Proprietary isn't bad. Open isn't great.
Proprietary vs. open is bad.
Proprietary + open is great.
Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations. Save the "VS." narrative for Street Fighter II.
> "Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations."
True, but Flash is a closed standard with a closed implementation. Adobe likes to claim it is open - but the fact remains that not only is it impossible to write an open implementation of their incomplete spec, but Adobe has actively sought to keep core components proprietary even in spec and prevent competing implementations.
That's the part that irks me about Adobe's role in this issue - they're playing themselves and Flash off as this open savior of the web when they've actively been evil in that regard. If you're closed, great, do your thing; if you're open, then actually open your spec - don't open part of it and then go after the other half with lawyers.
So Adobe gets tossed aside in favor of HTML5/canvas. Or an open version of the SWF format with no licensing issues emerges. I am fine with that. If Adobe wants to be stupid, they are more than welcome to.
Apple is calling the kettle black with the proprietary argument. We can drill down to specific layers but the effects are the same to the developer coding on that layer.
OS has contributed to advancements in design, but proprietary initiatives employ a fleet of people to research, design and case study a technology. They do it all day and not as a side project after work.
Again, it isn't a case of one vs. another. I wish we didn't need to take a side and finally come to a conclusion that both are good in their own ways. Evolution is key.
There are plenty of people that are employed full-time to work on Open Source software. Don't perpetuate the myth that all Open Source software is created by people 'in their free time.'
Your link makes it seem like an evangelist is playing loosely with words; "available for download" could simply mean beta/RC status, not ready for release everywhere.
Battery Life
From your link: The results are amazing: I can watch a 4 hours and a half flash movie, without interruption, with a bright screen (no sleep mode) and sound !!!
From Steve Jobs post: The difference is striking: 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.
They seem to agree with each other? And only helps Apple's point.
It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we?
Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours.
Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that I answer: a:hover {}
I just don't get this argument from Apple. Steve Jobs pioneered high usability mobile UI because Apple took the reigns. Now we have Android UI taking a cue from Apple and "unlocking the mobile market"
Flash and HTML5 have a similar relationship. HTML5 opens it up a bit. That's great. But what about HTML6? Flash is Area51 for implementation study.
We don't need to implement a marquee tag and then take it away once we realize it sucks. How could we market test video conf. or canvas-based visuals if we had no way to benchmark them? Flash is good. The VS. argument is a misnomer.
> "We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours."
We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this.
To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running Flash alone doubles the power consumption of the device. That's insane.
> "With that I answer: a:hover {}"
a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices.
The most compelling argument made though we've already been aware of for some time: cross-platform toolkits encourage lowest common denominator design. In Apple's world of pixel-perfect mockups and obsessive attention to detail this is abhorrent - and I'm inclined to agree. The iPhone's chief strength is its remarkably polished user interface - which for the most part remains true across its 3rd party app sphere, thanks in no small part to Apple's obsessive HID enforcement.
A Flash-compiled-to-iPhone app destroys this in the same way that a Linux Qt app hastily ported to Windows is the same.
> a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices.
This is precisely what I am talking about. We slice the pear in the middle and somehow end up choosing one side over another. True, a:hover is a deprecated form of menu control in HTML, but it is in Flash, too. Again, how you use the tool. Damning an entire developer base based on miscreant use is not a compelling argument. Sorry, but it isn't.
That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use".
Here's my impression of the different sorts of Flash use, based on my journeys on the web:
- Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking addon (e.g., Ctrl+T while focused on a Flash applet = no new tab), and much better battery life on mobiles.
- Crappy restaurant websites and other crimes against humanity: These should just die, and HTML5 will hopefully inspire better design ethic than this. I don't buy the argument that hovering is no longer common used as a critical navigation feature in Flash - I see it everywhere, especially for crappy restaurant websites. Flash is also impossible to crawl which reduces the usefulness of the web overall. Hell, you can't even LINK to content in a Flash site. IMHO the "full Flash site" (as opposed to Flash being a component of a page) needs to die a fiery, painful death.
- Games: The only place where Adobe has even a remotely legitimate claim that Flash is an empowering product rather than a crutch.
When I think of Flash these keywords come to mind: slow, buggy, crashy, badly designed, usability nightmare, gimmicky, unprofessional, and just plain bad.
> That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use".
The vast majority of websites in general are poor. It would be no surprise to see that the majority of Flash sites would also be poor. Both sides have exceptions, though.
> Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking addon (e.g., Ctrl+T while focused on a Flash applet = no new tab), and much better battery life on mobiles.
I don't disagree. I am grateful that HTML5 can handle this, but it took a "standards" committee several years to roll this into a questionably viable model. The immediate fanfare for the slow implementation raises my eyebrow a bit. We're all happy about having something we've needed for years. The company that created the fold so we could have sites like YouTube today? The devil.
> - Crappy restaurant websites and other crimes against humanity: These should just die, and HTML5 will hopefully inspire better design ethic than this.
It won't. Cheese is forever. If HTML5 can accomplish cheese, people will create cheese. We're all hopeful, but the human condition comes into play.
It's not the cheese I object to - but that the Cheese breaks the internet in fundamental ways.
Example: We just wrapped up Restaurant Week here in Seattle where a bunch of local establishments offered up prix-fixe specials for a couple of weeks. The website for this event was done up all in Flash, and made it impossible to crawl for a search engine, or even to link or bookmark a particular restaurant for later retrieval.
What did we exchange for this cheese and gimmicky design? Everything.
There's no regulating for good taste - you're right, most websites in general are poor. They, however, are still accessible - neon green text on black background with an annoying MIDI track in the background is still information that:
- you can link to
- you can bookmark
- you can copy and paste
- you can search for in-browser (doubly important if the website fails at layout, e.g. most Flash sites!)
> What did we exchange for this cheese and gimmicky design? Everything.
I agree that if you don't follow the proper protocol you will end up with an undesirable site. I can't argue that Flash == HTML in terms of accessibility. There are ways within Flash to harness some accessibility but it is up to the developer to implement these. An informational site in Flash is a bad choice. I would never suggest the use of Flash for broad use. A fun site (like http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo) is more appropriate.
> - you can link to
> - you can bookmark
Named-anchors and proper implementation (same as AJAX RIA)
> - you can copy and paste
"Selectable text" is an option in any Flash text field.
> - you can search for in-browser (doubly important if the website fails at layout, e.g. most Flash sites!)
> - you can search for on Google/Bing
Flash exports text within to the container. Google also can search SWF.
"Selectable text" is an option in any Flash text field.
