profitable to Apple to care about computers, and no farther. Which is only natural - he's the CEO of a company that's in the business of making money, not in the business of making great computers. It's surprising to me that people are still under the impression that those are both the same thing.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:06:35 -0800

BP: "When Apple shuts down Google's app store." I'll defer to real lawyers, but I'm pretty sure weston's point stands. A business doesn't have to choke all competition out of the market before its practices can be examined.

By: weston

weston — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:08:13 -0800

Microsoft has never had any kind of a monopoly. This isn't what the courts said.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:15:16 -0800

A business doesn't have to choke all competition out of the market before its practices can be examined. It just needs to choke about 16.6% of the market before Adobe's lobbyists get what they want.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:18:58 -0800

Let's step back and imagine that tomorrow, Microsoft released a patch that prevented any unsigned code from running in Windows... That analogy doesn't work, since what Apple did is open a store for a specific set of devices and declared "if you want to sell Apps in this store for this device we built, you have to do X, Y and Z". If you don't want to, that's fine, but then you're not selling products in our store, which we built to cater exclusively to these devices we built." To me, you can't argue that Apple is a monopoly when people can say "Screw it, I'll buy an Android phone." Not sure if that's a valid legal argument though.

By: weston

weston — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:27:36 -0800

Steve Jobs cares about computers up to the point that it is profitable to Apple to care about computers, and no farther. I'm sure Apple as a company, Apple's shareholders, and probably Jobs personally all care about Apple as a profitable business. I'm sure they're not above venal motivations. But as crappy as I think their behavior over the App Store is, I don't think a careful observation of what they've produced fits with the idea that they don't care beyond what gets them paid. The fit and finish and innovation that consistently comes out of the place is hard to do without having people there who cares about craftsmanship and vision. It just needs to choke about 16.6% of the market before Adobe's lobbyists get what they want. Apple will probably have to be found to be breaking the law before the law can successfully be brought to bear against them, whether or not there are actually any Adobe lobbyists bringing the FTC's/DOJ's attention to the matter. And if they are breaking the law, well, you can hardly blame Adobe for that.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:28:19 -0800

At what point would you be willing to consider that Apple might hold a monopoly there? When Apple shuts down Google's app store. Seriously? By this logic, Microsoft never had a monopoly in computer sales, because the possibility always existed to buy a Mac or a Linux machine. No matter how infeasible that was for any real purpose, no matter how few programs were functional on them. Obviously, the law's definition of monopoly is a bit broader than yours. And if they are breaking the law, well, you can hardly blame Adobe for that. Oh, he'll find a way.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:49:30 -0800

Obviously, the law's definition of monopoly is a bit broader than yours. If the law calls Apple a monopoly, then the law is broken and should be dismantled.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:52:21 -0800

"The difference is that Apple is always right."

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:54:50 -0800

Instead of smarmy comments, why not just admit that Apple is not a monopoly? Why continue to resort to specious arguments like this? What do you gain from it?

By: zarq

zarq — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:01:06 -0800

Seriously? By this logic, Microsoft never had a monopoly in computer sales, because the possibility always existed to buy a Mac or a Linux machine. No matter how infeasible that was for any real purpose, no matter how few programs were functional on them. Obviously, the law's definition of monopoly is a bit broader than yours. Not exactly. Microsoft was bullying vendors so they would not offer competing software on machines running Microsoft Windows. That's a monopolistic practice. Apple is refusing to support an industry standard on their own machines. They do not seem to be discouraging competition in the same way that Microsoft was.

By: zarq

zarq — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:02:00 -0800

By which I mean that they do not seem to be a monopoly -- but especially not when compared to Microsoft.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:14:53 -0800

The change to the developer agreement barring cross-compiling and cross-platform development strongly discourages, even penalizes competition. Developers are faced with the choice of either writing their app for either the iPhone or for everything else - not realistically a choice, given that App Store sales constitute 99.4% of mobile app sales. When the iPhone OS version is done, developers can choose whether it's worth it to start from scratch and re-code everything entirely to get a part of that last .6%, which again really isn't a choice at all. With the well-discussed and strong probability that cross-developing will be the #1 flag for getting your apps rejected from the App Store as violating the agreement - and the fact that an arbitrary and closed approval process without appeals gives Apple an incentive to disallow cross-developed apps and claim, unprovably, that they were cross-compiled - Apple is using its market clout to try to make the vast majority of apps iPhone-only. With, again, 99.4% of mobile app sales - even at its peak, Microsoft never came near that number - it's absolutely a monopolistic practice.

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:46:41 -0800

The change to the developer agreement barring cross-compiling and cross-platform development strongly discourages, even penalizes competition. The developer agreement clearly bars derivative applications flowing to the iPhone (i.e. Flash->iPhone) but does the reverse hold? If such a tool existed, could Apple prevent cross-platform development to flow the other way (i.e. iPhone->Flash)?

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:53:58 -0800

No, no, everybody, remember that Microsoft is eeeeeeeeeevilll!

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:00:21 -0800

The change to the developer agreement barring cross-compiling and cross-platform development strongly discourages, even penalizes competition This is nonsense. Adobe is all smiles and handshakes with Google, handing out free Android phones to its staff. There's plenty of competition.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:00:54 -0800

Can't we just agree that they're all evil?

By: weston

weston — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:48:17 -0800

Developers are faced with the choice of either writing their app for either the iPhone or for everything else - not realistically a choice, given that App Store sales constitute 99.4% of mobile app sales. When the iPhone OS version is done, developers can choose whether it's worth it to start from scratch and re-code everything entirely to get a part of that last .6%, which again really isn't a choice at all. I agree with you that they're flexing and even arguably somewhat abusing their market power. But I think it's harder to make the case that they're a real monopoly and even harder to make the case that they're abusing a real monopoly, given that they don't seem to be in a position to do anything (or actually seem to be doing anything) to keep the rest of the smartphone market from developing one or more ecosystems of its own. This was the thing about Microsoft that made them so terrifying: they not only had the market power to offer some sweet carrots --- or twist arms and break kneecaps -- to knock down competitors and would be comers, they used it. If Apple had the market power MS had and the inclination to use it, you'd see them telling record labels that if they wanted to sell through the itunes store, they had to sell exclusively through the itunes store, and AT&T that if they wanted to sell the iPhone, they'd better not be selling other smartphones. The recent 3.3.1 changes are annoying, unreasonable, and somewhat anticompetitive, but they're not telling an OEM that if they agree to install a potential competitor, they'll be seeing their OS cost per unit triple. None of this means that Apple isn't running afoul of other antitrust measures, and I wouldn't mind seeing that investigated. Not because I really believe they're going to reach even 2/3 marketshare in mobile devices. I'm more worried about the concept of general purpose computing devices as locked appliances with tight vendor control spreading to other manufacturers, and of course because I'd personally find Apple's mobile platform more appealing as a developer and as a consumer if they weren't so controlling and capricious.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Mon, 03 May 2010 21:55:31 -0800

