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Thoughts on Flash
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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. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. 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.
Cartoons
Priest Sex-Tape
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In the small Brazilian city of Arapiraca, tucked away in the poor, conservative northeast corner of the country, a hidden-camera video showing an octogenarian priest having sex with a young altar boy is being hawked on the street. For $5 to $10, vendors here will sell you the video, downloading it directly into your cellphone via Bluetooth. The price depends on the quality and length of the footage. According to one street vendor, the most popular download is the “complete” version. Buyers, he says, are “almost everybody—not just the curious.”
[..]
Other bombshells dropped during the three days the senate inquiry took place in Arapiraca. Father Duarte admitted he had sexually abused both Flávio and Fabiano, but suggested his victims were wrong to come forward. “I regret that these accusations have come from people who ate at my table,” he intoned. “Just as Jesus said: ‘Those who ate my bread are those who betray me.’”
And the third accused priest, Father Gomes, denied that any abuse took place at all, insisting he was victim of “revenge,” and accused a third altar boy, Anderson Farias Silva, of attempting to extort money from him. Silva said that Father Gomes had abused him since he was 14.
Furthermore, because Father Duarte is cooperating with the investigation, Brazilian police say he fears for his safety. “He asked for protection during the [senate inquiry] because he had denounced the others and he was scared,” says Officer Sousa. Father Duarte also said he believes Father Gomes to be “dangerous.”
Deepwater Horizon
Don’t secure your wifi!
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Obviously this is not legal advice, but sounds pretty simple to me – the new Digital Ecomony Act actually encourages people to run public wifi to make themselves immune to the copyright infringement reports, technical measures, and even direct civil cases.
One UK provider has implemented this already.
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HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion
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HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion.
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“We support open web standards where they compete with other companies’ proprietary stuff, but when our platform has proprietary cool stuff [like the Touch API], then we force people to use that instead of anything else.”
Mkay.
I mean, if they really wanted to create open standards, how about adding a multitouch API to HTML5 or something like that?
I think it’s a nice plainspoken letter, and nice to have this addressed out in the open, and I don’t blame them for doing what they’re doing, especially the bit where they’re anal about protecting the user experience, and I don’t care that Flash doesn’t run on the iOS. But Apple is no White Knight either.
exactly.
Also, the availability of third party tools saved Apple’s ass once. Remember CodeWarrior?
C’mon John, the picture is clear already. Don’t be fooled by the whole bunch of FUDD about the “evil application layer that endanger the security of blah blah blah”.
Every system of the last 20 years had some kind of “third party layer of software” that came “between the platform and the developer”, and many of those systems were far more reliable than the standard Mac, being built to run servers or critical application, not just to look cool on a Starbucks table.
Apple is trying to kill a competitor, no more. They are pushing Adobe out of a whole sector of their most faithful customers, beginning with Flash and in a near future moving to PDF and ultimately to their graphic suites.
As soon as Adobe will try to enforce their power (something like “…or else no more Photoshop CS6 for mac”) Apple will roll out in a matter of *days* their own graphic suite (developed secretly in the last years).
It’s sales talk, and very obvious at that too.
It starts by creating an image of Apple as a father figure compared to Adobe as the ‘garage’ kid (first big customer, having owned a large part of, etc).
Then it goes on to associate Adobe with negatives like ‘closed’, ‘propriatary’, ‘don’t say’, ‘drawbacks’, ‘sub-standard’, ‘mercy’, ‘worse’, combining it with absolutes as ‘only’, ’100%’, ‘entirely’, ‘any’, ‘never’. Note also that Adobe is addressed/described as alone.
Apple is associated with positives like ‘high’, ‘advanced’, ‘best’, ‘shines’, ‘free’, ‘perfectly’, ‘great’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘delighted’, whilst at the same time avoiding absolutes with words like ‘perhaps’, ‘much’ and ‘many’. Apple is portrayed as a team player with words like ‘member’, ‘widely adopted’, ‘many others’, ‘our developers’.
Leave all this out, and what you are left with is:
“Adobe’s Flash products are [...] proprietary.”
“Apple has [..] proprietary products too.”