Is copying/pasting it to the OS (or app) pasteboard an option? If so, will it use the same UI as native apps have? Or will it force a funky widget of its own in the middle of an app that otherwise looks like the rest of the OS?
The options are the same as the OS using the same UI. Identical to right-click menu in browser inputs/address bar. It is using the OS clipboard. CTRL/OPTION+C/V works the same as well.
Are you saying that Adobe reimplemented the UI? Or that they pass it off to the OS to handle? Because if its the former, the iPhone doesn't have a menu dropdown for cut/copy/paste. Or a ctrl/command button, for that matter.
I'm only asking because I've never had copy/paste from flash work well on the desktop.
Because <canvas> is used for just the "flashy" part of the site but everything else is still in traditional HTML with all of its advantages. Sure that can be done in Flash too, but, as we've seen, people often end up just doing the vast majority of the site in Flash. There's not the same temptation with <canvas>.
Why not? If <canvas> is being used as a drop-in replacement for Flash, why wouldn't it just be used in exactly the same ways? There's nothing special about canvas that would make it less prone to abuse.
Flash includes a ton of controls: buttons, scrollbars, text areas, etcetera. It has its own scripting language and memory environment that is separate from the HTML page and its DOM/JavaScript environment that contains it. There are ways to shuffle data and events between the two, but that means going out of your way to do so.
So if you're going to have a Flash-y data visualization component, say, it's easiest and most natural to have the controls for it (buttons adjusting parameters, display of those parameters, navigational controls) made in Flash too -- just expand the content rectangle of your Flash component out and drop in the controls.
In HTML5, the 'environment' of the <canvas> object is that of the surrounding HTML page. Adding buttons and other controls around the edge of your visualizer is most straightforwardly done by using "native" HTML <button>s and other such elements.
So it would be surprising to see <canvas>-using pages end up being done in a way where the <canvas> is essentially the whole page — it would require more programmer effort — whereas in Flash that's by far the easiest way to do it.
Although i agree that there are a lot of issues wrong with Flash, some of the things you mention aren't entirely accurate. For example, you can link directly to interior Flash content with SWFAddress (http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/). Also, there have been greater strides made in crawlers so that Flash content is more easily indexed by crawlers.
I will be the first to admit there are a lot of poorly designed Flash sites, but from an interactive design perspective, Flash still gives you the most freedom to create more innovative ways for user interaction. IMO this isn't something that should be dismissed so quickly.
> We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this.
To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running Flash alone doubles the power consumption of the device. That's insane.
What's your battery life playing an intensive game or using a processor intensive app?
When it comes to battery life, you must consider the affect on the total user experience.
If the iPhone can play video for 10 hours, that means a 2 hour movie brings my battery life to 80%.
If the iPhone could play Flash video for 5 hours and I watch a 2 hour movie, my battery life is reduced to 60%.
Given other things I do with my phone battery life is important beyond "how much video can I watch?" If the repercussions of watching a two-hour video are so much less severe, I am more likely to watch the video in question knowing I won't wind up with a dead phone after a half day of traveling.
Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours.
If a phone can watch 4 1/2 hours of flash in software before the battery is drained this means that watching a two hour movie will eat half of my battery. By comparison I can watch a two hour movie using hardware decoding and still have 80% of my battery left.
About Job's remark of hardware vs software decoding of video:
In both cases, he's talking about H.264. An end user might not even realize there's a difference. But some encoders produce H.264 that can hardware decode, and some encoders do not. Not all H.264 is created equal, and this is one area that really matters.
You want an H.264 encoder that produces hardware decoder compatible video.
"But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we?"
I would argue that that's a reasonable point to make. Steve Jobs doesn't have a vested interest in seeing Flash die, he has a vested interest in seeing the iPhone platform succeed. If he saw any way Flash could help that, I'm sure he'd be all for it, but he's seen how Adobe's behaved in the past (late with PPC versions, late with OS X versions, late with Intel versions, late with 64-bit versions, crashy Flash, slow Flash, etc.), and he has no interest in subjecting the iPhone to the same issues that the Mac platform has had to endure at the hands of a slow-moving corporation who has little interest in being a good citizen.
I would argue that Jobs is 'neutral' in the sense that he's not supporting anyone else's agenda. He's made his choice based on the facts before him, and while you may not agree with how he got there, I would say that he got there from an initial position of neutrality.
The very moment flash was not included in the iPhone, Steve Jobs had a vested interest in seeing Flash fail. If Flash expands, user satisfaction with the iPhone goes down. If Flash fails completely, one of the strongest negative components of the iPhone disappears.
Why does he have a vested interest in making it fail? Could he not change his mind and allow Adobe onto the platform? It's not like he's never changed his mind in the past (the Intel vs PPC 'Megahurtz Myth' comes to mind).
Yes, this goes back to 1989 fight over fonts, and the 1993 fight about Display Postscript and the 1999 fight about Photoshop on Windows, and the 2007 withdrawal of 64-bit Carbon toolkit at the last minute.
Apple modified WebKit to support most uses of a:hover by changing how touch interaction works when a :hover style exists on an element. Apple cannot do this with Flash, which means Jobs's argument here is right on the money.
No, but you might watch a film and a couple of music videos and then the battery is getting awfully low. My iPhone lasts a day on one charge (with heavy web use & lots of calls). Halving that with a 2 hour film could be a big problem.
The point is it will only ever directly effect products made by the same company. A device from HP or Microsoft will never be hurt by an issue with a closed Apple platform.
If there are issues with Flash, it will hurt every company using Flash, and there is nothing those companies can do about it other than bug Adobe to fix it or drop Flash support.
I don't disagree that Flash has the potential to create issues.
The argument just suffers from the fallacy of composition. The standoff motif is getting old. We're talking about software, not cold war against another country.
Apple doesn't want you to notice Steve behind the curtain. With Adobe we tend to pick and choose what we agree with and ignore the points that don't support our bias.
In what way is saying "Flash has problems, therefore putting Flash on your platform will expose it to those problems" a fallacy of composition? I don't see it at all. It's not wrongly attributing an attribute of one small part of Flash to the whole. Or are you saying the fallacy is somewhere else?
But you don't appear to have pointed out any specific flaws in the argument against it. So you're not making an argument, just an unsupported assertion.
All I am saying is that Steve Jobs isn't putting all the facts on the table as they are. He is feeding the anti-Flash gang mob with half-truths.
To say Flash is proprietary, possibly poorly executed format is a fair thing to say. To say it is completely without merit and has no place is a fallacy. HTML5 video is widely supported today. Flash might be a delivery vehicle for another unrealized idea tomorrow.