If Apple had the market power MS had and the inclination to use it, you'd see them telling record labels that if they wanted to sell through the itunes store, they had to sell exclusively through the itunes store, and AT&T that if they wanted to sell the iPhone, they'd better not be selling other smartphones. If Apple's threatened monopoly was for music sales or smartphone sales, yes. But the threatened monopoly is in mobile apps, and they're essentially telling developers that if they want to sell through the App Store, they need to sell exclusively through the App Store.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:28:39 -0800

No, the "monopoly" is in mobile apps on the iPhone. That's no more a monopoly than Warner Bros. not allowing your cousin's band on their label.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:31:31 -0800

Hint: That 99.4% isn't of iPhone mobile apps. It's of ALL mobile apps.

By: weston

weston — Mon, 03 May 2010 23:56:57 -0800

Hint: That 99.4% isn't of iPhone mobile apps. It's of ALL mobile apps. Yeah, for various reasons, they've been able to turn their fraction of the smartphone market into the most active subsection of the app space, but they've pretty much done it using carrots rather than sticks, and given how wide open other devices are to similar markets, the only thing really keeping other players from providing competition is their ability to get it together. It's hard to argue that amounts to an entrenched monopolistic position for Apple. This doesn't mean they don't have market power. They clearly do and I see the argument that their development requirements raise the investment bar for going cross-platform, which is somewhat anti-competitive. But even that's not a prohibitively high bar and so while I think it's not necessarily good, it also seems really unlikely that there's a monopoly-abuse case to be built out of it.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:08:47 -0800

Hint: That 99.4% isn't of iPhone mobile apps. It's of ALL mobile apps. What percentage of those Apps were cross platform before?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:09:36 -0800

Or was is the dominate tool for making Apps in Apple's App Store?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 04:20:23 -0800

Also, a bit of clarification please, from the developers about the bolded part in section 3.3.1:

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).

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:29:11 -0800

Who needs Flash?

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:41:38 -0800

So, BP (I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm just trying to get this straight), I am okay, even if I get miles and miles away from directly accessing Apple's libraries, as long as whatever frameworks I write are in Objective-C and are coded in XCode? I am genuinely confused about this. Is there any possible coding I could -- in XCode -- using C, C++ or Objective-C, that would be in violation of this part of Apple's TOS?

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:42:16 -0800

from BB's link "Who needs Flash?" : "There's a ton of momentum behind HTML5, and it's well-justified momentum," Mozilla VP of engineering Mike Shaver tells Webmonkey. "The future of the web is the web, and betting against the web is a bad idea." That, sir, is irrefutable logic.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:50:34 -0800

The future is the future man, so don't bet against it. I'd be happy to see Flash dethroned as the dominant form of delivering video and photographer's website, but it definitely has uses elsewhere.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:14:16 -0800

via Gruber, Adobe complained to Feds. This is good news for everyone but Apple's shareholders. Anybody know where I can find this in html5?

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:28:44 -0800

Adobe shows off prototype Android tablet running Air and Flash 'flawlessly'

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:33:39 -0800

Here I showcase a number of HTML5 websites on the iPad. This is the web experience Steve Jobs wants us to have. errr.... I hope not. That's pretty bad actually.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:42:13 -0800

Adobe shows off prototype Android tablet running Air and Flash 'flawlessly' What's the battery life like? Oh and real artists ship.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:45:44 -0800

Sorry, what? I haven't gotten over that HTML on iPad video. It's... horrifying. It's like the guy stumbled into every way to make the device look terrible possible. I almost want to sign up to YouTube to try and assure people that it;s not all that bad and we're just looking at worst case there.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:50:48 -0800

I should sincerely hope it's not really like that, Artw. That was just a rollercoaster of dashed expectations.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:55:54 -0800

That was basically a series of demos that run fine on desktop but that you probably don't want to let anywhere near your comparitively underpowered mobile device. If you were serious about making a HTML5 app that worked well on iPhone/iPad you'd avoid the various sizing issues, UI issues and particularly the math and redraw heavy CANAVS tag animation. Probably bets to use CANVAS pretty sparingly in fact. On the other hand, if your serious about how HTML5 on your mobile device is a complete replacement for Flash maybe it better take that shit in it's stride.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:57:01 -0800

What do you expect? Try ripping out your computer's standard-for-2010 4GB of RAM and sticking in the 256 MB that Apple thinks is enough for you, and see what your web experience is like.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:01:26 -0800

So, BP (I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm just trying to get this straight), I am okay, even if I get miles and miles away from directly accessing Apple's libraries, as long as whatever frameworks I write are in Objective-C and are coded in XCode? I guess I don't understand how you would be "miles away" if you're using Objective-C and Apple pipeline. Do you have a technical example that might demonstrate what you mean? As far as I can tell, a macro does not really create a unique language in this case, if it gets translated to Objective-C before compilation. If you have a counterexample, I'd be curious to see what it looks like.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:05:22 -0800

mullingitover - Hionetsly i think you could put together a very demo of web apps using Javascript, CSS and some cool new HTML5 stuff that would look amazing on the iPad... just that wasn't it. And if you did make it, it wouldn't really be flash like... it'd be more like a really, really nice web page designed to fit a specific form factor.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:12:56 -0800

Artw: “Here I showcase a number of HTML5 websites on the iPad. This is the web experience Steve Jobs wants us to have. errr.... I hope not. That's pretty bad actually.” Eh, that guy's obviously just being a massive tool. I mean, picking a bunch of amateur games from canvasdemos.com is probably the worst way to test HTML5 on a device. “That was basically a series of demos that run fine on desktop but that you probably don't want to let anywhere near your comparitively underpowered mobile device.” Seriously? They didn't work on my desktop, either. Well - my laptop, and I'm in Ubuntu right now - but that shouldn't matter. Honestly, I had precisely the same problems that dude had trying to run this stuff in Firefox. I have a feeling he just picked some crap stuff. I'm not saying this because I think HTML5 is a complete replacement for Flash yet - far from it. But it's a pretty disingenuous test to pick a bunch of little test-apps like this, particularly ones that clearly don't work in the first place, and pretend that that's a complete test of the framework.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:14:53 -0800

(And it's pretty obvious, I think, that that guy's just trying to be lamely sardonic: "see, this is the future, throw away Flash, blah.")