Like Officer Barbrady said: “Move along people, nothing to see here”.
ummmm… if this is about a marketplace where applications are sold, and the concern is that allowing flash to be used to develop apps would produce substandard apps, wouldn’t the marketplace show less favor to those apps for being substandard and do by nature what apple is trying to do by legislation?
the logicnof that nicely written letter is completely faulty. what’s worse is that the letter contains language that’s designed to play on cognitive biases (we cannot be at the mercy…, painfully slow to adopt…, lowest common denominator). it’s a calculated document that has been brewed to sway public opinion. frankly, that’s evil.
Come on Florian, let’s live in the real world. Lying is evil. Explaining your point of view in effective language is normal. Saying that Flash crashes a lot and has shitty performance is pretty far from claiming that there will be death-panels in health care.
The overall quality of apps that are offered matters to Apple. For those substandard apps to sell fewer copies, some customers have to have shitty experiences with them, experiences they may blame as much on the device as on the app. Apple doesn’t want that. It’s nothing new–just think back to 1984 when they strongly discouraged ports of text-based apps to the Mac and wanted all apps to play by the new UI guidelines.
>Explaining your point of view in effective language is normal.
This is not a case of “effective language”, this is a matter of using subliminal messages to spin public opinion. Maybe is legal, but has not my approval.
>The overall quality of apps that are offered matters to Apple.
Totally wrong. The quality of apps that run on *my* device should matter *only to me*.
Some court should force Apple to ditch all those practices against competition, they are letting slip a very dangerous precedent here.
> For those substandard apps to sell fewer copies, some customers have to have shitty experiences with them, experiences they may blame as much on the device as on the app.
Yeah, as if. Imagine you buy a brand new japanese citycar, shiny and confortable. Then you go off-roading into the countryside. Do you really think someone would blame the car maker for the bumps?
That is a petty and stupid excuse to try to safe Apple’s face: one can believe that bullshit only if he really wants to believe that.
> think back to 1984 when they strongly discouraged ports of text-based apps to the Mac
How ironic.
Totally wrong. The quality of apps that run on *my* device should matter *only to me*.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it isn’t about quality. It’s about the lead they currently have over competitors:
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this is a matter of using subliminal messages to spin public opinion.
Subliminal? Are you sure you know what that word means?
The quality of apps that run on *my* device should matter *only to me*.
It’s nice that you think it should not matter to Apple, but there’s pretty strong evidence that it does. For example, apps are screened before released, and if found buggy, they won’t go into the App Store. Clearly Apple cares about the quality.
Imagine you buy a brand new japanese citycar, shiny and confortable. Then you go off-roading into the countryside.
It’s more like you bring your car to the official dealer for service, and ask them to install aftermarket spark plugs. Soon after, your engine develops problems. Your friends hear about this and think “I’m going to stick with German brands.” Sure, you asked for the cheap parts, but it’s going to affect the perception of the brand.
Don’t get me wrong–I have mixed feelings about the situation Apple has set up. I don’t have an iPhone, and I’m undecided whether I will get one or try other smartphones first. But Apple is pretty honest about the setup of the situation and I think they should be allowed to set up their business model the way they want–at least until they become a monopoly.
Yes, I know what “subliminal” means. I’m not using the word in a strict sense clearly, but the meaning is the same. read the message by Jim above here, and you get a nice plan of what they are doing.
The fact that the apps are reviewed and approved (or shot down) by Apple is an abomination itself: again, not a matter of “apple wants best quality for me”, more something like “apple wants to control the whole market”. Plain wrong, IMHO.
About the monopoly, you say you want to act if and whether they became a monopoly. I prefer to avoid this situation, since it could become a standard in a near (and frightening) future.
i think the spark plugs metaphor is retarded. nyaaah
i also like the piece on the register where they point out how stupid it is for steve jobs to give adobe flack for not using cocoa, when it turns out that the finder only started using it in snow leopard and, final cut and itunes (2 flagship apps from a company to which quality and uptake of new api features is soooo important) don’t use them yet. brilliant!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/30/jobs_flash_letter_deconstructed/
hold on, so this is like you going to the dealership and complaining your car doesn’t work well and them telling you it’s because you’re using stock sparkplugs instead of the awesome aftermarket german ones they resell from a 3rd party manufacturer?
steve jobs is jackass. it’s time for him to get put out to pasture so this company can stop seeming so evil and get back to being cool.