And the "death to the plugin arch" circle-jerk logic is almost intolerable. Only create within the confines of the parent layer's imaginative capacity? Sounds more closed than SWF.
I have no issue with him shutting out something that really sucks today at the cost of potentially missing out on something awesome to do with it tomorrow. The awesome scenario just doesn't seem likely to come to pass. If tomorrow there's a completely great thing on the web that can only be done with flash, then I think Jobs is pragmatic enough to reevaluate.
But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone, openness dogma be damned. When Jobs limits my general purpose computers, I'll be angry, but until then, I'm glad he's making the tough design decisions instead of just letting the device be a free for all.
My point was that that is one of the main uses of Flash, and that an extremely simple/common flash implementation is enough to burn a huge number of CPU cycles for no benefit.
No user benefit. But there's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy HTML5 canvas ads, and those are guaranteed to burn even more of your CPU cycles. So I call shenanigans on that argument.
Apple controls the iPhone's HTML5 renderer and feels much more confident in its performance. "There's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy canvas ads" is not the same thing as "canvas ads will suck at least as much power on average as Flash ads."
They were separate points. Canvas is inherently more computationally expensive than Flash at this stage of the technology. As canvas advances, so does flash -- unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads.
"unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads."
Who says they'll progress at the same rate? That's ridiculous. Flash is at least 10 years old and has been in extremely heavy use, so it's likely plateaued in terms of performance on most platforms. Canvas (and the rendering engines for it) are very new by comparison.
> But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone
In my opinion, this is moot point. Annoying ads aren't going to be limited to Flash. HTML5 ads aren't going to be more fun.
I think Gruber remains independent from Apple.
It would be too conspiracy theory for Gruber/Daring Fireball to be a secret PR mouthpiece for Apple.
More likely Apple reaches out to him because he is by far the most influential Apple website outside of Apple (MacRumors is a distant 2nd in my opinion).
They don't have to pay Gruber anything; the increased ad revenue from being a member of the elite The Deck should more than compensate.
More likely Apple reaches out to him because he is by far the most influential Apple website outside of Apple
I also think he is one of the most levelheaded apple-centric websites out there. Gruber talks a lot about premium products (not just apple) and their success in various markets -- DF is like a premium tech/apple/good taste blogzine and I imagine that his style appeals to a lot of people at Apple, whether they reach out to him or not (and "legally" or not)
Gruber is fantastic when he's not in "scandal" mode.
The site quality degrades significantly, however, when he latches onto a "scandal", whether it be about stolen iphones or illegitimate wi-fi security claims.
With his recent ad nauseum stolen phone coverage, DF has felt more like an overwrought Entertainment Tonight scandal episode.
I've found the best Gruber reading algorithm is:
if (post < 2 paragraphs) { worth bookmarking } else { mark as read }
Apple's competitors have been clamoring to put Flash on their mobile devices because it's one more bullet point they can use in their marketing against the iPhone.
Yet it's 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found. How is that not Adobe's fault?
Don't lose sight of the issue. 3.3.1 is the issue, not "Flash on the iPhone". By reframing the argument as "Flash on the iPhone", you are succumbing to misdirection.
So "Flash on the Web == Bad" because it's not open, but "Flash cross-compiled apps on iPhone == Bad" because it's not... open... ? The logic doesn't match up. As has been stated, it's a misdirection. Steve Jobs is setting fire to a house on the west side of town so that no one will notice that he's robbing the bank on the east side.
He's trying to come off as an 'open crusader for the web against Adobe' because 'Adobe is not open,' but on the other hand shoving Adobe (and others) off of the i{Phone,Pad} platform because it's not part of Apple's own 'not open' environment. I hate Adobe as much as the next person, but let's not dress Steve Jobs up as a knight in shining armour just because he also doesn't like Adobe.
"Flash cross-compiled apps on iPhone == Bad" because it's not... open...
Neither stated nor implied. The logic doesn't "match up" because it's a separate issue, addressed with different arguments:
"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."
He then goes on about third-party middleware, e.g.:
"We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."
Jobs does not make the openness argument in reference to Apple's proprietary platform at all. It seems to me that you have to ignore the last third of the article to think that he was.
He's trying to come off as an 'open crusader for the web against Adobe'
Is Jobs lying when he says Apple supports open web standards?
This has nothing to do with what's open and what isn't, it's about who controls what. Apple controls iPhoneOS, Adobe controls Flash. It's a prizefight. Don't get caught in a sucker punch just because you were paying attention to the fancy footwork.
Fake Steve raises an interesting point about how close John Gruber and Apple are.
>"...we leaked the Flash essay to our Chief Apologist John Gruber and told him to start whipping up some buzz on Twitter about it, and he followed orders [http://twitter.com/gruber/status/12988151829]."
Apple do not have a Monopoly, unless you use a diseased meaning of the word Monopoly to mean devices produced by Apple. In that case, almost every company has a monopoly.
How is it so different? Microsoft at least did not control the hardware. Apple has always been worse than Microsoft in that respect - they even wanted to control the printer at one point! The only difference now is that for some reason its working for them now and iPhone is incredibly popular. But they're much more monopolistic than Microsoft ever was, and they always have been, and I would imagine they always will be.
At a certain point, if you execute so much better than the competition and set yourself up differently (controlling and innovating in hardware too) and you maintain total control of your platform, you can dominate in the market to such an extent that you have a virtual monopoly.
Yes, but Apple do not have a monopoly in smartphones or computers. Maybe, just maybe you could say they have significant market dominance of mp3 player market, but who cares about that.
I think it's almost entirely bullshit and misdirection. 3.3.1 doesn't apply to specifically to Flash.
"Open" is irrelevant. Apple is certainly no more open than Adobe.
The Full Web - whatever. Don't support it in the browser, don't support browser plugins, fine. Safari on iPhone still crashes all the time.
Reliability, security, performance - these are all things that apply to native apps built for the App Store, so why are apps built with Flash excluded in particular?
Battery life - more irrelevance. I'm pretty sure that there are games on the App Store right now that will suck away your battery's life faster than most cross-compiled Flash games. Game loops are intrinsically always busy - they don't necessarily have a natural idle point like GUI event loops do, especially if they are running at less than their desired framerate.
Touch - this is an application quality issue. I don't see any difficulty in simply not approving apps that have awkward non-touch interfaces.