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:18:02 -0800

There isn't really a counter-video though, is there? For all the big talk for HTML5 on the iPad I've yet to see it really deliver.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:19:37 -0800

I'd really like to see what HTML5 Youtube looks like on an iPad. I mean, it seems like that'd be a much better test, as far as professionally-coded HTML5 interfaces go.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:25:42 -0800

Looks like video plays inline on the Youtube HTML5 site pretty well.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:29:02 -0800

And that 3D page runs fine for me on my desktop. Equivalent flash would probably be smoother, but it's still double digits framerates and not dying on it's arse like it did on the pad.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:30:04 -0800

That does look nice. Of course, I know there are miles between a simple Youtube video interface and an interactive Flash game. But as far as the assertion that HTML5 is a memory hog that slows down dramatically on mobile devices, well... I guess I just don't know enough to say whether that's true or not.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:31:34 -0800

Yeah, I hadn't found that 3D page - I just tried the Tetris game and the etch-a-sketch thing, and neither of them really worked. The Tetris game died in the same place it did for him - no more blocks after the third, no matter what I do, although oddly sometimes it seems to work fine.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:34:25 -0800

The 3D page actually runs better on my G1 than it did in the iPad video.

By: Artw

Artw — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:34:49 -0800

TBH The two examples are comparing apples and oranges, and that they are thrown into this one bucket called "HTML5" is kind of ridiculous. Of course the iPad is going to be good at showing a H264 video - that's what it's designed to do. JS animation of the CANVAS tag, on the other hand, is a completely different thing. TBH I'm not surprised that it can't match desktops, but given how much it's been pushed I am surprised at how hard it falls down once you ask it to do anything complex.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:37:32 -0800

But this is the thing - I've seen Flash that does exactly the same thing, just because it's coded poorly. At the same time, though, maybe it's pretty unlikely that these are just bad hack jobs, given that HTML5 seems pretty simple on the face of it. Hmm.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:41:46 -0800

I guess I don't understand how you would be "miles away" if you're using Objective-C and Apple pipeline. Do you have a technical example that might demonstrate what you mean? You know how, in most languages, people write really complex frameworks, and sometimes those frameworks basically "become" the langauge -- meaning that programmers start interfacing with the original language only through the framework? An example is JQuery. It's 100% Javascript, but it's got its own, unique API -- and you can basically do anything most JS programmers want to do by using JS features through JQuery. So it is a sort of middle-man between Javascript's raw api and the developer. If I told someone that he HAS to program in Javascript and only Javascript, I might feel that he was violating the spirit of the law if he started using JQuery. But JQurey IS just Javascript, so do we allow it or not? Let's say I built something like that in Objective-C. I thought the language was too difficult, so I built a whole series of functions that map onto the raw ones. My functions are all written in Object-C, but your experience, when you use them, won't feel much like Objective-C, and if you just learn my way of doing things, you'll never know how you might optimize the code by going into the raw guts. Similarly, people who learn JQuery instread of Javascript may make all kinds of mistakes. And I thought Apple was against that sort of thing. They don't want middle-men, because middle-men move developers away the real api. And Apple feels that leads to sloppy code. If they're right, it should apply to all third-party frameworks, whether they are written in Actionscript or Objective-C. Either way, you're not writing code using the methods that Apple has documented; you're writing code that uses that code.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:43:30 -0800

"Of course the iPad is going to be good at showing a H264 video - that's what it's designed to do." It has a huge crutch with its hardware decoding of the video. Meanwhile, I checked out all the same demos he was hitting on my laptop and they all ran like buttah. A lot more processor chug than I'd expect to see with Flash, but the framerates were high enough. The iPad design makes some huge compromises to maintain Apple's profit margins and to get the 20-hour battery life. It's not good or bad, (well, it's hilariously bad but that's just my opinion) that's just the engineering choices they made. I'm sure there will be another generation along to fix some of the shortcomings and keep the upgrade treadmill spinning. What's the term for people who buy first-gen hardware?

By: Tenuki

Tenuki — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:57:46 -0800

The iPad design makes some huge compromises to maintain Apple's profit margins and to get the 20-hour battery life. If only it had a swappable battery.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:24:15 -0800

An example is JQuery. I guess what I meant by technical example was something that used preprocessor directives and relates directly to the issue of generating Objective-C used to make iPhone apps, which is the basis on which you and weston were criticizing Apple and/or questioning the developer agreement.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:43:50 -0800

if you just learn my way of doing things, you'll never know how you might optimize the code by going into the raw guts In any case, that's no more creating a different language than the internals of deques, b-trees, linked lists, etc. being hidden away by abstract container classes in STL C++ or Cocoa or Java any other language being languages unto themselves.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:33:56 -0800

U.S. antitrust enforcers are considering an investigation of Apple Inc. following a complaint from Adobe Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. Adobe could not win in the court of public opinion and so are trying to strong-arm Apple in a federal courtroom. Honest people will recognize this scheme to label Apple a monopoly as an out-and-out scam.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 00:12:57 -0800

Apple: Bad press roundup

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:02:44 -0800

Not really. You're just abstracting away details, and the underlying programming syntax remains the same. I suppose if you're sticking to the basic idea that a computer language is its syntax, what you're saying here is fine from a debate standpoint. But on a pragmatic level, when it comes time to write programs, I think vocabulary matters just as much to what you mean by "language", and that's what you're changing when you build abstractions. Hence my statement that the line between abstraction and language can be a fuzzy one. And the C preprocessor makes it even fuzzier. There's not a lot of daylight between: int max(a,b) { return a >= b ? a : b; } and #define max(a,b) (a >= b ? a : b; ) and s/max$[^,]+,[^)]+$/(a >= b ? a : b; )/ and generating those tokens using Scheme or Lua.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:41:05 -0800

We can debate what constitutes a language, but I'm more interested in how Apple thinks about it, because whether they make sense or are foolish, I have to deal with Apple's rules. If I develop for the iPhone, I don't want to put in months of work and then have my app rejected. So, if I decide that I want to use something like JQuery for the iPhone -- a meta-language or whatever you want to call it, one written entirely in Objective-C but one that abstracts me away from many of Objective-C's functions and classes -- can I safely do so?