The last reason, it being another layer, is the most insidious. UI difference, performance, etc. are all irrelevant - games have weird UIs, drain battery, and poor performance is a quality issue. The truth is Apple doesn't want to be disintermediated. Apple wants developers to be strictly dependent on its tools and APIs, and not use anything between the app and the platform. This is particularly offensive to me as a software developer, and it's far worse than anything Microsoft has ever tried to pull. It's the reason why 3.3.1 is phrased the way it is, and it has nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with locking developers in.
As I see it, Flash on the web is used for three things: (1) video, (2) casual games and (3) ill-advised corporate intro screens.
I'd love to see video not needing flash, but it isn't, yet. Having a sand-boxed third-party FLV player, so that it didn't need to infect the Safari process, would be nice to have. I don't really see that approving such a process would be necessarily harder than approving any other native application on the App Store.
I'd love for (3) to disappear. I can't bear those things.
And it would be great if HTML5 was universally usable and performant enough to work for (2), but it isn't, yet. I know of many casual Flash games, though, that would work really nicely as apps, and Apple is hurting me personally by increasing the barriers preventing those apps on the web from being available on my device. This policy is both anti-consumer and anti-developer. Only in the short-term is it pro-Apple, but I hope and expect Apple will fade in the longer term in competition with Android.
>The truth is Apple doesn't want to be disintermediated. Apple wants developers to be strictly dependent on its tools and APIs, and not use anything between the app and the platform. This is particularly offensive to me as a software developer, and it's far worse than anything Microsoft has ever tried to pull. It's the reason why 3.3.1 is phrased the way it is, and it has nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with locking developers in.
Microsoft did the same thing with DirectX and OpenGL. OpenGL was cross-platform. Microsoft stopped supporting it, and instead insisted that developers use DirectX. This essentially killed cross-platform gaming for Mac/Linux. DirectX games port between Microsoft platforms and Microsoft's Console, but require significant middleware to port to OpenGL and non-Win32 platforms.
Use of an API, public and documented, is a form of dependence and lock-in. Apple has done. Microsoft does it. Oracle does it.
There's nothing stopping you from using an OpenGL api that's built on top of DirectX, though. What Apple has done here is say that you can't put an API between you and the underlying API such that you are insulated to some degree from platform changes; but even worse, they've mandated which languages (!!!) you can use to interop with that API, which is almost criminal, technically speaking. (Of course it's not de jure criminal. Just for the reading comprehension impaired.)
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."
Agree with him or not this is his view. And I think its a valid view. The first macs with a mouse didn't have arrow keys. And the early generation touch devices don't allow intermediate steps.
This is not stopping anyone from compiling from lisp to html5. Apple is fine with this. Buy native apps on their platform, for the time being, wont have intermediate layers.
What? The legal notion of "legal personhood" and actual personhood are not comparable, not even legally, and especially not in the context of the discussion at hand.
"This legal fiction does not mean these entities are human beings, but rather means that the law allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes..." Emphasis mine.
This stuff isn't even on topic, but when people insist on insulting my intelligence with snide pseudo-logical comments, I will insist on correcting them.
Regardless of what Apple think is best for the users, I would still prefer to have Flash on my iPhone. Not only to be able to use websites made in Flash, but also so that developers have a way to develop software without going through the App Store.
hmmm I too agree with this post somehow.... since long I am also not comfortable in learning flash and creating flash based website.. though the graphics is amazing but very slow.... the current decision by apple will definitely hinder the progress of Flash... Adobe need to come up with it's own version of mobile phone :) in the post Steve Jobs mentioned not to encourage the third party layer.... so they ll be slow to adapt the platform changes.... But today got mail from Appacceletor Titanium, they are quite happy bcoz they are developing based on JavaScript.... not sure..
I have trouble swallowing some of this. A few of these theories have been debunked successfully.
I have a small problem with this "don't look at the man behind the curtain" routine. Proprietary is proprietary. Don't try and swing it.
Battery Life: http://vimeo.com/9705969, http://vimeo.com/9724682
Delays: http://www.neowin.net/news/adobe-quotapple-hurts-customers-f...
Touch/Scroll: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-con..., http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/23/scrolling-html-w...
Speed: http://jobemakar.blogspot.com/2010/04/flash-is-speedy-on-and...
Apples position is that proprietary implementations of open standards is the way to go (tho' of course WebKit is completely open).
Thought:
Proprietary isn't bad. Open isn't great. Proprietary vs. open is bad. Proprietary + open is great.
Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations. Save the "VS." narrative for Street Fighter II.
> "Proprietary implementations are a (sometimes) necessary interstitial step towards great open implementations."
True, but Flash is a closed standard with a closed implementation. Adobe likes to claim it is open - but the fact remains that not only is it impossible to write an open implementation of their incomplete spec, but Adobe has actively sought to keep core components proprietary even in spec and prevent competing implementations.
That's the part that irks me about Adobe's role in this issue - they're playing themselves and Flash off as this open savior of the web when they've actively been evil in that regard. If you're closed, great, do your thing; if you're open, then actually open your spec - don't open part of it and then go after the other half with lawyers.
So Adobe gets tossed aside in favor of HTML5/canvas. Or an open version of the SWF format with no licensing issues emerges. I am fine with that. If Adobe wants to be stupid, they are more than welcome to.
Apple is calling the kettle black with the proprietary argument. We can drill down to specific layers but the effects are the same to the developer coding on that layer.
I'm not flaming, trolling or baiting, but I am curious: under what circumstances do you think proprietary implementations are necessary?
If your implementation relies on technology that you have licensed from a third party.
OS has contributed to advancements in design, but proprietary initiatives employ a fleet of people to research, design and case study a technology. They do it all day and not as a side project after work.
Again, it isn't a case of one vs. another. I wish we didn't need to take a side and finally come to a conclusion that both are good in their own ways. Evolution is key.
There are plenty of people that are employed full-time to work on Open Source software. Don't perpetuate the myth that all Open Source software is created by people 'in their free time.'
Most aren't. That is why the myth exists. Plenty < Majority.
To be fair... Zangief vs. Sagat is an abomination, but Zangief PLUS Sagat would cure world hunger.
Delays
Your link makes it seem like an evangelist is playing loosely with words; "available for download" could simply mean beta/RC status, not ready for release everywhere.
Battery Life
From your link: The results are amazing: I can watch a 4 hours and a half flash movie, without interruption, with a bright screen (no sleep mode) and sound !!!
From Steve Jobs post: The difference is striking: 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.
They seem to agree with each other? And only helps Apple's point.
Touch/Scroll
How about hover?
It is true that some of these links are from evangelists. But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we?
Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours.
Touch/Scroll: Another sidestep. A Flash issue? With that I answer: a:hover {}
I just don't get this argument from Apple. Steve Jobs pioneered high usability mobile UI because Apple took the reigns. Now we have Android UI taking a cue from Apple and "unlocking the mobile market"
Flash and HTML5 have a similar relationship. HTML5 opens it up a bit. That's great. But what about HTML6? Flash is Area51 for implementation study.
We don't need to implement a marquee tag and then take it away once we realize it sucks. How could we market test video conf. or canvas-based visuals if we had no way to benchmark them? Flash is good. The VS. argument is a misnomer.
> "We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours."
We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this.
To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running Flash alone doubles the power consumption of the device. That's insane.
> "With that I answer: a:hover {}"
a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices.
The most compelling argument made though we've already been aware of for some time: cross-platform toolkits encourage lowest common denominator design. In Apple's world of pixel-perfect mockups and obsessive attention to detail this is abhorrent - and I'm inclined to agree. The iPhone's chief strength is its remarkably polished user interface - which for the most part remains true across its 3rd party app sphere, thanks in no small part to Apple's obsessive HID enforcement.
A Flash-compiled-to-iPhone app destroys this in the same way that a Linux Qt app hastily ported to Windows is the same.
> a:hover is no longer (it certainly used to be) a common tool used for site navigation. Which is to say, rollover dropdown menus are out like parachute pants - it's a non-issue on the web today. Just about every site works with "clicks", which is Apple's primary form of interaction with websites on touch devices.
This is precisely what I am talking about. We slice the pear in the middle and somehow end up choosing one side over another. True, a:hover is a deprecated form of menu control in HTML, but it is in Flash, too. Again, how you use the tool. Damning an entire developer base based on miscreant use is not a compelling argument. Sorry, but it isn't.
> "based on miscreant use"
That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use".
Here's my impression of the different sorts of Flash use, based on my journeys on the web:
- Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking addon (e.g., Ctrl+T while focused on a Flash applet = no new tab), and much better battery life on mobiles.
- Crappy restaurant websites and other crimes against humanity: These should just die, and HTML5 will hopefully inspire better design ethic than this. I don't buy the argument that hovering is no longer common used as a critical navigation feature in Flash - I see it everywhere, especially for crappy restaurant websites. Flash is also impossible to crawl which reduces the usefulness of the web overall. Hell, you can't even LINK to content in a Flash site. IMHO the "full Flash site" (as opposed to Flash being a component of a page) needs to die a fiery, painful death.
- Games: The only place where Adobe has even a remotely legitimate claim that Flash is an empowering product rather than a crutch.
When I think of Flash these keywords come to mind: slow, buggy, crashy, badly designed, usability nightmare, gimmicky, unprofessional, and just plain bad.
> That's being a bit generous in favor of Adobe - the majority of the Flash development sphere is practically what one would consider "miscreant use".
The vast majority of websites in general are poor. It would be no surprise to see that the majority of Flash sites would also be poor. Both sides have exceptions, though.
> Videos/Audio: Easily replaced by HTML5, and better too. More readily hardware accelerated, behaves as part of the core browser instead of a hijacking addon (e.g., Ctrl+T while focused on a Flash applet = no new tab), and much better battery life on mobiles.
I don't disagree. I am grateful that HTML5 can handle this, but it took a "standards" committee several years to roll this into a questionably viable model. The immediate fanfare for the slow implementation raises my eyebrow a bit. We're all happy about having something we've needed for years. The company that created the fold so we could have sites like YouTube today? The devil.
> - Crappy restaurant websites and other crimes against humanity: These should just die, and HTML5 will hopefully inspire better design ethic than this.
It won't. Cheese is forever. If HTML5 can accomplish cheese, people will create cheese. We're all hopeful, but the human condition comes into play.
It's not the cheese I object to - but that the Cheese breaks the internet in fundamental ways.
Example: We just wrapped up Restaurant Week here in Seattle where a bunch of local establishments offered up prix-fixe specials for a couple of weeks. The website for this event was done up all in Flash, and made it impossible to crawl for a search engine, or even to link or bookmark a particular restaurant for later retrieval.
What did we exchange for this cheese and gimmicky design? Everything.
There's no regulating for good taste - you're right, most websites in general are poor. They, however, are still accessible - neon green text on black background with an annoying MIDI track in the background is still information that:
- you can link to
- you can bookmark
- you can copy and paste
- you can search for in-browser (doubly important if the website fails at layout, e.g. most Flash sites!)
- you can search for on Google/Bing
Those are pretty important.
> What did we exchange for this cheese and gimmicky design? Everything.
I agree that if you don't follow the proper protocol you will end up with an undesirable site. I can't argue that Flash == HTML in terms of accessibility. There are ways within Flash to harness some accessibility but it is up to the developer to implement these. An informational site in Flash is a bad choice. I would never suggest the use of Flash for broad use. A fun site (like http://www.myspace.com/fanvideo) is more appropriate.
> - you can link to
> - you can bookmark
Named-anchors and proper implementation (same as AJAX RIA)
> - you can copy and paste
"Selectable text" is an option in any Flash text field.
> - you can search for in-browser (doubly important if the website fails at layout, e.g. most Flash sites!)
> - you can search for on Google/Bing
Flash exports text within to the container. Google also can search SWF.
> Those are pretty important.
Agree.
"Selectable text" is an option in any Flash text field.
Is copying/pasting it to the OS (or app) pasteboard an option? If so, will it use the same UI as native apps have? Or will it force a funky widget of its own in the middle of an app that otherwise looks like the rest of the OS?
The options are the same as the OS using the same UI. Identical to right-click menu in browser inputs/address bar. It is using the OS clipboard. CTRL/OPTION+C/V works the same as well.
Are you saying that Adobe reimplemented the UI? Or that they pass it off to the OS to handle? Because if its the former, the iPhone doesn't have a menu dropdown for cut/copy/paste. Or a ctrl/command button, for that matter.
I'm only asking because I've never had copy/paste from flash work well on the desktop.
And HTML5 canvas changes this how?
Because <canvas> is used for just the "flashy" part of the site but everything else is still in traditional HTML with all of its advantages. Sure that can be done in Flash too, but, as we've seen, people often end up just doing the vast majority of the site in Flash. There's not the same temptation with <canvas>.
Why not? If <canvas> is being used as a drop-in replacement for Flash, why wouldn't it just be used in exactly the same ways? There's nothing special about canvas that would make it less prone to abuse.
Flash includes a ton of controls: buttons, scrollbars, text areas, etcetera. It has its own scripting language and memory environment that is separate from the HTML page and its DOM/JavaScript environment that contains it. There are ways to shuffle data and events between the two, but that means going out of your way to do so.