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:52:50 -0800

Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about. Is Apple okay with PureMVC? PureMVC is a popular framework for Actionscript developers. It abstracts away from parts of Actionscript's core. For instance, AS has a built-in event-listenener/broadcaster API. PureMVC skips it and rolls its own. But, under-the-hood, PureMVC is written in Actionscript. Now it's been ported to Objective-C. The idea is that someone who doesn't know Objective-C well, but who is used to PureMVC from Flash or some other platform (it's been ported to several) will feel at home. The won't use the standard Objective-C commands; rather, they will use the PureMVC equivalents. But this version of PureMVC is really just a library of Objective-C code. So is it allowable or not?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 05 May 2010 05:01:12 -0800

Sorry, what? It's a prototype, let's see how the final, shipping product performs, especially in terms of battery life. Because now that I'm seen a prototype and read the gushing review over zedomax, anything less than flawless performance is substandard. Interesting difference from Apple's secretive approach, where the final product is released and there's nothing to compare it to. The iPad design makes some huge compromises to maintain Apple's profit margins and to get the 20-hour battery life... Minor nit, it's a 10 hour battery.

By: mazola

mazola — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:00:10 -0800

Apple: Bad press roundup ...and then Apple goes and puts the screws to pool ol' Ellen.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:09:48 -0800

Apples attack on Adobe Flash, its all about online video

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 10:17:51 -0800

But this version of PureMVC is really just a library of Objective-C code. If it is a C, Objective-C, C++ or Objective-C++ library that you add to an Xcode project, it will probably be allowed, just like ASIHTTPRequest or json-framework and many other libraries that are built from calls to Apple's core APIs. If PureMVC uses a third-party compiler to turn ActionScript into a compiled app or a compiled, static chunk of an app that you add to a project, then it will probably be rejected. This is not anything different from what Apple has already said. And the C preprocessor makes it even fuzzier If you're using Xcode to compile an app, it seems like the fuzziness stops where macros, methods, functions, and wrapper classes ultimately have to turn into compiled C or Objective-C code.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:16:14 -0800

I hope you are right, BP. Here's what scares me: "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)." If I understand you correctly, you're saying that a framework written in Objective-C is not what they mean by an intermediary or undocumented API. But API literally means an Application Programming Interface. It's whatever commands a programmer uses to control a system. The only "Documented" APIs that comes with XCode are the standard ones for C, C++, Objective-C and the specific ones for Mac and iPhone/iPad programming, such as Cocoa Touch. PureMVC is 100% written in Objective-C (the version I liked to is) by humans (not in some machine-translated process), but it has its own API. It has it's own interface by which you program it. There's nothing strange about using the acronym "API" when referring to a complex library like PureMVC or JQuery. That may not be what Apple means, but how do we know? If I had to take a wild guess, I would assume that, in general, they won't bug you if you use 100% human-written Objective-C code, but that their vague language leaves the door open for them to step in if they want to. Which means that I'm at some risk if I choose to use frameworks like Objective-C. Maybe I'm not in much risk, but I smell some risk there. I wish Apple would define their terms better. But it may be in their best interest to not do so.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:25:21 -0800

Another Flash Vs HTML5 benchmark - PC and Mac, mostly desktop based. Basically HTML5 gets slaughtered on everything bar a somewhat iffy text rendering benchmark.

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:35:34 -0800

If it is a C, Objective-C, C++ or Objective-C++ library that you add to an Xcode project, it will probably be allowed Probably. If you're using Xcode to compile an app, it seems like the fuzziness stops where macros, methods, functions, and wrapper classes ultimately have to turn into compiled C or Objective-C code. I don't think I get your point. I do agree that when everything gets mixed down to object code rolled into a ready-to-eat binary, there's no more fuzziness. But I don't see how that changes things upstream. There's still very little conceptual room between a function as a device used as a shorthand for a set of C tokens and macro as such a device, and in turn little room between having cpp emit C tokens to be consumed by gcc and having Perl or Scheme or Lua emit those C tokens. But the last part of that conceptual continuum is forbidden by the 3.3.1 license, and it's this line drawn across these several closely coupled concepts that I find most crazy about the restrictions. Particularly because in the end everything gets turned into code compiled by the same toolchain.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:37:18 -0800

PureMVC is 100% written in Objective-C Then it's a non-issue. There are many Objective-C libraries and none are remotely in question. I think you're reading more into this than is there, honestly.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:42:14 -0800

There's still very little conceptual room between a function as a device used as a shorthand for a set of C tokens and macro as such a device, and in turn little room between having cpp emit C tokens to be consumed by gcc and having Perl or Scheme or Lua emit those C tokens This is irrelevant to questions about the wording of the dev agreement. If you're using a third-party compiler, your app will get rejected. Macros don't have anything to do with it; technically, they are just a shortcut to writing code before compilation.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:50:30 -0800

Interestingly the MonoTouch guys seem to be still pushing forwards, though theres that bit about not hearing any direct feedback from Apple. Apple seem to actively want to be ambiguous in all this.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:03:02 -0800

So, Blazecock, you're saying that were I to write an Actionscript interpreter in Objective C - something that takes Actionscript code and converts it to Objective C for Xcode compiling - and then write all my apps in Actionscript and just run them through this, that's okay by Apple's developer agreement?

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:16:14 -0800

This is irrelevant to questions about the wording of the dev agreement. I'm not arguing over whether it's clear that the dev agreement disallows X -> C compilation but allows preprocessor use. I'm arguing it's ridiculous as place to draw the line because of the vanishing differences between the things under discussion. technically, they are just a shortcut to writing code before compilation. Exactly. So, why this shortcut but not other shortcuts which are similar in terms of programmer utility and the same in terms of emitted object code?