So if you're going to have a Flash-y data visualization component, say, it's easiest and most natural to have the controls for it (buttons adjusting parameters, display of those parameters, navigational controls) made in Flash too -- just expand the content rectangle of your Flash component out and drop in the controls.
In HTML5, the 'environment' of the <canvas> object is that of the surrounding HTML page. Adding buttons and other controls around the edge of your visualizer is most straightforwardly done by using "native" HTML <button>s and other such elements.
So it would be surprising to see <canvas>-using pages end up being done in a way where the <canvas> is essentially the whole page — it would require more programmer effort — whereas in Flash that's by far the easiest way to do it.
Although i agree that there are a lot of issues wrong with Flash, some of the things you mention aren't entirely accurate. For example, you can link directly to interior Flash content with SWFAddress (http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/). Also, there have been greater strides made in crawlers so that Flash content is more easily indexed by crawlers.
I will be the first to admit there are a lot of poorly designed Flash sites, but from an interactive design perspective, Flash still gives you the most freedom to create more innovative ways for user interaction. IMO this isn't something that should be dismissed so quickly.
Hover isn't used for navigation in Flash. Its used for controls in games, a lot of the time. You click to start, then move the mouse to play.
// note: Deleted this comment and readded it, since I originally replied to the wrong comment. Whoopsies.
> We do other things on the iPhone. I don't want to make the choice between watching a video and then restricting my own usage just so my phone has enough juice to make a call. I'd rather watch videos and use my phone, and the more power efficient everything is, the more the user can do this. To put it in perspective, if Apple's numbers are to be believed, running Flash alone doubles the power consumption of the device. That's insane.
What's your battery life playing an intensive game or using a processor intensive app?
When it comes to battery life, you must consider the affect on the total user experience.
If the iPhone can play video for 10 hours, that means a 2 hour movie brings my battery life to 80%.
If the iPhone could play Flash video for 5 hours and I watch a 2 hour movie, my battery life is reduced to 60%.
Given other things I do with my phone battery life is important beyond "how much video can I watch?" If the repercussions of watching a two-hour video are so much less severe, I am more likely to watch the video in question knowing I won't wind up with a dead phone after a half day of traveling.
Battery Life: It's a bit of hyperbole. We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours. Would it matter if Flash could play videos for 11 hours? It is a misdirection or a sidestep of an original claim that Flash would kill the iPhone inside of 2 hours.
If a phone can watch 4 1/2 hours of flash in software before the battery is drained this means that watching a two hour movie will eat half of my battery. By comparison I can watch a two hour movie using hardware decoding and still have 80% of my battery left.
About Job's remark of hardware vs software decoding of video:
In both cases, he's talking about H.264. An end user might not even realize there's a difference. But some encoders produce H.264 that can hardware decode, and some encoders do not. Not all H.264 is created equal, and this is one area that really matters.
You want an H.264 encoder that produces hardware decoder compatible video.
"But we're not saying Steve Jobs is neutral are we?"
I would argue that that's a reasonable point to make. Steve Jobs doesn't have a vested interest in seeing Flash die, he has a vested interest in seeing the iPhone platform succeed. If he saw any way Flash could help that, I'm sure he'd be all for it, but he's seen how Adobe's behaved in the past (late with PPC versions, late with OS X versions, late with Intel versions, late with 64-bit versions, crashy Flash, slow Flash, etc.), and he has no interest in subjecting the iPhone to the same issues that the Mac platform has had to endure at the hands of a slow-moving corporation who has little interest in being a good citizen.
I would argue that Jobs is 'neutral' in the sense that he's not supporting anyone else's agenda. He's made his choice based on the facts before him, and while you may not agree with how he got there, I would say that he got there from an initial position of neutrality.
The very moment flash was not included in the iPhone, Steve Jobs had a vested interest in seeing Flash fail. If Flash expands, user satisfaction with the iPhone goes down. If Flash fails completely, one of the strongest negative components of the iPhone disappears.
Why does he have a vested interest in making it fail? Could he not change his mind and allow Adobe onto the platform? It's not like he's never changed his mind in the past (the Intel vs PPC 'Megahurtz Myth' comes to mind).
I would argue that it was even sooner that that. The Steve has probably hated Flash for a long, long time.
Yes, this goes back to 1989 fight over fonts, and the 1993 fight about Display Postscript and the 1999 fight about Photoshop on Windows, and the 2007 withdrawal of 64-bit Carbon toolkit at the last minute.
Apple modified WebKit to support most uses of a:hover by changing how touch interaction works when a :hover style exists on an element. Apple cannot do this with Flash, which means Jobs's argument here is right on the money.
We don't watch videos on the iPhone for 10 hours.
No, but you might watch a film and a couple of music videos and then the battery is getting awfully low. My iPhone lasts a day on one charge (with heavy web use & lots of calls). Halving that with a 2 hour film could be a big problem.
Proprietary on the web affects everyone, proprietary on the iPhone affects only the iPhone.
And the iPad, then other mainstream consumption devices. This argument doesn't live in 2010.
The point is it will only ever directly effect products made by the same company. A device from HP or Microsoft will never be hurt by an issue with a closed Apple platform.
If there are issues with Flash, it will hurt every company using Flash, and there is nothing those companies can do about it other than bug Adobe to fix it or drop Flash support.
I don't disagree that Flash has the potential to create issues.
The argument just suffers from the fallacy of composition. The standoff motif is getting old. We're talking about software, not cold war against another country.
Apple doesn't want you to notice Steve behind the curtain. With Adobe we tend to pick and choose what we agree with and ignore the points that don't support our bias.
In what way is saying "Flash has problems, therefore putting Flash on your platform will expose it to those problems" a fallacy of composition? I don't see it at all. It's not wrongly attributing an attribute of one small part of Flash to the whole. Or are you saying the fallacy is somewhere else?
In this respect, I am not arguing for or against Flash on any device. Just that the argument against it is just as flawed as the argument for it.
But you don't appear to have pointed out any specific flaws in the argument against it. So you're not making an argument, just an unsupported assertion.
All I am saying is that Steve Jobs isn't putting all the facts on the table as they are. He is feeding the anti-Flash gang mob with half-truths.
To say Flash is proprietary, possibly poorly executed format is a fair thing to say. To say it is completely without merit and has no place is a fallacy. HTML5 video is widely supported today. Flash might be a delivery vehicle for another unrealized idea tomorrow.