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:16:52 -0800

I think you're reading more into this than is there, honestly. I hope so. But I'm far from the only person who is confused, and thought it's been a while since this change to the dev agreement came out, it's odd that Apple is so quiet about it. Here are some quotes from a cursory search I just ran: The point is: we don't know what Jobs means. We might not know until apps hit the app store and are approved or not approved. http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2457-apple-locks-down-its-platform-just-a-little-bit-more.html I originally thought this would ban games written using Unity3D, but perhaps not — Unity3D produces a complete Xcode project and Objective-C source files, so it's more like a pre-processor than a cross-compiler. Hard to tell. http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler I can't help wondering what does it mean even for C++ libraries such as Qt or wxWidgets http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/04/08/2122254/iPhone-OS-40-Brings-Multitasking-Ad-Framework-For-Apps what does "originally written" actually mean? http://alblue.bandlem.com/2010/04/collateral-damage-in-331.html The language as written is very broad and impacts too many developers & publishers for Apple's own good. It is also difficult to enforce for games in particular. I firmly believe Apple will clarify it with a fairly narrow interpretation, or even revise it, but it might take a while to get the answer we want. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/7408/is-unity3d-banned-by-new-apple-sdk-licence

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:25:27 -0800

Unity3D is a really confusing case. Unity has its own languages, but if you output for iPhone, it doesn't compile am iPhone app. Instead, it translates your code into Objective-C source code and creates a whole XCode project for you. The only way for you to compile it is to open it in XCode. The CEO of Unity is optimistic but unsure of whether or not Apple will allow such iPhone development -- even though he's talked to people at Apple about it. WHY IS HE UNSURE? Why can't Apple say, with 100% certainty, "No, we will not allow this" or "Yes, we will allow this." Shit. They could even say, "You know, we're still hashing it out, internally" and it would be better than just vagueness. I don't blame Apple for keeping Flash off the iPhone. I don't blame them for forcing developers to use certain tools and certain languages. I may not like some of those choices, but it's their device and I am capable of following their rules or moving onto some other device. What I can't stand is vague rules. THAT is not fair. Come on Apple, CLARIFY! Give us ten use cases and say this one is okay, that one is not okay, etc. Or, if it's a gray area and each app will be judged separately, then say THAT. If that's the case, then iPhone app is a crapshoot. If it is, be honest about that! I feel like someone is telling me that if I walk on their property, they PROBABLY won't shoot me.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:26:15 -0800

So, why this shortcut but not other shortcuts which are similar in terms of programmer utility and the same in terms of emitted object code? Because Apple doesn't want third-party compilers building write-once, deploy-everywhere iPhone applications, even if some commercial developers want that feature?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:33:03 -0800

Via Daringfireball: I especially like this video, showing the Android browser playing YouTube videos using Flash, where the guy narrating the video says "Good thing I didn't buy an iPad, because this one does Flash", and at that moment, the browser crashes. Via WSJ: ``Speaking about Mr. Jobs's assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayen says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something "to do with the Apple operating system." ' ' lol

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:37:28 -0800

were I to write an Actionscript interpreter in Objective C - something that takes Actionscript code and converts it to Objective C for Xcode compiling Can such a thing reliably exist through #define statements? I suppose it could but it would be an awful lot of work and debugging of edge cases and grammar translation. Does such a library of #define statements exist that is used for commercial development? There's probably a research paper in there somewhere, at least.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:50:14 -0800

And on the general subject of benchmarking Javascript, IE must be damn confident in their new engine if they are suggesting people run this on it – the thing barely runs on FireFox and just about crawls along on Chrome.

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:54:40 -0800

Because Apple doesn't want third-party compilers building write-once, deploy-everywhere iPhone applications That might be their motivation, but they won't limit their collateral damage to that end and they might not even actually achieve it by fairly applying those license terms. And it's a pretty darn questionable goal in the first place.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:04:56 -0800

I especially like this video, showing the Android browser playing YouTube videos using Flash, where the guy narrating the video says "Good thing I didn't buy an iPad, because this one does Flash", and at that moment, the browser crashes. Via WSJ: ``Speaking about Mr. Jobs's assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayen says if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something "to do with the Apple operating system." ' ' lol BP, I respect your opinion, and I'm a big Apple fan (I own two macs, an iPhone and an iPad)*, but this is EXACTLY the kind of rhetoric we don't need. Computers crash all the time. It's ironic that one crashed just as someone was demonstrating how Flash is all that, but all we can learn from that is that, for whatever reason, that computer crashed right then. About once a week, my iPhone crashes. It seems to do so pretty much at random. It would be pretty shitty of me to say, based on that one crash, "Oh, see! X sucks." X being whatever app I was running. It's like if I promote eating well and exercising and then I die young of a heart attack, and then someone saying, "See! I guess it's NOT so helpful to live a healthy lifestyle," ignoring the fact that people have heart attacks for all sorts of reasons, including bad genes. Your second quote is Adobe doing the same FUCKING thing. It's lies, damn lies and spin. An Apple machine crashed while it was running a Flash app. So instead of a reasoned discussion about it, we get the Apple team shouting "It's Adobe's fault" and the Adobe team shouting, "It's Apple's fault." Has anyone -- on EITHER team -- actually diagnosed what caused the crash? If not, then they should shut up. Either come out with your expert knowledge about what caused the crash or be honest and say, "I'm going to say anything that supports my team, whether it's based on reality or not." Meanwhile, we developers are out in the cold. We have to wade through the filthy sewer water of fanboy statements, CEO spin and outright ignorance. I don't give a shit about Adobe. I don't give a shit about Apple. I just want Computer Scientists to act like SCIENTISTS and for those of you who are enthusiasts, hackers, pundits, etc. to pretend to be scientists for five seconds. Since I run the world, I am not enacting a moratorium on the following in this discussion: "open standards" and "crashes." Exceptions will be granted to experts who can convince me that they do not have an iron in the fire and are more in love with truth than with defending Adobe or Apple or being defensive. *I make my living as a Flash Developer. (However, I would prefer not to have Flash on the iPhone and iPad, and, in general, I am in favor of iPhone/iPad development being done in Objective-C, which is not that hard to learn.)

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:05:25 -0800

Can such a thing reliably exist through #define statements? ... There's probably a research paper in there somewhere, at least. Not just a paper, a precedent. Strousup says he created the "C with Classes" language first as a set of C preprocessor instructions that yielded C. The way I'm reading what he's saying, it sounds like he created those instructions using another program he wrote in C, but either way...