And the "death to the plugin arch" circle-jerk logic is almost intolerable. Only create within the confines of the parent layer's imaginative capacity? Sounds more closed than SWF.
kevinh said it best: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1305322
Support to my assertions: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304353
I have no issue with him shutting out something that really sucks today at the cost of potentially missing out on something awesome to do with it tomorrow. The awesome scenario just doesn't seem likely to come to pass. If tomorrow there's a completely great thing on the web that can only be done with flash, then I think Jobs is pragmatic enough to reevaluate.
But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone, openness dogma be damned. When Jobs limits my general purpose computers, I'll be angry, but until then, I'm glad he's making the tough design decisions instead of just letting the device be a free for all.
What flash ads? Just use AdBlock.
My point was that that is one of the main uses of Flash, and that an extremely simple/common flash implementation is enough to burn a huge number of CPU cycles for no benefit.
No user benefit. But there's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy HTML5 canvas ads, and those are guaranteed to burn even more of your CPU cycles. So I call shenanigans on that argument.
Apple controls the iPhone's HTML5 renderer and feels much more confident in its performance. "There's nothing stopping advertisers from making crappy canvas ads" is not the same thing as "canvas ads will suck at least as much power on average as Flash ads."
They were separate points. Canvas is inherently more computationally expensive than Flash at this stage of the technology. As canvas advances, so does flash -- unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads.
"unless Flash dies off completely, Canvas ads will always suck more CPU cycles than Flash ads."
Who says they'll progress at the same rate? That's ridiculous. Flash is at least 10 years old and has been in extremely heavy use, so it's likely plateaued in terms of performance on most platforms. Canvas (and the rendering engines for it) are very new by comparison.
> But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these days, beside video and unusable websites, are animated flash ads that use up 40% of my much more powerful Macbook Pro's CPU time means I'm in no hurry to have flash on the phone
In my opinion, this is moot point. Annoying ads aren't going to be limited to Flash. HTML5 ads aren't going to be more fun.
I was talking mostly about the CPU utilization, not just the annoyance factor. I would hope that the HTML5 equivalent would be less power-hungry.
John Gruber has been making these exact points. This could basically be ghost written by Gruber and we wouldn't know the difference.
I've often wondered if Gruber's reliable contact at Apple was some guy with turtlenecks and no numberplates.
He did throw up this little Tweet a couple nights ago: http://twitter.com/gruber/status/12988151829
And he did it at 9:42pm, iPhone's preferred (evening) time. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250125)
I think Gruber remains independent from Apple. It would be too conspiracy theory for Gruber/Daring Fireball to be a secret PR mouthpiece for Apple. More likely Apple reaches out to him because he is by far the most influential Apple website outside of Apple (MacRumors is a distant 2nd in my opinion). They don't have to pay Gruber anything; the increased ad revenue from being a member of the elite The Deck should more than compensate.
More likely Apple reaches out to him because he is by far the most influential Apple website outside of Apple
I also think he is one of the most levelheaded apple-centric websites out there. Gruber talks a lot about premium products (not just apple) and their success in various markets -- DF is like a premium tech/apple/good taste blogzine and I imagine that his style appeals to a lot of people at Apple, whether they reach out to him or not (and "legally" or not)
Gruber is fantastic when he's not in "scandal" mode.
The site quality degrades significantly, however, when he latches onto a "scandal", whether it be about stolen iphones or illegitimate wi-fi security claims.
With his recent ad nauseum stolen phone coverage, DF has felt more like an overwrought Entertainment Tonight scandal episode.
I've found the best Gruber reading algorithm is:
if (post < 2 paragraphs) { worth bookmarking } else { mark as read }
Keep in mind, he lives in Philadelphia, where it was 12:42am.
I'm sure he operates strictly on Cupertino time. ;)
Because they're obvious points to make.
Apple's competitors have been clamoring to put Flash on their mobile devices because it's one more bullet point they can use in their marketing against the iPhone.
Yet it's 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found. How is that not Adobe's fault?
I agree, but a hell of a lot of people are missing these obvious points, though. Most people with an opinion on Apple are.
Don't lose sight of the issue. 3.3.1 is the issue, not "Flash on the iPhone". By reframing the argument as "Flash on the iPhone", you are succumbing to misdirection.
True enough. And Cocoa Touch is not an 'open standard.'
Jobs never said that Cocoa is an open standard. He just state that Flash is as proprietary as Cocoa Touch. Market share =! Open.
His point is that on the mobile web, HTML5 is open, not Flash.
So "Flash on the Web == Bad" because it's not open, but "Flash cross-compiled apps on iPhone == Bad" because it's not... open... ? The logic doesn't match up. As has been stated, it's a misdirection. Steve Jobs is setting fire to a house on the west side of town so that no one will notice that he's robbing the bank on the east side.
He's trying to come off as an 'open crusader for the web against Adobe' because 'Adobe is not open,' but on the other hand shoving Adobe (and others) off of the i{Phone,Pad} platform because it's not part of Apple's own 'not open' environment. I hate Adobe as much as the next person, but let's not dress Steve Jobs up as a knight in shining armour just because he also doesn't like Adobe.
"Flash cross-compiled apps on iPhone == Bad" because it's not... open...
Neither stated nor implied. The logic doesn't "match up" because it's a separate issue, addressed with different arguments:
"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."
He then goes on about third-party middleware, e.g.:
"We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."
Jobs does not make the openness argument in reference to Apple's proprietary platform at all. It seems to me that you have to ignore the last third of the article to think that he was.
He's trying to come off as an 'open crusader for the web against Adobe'
Is Jobs lying when he says Apple supports open web standards?
This has nothing to do with what's open and what isn't, it's about who controls what. Apple controls iPhoneOS, Adobe controls Flash. It's a prizefight. Don't get caught in a sucker punch just because you were paying attention to the fancy footwork.
3.3.1 is an issue for developers. No Flash is actually a super huge deal for users.
I think one of the main reasons they published this was so they could respond to “iPhone doesn’t even have Flash.”
Gruber is really Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is really Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve Jobs is actually Bill Gates.
The latest from Fake Steve on this piece: http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/04/please-stop-thinking-about-....
Oh man, I almost spit my tea out laughing at that. Wow.
Fake Steve raises an interesting point about how close John Gruber and Apple are.
>"...we leaked the Flash essay to our Chief Apologist John Gruber and told him to start whipping up some buzz on Twitter about it, and he followed orders [http://twitter.com/gruber/status/12988151829]."
Consider too that Steve Jobs replied to an email asking about the restriction of apps to C* with a link to a Gruber post [http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/04/steve-jobs-response-on...].
I'd argue that the real Steve Jobs is Bill Gates, lately. Maybe Monopolies (essentially) do that to people.