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:53:31 -0800

About once a week, my iPhone crashes. It seems to do so pretty much at random. I notice that the endless freezes and shutdowns of the 3.1 update on 3G pretty much never get mentioned in these discussions... They updated it after a while but i was damn close to ditching the thing. I think a lot of these discussions are predicated on an expectation of stability from Apple products that experience does not bear out, and every one is supposed to politely ignore it when it doesn't. FWIW I still get regular Safari hangs. That's pretty much the number one App to crash on my phone.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:00:45 -0800

they won't limit their collateral damage to that end This hasn't happened, so until it does, you're speculating — and given that just about every app on the store probably uses some wrapper classes, you're speculating without good cause. I'll say it again: you're reading something into this which does not exist.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:03:13 -0800

I just want Computer Scientists to act like SCIENTISTS and for those of you who are enthusiasts, hackers, pundits, etc. to pretend to be scientists for five seconds. Well, if you have an example of a computer language like Actionscript, C# etc. used with the iPhone, other than the big four that are already accepted, and which is facilitated through #define statements, please post it. The scientist in me would like to see it.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:18:37 -0800

What? I haven't said anything about #define statements in this thread. Do you have me mixed up with someone else? I have ZERO interest in Apple supporting Flash or Actionscript (or C# for that matter). I was responding to your post about crashes, in which you reposed spin-like, political, rah-rah-team statements that shouldn't have been made in the first place. Just because Adobe and Apple are making bullshit statements, that doesn't mean we have to spread their nonsense. Computers are very complex. Anyone who says "X causes my computer crash" is either an expert who has done rigorous tests (in which case, more evidence and less rhetoric, please), an idiot or a spin doctor.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:19:13 -0800

It's ironic that one crashed just as someone was demonstrating how Flash is all that, but all we can learn from that is that, for whatever reason, that computer crashed right then. Come on, it's not only ironic, it's funny! Robert Reich, former US Sect. of Labor, chimes in with a sensible take on Apple vs. the whole world: Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit for abusing its economic power, but not even raising an eyebrow about the huge and growing economic (and political) muscle of JP Morgan Chase or any of the other four remaining giant banks on Wall Street? Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy. Apple's supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe's Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google's Android phones and RIM's BlackBerrys. What's wrong with that? Apple says it's necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world's #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn't exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple's decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

By: mrzarquon

mrzarquon — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:28:10 -0800

> Has anyone -- on EITHER team -- actually diagnosed what caused the crash? Just to point out, Apple has in fact put in a plug-in isolation method in Safari 4.0.5, which specifically keeps a plugin crash from taking down safari. Pops up a nice "the flash plugin has crashed" dialog as well. I haven't seen other plugins crash on my machine yet, but in instances where it was or would have crashed, I am now seeing that Safari had to go and preemptively kill the flash plugin process. Now, it could be something in Apple's code that is making it vulnerable to crashing when Flash is running, so they took precautions to isolate it, but the fact that by Apple isolating the Flash Plugin means that Safari crashes less, is leading me to suspect that the stability issue is more in Adobe's court than Apples.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:12:44 -0800

I wouldn't be surprised, mrzarquon. Adobe hasn't hasn't had much competition in the web-video and multimedia world, so they probably got lazy. On the other hand, you're also right when you say that MAYBE Safari should be more robust and not let plugins like Flash thwart them. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm going to be VERY careful about making half-cocked statements without knowing all the facts. BP, you plopped anecdotes about crashes into this thread. Then, when I called you on doing that -- on spreading rumors as if they added something substantive to the discussion -- you neither confirmed it or denied it. You didn't say, "I guess you're right." Nor did you say, "They aren't just anecdotes. Here's hard data to back up what I'm saying." You didn't even say, "Yeah. I'm spreading anecdotes. So what? It's fun!" Instead, after wasting at least as many words as I have here, you implied the whole thing is silly, because there are more serious problems in the world. I agree, there are. But here, we're talking about Apple and Adobe. And people from those companies are telling lies. Adobe has implied that OS X is buggy in a pretty serious way. That's a SERIOUS charge. They'd better be able to back that up. I use OS X and I also program Flash apps. I need to know what serious bugs Adobe has uncovered in OS X. If they haven't ACTUALLY uncovered any, they should quit bullshitting. If they have found bugs, they should share them with us so that we can work around them or bug Apple to fix them. Apple has implied that Flash is deeply flawed and that it causes Safari to crash. I assume that means that Flash is going beyond what it SHOULD be doing inside Safari. In other words, if Flash is playing by the "plugin rules," then it's Safari's fault if it's crashing. But that can't be the case, because Jobs says it's a Flash problem. I don't find that hard to believe. On the other hand, I don't just accept statements like that without evidence -- evidence that the problem is all (or mostly) Adobe's fault. So why doesn't Jobs come forward with evidence? Why don't you come forward with evidence? You have enough self-respect to do that, right? To keep quiet about things you're unsure about and explain things you are sure about. By the way, if you're sick of me, here's how to get me to leave this thread: rather than giving your evidence for how you know it's Adobe, and not Apple, that is responsible for the crashes -- or rather than explaining why, without evidence, you are spreading these rumors -- just don't respond at all. Or "respond" by telling me I'm taking it too seriously. Or respond by pretending I am talking about #define statements. Or respond by saying, "Tell me this:" and then act like I'm trying to defend Flash or denounce the iPhone. (I'm not doing either.) I will take any of the above as a sign that you don't take my comments seriously and I'll be on my way.

By: weston

weston — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:38:49 -0800

This hasn't happened, so until it does, you're speculating. If you take a straightforward reading of the license, it has indeed already happened, since the language of the license seems to clearly forbid writing in, say, Scheme that compiles to C. And while it may be speculating to say that there'll come an Apple ban on intermediate libraries written in the blessed languages, what we're talking about isn't the distant possibility realm. Some of these libraries will almost certainly grow up into solutions that span other mobile platforms. If, as you say, Apple is motivated by and committed to eliminating cross-platform targeting, they'll have to follow with a stance against these libraries... leaving developers who've invested in them stranded.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:07:05 -0800

spreading rumors For the record, all of the observed instability that Flash causes — or happens when people use Flash — is pretty well documented. I just found it funny that Adobe is using the media to blame Apple for Flash being buggy, and at the same time it demonstrably cannot make a stable product for Google. Or, sorry: crashes happen "coincidentally" while Flash content is pulled up.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:46:11 -0800

Presumably, if you make a system and allow people to write plugins for it, there are certain expectations that you have of those plugins. You ask that they only use X amount of resources, etc. You then say, "as long as your plugin plays by these rules, you will not be held responsible if something bad happens, because we are guaranteeing that plugins that follow those rules will work in our system. And if they don't, that's our fault." Flash crashes Safari. Okay, is that because Flash is not following the rules? Because just saying that Flash is causing the crashes isn't good enough to place the blame on Adobe's shoulders. If I tell a kid he can jump up and down on the bed, and then, when he jumps up and down on it, it breaks, that's not the kid's fault. As Adobe says, it might be Apple's fault. Maybe Flash is playing by the rules, and yet, even though it is, OS X has bugs in it that cause Flash to crash. Of course, Adobe SHOULDN'T say that unless they 100% know it to be the case. If they are saying that without evidence, they are liars. Can you link to the documentation that shows that (a) the browser crashes more often when it's running Flash than when it's running other processes that do similar things (play videos, etc) and (b) that this is because Flash is violating the rules it's supposed to be following? I am not trying to catch you out or prove that Flash is a fine and dandy piece of work. My suspicion is that Flash is riddled with bugs. But I don't judge without evidence. I am trying very hard to get accurate, honest, un-politicized answers.

By: empath

empath — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:53:30 -0800

The problems with Flash, I suspect, often have to do with poor flash programming and/or malicious flash ads, too.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:52:38 -0800

The problems with Flash, I suspect, often have to do with poor flash programming and/or malicious flash ads, too. I think the unfortunate tester was using Google's YouTube at the time.

By: juiceCake

juiceCake — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:25:01 -0800

Adobe could not win in the court of public opinion and so are trying to strong-arm Apple in a federal courtroom. Honest people will recognize this scheme to label Apple a monopoly as an out-and-out scam. Spot on perfect parody of the sort of nonsense argumentative tactics we see all to often. If you disagree with the statement you're "dishonest" because "honest" people see it otherwise or ike this. Bravo, a better parody of an assholish statement could not be made. Up there with the use of fanboy and haters. As for beta applications (and for the matter released applications crashing, well beta application crashes. Laugh fucking out loud. Unreal.

By: JaredSeth

JaredSeth — Thu, 06 May 2010 05:42:56 -0800

I think the unfortunate tester was using Google's YouTube at the time. On a prototype device. More on point, I'm inclined to agree with empath about the root of most Flash issues. Let's face it, there are millions of Mac users using Flash often hundreds of times a day without issue. I find the assertion that Flash is fundamentally flawed pretty ridiculous. It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. Now if Jobs wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just ban Flash altogether, that's his prerogative but it's going to be a long time before HTML5 is able to replace all the stuff being done with Flash today and you're not buying a device for 5 years from now.

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Thu, 06 May 2010 07:03:53 -0800

grumblebee I think you're taking too legalistic an approach. The new license means one thing, and one thing only: Apple gets to dictate not only what gets on the iPhone, but how it's written, and the rules are so vague that pretty much any program can be found to be in violation if Apple chooses to see it as violating. Therefore if, for any reason whatsoever, Apple dislikes your product or especially if your product threatens their vendor lock in model of business, you will be found to be out of compliance with the TOS and your program will be removed from the iPhone. The TOS is deliberately vague. Of course it can cover wrapper classes, if Apple ever chooses to kill a threatening program and it doesn't violate anything else they'll kill it for using wrapper classes. Earlier I would have speculated that the draconian, blatantly self serving, and monstrously vague TOS would have frightened developers away. The fact that Apple has, repeatedly, demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to let people invest time/money/energy into a product then unevenly enforce their TOS to kill one product, but not similar products, is all the evidence you need to know that the TOS isn't a legalistic document enforced evenly but rather an umbrella document meant to be unevenly enforced and exists only to give cover to discriminatory action. You develop for the iPhone at the mercy of Apple, and they're pretty damn merciless. You'd hope that sort of hostile, anti-programmer, environment would hurt the iPhone and force Apple to change it's evil ways. But that hasn't happened, apparently there are enough developers out there who will write code for the iPhone no matter how much shit Apple makes them eat, and how risky it is from a business standpoint. But let's not fool ourselves, we all know, even Blazecock Pileon if he'd just admit it to himself, that the entire purpose of this TOS is to give Apple cover for when they go after anything that threatens their vendor lock in. I'll give you any odds you want that the presence of an app on the Apple store and the Android store results in an automatic TOS violation notice from Apple. The objective of this isn't quality, it's business: Apple benefits from having any given app available only for the iPhone, and they can and will punish you for making it available anywhere else.

By: mazola

mazola — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:03:14 -0800

the entire purpose of this TOS is to give Apple cover for when they go after anything that threatens their vendor lock in That's certainly the malicious interpretation. The flip-side is they are trying to shepherd developers to using a supported set of APIs to ensure smooth delivery of advancing and evolving technology. It's good for Apple and good for end-users (and perhaps even good for some developers) and goes a long way to avoiding "My apps' busted/buggy/slow!" complaints when development is based on a third-party (see: Apple-Adobe). Apple has a pretty consistent track record of creating products that must win/lose on their own merit. When they introduced the iPod they could've sold it below cost to gain immediate share and kill all the competition. Instead they released it at a ridiculous price point and it won on the basis of its features and design. They really don't have a history of an 'own the market at-any-cost' kind of ruthlessness about them. On the other hand, I have first-hand experience on what Flash does on my laptop. Fans start a'blazin' and things can slow down or lock up. It is not inconceivable that it would be a bad technology add-on to other mobile devices. Apple has acted in a principled way in the past and there's enough goodwill built-up that I accept Jobs' arguments at face value on this one. The biggest danger that I see is a post-Jobs Apple where decisions are being made on perhaps less visionary or principled grounds. The company is now large enough that it may have to play by a new set of rules in order to fuel growth and provide shareholder value.

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:07:15 -0800

That's certainly the malicious interpretation. The flip-side is they are trying to shepherd developers to using a supported set of APIs to ensure smooth delivery of advancing and evolving technology. They why use vague language?

By: weston

weston — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:28:40 -0800

I'll give you any odds you want that the presence of an app on the Apple store and the Android store results in an automatic TOS violation notice from Apple. Off the top of my head, Remember the Milk is on both. I totally agree that Apple has demonstrated they can be capricious and investing in developing for their mobile devices is something of a risk because of that, but I haven't seen evidence yet that just writing for another device is enough for them to reject an app.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 06 May 2010 09:31:52 -0800

Smartbooks have been delayed by Flash issues, says ARM However:

Drew [ARM VP marketing] suggested that solving the issue of Flash optimisation had involved "lots of heavy lifting" but once the new version of Adobe's rich media software is in place for smartbooks, that would be "very powerful" for ARM....However, Drew said he was "far from disappointed" with ARM's smartbook development experience thus far. "I actually think we're a lot stronger because of it," he said. "We now know what we didn't know two years ago. It has taught us a lot about how we work with software companies."

How on earth does someone even write that? Does any of that even make sense?

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:21:52 -0800

Oh, it totally makes sense. Apple made them write better code because Apple's standards are extremely high in this area. The Apple Store is Steve Jobs' greatest innovation. All the shiny devices etc. are the window dressing that brings people into the store and it is the store that makes the money, especially into the future. He has already started to monopolize music sales and now he has his sights set on video. Crushing Flash is all about monopolizing video. Through the Apple Store content vendors now providing free content will eventually be able to charge for their content. We will pay because it will be cheap like it is with dead tree media because everyone will be paying. Jobs is an evil genius, but it might actually be a pretty rich non-free environment he leaves as his legacy.

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:28:40 -0800

Bit more detail on the Scribd thing - looks like they make the browser a big SVG viewport, which makes a lot of sense. It's actually pretty good. There's been some complaints about fidelity and the way various browsers handle font fidelity apparently, but it's infinitely preferable to their previous awful UI.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:58:44 -0800

"No more IT track, few scheduled Mac sessions, and it was only announced six weeks ahead of time. And it sold out in record time. Last year's took a month to sell out. This year's took eight days." [source]

A pre-Jobs WebObjects team? No, I mean the approach to the web reminds me of Apple before Jobs came back: lots of different teams working on different and incompatible goals, from OpenDoc to Copland, with no adult supervision or direction. The people in there who are working on WebObjects are mostly doing seriously heavy lifting -- they're powering the iTunes and App stores, the Apple Store systems (online and off) and so on. But there are lots of other parts of the company doing web-facing stuff, including the devtools team (new framework for the iPad version of the doc readers), the documentations team (new framework for the online iPhone manual), etc, etc, etc. It's all very Apple.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:12:19 -0800

You'd think they try for something a little less ambitious just so they can say "Look, it's working ok? FU Apple." Crashing and burning like that doesn't look good. Unless you're Steve Jobs and demoing the iPad for the first and gleefully showing off that Flash doesn't work on it.

By: mullingitover

mullingitover — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:20:49 -0800

[flash lite beta crashes at demo, o noes] Cool post. You forgot to include the part where he went on to say:

Personally, I hope Adobe gets Flash working well on Android soon. Flash is still one of the greatest tools we as web developers have, and the idea that HTML5 can do everything that Flash can do and thus renders Flash irrelevant is completely inaccurate — patently absurd, in fact.

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:06:50 -0800

Oh, having my CPU pegged at 100%, the fans cranked, and my laptop roasting my lap is just a misperception. For what Flash is doing (which is usually what some ad is doing in the background), I should be thrilled at its efficiency, yes? Also: Now, there is currently one potential exception to this, and that is video playback. Looking at the video performance numbers posted at Streaming Learning Center, you can see that in some configurations, Flash video can require more CPU resources than H.264 video played back directly in the browser. Specifically, on Safari on Mac, H.264 video played back via the browser, uses significantly less CPU than video played back via the Flash Player.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:22:24 -0800

Top Flash Misperceptions : Flash is a CPU Hog Flash is just being nice, turning your fan on for you at full blast! It's a feature, not a bug.

Artw — Wed, 12 May 2010 07:58:22 -0800

It should probably pointed out that there's all kinds of weird knockoffs and fakes floating around Asia, so Apple might not want to invade Vietnam just yet.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:08:51 -0800

Fair point, ArtW, although the fakers went to a hell of a lot of trouble to put an Apple logo on the chips inside, lay out the internals the same as the previously-floated 4G, but somehow failing to make it an operable phone.

By: mazola

mazola — Wed, 12 May 2010 08:27:40 -0800

From the comments:

All this coming out on the same day as the news of another Foxconn employee "suicide"... ( http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-05/12/content_9840667.htm ). Yes, TC, this is all getting quite "silly" indeed.

And the backstory?

There seems to be little new information posted, though the individual who submitted the link to us stated a Vietnamese businessman had bought it in the U.S. together with an iPad.

Apple iPad:

~~Flash~~
~~Cash~~

By: adamrice

adamrice — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:47:53 -0800

Here's what I see as an inherent shortcoming for Flash in the whole interactive-content domain (games, etc). I understand that Flash may have a better development environment. I understand that Flash is more widely usable than HTML5 (Canvas) and JS. The problem I see is that Flash is all the work of one company. I read that there's an open-source Flash interpreter that has a partial implementation of an old version of Flash. I'm going to say that's not really relevant unless your initials are RMS. There are several different organizations with lots of smart people actively working on Javascript, some open-sourcing their work, and they've taken it from the point where it was abominably slow to pretty snappy over the years. The sheer force of competition between different JS interpreters will condemn Flash to riding on a slower escalator than JS. Grumblebee

How am I supposed to make an HTML5 app that works in IE6? [snip] But I l[i]ve on planet Earth. I live in 2010, not 2015.

Artw: "Has Google leapfrogeed Apple? "Not a chance"" It's hard to tell if El Jobso is answering the question "Have you read this Gizmodo article" or "Do you believe Google is surpassing you guys" and given Apple's state of affairs with Giz, I suspect it's the former. Even SJ must admit that Google is clearly ahead now that they have flash. *ducks* hey I meant camera flash!

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:17:28 -0800

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 on Android: Slow but Pretty.

By: mazola

mazola — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:21:07 -0800

Waiting a Decade for This

Until now, nearly all the folks who have expressed an opinion about the weighty matter of Apple's refusal to allow Adobe's Flash onto the iPhone (including me) have had one thing in common: They've never used Flash on any smartphone... The beta is, indeed a beta, and the EVO hasn't even shipped yet. But I started this experiment wanting to like Flash on Android...and as of right now, my hands-on experience with it has left me profoundly disappointed.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:16:58 -0800

DOJ investigating Apple for iTunes related antitrust issues

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:34:15 -0800

Adobe and Google revealed to be parents of Satan, Flash their evil tool used to kick puppies. Apple found to be a combination of Superman, Wonderwoman and Spiderman, who's mere presence produces ice cream and sunshine.

By: mazola

mazola — Wed, 26 May 2010 06:50:10 -0800

Apple censors Republican Congressional candidate

"I don't have a Constitutional right to an iPhone application, but they don't have a right to keep me from talking." Legalities aside, I asked David if he thinks it's right for Apple to filter political apps. He said, "The way I look at it, iPhone applications are becoming somewhat of a de facto standard. Similar to the way Hare Krishnas are allowed to give out flowers and literature at the airport, even if the airport is privately run in partnership with the public, with the iPhone becoming the standard for mobile applications, it is wrong for them to stifle expression of certain ideas with the world through the portal."

By: Artw

Artw — Fri, 28 May 2010 22:58:08 -0800

Charles Stross on the iPad

By: Artw

Artw — Sat, 29 May 2010 06:58:51 -0800

'Had it crashed? Or was it being sarcastic?' Charlie Brooker on the iPad

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 29 May 2010 07:08:05 -0800

I've Changed My Mind About The iPad