Apple do not have a Monopoly, unless you use a diseased meaning of the word Monopoly to mean devices produced by Apple. In that case, almost every company has a monopoly.
How is it so different? Microsoft at least did not control the hardware. Apple has always been worse than Microsoft in that respect - they even wanted to control the printer at one point! The only difference now is that for some reason its working for them now and iPhone is incredibly popular. But they're much more monopolistic than Microsoft ever was, and they always have been, and I would imagine they always will be.
At a certain point, if you execute so much better than the competition and set yourself up differently (controlling and innovating in hardware too) and you maintain total control of your platform, you can dominate in the market to such an extent that you have a virtual monopoly.
Yes, but Apple do not have a monopoly in smartphones or computers. Maybe, just maybe you could say they have significant market dominance of mp3 player market, but who cares about that.
I think it's almost entirely bullshit and misdirection. 3.3.1 doesn't apply to specifically to Flash.
"Open" is irrelevant. Apple is certainly no more open than Adobe.
The Full Web - whatever. Don't support it in the browser, don't support browser plugins, fine. Safari on iPhone still crashes all the time.
Reliability, security, performance - these are all things that apply to native apps built for the App Store, so why are apps built with Flash excluded in particular?
Battery life - more irrelevance. I'm pretty sure that there are games on the App Store right now that will suck away your battery's life faster than most cross-compiled Flash games. Game loops are intrinsically always busy - they don't necessarily have a natural idle point like GUI event loops do, especially if they are running at less than their desired framerate.
Touch - this is an application quality issue. I don't see any difficulty in simply not approving apps that have awkward non-touch interfaces.
The last reason, it being another layer, is the most insidious. UI difference, performance, etc. are all irrelevant - games have weird UIs, drain battery, and poor performance is a quality issue. The truth is Apple doesn't want to be disintermediated. Apple wants developers to be strictly dependent on its tools and APIs, and not use anything between the app and the platform. This is particularly offensive to me as a software developer, and it's far worse than anything Microsoft has ever tried to pull. It's the reason why 3.3.1 is phrased the way it is, and it has nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with locking developers in.
As I see it, Flash on the web is used for three things: (1) video, (2) casual games and (3) ill-advised corporate intro screens.
I'd love to see video not needing flash, but it isn't, yet. Having a sand-boxed third-party FLV player, so that it didn't need to infect the Safari process, would be nice to have. I don't really see that approving such a process would be necessarily harder than approving any other native application on the App Store.
I'd love for (3) to disappear. I can't bear those things.
And it would be great if HTML5 was universally usable and performant enough to work for (2), but it isn't, yet. I know of many casual Flash games, though, that would work really nicely as apps, and Apple is hurting me personally by increasing the barriers preventing those apps on the web from being available on my device. This policy is both anti-consumer and anti-developer. Only in the short-term is it pro-Apple, but I hope and expect Apple will fade in the longer term in competition with Android.
>The truth is Apple doesn't want to be disintermediated. Apple wants developers to be strictly dependent on its tools and APIs, and not use anything between the app and the platform. This is particularly offensive to me as a software developer, and it's far worse than anything Microsoft has ever tried to pull. It's the reason why 3.3.1 is phrased the way it is, and it has nothing to do with Flash and everything to do with locking developers in.
Microsoft did the same thing with DirectX and OpenGL. OpenGL was cross-platform. Microsoft stopped supporting it, and instead insisted that developers use DirectX. This essentially killed cross-platform gaming for Mac/Linux. DirectX games port between Microsoft platforms and Microsoft's Console, but require significant middleware to port to OpenGL and non-Win32 platforms.
Use of an API, public and documented, is a form of dependence and lock-in. Apple has done. Microsoft does it. Oracle does it.
There's nothing stopping you from using an OpenGL api that's built on top of DirectX, though. What Apple has done here is say that you can't put an API between you and the underlying API such that you are insulated to some degree from platform changes; but even worse, they've mandated which languages (!!!) you can use to interop with that API, which is almost criminal, technically speaking. (Of course it's not de jure criminal. Just for the reading comprehension impaired.)
He addressed 3.3.1 here
"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."
Agree with him or not this is his view. And I think its a valid view. The first macs with a mouse didn't have arrow keys. And the early generation touch devices don't allow intermediate steps.
This is not stopping anyone from compiling from lisp to html5. Apple is fine with this. Buy native apps on their platform, for the time being, wont have intermediate layers.
"The truth is Apple doesn't want to be disintermediated."
I thought Jobs article made that pretty clear, actually.
I agree, but it's really sad that we're at a place where we praise Apple for communicating... like normal human beings.
Apple is a corporation, not a human being.
Clever. The only thing more disturbing than Apple's behavior is how many developers seem to be suffering from stockholm syndrome.
Yes, Flash and iPhone developers alike.
The Supreme Court would like a word with you.
What? The legal notion of "legal personhood" and actual personhood are not comparable, not even legally, and especially not in the context of the discussion at hand.
parent is referring to this: http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/01/analysis-the-personhood-of...
which was generally interpreted to mean the SCOTUS decided corporations are people.
So, to recap, legally being a person and being a person aren't, legally, the same.
Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
"This legal fiction does not mean these entities are human beings, but rather means that the law allows them to act as persons for certain limited purposes..." Emphasis mine.
This stuff isn't even on topic, but when people insist on insulting my intelligence with snide pseudo-logical comments, I will insist on correcting them.
In other words, you like feeding the trolls?
The comment was a jab at the court's decision to move in the direction they have. I'm sorry that wasn't clear to you.
Beyond that, I find it incredibly silly that you find your intelligence so easily insulted. Perhaps it's time to take a chill pill.
Corporations typically don't appeal to reason on complex issues. In fact, most humans don't (though maybe "normal" ones do?).
What's sad is that it's a simple but important standard that isn't ordinarily upheld. It isn't sad to praise anyone for meeting that standard.
Regardless of what Apple think is best for the users, I would still prefer to have Flash on my iPhone. Not only to be able to use websites made in Flash, but also so that developers have a way to develop software without going through the App Store.
hmmm I too agree with this post somehow.... since long I am also not comfortable in learning flash and creating flash based website.. though the graphics is amazing but very slow.... the current decision by apple will definitely hinder the progress of Flash... Adobe need to come up with it's own version of mobile phone :) in the post Steve Jobs mentioned not to encourage the third party layer.... so they ll be slow to adapt the platform changes.... But today got mail from Appacceletor Titanium, they are quite happy bcoz they are developing based on JavaScript.... not sure..
The Lord said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" And the woman replied, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate."