FSF Response To Steve Jobs's Letter

boilednut writes "Steve Jobs's recent missive on the deficiencies of Adobe's Flash is still reverberating around the Internet. In this editorial, John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds, arguing that Apple is presenting users with a false choice between Adobe's proprietary software and Apple's walled garden."

Comments

And Theora?

[Hatta]

I'd be more interested in a response from Xiph on Job's email concerning Theora.

Re:And Theora?

[WrongSizeGlass]

I'd be more interested in a response from Xiph on Job's email concerning Theora.

They have a comment from him here.

Re:And Theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Xiph's Gregory Maxwell wrote a couple of responses on the Theora mailing list:

http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003766.html
http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003769.html

Re:And Theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

And here: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003766.html

Re:And Theora?

[rtfa-troll]

The response has been clear, and it's the same response as free software people have given everywhere: "show us your patents". Even the current US legal system is pretty clear about this. If you are aware that your patent is being infringed, you have a duty to come forward to tell the person who is doing that. If you don't; when it comes to damages it is completely obvious that you didn't do your best to minimise the damage caused to yourself and you don't deserve to be paid off.

What Apple and Microsoft are doing is either a) allowing people to continue doing "damage" by using a patent they don't have the right to when Apple or Microsoft could stop that by clearly stating which patent it is or more likely, b) spreading FUD. In case a) since MS and Apple are the only ones who know what the patents are, they should be liable for the continued "damage" from the use of patents from the point where they decided to speak about the patents without stating which ones.

Someone should take this up in a court e.g. in Germany where some parts of the legal system still seem to function.

Re:And Theora?

[initialE]

Finally a law where "pics or it didn't happen" applies.

Re:And Theora?

[Frigo]

Isn't it possible to simply sue Apple and Microsoft for defamation ?

Let the users decide

[walshy007]

Letting the users decide is the best option, what's that? the users can't decide because of apple, of course they can, they aren't forced to buy the product. Their own stupid fault if they buy something so locked down and don't like it.

As far as stallman is concerned, it is still another choice, just one that doesn't make sense from the freedom perspective.

Re:Let the users decide

[cupantae]

What's that supposed to mean? Apple's approach conflicts with the FSF's philosophy, so they're telling people why. Users are obviously still let decide; advising people one way or the other doesn't change that.

And it's not like the FSF is meddling in other people's business, because the question of what standards are commonly supported/used is relevant to everyone who wants to use a computer.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

The people aren't being informed of the CHOICE though. They aren't told about DRM. They aren't told about the problems of proprietary software. Even when they are they aren't given a choice. Companies lock them into it. Other users that need to exchange files with each other have forced yet others into making the same bad choices of using the same vendors products. No choice here.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Letting the users decide is the best option, what's that? the users can't decide because of apple, of course they can, they aren't forced to buy the product. Their own stupid fault if they buy something so locked down and don't like it.

As far as stallman is concerned, it is still another choice, just one that doesn't make sense from the freedom perspective.

And that's Stallman's problem. His ideal phone boots a GNU/HURD kernel and comes with nothing but a copy of emacs and the specifications of the hardware. From there, he expects people to write their own media library, implementing codecs from scratch.

He is perplexed as to why anybody would choose to pay for Apple's platform and accept the restrictions imposed by it.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

B-b-b-b-but he said Apple is bad... that makes him an authoritarian Nazi fuckwit. Don't you see how this works? I'll bet you're a communist who hates America.

Apple uber alles!

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

you presuppose there is room for a fair choice.

Re:Let the users decide

[eloki]

He is perplexed as to why anybody would choose to pay for Apple's platform and accept the restrictions imposed by it.

I don't think he's perplexed. Someone who spends that much time arguing that freedom is the greater good clearly understands that other people are valuing convenience, appearance, ease of use etc. over freedom.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

His ideal phone boots a GNU/HURD kernel and comes with nothing but a copy of emacs and the specifications of the hardware.

I'd buy one.

Re:Let the users decide

[green_abishi]

Why was this modded insightful? As the originator of the free software movement Stallman simply wants the software people receive on the phone to be "free." See the definition of that here: http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software This has nothing to do with the ridiculous notion that people must write any software themselves (though they could if they chose to). For an example that comes closer to the mark, see Android.

Re:Let the users decide

[Kensai7]

Letting the users decide is the best option, what's that?

I have a reason to believe people in the end *want* to be guided by a benevolent dictator who chooses what's best for them. There is some logic to this, especially if the looks of a system are important. Take a look on the best iPhone apps. In the end, their GUI is streamlined and follows the best Apple guidelines. It somehow blends with the rest of the interface.

Now go on and look Android apps. It's a total mess. That's not necessarily bad, but I think we should not bash Apple customers for choosing a good-looking product. Nevertheless, I would really love to have a switch in my iPhone which, after a couple of popup disclaimers, lets me install whatever I want using alternative unofficial stores.

Re:Let the users decide

[Burz]

And that's Stallman's problem. His ideal phone boots a GNU/HURD kernel and comes with nothing but a copy of emacs and the specifications of the hardware.

No... it would come with printer drivers too.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

From there, he expects people to write their own media library, implementing codecs from scratch.

What dolt modded this insightful? If this was actually the case the FSF and the GNU project wouldn't exist. Mods, wield that overrated or flamebait, because it is both and no one seems to have noticed.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not necessarily bad, but I think we should not bash Apple customers for choosing a good-looking product.

Can we still bash them based on their sexual orientation and general idiocy?

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

My problem is with how the FSF is implying that Jobs is a hypocrite. It seems that they're more interested in making his thoughts into something that they're not than they are about promoting free software. I like the idea of free software, but the FSF is coming across as your typical zealot, trying to twist people's words to better suit their own agenda. Maybe it's not intentional and they're simply incapable of comprehending that another person's values may be just as valid as their own, even if they conflict. Either way, I'm disappointed that Ars ran with this article rather than going with something less bias.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

He is perplexed as to why anybody would choose to pay for Apple's platform and accept the restrictions imposed by it.

I don't think he's perplexed. Someone who spends that much time arguing that freedom is the greater good clearly understands that other people are valuing convenience, appearance, ease of use etc. over freedom.

If he understands it, he doesn't agree with it. The thing about Stallman is that he is operating on absolutist axioms. For him, freedom comes before all else, without compromise. He thinks of proprietary software and closed standards as booby traps—he has used exactly this metaphor—that offer "convenience, appearance, ease of use, etc." as bait to get people to sacrifice their freedom. His points are actually very sane and consistent if you accept the principles that he's working from, but the man clearly does not live in the real world of reasonable trade-offs. (Which is not to say that Facebook's current privacy policies are reasonable; they aren't.)

I greatly respect Stallman and am grateful for all he's given us (especially Emacs), but I don't think his philosophy of freedom is useful.

Re:Let the users decide

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I doubt that these people actually realize they are handing in freedom, just like they didn't realize that stricter airport security meant that they needed to hand in freedom in airports and airplanes.

Re:Let the users decide

[rmav]

Why was this modded insightful? As the originator of the free software movement Stallman simply wants the software people receive on the phone to be "free."

And not only - it is ok to pay for free software. Source must come with it, you must be allowed to modify and install it. You can pay for the service, for assistance. Open source is not incompatible with commercial use. Only, it is more difficult to do that, because you have to rely on the quality of your services, and not on lock-in.

For an example that comes closer to the mark, see Android.

I find Android even worse than the iPhone OS (that is my platform), because it gives control of the firmware to the cellular phone manufacturers and cellular service providers - but not to the end user.
Roberto

Re:Let the users decide

[rmav]

And that's Stallman's problem. His ideal phone boots a GNU/HURD kernel and comes with nothing but a copy of emacs and the specifications of the hardware.

No... it would come with printer drivers too.

And a TeX installation. I miss TeX on my iPhone.
Roberto

Re:Let the users decide

[Runaway1956]

I'm all for FSF, opensource, and freedoms in general. But, FFS, there IS NO HURD!! Go on, I challenge. Download that HURD kernel, compile it, and install it on all your production machines. What's that? It didn't work? FFS, again. Even Microsoft has a working kernel!

The Gnu part of your Gnu/Hurd statement is alright. There is a lot of Gnu software out there, being used by anyone and everyone. But, when Stallman and others start speaking up about the HURD kernel, they all come across as blind zealots. It's nothing but vaporware, and I don't expect to live long enough to see a HURD computer.

Re:Let the users decide

[Runaway1956]

"I miss TeX on my iPhone."

So, donwload a picture of your guy, and save it to the iphone.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:HB_dKdvH5jP9wM:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/93/207891426_773fe934b5.jpg

Re:Let the users decide

[LaRainette]

Steve Jobs is a supporter of Open-source ? Well good to know ! That's probably why so much of what makes Apple's commercial success has been open sourced ! oh wait...

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to point out that the FSF is run by hypocrites?

Sorry, you are late:

http://openbsd.org/lyrics.html#43

Re:Let the users decide

[daveime]

Being a hypocrite and being a cunt are not mutually exclusive.

 

Re:Let the users decide

[LaRainette]

That's not true. Android doesn't give any power to the cellular manufacturers of the carriers. Android gives this power to anyone willing to do so. And you might not know it (unless you are hypocritical) but Android doesn't lack mods. pretty much any hpone on the market that's sold to run Android can be flashed to run "stock" version of the OS, or any flavour Cyanogen has come up with.

Re:Let the users decide

[LaRainette]

Yes we should bash them ! Omg you started so good and then you lost something ... You should not "would really love to have a switch... blabla" you should NEED it. It should be a deal breaker ! Else you're like the people you described earlier who in the end want to be guided by a benevolent dictator. And that part you got it right, most people will do ANYTHING not be have to think.

Re:Let the users decide

[Kensai7]

Perhaps most people have more than one device. :)

I do. One to think and one to fire-and-forget. Is it so bad? However, don't get me wrong, I understand your point and you got it right. For one device it should be a deal breaker. I think we're becoming Jobs' new sheeps. And he ain't the Messiah!

Re:Let the users decide

[drinkypoo]

My problem is with how the FSF is implying that Jobs is a hypocrite.

Jobs is clearly a hypocrite. (Link to opinion piece on my website, no ads)

It seems that they're more interested in making his thoughts into something that they're not than they are about promoting free software.

It seems to me like they're talking about what his thoughts mean. Jobs is trying to anticompetitively support H.264.

Either way, I'm disappointed that Ars ran with this article rather than going with something less bias.

You must be new [t]here.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

His ideal phone boots a GNU/HURD kernel and comes with nothing but a copy of emacs and the specifications of the hardware.

Do you have a source for that statement? I mean, surely you wouldn't tell lies about other people in public, right?

Re:Let the users decide

[rmav]

That's not true. Android doesn't give any power to the cellular manufacturers of the carriers. Android gives this power to anyone willing to do so.

But, as with the iPhone, potentially violating EULAs, conditions in the contracts with the service provides, voiding your warranty.

And you might not know it (unless you are hypocritical) but Android doesn't lack mods. pretty much any hpone on the market that's sold to run Android can be flashed to run "stock" version of the OS, or any flavour Cyanogen has come up with.

I know that, but, as with a Jailbroken iPhone, potentially violating EULAs, conditions in the contracts with the service provides, voiding your warranty.

Furthermore, the 192Mb version of the HTC Magic my wife owns has also the "wrong" HBOOT version. So she cannot upgrade to Android 2.1. That's of course compatible with that "pretty much any phone" you write: you admit a few exceptions.

I stand by my words: allowing cell phone manufacturers and service providers the choice of version of Android one can install is, in my opinion, an even worse kind of evil released unto the (average) users.

OTOH, as of today _every_ iPhone, iPod, iPad can be jailbroken (tomorrow the situation could be different).

Roberto

Re:Let the users decide

[isilrion]

I'm all for FSF, opensource, and freedoms in general. But, FFS, there IS NO HURD!! Go on, I challenge. Download that HURD kernel[...]

I won't take that challenge. Since when it is necessary to create a kernel to promote an ideology - specially if there is another mature kernel that works for that? Luckily, the ones making that claim are the zealots against the FSF, and not the FSF. In Stallman's own words:

Given the years of work we had already put into the Hurd, we decided to finish it rather than throw them away.

If we did face the question that people ask---if Linux were already available, and we were considering whether to start writing another kernel---we would not do it. Instead we would choose another project, something to do a job that no existing free software can do.

Hurd is not even in the FSF's priority project list. Do you still believe that Stallman & others are the blind zealots?

Re:Let the users decide

[osgeek]

Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.

Adobe would like to control the user experience through its proprietary application framework (Flash). Apple would like to control the user experience through locked down firmware and their App store.

Look, I have two iPhones. I love the iPhone. It is mostly what it is because Apple is in control and makes good design decisions. I have friends with Android phones and they're a bit of a mess IMHO. You can definitely see where the lack of a good strong single voice in the design has kept the current implementations from matching the iPhone experience.

That said, Jobs is being a hypocrite. He's playing a marketing game to give fan boys (ahem... you?) ammo in the Adobe battle for control over the Interwebs. Fair enough. I hope he wins it since I think that Flash sucks. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's being a hypocrite, though.

Don't let your admiration of Apple or its products cloud your ability to be objective about arguments put before you.

Re:Let the users decide

[burris]

Steve said "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."

Yet, that is the same situation he imposes on all iDevelopers. That, my friend, is hypocrisy.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how to say it any way, so I'll just get straight to the point.

STEVE JOBS *IS* A FUCKING HYPOCRITE. If you can't see that, then either you don't want to or you don't understand the situation. Either way, you have to be far more trusting than you should be to think Steve/Apple are angels.

Re:Let the users decide

[catmistake]

You and parent are glossing over the GPs inciteful observation. And hypocrisy cannot be derived from Job's essay. Sullivan at the FSF, and it seems most, have misinterpreted what Job was saying. Sullivan's response is a straw man argument... he's arguing Job's is a hypocrite for arguing something he didn't argue. Jobs was talking about something else.

Re:Let the users decide

[JAlexoi]

FYI: US airport security is exceptionally lax. Still. And it's not about the overzealous security checks, it's about overall security.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Adobe wanting Apple to allow there application framework as an option to developers mean Adobe is wanting to control the user experience. I as a developer control the user experience almost entirely. Flash, Monotouch,etc just give me more options to develop the applications I want. I would expect any company that produces an application framework for Windows or Mac would want to see their software being used as much as possible on the platform. Thats how capitalism works. It is is completely understandable. There is a lightyear of difference between wanting to offer the developer options vs Apple wanting to lock down much of the platform and control what you can and can't create for it.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and any moment now, everyone will start throwing away their Wiis, DSs, Playstations, XBOXs and every other console in existence, because they limit the software that they will allow to run on their devices too.

Re:Let the users decide

[LaRainette]

What ? any iPhone can be Jailbroken. that's true. I don't see the link between this and the fact your wife's phone has crap hardware that's not compatible with Android 2.1 Guess what ? iPhone OS 4 won't run on 1st Gen iPhones either.. Grow a brain please and re read your comment : you're comparing Apples (upgrades) and Oranges (mods)

Re:Let the users decide

[sixsixtysix]

There is a lightyear of difference between wanting to offer the developer options vs Apple wanting to lock down much of the platform and control what you can and can't create for it.

no kidding. i don't see how anyone can be for the openness of some platforms while being for the lock-down on others. its only going to get worse. wait till windows and macos are like this. add contracts with hardware makers to keep out linux, then eula the shit out of it. all in time for internet 2.0.

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

How? Because you don't agree with it? I don't think you know what the word "hypocrisy" means.

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

That depends upon your values. You may not agree with him, but I fail to see how they are hypocritical within his own value system.

Keep in mind he may not be talking the proprietary nature of Adobe Flash because he thinks that's inherently a bad thing, something that we should therefore avoid, but simply because he thinks Adobe is telling us BS and he's trying to refute a point. He's also saying that if freedom is important to you (not necessarily himself), then HTML5 is a better option anyway.

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Where did I imply that?

Re:Let the users decide

[Lars512]

Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.

Jobs doesn't make philosophical arguments against Flash though, he only makes business arguments.

His problem is that Adobe dropped the ball, and are lagging instead of innovating. Jobs claims Flash is the number one source of crashes on OS X, and Adobe has done nothing about it. In the mobile device space, Flash doesn't yet support use of hardware acceleration in video decoding, which means massively increased resource usage and thus reduced battery time. Since Adobe lags on these issues, Apple prefers a process they can contribute to and in some sense control, hence open standards in this area of their business. If Adobe had not dropped the ball, Jobs would be happy to use Flash and there'd be no conflict to see.

Re:Let the users decide

[the-empty-string]

How? Because you don't agree with it?

No. Instead it is because, as he said, that is the same situation [Jobs] imposes on all [d]evelopers. Jobs' own behaviour doesn't meet his proclaimed standards. Pretty much the definition of hypocrisy.

Re:Let the users decide

[mysidia]

Of course the philosophy is useful... it lead to the creation of the Free Software foundation.. GNU..

The GPL... and open source software as we know it.

The philosophy attracts volunteers.

Re:Let the users decide

[FredHStein]

Steve said "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."

Yet, that is the same situation he imposes on all iDevelopers. That, my friend, is hypocrisy.

Go back and read Steve's statement. He doesn't want someone else to control "his" developers. He is blatantly pursuing his self-interest. Is that hypocrisy? iPhone/iPad developers and customer are not forced into this. They opt in. My last count says iPhone has about 1% of the world's cell phones and less than 20% of the "Smart" phones.

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It's not really the same situation. To you, perhaps it is. But that doesn't make it an absolute thing.

Re:Let the users decide

[david_thornley]

Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.

Which is not what Jobs is doing.

There is a difference between open standards and interfaces on the one hand, and open systems on the other.

Adobe wants Flash to be embedded into the web, so that surfing has to be done through their proprietary software. Jobs wants the web to be open, and offers different ways (some tightly closed up) to access it. If the web is primarily open standards, then I can browse it with my iPhone or my Ubuntu box. Somebody else can browse it with their Droid or their Windows 7 box. It's open to all, and you can select your browsing platform based on whatever you like: openness, cost, ease of use, security, you name it. If the web is primarily Flash, then to surf it I am limited to platforms that support Flash, and I have to accept all of Flash's defects, including its currently bad security.

Jobs also wants to sell a locked-down smartphone and a locked-down tablet, but that's far different. The iPhone and iPad have advantages and disadvantages, but they're just part of the marketplace. If you prefer a Droid and a netbook, that's cool. Jobs isn't going to stop you. If you prefer a Macbook as an open alternative to an iPad, Jobs will be happy.

Re:Let the users decide

[drinkypoo]

That depends upon your values. You may not agree with him, but I fail to see how they are hypocritical within his own value system.

They're hypocritical within reality. Apple is highly proprietary, so decrying the proprietariness of Adobe is obviously hypocritical. It shouldn't take a genius to figure this out, just a guy with a dictionary. And thanks to the internet, that guy is you. Figure it out.

Further, what it tells us about his value system is that it's okay when Apple does proprietary stuff, because His Highness Steve "the" Jobs is at the helm, but it's not okay if Adobe does it, because it creates a situation inconvenient for Apple, that Steve Jobs is willing to lie about, like he lied about creating WebKit (it's a fork of pre-existing software) and like he lied about being against flash because "it is proprietary". This is the root hypocrisy; he is clearly not against flash because of this part of its nature, because Apple has plenty of proprietary products, including every part of OS X that differentiates it from being just another *BSD, and every application that they produce for the operating system. Every one, without exception. Show me the Open-ness of iTunes, which will deliver data to iPods and their ilk that it will not deliver to other devices... Let alone show me the source.

The simple answer is that Flash represents a possible end-run around the app store. Flash can store data for later use so in theory you could build an app store in flash, to deliver flash apps, and completely avoid Apple. Users wouldn't even see Apple's advertisements (Featured apps, manipulated search results) because they wouldn't even be visiting the App store. If the only apps (or the majority of them, anyway) that they want are casual games, then contrary to what The Jobs would have you believe, Flash would serve their needs just fine. And this is what frightens Steve, who wants control of users for what it represents: a steady stream of income.

Whether my above paragraph is 100% true or not, we know that Jobs is lying when he says he is against Adobe because they are proprietary. He would have to be against Apple for the same reason. He is against Adobe because they are inconvenient to Apple today. This is unfortunate because they have long existed in a mutually beneficial relationship, a relationship which could continue today if not for Apple's typically corporate need to do all they can to dominate every market in which they compete. Competition is not beneficial to corporations, only to users, and we have long seen that Apple operates most comfortably when telling users what they want to do.

Re:Let the users decide

[rmav]

What ? any iPhone can be Jailbroken. that's true. I don't see the link between this and the fact your wife's phone has crap hardware that's not compatible with Android 2.1 Guess what ? iPhone OS 4 won't run on 1st Gen iPhones either.. Grow a brain please and re read your comment : you're comparing Apples (upgrades) and Oranges (mods)

Before going around and telling people to grow a brain, grow yours first. I was not comparing upgrades to mods, but accessibility to the firmware to accessibility to the firmware. It is a very well known fact that you can do a lot of modifications to an iPhone software. If you are not aware of that, that's not MY problem.

My wife's Magic cannot be upgraded because of a non-rootable boot loader. Other models with otherwise identical hardware can be upgraded, so it is not "crappy" hardware the cause.

But, the discussion was not about this particular thing. I was claiming that Android gives power of control over the firmware to the cellular providers and cell phone manufacturers - and this is correct, no way how you want to spin it. I also claimed that this is worse than iPhone's lock - this is clearly my opinion and you may have a different one.

The main difference is that I behaved like a civil person, and in reply you told me to grow a brain, which is a clear sign that either your parents did not raise you properly, or that you were a hopeless case to begin with. I will not reply to your posts starting from now, so do not waste time on me.

Roberto

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Within reality? What reality would that be? I suggest you re-read my reply.

Re:Let the users decide

[drinkypoo]

Within reality? What reality would that be? I suggest you re-read my reply.

I suggest you [re-]read my sig, then the first paragraph of my comment. Then the definition of hypocrite. Then the thoughts on adobe letter.

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.

But he isn't performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying. Maybe you don't get what he's decrying, but it's certainly not propitiatory technologies.

Re:Let the users decide

[drinkypoo]

But he isn't performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying. Maybe you don't get what he's decrying, but it's certainly not propitiatory technologies.

No wonder you're confused. You can't spell proprietary. You need to do that to look it up, if copy and paste is too complicated.

When Steve Jobs says "Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true." I'm not sure how else to interpret that when he follows it closely with "Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary." So when he brags about how Open Apple is, then says:

\

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. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards. Apple's mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Then he's a hypocrite, because Apple is allowing their position as a member of MPEG-LA to pervert their position as a member of the group steering HTML5, specifically by pushing a patent-encumbered video standard.

I won't play this game with you any more; if you still don't get it, I'll assume you can't be communicated with.

Re:Let the users decide

[LaRainette]

I have prepared a very long speach. Really very long.
Then I realised everything you said from the beinning was crap so I deleted it and decided to leave you with this :
You said Android gives power to the cellular operators, that's not true.
For instance all the HTC Branded (not HTC made) smartphone come with NO custumization from the carrier whatsoever. I guess you were thinking about phones that are carrier specific (verizon ans such have many)
Now these phones are partly designed and paid for by your carrier so why on earth wouldn't they have the right to customize them ? Don't like their crappy version (I don't) just buy a regular Android phone, not one that has written all over it "I was designed and marketed by verizon" and you'll see the evil verizon customization disappear by magic.
One last thing : how is it more power to the carrier when any human being could do it ? (I'm talking about customisation)
in the Apple model, Apple does everything, AT&T sells the contract (that Apple decided for you!) and you just consume like a good cow.. sorry consumer.
In the Android model : Google makes Android, [manufacturer] can make a flavored Android, or the carrier can if it is actually the manufacturer, and then the consumer can change :
either to the stock version from google
back to HTC/Moto
or Any custom build from the community.
All I can see is how Android gave SO MUCH POWER to the user. The carrier... it doesn't change Moto and HTC or sammy phones. The carrier just like to have a Orange of vodafone branded smartphone to be sure once again that nobody wants it...

Re:Let the users decide

[rmav]

I have prepared a very long speach. Really very long. Then I realised everything you said from the beinning was crap so I deleted it and decided to leave you with this : You said Android gives power to the cellular operators, that's not true.

I decided to take the bait because you spew so much crap.

What I said was true. And, by the way I said that Android gives power to the cellular operators and to the cellular providers. Which is clear, because everybody can take the source and modify it.

For instance all the HTC Branded (not HTC made) smartphone come with NO custumization from the carrier whatsoever. I guess you were thinking about phones that are carrier specific (verizon ans such have many)

So you never heard of the Sense UI. OK, fine. This is a brand customization. Not evil per se, but it is customization. Of course this is added choice, so in fact I am not criticizing it. But it is clear that the manufacturer can change the way the OS works

And you never heard of the carrier specific ROMs that do not allow you to access the marketplace (there are some of them in Australia) or the ROMs that will only allow you to buy from a provider specific marketplace (there are some in Europe). ROM that are installed that block tethering (so you really have to modify the OS heavily to have it). Sorry, but they exist. It is not my fault that you are ignorant. And in some cases the user CANNOT reflash the phones. On several phones there is no such provision. Unless you root it, and it is not always possible because, as with jailbreak, it depends on an exploit. Vodafone in Germany has modified their Magics so that you cannot upgrade to Android 2.x. Now tell me how this is NOT giving power to the cell service provider.

Of course Android gives also more choice to the user. Who is disputing that. But not all are nerds that root their devices.

There is only one thing worse than apple fanboys, apparently: Android fanboys.

Roberto

Re:Let the users decide

[psiclops]

situation 1: apple don't want developers to have to wait for 3rd party (adobe) to decide if/when their software will be updated so that all features of iPhone can be utilized. situation 2: apple require a 3rd party (apple being a 3rd party between developer and consumer) to decide if/when they will allow developer to release their product to the user. Situation 1 - developers do not have to use adobe(3rd party)'s software, they can develop in anything they wish to utilize the full functionality of the iPhone. Situation 2 - developers have no choice, consumers have no choice (yes i'm aware that people do not have to use or develop for an iPhone, both situations all take place within the limited realms of iPhone user/developer). i don't think anyones claiming they are the same thing, however; please enlighten me on how this is not hypocritical

Re:Let the users decide

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

H.264 is open, just not free. Jobs wasn't ranting against patents, either.

Re:Let the users decide

[Anonymous Coward]

Your link does not work. Remove the "edit" part at the end or it produces an "Access denied" error. It probably works for you since you are logged-in

To me, it's a question of mobility.

[WilliamBaughman]

I think that what many people are missing is that what Apple is offering is a proprietary implementation of open standards, vs a proprietary implementation of a closed standard. If Apple finds a problem in Safari, it can fix it. If it finds a problem with Flash, it can't. An iPhone owner who doesn't like Apple's implementations of HTML5 or IMAP can get a different smart phone. If he doesn't like Adobe's implementation of Flash, he's hosed.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[aussie_a]

That's stupid. If a user doesn't like Adobe's implementation of Flash, he can choose not to Flash. At the moment the user has less choice, not more.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jedidiah]

Apple wants me to be dependent on Apple.

I would rather not be dependent on Apple. I would rather not be dependent on Adobe either. However, I would like to be able to choose for myself.

At least Microsoft allows me the freedom to be "tasteless".

This is "why I shouldn't buy an iPad". This is also why "no one else should buy an iPad".

No one should actually buy into the idea that Jobs is some sort of nice-guy-hippie. He just wants people to buy into his brand of vendorlock.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Arker]

H.264 is NOT an "open standard."

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[cbreak]

There is a big difference between a proprietary software and a proprietary format. If the format is open, you can chose which software to use to view it. Just look at Office and it's format: It is a massive factor in the dominance of the software. But Internet Explorer is a proprietary software rendering an open format, you can easily pick or even implement yourself a different reader. That's why there is a competition in the browser space, much more than in that for office software.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[mr_lizard13]

This is also why "no one else should buy an iPad".

It's why you shouldn't buy an iPad, sure, but to be fair, being dependant on Apple is one of the things that makes this device appeal to me. Simple reason being, I've seen Apple products time and time again trump their competitors in terms of usability, and that's the one thing that matters to me.

I buy it knowing full well it's locked down like fort knox, but it's their control over the thing that makes it as easy to use as possible.

It's not for everyone, I know.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dangitman]

At least Microsoft allows me the freedom to be "tasteless".

But if you choose Microsoft Windows, you are also dependent on Microsoft. How is this any different? How can Microsoft be considered open, when their products are utterly proprietary?

No one should actually buy into the idea that Jobs is some sort of nice-guy-hippie. He just wants people to buy into his brand of vendorlock.

Yet, you believe that Microsoft is somehow about freedom and not vendor lock-in. A very strange belief.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[countertrolling]

I buy it knowing full well it's locked down like fort knox, but it's their control over the thing that makes it as easy to use as possible.

That's pretty much it. They are selling an appliance with a specific function, or two.. It's like people are complaining because their refrigerator can't fly them to the moon and back

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Q-Hack!]

H.264 is NOT an "open standard."

Err...

This may just be semantics, but it is an 'open standard' what it is not is 'open source'. There is a difference.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[maxume]

No, it's like people are complaining that their refrigerator can't keep chicken cold, it only works with beef.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Draek]

Err...

This may just be semantics, but it is an 'open standard' what it is not is 'open source'. There is a difference.

Wrong and wrong. It is "open source" as there exist an open source implementation of it, what its not is an "open standard", as it requires royalties to be implemented legally (the open source implementation is illegal in any country that recognizes software patents).

Sure, the specification itself is available to be read, but that applies to *all* standards, otherwise they couldn't be called as such. What differentiates an open standard from a closed one is the aspect of the latter of having one entity controlling who gets to implement it and who doesn't, and in h.264's case that's MPEG-LA through its patent portfolio.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[masmullin]

sorry I thought you said

being dependent on heroin is one of the things that makes this drug appeal to me. Simple reason being, I've sucked dealer cock time and time again and each time heroin dealer cock trump their competitors in terms of taste, and that's the one thing that matters to me.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[xigxag]

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

If you own a Windows computer, you are free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Microsoft other than your initial purchase.
If you own an iPod/iPad/iPhone, you are required to interact with Apple to do any of those things.

You need to use their tools to write an app.
You need their permission to distribute an app.
You even need their permission to receive an app.

That's the difference.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[countertrolling]

Well, a bit more like you have to buy the shelves and vegetable drawers, the door, and water/ice dispenser from the manufacture, maybe the compressor too. And not too many people are running torrent trackers on their kitchen appliances. But like you can visit any site with an iPad, you can put any food in the fridge..

It's about what you expect for your money. Apple wants to be the Hugo Boss of computers.. more power to 'em...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dangitman]

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Are you?

If you own a Windows computer, you are free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Microsoft other than your initial purchase.

And, if you own a Mac, you are free to write, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Apple.

If you own an iPod/iPad/iPhone, you are required to interact with Apple to do any of those things.

And if you own a Zune/Kin/Windows 7 Phone you are required to interact with Microsoft to do any of those things.

So, what's the difference that makes Microsoft more free?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[hduff]

It's like people are complaining because their refrigerator can't fly them to the moon and back

Yours can't? Bummer, dude.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[hduff]

Well, a bit more like you have to buy the shelves and vegetable drawers, the door, and water/ice dispenser from the manufacture, maybe the compressor too. And not too many people are running torrent trackers on their kitchen appliances. But like you can visit any site with an iPad, you can put any food in the fridge..

It's about what you expect for your money. Apple wants to be the Hugo Boss of computers.. more power to 'em...

I can see it now --

If all refrigerators were made by OS companies . . .

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[pla]

But if you choose Microsoft Windows, you are also dependent on Microsoft. How is this any different?

Because the underlying issue has nothing to do with Windows vs Macs vs Linux, or Microsoft vs Apple vs... um... Linux, or Steve (B) vs Steve (J) vs Linus.

And Macromedia (seriously - Fuck Adobe) doesn't even enter this particular game, except as the ball tossed around by the real players.

The underlying issue involves control, nothing else. More importantly, who has it over what I can run on my hardware. Apple bluntly tells us what we can run. Microsoft "only" wants to tell us what we can't run. And Linux just hands us the keys and asks us not to wake it up if we get in after 2am.


Personally, I'll take "choice" every time. YMMV.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[mgkimsal2]

At least currently, if you own a Mac computer, you are free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Apple other than your initial purchase. If you own a Zune or WinMo phone, you're required to interact with MS to do some of those things.

You (for all practical purposes) need to use their tools to write an app.
But, AFAIK, you do not need their permission to distribute an app.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[countertrolling]

Yours can't?

Maybe before this decade is out...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[shinobiX]

actually its more like only allowing you to buy groceries from the place that sold you the refrigerator!

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Daengbo]

But like you can visit any site with an iPad, you can put any food in the fridge..

I want to play Farmville on the Facebook site. How can I do that? ;)

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[xigxag]

Your original comment specifically brought up "Microsoft Windows" as a direct comparison to the iPad (iPhone OS). My reply was, of course, to that remark, not to these new issues you are raising. However, if you want to move the goalposts to include the companies' strategies as a whole, then fine, in that case I agree with you in principle. Both companies are equally unfree. There's a crucial difference, however. In the market where it is most dominant, the desktop, Microsoft is restricted both by custom and the threat of government retribution from using the kind of strongarm tactics that Apple is getting away with in the market where it is most dominant, mobile "app" sales. Had the DMCA and similar laws existed in the 1970s, Microsoft might be likewise exploiting its dominant position with impunity.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jkabbe]

Microsoft is "tasteless" -- That's definitely a "+5 Insightful" if I ever saw one...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dangitman]

Microsoft is restricted both by custom and the threat of government retribution from using the kind of strongarm tactics that Apple is getting away with in the market where it is most dominant, mobile "app" sales.

This comparison is specious. Microsoft positioned itself as the default OS and software for a whole industry, to be implemented on third-party hardware. Microsoft abused this position by forcing those third-parties to only support their software, and no others. This was but one of their anti-trust abuses.

Apple, on the other hand, make their own hardware and software ecosystem. They don't manipulate third parties to do anything, or prevent them from making products on other platforms.

Your idea that Microsoft is "restricted" is absurd. Yes, they had some impotent lawsuits leveled against them, but they certainly weren't holding back on abusing their monopoly in the 1990s. And what about gaming systems? The Xbox is more dominant in gaming consoles than Apple is in mobile phones, yet you rarely hear anybody decrying the closed Xbox platform.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dangitman]

Apple bluntly tells us what we can run. Microsoft "only" wants to tell us what we can't run.

But that's not true for mobile platforms. Microsoft is implementing the exact same level of control with the Zune and Windows Phone 7. Compare apples to apples.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stockholm syndrome much?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[gyrogeerloose]

At least currently, if you own a Mac computer, you are free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Apple other than your initial purchase. [...]

You (for all practical purposes) need to use their tools to write an app.

As opposed to all those Windows apps that have been developed on Linux machines, of course.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[countertrolling]

Jailbreak the fridge. See if you can't turn it into a replicator while you're at it...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Rozine]

Huh? Zune - can you even write apps for that? Kin - you can't write apps for that, it's not a smartphone. Windows 7 mobile - since when do you need Microsoft's involvement to release an app for that? I haven't used windows 7, but previous stuff, like windows CE, was an open platform - not FOSS, but you could do whatever you wanted with what you had. Palm too, btw. That's why this new trend emanating from Apple is so devastatingly bad for freedom. Lay off the RDF.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's stupid is the whole debate. The debate is about video. Flash is terrible at video. H.264 destroys it at any test of quality of bandwidth, in some cases embarrassingly so. Everyone is up in arms because some developers and users like Flash, and are afraid if it isn't rolled into HTML5 (which, btw, was never really going to happen), that it was going away because it's not supported on iPhones and iPads and iPods. It's absurd. Flash isn't going anywhere, it's not going to be be killed and there will always be an Adobe plugin available for Flash users, and furthermore, what end users want from HTML5 was never a consideration to begin with. So to be clear, we don't need to use Flash where it's no longer suited nor can compete any longer, namely, as a (and especially not THE) video delivery method just so developers can have a platform snuck in there they can develop on. Fuck that.

See? It's a silly debate. Even Sullivan missed the point of what Jobs meant about open standards. And it's all pointless news fluff any. It really reminds me of an onion article spoof of the fake rivalry between the "tastes great" and "less filling" parties of a certain beer commercial... except in The Onion article, while one side screamed "tastes great," the other side was screaming "crunchy wheat!"

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[amRadioHed]

You do know that Flash video can and frequently does use H.264, right?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[QuantumG]

Except that on iPhone, iPad, etc there is no choice. Apple prohibits any product which competes with their own.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[catmistake]

Err...

This may just be semantics, but it is an 'open standard' what it is not is 'open source'. There is a difference.

Wrong and wrong. It is "open source" as there exist an open source implementation of it, what its not is an "open standard",

You are incorrect. H.264 is an open standard. The fact that H.264 is an open standard speaks zero towards, yes, the fact that it has patents. x264 is the open source implementation of H.264, yet it also has patents associated with it.

as it requires royalties to be implemented legally

you don't understand what an open standard is... it has nothing to do with whether or not there are patents

(the open source implementation is illegal in any country that recognizes software patents).

This is also false. And a little ridiculous.

Sure, the specification itself is available to be read, but that applies to *all* standards, otherwise they couldn't be called as such. What differentiates an open standard from a closed one is the aspect of the latter of having one entity controlling who gets to implement it and who doesn't, and in h.264's case that's MPEG-LA through its patent portfolio.

Patent holders just get paid. They don't set standards. The standards are set by those that use the standard (whether they have to license the right to do so or not). You don't understand what an open standard is. It has nothing to do with patents.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Since Apple's ipad, facebook offer's videos in mp4 and flash, along with those other big name sites to go html 5 (thank you youtube)

adding (the standard) HTML5 is making less choice, i see, gotcha. yeah.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Arker]

You, sir, are the one that doesnt understand what an open standard is. An open standard is one that everyone can implement.

Only people with the express permission of the patent holders can implement H.264 legally. That is the diametric opposite of open however you look at it.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[kanweg]

"Apple prohibits any product which competes with their own."

Sweeping statement and not true. Want faster downloading? Get Opera and use that instead of Safari.

Bert

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[josath]

Except that Flash is an open format...just nobody has felt it valuable to implement their own runtime (besides gnash, but they are pretty far from implementing the full spec)

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dhobbit]

No, it's like people are complaining that they're not allowed to modify their refrigerator to fly them to the moon.

I've used linux since '94, I've used bsd since 2000, and purchased a Mac because of the bsd unix underpinnings and the ease of use. I own an iPhone and iPad, I've jail broken and unjail broken the iPhone and I'll probably jail break the iPad at least once. But at this point I've seen very little user impact of the restrictions imposed by Apple. Remember people (normal people not nerds) don't care about codecs, html5, flash, or anything of this. They care about farmville, AppStore games, and having to learn as little as possible to get their work done.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dhobbit]

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

If you own a Windows computer, you are free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Microsoft other than your initial purchase.
If you own an iPod/iPad/iPhone, you are required to interact with Apple to do any of those things.

iPod/iPad/iPhone aren't computers. If I buy a Mac I am free to write, use, sell or give away applications with zero involvement from Apple.

This is the difference between a content creation device and content consumption device.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dhobbit]

Open standard doesn't mean free. H.264 is open in that the spec is open and available for anyone to implement. If you want to *use* that implementation then you have to pay the license. H.264 is standard in that a largish group of vendors and implementors got together and agreed to the same implementation details so there is compatibility between them.

I agree that open and free would be better but that's not the world we live in sorry.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that open standard doesn't have one definition, but no, it doesn't ever have to do with whether there are patents. The OSI demands they be royalty-free for unrestricted-use licenses or under a legally binding promise of non-assertion toward open source software. H.264 meets that until at least 2016.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[eluusive]

Not only that, you don't have to buy an iPhone if you don't want! HOLY SHIT!

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet almost no H.264 video players can display Flash.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[TehDuffman]

They care about farmville,

Farmville is flash....

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[cgenman]

To be fair, Apple is offering an unfinished proprietary implementation of something that is scheduled to become an open standard in 2012, vs the theory of a proprietary implementation of a closed standard that has been around for 10 years.

If Apple finds a problem in flash, they can't fix it. If Apple finds a problem in HTML 5, it's probably because the standard isn't finished and neither is their implementation, nor are websites built with it. Considering the debate around "Is it safe to ignore I.E. 6," a browser that that shipped in 2001, it will probably be years before it is safe to assume your users can access HTML 5. Heck, it's scheduled to be recommended in 2022.

HTML 5 is a bunch of handwaving. It will get there eventually, but as of now it doesn't exist.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dissy]

No, it's like people are complaining that their refrigerator can't keep chicken cold, it only works with beef.

To be fair, its more like apple haters saying these refrigerators can't keep chicken cold it only works with beef, and thus no one in the world should ever buy one and wanting one makes you stupid... even if you despise chicken and only eat beef.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[dunkelfalke]

Opera mini is not a web browser but rather a viewer for images in a special format so it does not compete with Apple software.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Yfrwlf]

...and SWFdec, and others...but the reason they are all "far from implementing the full spec" is that it's closed, and the new specifications in the next version of Flash will never be implemented by the open ones. Thus, Adobe will always "lead", because they are the masters of Flash, and "the others" will always follow, and perpetually be "not as good". The thing is, many sites will always be upgrading to the newer versions of Flash as well, so part of Adobe's tactic is that by getting most sites to upgrade, they will keep the Flash world fractured and Adobe Flash will always be the "reliable one that always works with every site" while Gnash and SWFdec will always be the unreliable, crappy version.

It's pretty similar to the .NET/Mono tactic too no doubt.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Yfrwlf]

Sorry, okay, the *specification* may not be closed, but a moving target isn't really a standard, and even if the standard itself is completely open and was only being extended and not completely altered or something to make it hard for anything else to reimplement it, you still face the problem I noted in my other post of Adobe releasing their program first and not the spec, as well as the limitation of being able to actually *create* Flash content. Someone please tell me why it's possible that Adobe had a monopoly on PDF for so long, and why they still have a monopoly on Flash? If it was actually a good standard, the net should be buzzing with PDF and Flash creating and viewing applications, but it isn't. Open PDF-creating software is just finally getting started really it seems, while Flash creating ones don't exist AFAIK unless they're from Adobe or are closed somehow. It may be because most programs for creating SVG graphics are using the .svg format instead of PDF, and for animations? Not sure. It's still a complete mystery why HTML web standards stopped at "dynamic and moving text" instead of continuing onto "dynamic and moving verticies and lines". So many years of Flash pain could have been adverted if the standard had only continued to define SVG shapes and animation...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

What?? How can you say you buy Apple products _because_ of the vendor lock-in? I could understand if you said "despite the vendor lock-in" (I do realize their products have some good points when it comes to interface simplicity and usability), but this way it seems you're just another one of those sheeples who reinforce (through money) the anti-competitive actions of corporations (such as Apple).

Me? I'll wait until the good people at Shenzhen reinvent the iPad at a third of the price, with USB ports, SD card reader and camera (probably something similar to this: http://www.clonedinchina.com/2010/05/zenithinks-10-inch-ipad-clone-packs-1ghz-arm-cortex-a8-processor.html).

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[CowboyBob500]

Wrong and wrong. It is "open source" as there exist an open source implementation of it, what its not is an "open standard", as it requires royalties to be implemented legally (the open source implementation is illegal in any country that recognizes software patents).

The USA in other words. Seriously, the rest of the world just needs to allow the US software industry to descend into one giant patent lawsuit. Why should we care that H.264 is encumbered there? It is clearly the superior codec out there, just implement it already and let the US deal with the legal fallout. Because we all know damn well that if the shoe was on the other foot, they would be going ahead and telling us to suck it up.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[CowboyBob500]

Within the USA, only people with the express permission of the patent holders can implement H.264 legally.

FTFY

So you can't implement it in the US without paying a fee? My heart bleeds. For me, it's an open standard and free to use. Companies should just implement H.264 for HTML5 - as its clearly the best tool for the job - and keep a separate branch for US downloads that continue to use Flash as they do now. At least that way it's only the US that gets left behind. It's not impossible, they did it when the US had export restrictions on RSA key length.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is nothing stopping Apple (other than Steve Jobs) from writing their own "not buggy and not resource hungry" Flash player.
Yes, Adobe controls the Flash format, but it is documented and anyone is free to write their own player.

That's where Steve Jobs' letter is flawed.

On Linux I can CHOOSE to use Flash from Adobe, or an open source alternative.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Amarantine]

Windows 7 mobile - since when do you need Microsoft's involvement to release an app for that? I haven't used windows 7, but previous stuff, like windows CE, was an open platform - not FOSS, but you could do whatever you wanted with what you had.

Since, well, Windows 7 mobile. Quoting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile_7 : "Windows Phone 7 will only run applications that have first been approved by Microsoft and will only be available via the Windows Phone Marketplace."

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[captjc]

You can't. You also can't play Super Mario World on a PS2 or Halo 3 on a Wii.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone enjoys the freedom of simply "getting a different smart phone" just because you find yourself screwed by Apple after you purchased one of their products, as they are terribly expensive products. Back here where I live an iPhone costs around the national average for a month's pay. Moreover, they are sold under fidelity agreements, which means you are forced to maintain your iPhone for around 2 years unless you also want to pay off your agreement. That means that unless you are rich with a lot of disposable income you don't enjoy the benefits of ditching your iPhone in order to get the sort of choice you mentioned.

And moreover, why should a company impose you what software you should or shouldn't use?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Lars T.]

No, it's like people are complaining that their refrigerator can't keep chicken cold, it only works with beef.

No, they are complaining because it can keep chicken cold, but not half a cattle.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[GreatBunzinni]

That doesn't make any sense. You are trying to describe a false dilemma. No one in their right mind would ever claim that the choice is between usability and being held hostage by Apple. Nothing forces Apple to lock down their platforms besides their intentional drive to lock you on a platform so that it makes it impossible for you to either exert your rights to control any product you purchased with your hard-earned money and even migrate to some other platform you see fit. There is no technical limitation that makes it only possible to have an UI with shiny buttons with nifty graphical effects if a corporation controls what software you may or may not install. So, what twisted train of thought forced you to claim such nonsense?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[maxume]

Yeah, well, good thing I never said no one should want to buy Apple products, all I ever do is (mildly) argue that people shouldn't put up with their control-freak approach.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Lars T.]

Your original comment specifically brought up "Microsoft Windows" as a direct comparison to the iPad (iPhone OS).

No, his original comment was to a comparison of Apple and Microsoft "Apple wants me to be dependent on Apple. [...] At least Microsoft allows me the freedom to be "tasteless"."

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Lars T.]

The underlying issue involves control, nothing else. More importantly, who has it over what I can run on my hardware. Apple bluntly tells us what we can run. Microsoft "only" wants to tell us what we can't run. And Linux just hands us the keys and asks us not to wake it up if we get in after 2am. Personally, I'll take "choice" every time. YMMV.

So you want to have the choice to let Adobe tell you which features of Apple's OS your apps can use. Maybe you should use a more open system then.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, this is such a feeble attempt to defend Apple I almost feel physically sick reading it...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[pla]

So you want to have the choice to let Adobe tell you which features of Apple's OS your apps can use.

That has so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to begin.

Okay, how about here - Can you explain how having the choice to use interpreted-language-X restricts me more than not having it available as a choice?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[MacDork]

If you own an iPod/iPad/iPhone, you are required to interact with Apple to do any of those things.

And if you own a Zune/Kin/Windows 7 Phone you are required to interact with Microsoft to do any of those things.

If I own an Android, I'm free to develop anything without getting permission from anyone.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[LaRainette]

That's not true. Gnash for flash Foxitreader and countless OSS pdf readers. Open office will let you create PDFs. Pdf is a fucking ISO standard ! How are Apple's product any less proprietary than Adobe ? You think adobe's product don't use OSS in their core ? lol...

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[kirbysuperstar]

Actually, you can play Super Mario World on the PS2. It's not legitimate in the least, but it's there and it's possible.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[drinkypoo]

It's why you shouldn't buy an iPad, sure, but to be fair, being dependant on Apple is one of the things that makes this device appeal to me. Simple reason being, I've seen Apple products time and time again trump their competitors in terms of usability, and that's the one thing that matters to me.

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[drinkypoo]

Apple, on the other hand, make their own hardware and software ecosystem. They don't manipulate third parties to do anything, or prevent them from making products on other platforms.

Users and developers make a hardware ecosystem. Manufacturers only make hardware and software available to them. Restricting users and developers makes for a less versatile platform. Jobs is trying to crush Apple under the weight of its own Hubris and he doesn't even know it yet. Americans don't want to be told what content they can consume, even if they claim they do. I don't think too many others do, either. I mention Americans mostly because so many other people out there seem to have protection from software patents; but if Apple and Microsoft should succeed in their support of H.264 (aka their attack on Theora) then it will affect everyone, software patents or not.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[catmistake]

That's the thing... we don't need to worry about flash. Adobe will make sure a plugin will always be available for new browser users. Just because flash isn't rolled into html5 doesn't mean it's going away. Hopefully, it will just go away from video delivery.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[mini me]

Write a Flash interpreter capable of hosting Farmville, snag a provisioning profile from a another developer (if you want to save $100) and install it. Virtually the same process required to play the game in an open environment at present time. The SDK rules only apply if you want to use the App Store.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Daengbo]

You know what? I don't have a problem with appliancing (yeah, I verbed). I think it's good for Linux distros in the long run.

He said that I could visit any site on the net. I mentioned what is probably the most popular page on the most popular site, which you can go to but which you won't be able to use. If you think playing Farmville is something that the average user of an iPad won't expect to be able to do, you're wrong. It's exactly the kind of casual web experience they prefer. A touchscreen tablet is also the perfect form factor.

Unlike the app store (which is iPad only), there is no iPad-certified web so don't compare web browsing to consoles. The user has no way to know whether a site will work or not. Disappointment will abound.

No skin off my back. I was just pointing out that Mr. countertrolling was wrong. There are plenty of sites that you can't visit (usefully, anyway).

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Daengbo]

No, I don't actually want to play. I just mentioned what I guess is the most popular page on the most popular site on the web in order to point out that there is a lot of the web that's useless to iPad owners. Yes, you can figure out how to do write and install something, but the people who play Farmville almost certainly can't.

I'm not proposing that Flash be included. iPad proponents can't say "you can visit any site" truthfully, though. Some of the most popular parts of the web are excluded.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Proprietary software for a proprietary format can't be compared to either proprietary OR open software for an open format. If you want to render the proprietary format, you must use the software that is capable of it. Saying that that not having the proprietary renderer available is somehow providing more choice (as OP did) is either misguided or disingenuous.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[mr_lizard13]

Sorry dear, but you're over-analysing what I've said.

My claim is fairly straightforward: I've tried products (phones, laptops etc) from various manufacturers. I prefer the Apple ones.

In my opinion (which you refer to as nonsense, thanks for that) the Apple products are better because Apple designed both the software and the hardware. They control pretty much the whole show.

It's vendor lock-down of the highest order, sure, and for that reason alone for many it's something not to purchase.

And it's not just the 'shiny buttons' and 'nifty graphical effects' I like, it's the sum total of all the effort they shove into their product that makes it preferable to me. That tends to be how I decide to purchase something. I'll have a play around with it first, if I like it, I'l buy it.

Other manufacturers are free to create the same experience if they want, there's no technical limitation. But I've yet to try a product from another manufacturer that offers the same experience, so there must be some other barrier in the way. Perhaps it's because they don't build both the software and the hardware...?

But thankfully we have an open marketplace, where you can buy the products from the other vendors if you prefer.

PS I'll avoid the opportunity to call out your claim that I can't migrate to some other platform as I see fit as 'complete nonsense' ;-)

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[drinkypoo]

And yet almost no H.264 video players can display Flash.

I know I shouldn't feed the idiots, but the majority of H.264 players in this world are desktop PCs including Macs, and they most certainly do display Flash. Blu-Ray adoption is well behind Windows XP and later, which AFAIK is the first version of Windows that "comes with" H.264 support (it shows up as an OS upgrade.)

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[drinkypoo]

Apple bluntly tells us what we can run. Microsoft "only" wants to tell us what we can't run. And Linux just hands us the keys and asks us not to wake it up if we get in after 2am.

Apple and Microsoft both tell us that HTML video shall not be legally viewable or creatable on Free Software platforms except in countries with no software patents.

From where I'm sitting, they have precisely the same stance on the most important issue of our day: Software Patents. And that stance is that they will use and abuse them no matter how unjust as long as they are the law. The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is situational; they have the same ethics, but different opportunities.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[bigngamer92]

This is much more accurate than the Poster below. Apple sold you the Fridge, now it only wants you to put its food in there.

Yeah Fridge Analogies!

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

minus one, wrong.

You still got modded up though. Bizarre.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Lars T.]

So you want to have the choice to let Adobe tell you which features of Apple's OS your apps can use. That has so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to begin. Okay, how about here - Can you explain how having the choice to use interpreted-language-X restricts me more than not having it available as a choice?

Who said that. So go limit yourself. Please. You have the choice so take it. Go put yourself into a ghetto of dependence on a company - as long as it isn't Apple, you are FREE!

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Not only that, you don't have to buy an iPhone if you don't want! HOLY SHIT!

Slashdot believes that alternatives are very important. So long as those choices don't come from Apple or Microsoft.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

Not quite - it supports "open" food - so you can put a standard chicken in there, or a standard jug of milk.

Microsoft's fridge requires you to buy special milk bottles that have a unique shape.

The Linux fridge sells you a cow and you have to milk it yourself, but you are free to do so at any time.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[JAlexoi]

Thankfully we didn't get to a point where Apple has a dominant, near monopolistic, position in the smartphone market. Otherwise would have been fucked.
We already know how fun is having a near monopoly on Office productivity suites, don't we? Try telling a person in the developing world or poorer countries that he/she needs to dish out a year's salary* to send documents to their state officials or read documents...

* - No jokes here, USD$200 is a years salary for a LOT of people in this world.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

So is Bejeweled 2, but it still runs on the iPhone.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[maccodemonkey]

They care about farmville,

Farmville is flash....

Not for long...

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/21/its-coming-farmville-heading-to-iphone-and-ipad/

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

No, you are the one who does not understand what an open standard is.

If I were you I would look up what the definition is.

GSM is an open standard too, but you need to pay Nokia for licensing - it doesn't change the fact that it is an open standard.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Kielistic]

Correction: the Microsoft fridge supports "open" food, "closed" food or really anything you want to do with it. Remember, they're not the ones dictating what is allowed on their platform.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

Yes, and the Apple fridge supports the same, except their formats are all pretty open (unlike .doc, .xls etc).

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[SETIGuy]

It supports "open" food. You just need to pay the place that sold you the refrigerator a dollar an item to unlock the refrigerator door for you so you can "open" it.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Bent Mind]

I actually didn't realize that Flash was an open standard. My assumption, based on the limited number of applications implementing it and its popularity, was that it was closed. I just figured that the very few non-Adobe applications that use it had reverse-engineered it. Learn something new everyday.

Open PDF-creating software is just finally getting started really it seems

Not sure what you mean here. I've been using Ghostscript for 14 years now. It has never had a problem generating PDF for me. You did say open, so I should note that the GPL version came out 7 years ago.

It may be because most programs for creating SVG graphics are using the .svg format instead of PDF

Hmm, I never thought about using SVG to replace PDF. I suppose you could. I'm not sure how well SVG implements paper-space.

They have different purposes. SVG was designed to produce vector graphics for the WWW. PDF was designed to produce a digital print job. PDF does make use of vector graphics. However, it was meant as an end-deliverable. That is why the ability to edit PDF is so limited.

It's still a complete mystery why HTML web standards stopped at "dynamic and moving text" instead of continuing onto "dynamic and moving verticies and lines"

That isn't much of a mystery. HTML stands for Hyper-TEXT markup language. The World Wide Web Consortium did create a web-standard to handle "dynamic and moving verticies and lines". They called it Scalable Vector Graphics

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Wovel]

You can not implement your own flash viewer without violating the Adobe TOS. Gnash dances around it, read their FAQ. If Apple were to make their own flash player for iPhone and not pay royalties to Adobe they would be in court before Steve could open the first flash app in the Keynote.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[sixsixtysix]

in an ideal world, if you own the cartrdge, you should be able to play it on whatever you want.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Wovel]

Really.. Microsoft makes a phone with a working flash player? That would be news to both Microsoft and Adobe.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Wovel]

Jus t because you do not understand the concept the GP is describing, does not mean he is presenting a false dilemma. Spend less time on Wikipedia and more time studying what real usability is and come back and see us.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Wovel]

How would that be different than jailbreaking a phone....I can run android on an iPhone too.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

You have to pay Apple a dollar a time to access the internet?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[sixsixtysix]

their standard chickens, all of which come from the same farm (owned by fridge-maker), only come deep fried, because the fridge-maker thinks its the best eating experience. even though many types of chicken and other poultry could be kept cold. they are too scared of putting a magneted note on it that says "we suggest you only keep fried chicken in here, but if you want some patties or nuggets, that's okay, but you have to blame whoever cooked them if they rot in here or don't taste good."

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[kirbysuperstar]

I didn't say it was different. I'm just making a wee correction.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[jo_ham]

So, the farm is there and is easy to buy from, but there's a whole other market out there of rolling fields. The gates to these fields have standard latches that require standard protocols to open. The fridge can do this and get chicken from other sources.

Although, Adobe farms has some sort of impassible chasm, and the fridge does not have the necessary instructions to operate the drawbridge. I think Adobe chickens might make the fridge bloated and slow, however.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Kagetsuki]

H.264 licenses are currently free, but the free licenses are all set to expire at some point and renewal/new acquisition may cost money. I have a feeling they'll start charging for hardware and embedded implementations but leave pure software implementations free, but that's not the point. The point is it is not an open standard, and it is also not necessarily a free standard.

Oh, and I can't listen to your album on Spotify because, as their website states: "Not available in your country" and "Not available for your OS". Ah well, it's not like you care about choosing things that aren't artificially locked down in order to try and profit off of some obscure fragments of IP. Well, as long as it's the "best tool for the job" for you then you go ahead and keep on using it.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember people (normal people not nerds) don't care about codecs, html5, flash, or anything of this. They care about farmville, AppStore games, and having to learn as little as possible to get their work done.

Normal people don't care about politics, either, about business regulations, environmental standards, diplomacy, and so on.

What you're advocating is, in essence, the business version of having an absolute monarch (and a ruling upper class) which the peasants don't and shouldn't concern themselves with. If you've got to work on your farm, you'll care about your cow getting sick, not about going to war with Prussia.

But that didn't really work out so well in practice, did it? We fought for freedom and democracy (the right to participate in the political process!), and for good reasons.

Doesn't the same thing apply here? Freedom is important, and the fact that the people won't care about it until it's too late doesn't mean a thing.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but will apple refund that persons hard earned money? My guess is no...

Any one interested in a slightly used ipad?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Gilmoure]

Damn it! I thought I was just thick trying to get Halo on my Will. I even drew the XBox logo on it and everything.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Gilmoure]

Yeah, Jobs is so stupid for Apple. Good thing they don't pay him much.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Gilmoure]

Adobe will make sure a plugin will always be available for new browser users.

Like now, where it's available on all the various mobile platforms?

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[catmistake]

clever, but Adobe has had the same opportunity in this space as elsewhere. A platform is a platform. The trouble is, Adobe has fallen prey to the design philosophies of all giant software companies: don't redesign, just add more features and bloat.. Usually, this works, like with Microsoft and Office, computers get faster and can handle all the extra junk you don't use. But with Mobiles, the platform got slower (relatively speaking), and Adobe just tried to shoehorn Flash on there (Flash did run on desktops in 2003, which is about the power of the best mobiles today). Trouble is, we're all fucking sick of it. By 2006,7 desktops finally got fast enough that Flash could be used with minimal annoyance. No one wants to go back to 2003 in terms of Flash performance. We'd rather go without, and ignore "70%" of the Internet (when mobile).

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[Gilmoure]

Heh. I've put Flash block on all my Mac browsers and truthfully, that 70% is well worth missing.

Re:To me, it's a question of mobility.

[josath]

I didn't see any "Terms Of Service" at all? I just googled "adobe swf format", got this page: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ Which let me download a PDF without agreeing to any license. There are no mentions of "Terms Of Service" in the Gnash FAQ, though they do reference the EULA which is included with Adobe tools, however as I linked above, you can download the SWF format specification without agreeing to anything and without installing any Adobe tools.

Meh

[WrongSizeGlass]

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 Mr. Sullivan needs this explained to him then maybe he should hold his comments until he understands it. Does he actually expect *every* article, blog post or story to rehash this basic concept?

Re:Meh

[robla]

If Mr. Sullivan needs [the fact that Jobs doesn't talk about the general problem with proprietary technology] explained to him then maybe he should hold his comments until he understands it. Does he actually expect *every* article, blog post or story to rehash this basic concept?

I think it's reasonable to expect an editorial that complains that Flash is "not open" as its first big bold bullet point would somehow address the reason why Jobs thinks we should care. I know why I care, but it's not at all clear why Jobs thinks I should care.

Re:Meh

[MrHanky]

If you had read the next paragraph as well, you would probably have held your idiotic comment as well:

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

Jobs doesn't say why open standards are good, because then it would be obvious that that the "freedom" Jobs offers just isn't.

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

He doesnt care that you should care, or not.

Flash apps circumvent the app store, you can make a website app through flash for free (such as a game) and Jobs doesn't get to enforce his Apple Tax.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash in Safari is buggy. Adobe has had 3 years to show that they can make a workable version (full flash - not flash lite) on a smart phone. Instead they have slipped. Apple doesn't care what you do in safari - you can make a game there and put it on the web without anyone caring. The issue however, is that when Safari crashes, Apple is taking ownership of that perceived failure. One way to reduce this is to not have flash on there.

Flash in the app store is an issue of "who releases updates." Lets have firmware for the iDevice 4.0 come out and pretend that Adobe hasn't given up on flash to the iphone development. How long would it take for Adobe to release an update that supports the new features of the firmware? This is the issue that Apple has with there. They don't want to release the firmware and have to wait until another company comes out with an update before the customers can finally get the features - features that apple perceives as setting them above the other smart phones.

Re:Meh

[rolfwind]

Jobs doesn't say why open standards are good, because then it would be obvious that that the "freedom" Jobs offers just isn't.

Except Jobs isn't offering "freedom". He never really argued that in the essay.

Job's argument was that with open web standards, if he/Apple/or_it's_customers are unhappy with the browsing experience, Apple can throw money at it and make a better browser. But if they hate flash on the iPhone, there is NOTHING apple can do to improve it. In essence, Apple has been selling a seamless user experience. It has never been selling freedom and often times you trade in some freedom for convenience. That is Apple's market and his argument.

I own one of the last generation of PPC notebooks Apple made. It's true, it has a slow 1.67GHz G4 processor. But at it's speed it should offer somewhat decent flash, but nearly all video's are choppy for it. I never got a satisfactory answer. Apple points to Adobe saying they code a crappy implementation. Adobe points to Apple talking about not having accent to libraries they need. All I know is flash is ultra slow.

Frankly, while I think Apple is crummy on things sometimes, I know the Internet is also one giant waambulance too. If Apple wanted a super closed off garden, it's not going to get that with HTML5 anyway. I also think flash sucks, so I'd rather have it die as well.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many applications built on MSFT technology that locks you in to the platform and there is nothing you can do about it. For instance, FMLS real estate applications requires that you use Internet Explorer. I have tried Safari, Firefox, Chrome on Mac and Linux, and the web app renders it all wrong on those platforms. When I complained to them, the response was yes we require IE, and we are working on supporting other browsers. A few years later, they are beta testing out the new system and guess what? They re-wrote it in yet another closed proprietary system, Flash. Now they are already pointing the finger at the iPad, saying its not supported because of lack of Flash support. Shouldn't a CTO be smart enough to select a technology that would play nice for the future. I mean, they should have known that choosing Flash is choosing yet another lock in technology and stick with the basics of web app development, or plan on building on top of HTML5.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I think MrHanky's attitude towards people who disagree with him appropriately matches his namesake. It's the MrHankyesque 'all patents are bad' fervor that makes those of us who support free & open source software look bad. Patents are a fact of life, like it or not. Obviously you don't. Your childish and aggressive name calling only undermines your message and makes you look like a dick instead of just your namesake.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs doesn't say why open standards are good, because then it would be obvious that that the "freedom" Jobs offers just isn't.

I think I speak for everyone at Slashdot when I say open standards *are* good, for reasons that don't need to be explained.

Apple is not being hypocritical here, Apple's platforms do support all of the open standards of the web. Apple doesn't even offer a proprietary standard for the web, other than quicktime, which they are openly and aggressively working to replace with plugin-less HTML5 video.

If your concern is that they are pushing H.264, then you'd better not run into Adobe's arms, because flash supports it too. I would argue that the video codec discussion is only tangentially related (especially since adobe and apple support the same codec here), and that what's being proposed for HTML5 is the big step forward that we need right now (plus we're limited by mobile, power-efficient hardware decoding -- it sounds to me like we'll have two standards, Google's VP8 for patent freedom, and MPEG LA's H.264 for low power, mobile functionality -- a big improvement overall for the web).

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Epic fail!

THE ENTIRE WEB circumvents the app store, you can make a website app through STANDARDS SUCH AS HTML5/CSS3/JAVASCRIPT for free (such as a game) and Jobs doesn't give a shit about it, go ahead, knock yourself off, get rich, have a nice day.

Do users of AdSense or AdWords pay a "Google Tax"? No because a)they don't pay Google for services unrelated to AdSense/AdWords, and b)they can go with any other network they choose.

Did Windows users pay a Microsoft tax? Yes, because you were charged a Windows license even if you bought your computer with another OS / no OS at all, and you did not have an option (all desktop sellers were under similar licensing obligations with Microsoft).

So you not only don't understand the role of Flash in the web development stack in general or in Apple iDevices in particular, you can't even use the expression "XXX Tax" with full understanding of its meaning.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

> Jobs doesn't say why open standards are good, because then it would be obvious that that the "freedom" Jobs offers just isn't.

Another misled soul *sigh*

Jobs doesn't sell "freedom" of any type. Say it again: Jobs-does-not-sell-freedom. He simply doesn't deal freedom, that's the FSF's trade. Go read his thoughts on flash, the only time he says "free" is in the "beer" sense. "Freedom" is part of the agenda of the FSF, and has been injected by them in the conversation arbitrarily to claim relevance, NOT because "freedom" has actually anything to do with Apple's (or Adobe's) positions.

Jobs offers interoperability. You write your stuff using standards (HTML5, Javascript and so on) and it will "Just work!". He doesn't care if users "freely wander and creatively explore the Web" or if they just go to the same F*books/Twitters/YouTubes as everybody else. That's again FSF rhetoric, "think of the uuuuuuusers!" Nah, Apple offers a standards-compliant platform, and thats ALL it does: they're not freedom fighters or creativity enhancers, no need to either idolize them or demonize them.

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

Wow, ummm your pretty passionate about this.

The developments for HTML5 are still relatively new and I'm going to take a reserved stance on this before claiming its the long awaited solution that we've been looking for.

Unless you have an article or piece of information that I've missed to the contrary? If not I'll stick to my original assumption.

The whole Quake 2 thing i believe was a great proof of concept, but really that's were its all at, proof of concept at this stage not production worthy nor easy and accessible. I'm not sure on one thing though and this is possibly something you'd know but how robust the Application Cache with the iPhone? from what i can gather its still pretty basic. If users are stuck pulling massive amounts of data to get their apps to work (depending upon complexity of course) there is another delimiting factor.

Companies have a right to sell goods and services as they wish, Adwords, Windows, etc is all fine by me. Even Apple has the right to sell "their own services" but the truth is flash does help circumvent the app store and make it easier developers to churn out free apps that can't be controlled.

HTML5 even though is as great concept and I can defiantly see becoming the new buzz word that all next generation smartphones will slap at the top of their specifications lists as an important selling point. I still think its too new.

It could very well be the "app store killer" and solve the issues that android is facing with Vodafone. I'm sure you'd agree the uneven standards that all smartphones are plagued with is a huge growth stunt in that particular part of the industry because nothing is really that portable.

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

But this is what i don't get, a light flash should be okay for now and I think would make everyone think Jobs isn't so full of it. Lets say the flash banners on Slashdot, those shouldn't kill an iPhone and with the way flash now allows you to explore its internals you'd think they could set it up to simply pull meta-data too see if the flash object is worthy or not if so run it with the bare minimum API usage.

But i do like your concept about them having more features than competing SmartPhones, like the ABS breaks and ESP features in cars, they only do it if they must to keep current against their competitors.

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

Also ... Not sure if you've seen this ...

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/flash-nexus-one-demo/

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

Here something i found also ...

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042210-analyst-html5-far-from-killing.html

Let the blasting begin Mr AC :)

Re:Meh

[DeadboltX]

Ladies and Gentlemen! Friends and Colleagues! Acquaintances and Strangers alike! You’ve all been duped! Hoodwinked! Bamboozled! What this here computery programy thingy you’ve all been using is closed! Closed! Now let me ask you this! If there’s a door, and you’d like to go through it, is it better if it is open or if it is closed? Why open of course! And how about this fine young lass right next to you sir, imagine it’s Friday night and she’s at your place and you’re ready to go, would you rather her legs be closed or open? You’d be a damn fool to say anything but open! And we all know of those unfortunate situations where a fool mother leaves her infant locked in the car on a hot summer day, and that poor little boy or girl ends up dying from the heat. Now tell me folks, couldn’t this all have been avoided if the window was open, instead of closed? So tell me, why on earth would you want software on your phone that’s closed? Well I’m here to tell you that you need to fear not when it comes to the iPhone because we support technologies that are open! So come on down, and buy what I’m sellin'!

Re:Meh

[dhobbit]

I can make a game for the AppStore for free and it actually costs Job's money since Apple pays for hosting and bandwidth.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Although there are plenty of free aps on the app store and apple refused to let flash on the iPhone before the app store existed. If adobe had made a decent version of flash for the iPhone this wouldn't be an issue. Seeing as it's taken them 3years to fail to bring it to mobile devices and 10 years to update Photoshop to native code I wouldn't want to rely on them either.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/flash-nexus-one-demo/

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

pure comedy gold!

Re:Meh

[Waccoon]

But if they hate flash on the iPhone, there is NOTHING apple can do to improve it.

Make their own? Just because it's difficult and would take a long time doesn't mean it's impossible, and if it's open, it should catch on quickly.

Ah, but then there would be that nice no-compete clause... and the appearance of just playing "catch-up"...

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google's VP8 for patent freedom"

That sure would be great wouldn't it? But Google proposed VP3 for the internet video standard. That suggests to me that they don't intend to make VP8 open and free after all.

Re:Meh

[Lars T.]

Here something i found also ...

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042210-analyst-html5-far-from-killing.html

Let the blasting begin Mr AC :)

Let me say this for Mr. AC: as long as even the Openness Weenies will support a closed system over an open one, of course Flash will win over HTML5.

Re:Meh

[sourcerror]

That way you only made the ipad more attractive: see, there are a lot of free apps! So they'll get the money of hosting back several times through hardware sales.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what's ironic?

If the FSF was able to produce something like this,they wouldn't look half as bad as they do now.

In fact this could be pretty effective on the intended audience.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

The same could be said of any 3rd party software; it is potentially a slippery slope. Today it's Adobe Flash; what will it be tomorrow? Perhaps in the future 3rd parties will be required to include their source code with their App Store submissions (assuming Apple still allows 3rd parties to write software).

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah....but your argument breaks down because you can implement the same sort of functionality with HTML5 and javascript.

Re:Meh

[drinkypoo]

Job's argument was that with open web standards, if he/Apple/or_it's_customers are unhappy with the browsing experience, Apple can throw money at it and make a better browser.

It's clear that a browser is not something you can throw money at to improve it. Microsoft tried with Mosaic, and look where that got them. Apple didn't throw money at the problem of creating an HTML renderer, they forked KHTML and then Steve Jobs takes credit for creating webkit in his letter on adobe.

In essence, Apple has been selling a seamless user experience. It has never been selling freedom and often times you trade in some freedom for convenience. That is Apple's market and his argument.

What would Ben Franklin say? Those who buy Apple deserve to suffer?

I own one of the last generation of PPC notebooks Apple made. It's true, it has a slow 1.67GHz G4 processor. But at it's speed it should offer somewhat decent flash, but nearly all video's are choppy for it. I never got a satisfactory answer. Apple points to Adobe saying they code a crappy implementation. Adobe points to Apple talking about not having accent to libraries they need. All I know is flash is ultra slow.

All I know is that you can at least view flash on it.

Frankly, while I think Apple is crummy on things sometimes, I know the Internet is also one giant waambulance too. If Apple wanted a super closed off garden, it's not going to get that with HTML5 anyway. I also think flash sucks, so I'd rather have it die as well.

But, it won't. At least, HTML5 isn't going to kill it. Or at least, not any time soon. Even if you could do everything in HTML5 that you can do in Flash (which is probably not true, or at least, there will be cases where Flash offers superior performance) Flash has superior authoring tools to anything we'll see for HTML5 in a while.

Re:Meh

[repressitol]

He doesnt care that you should care, or not.

Flash apps circumvent the app store, you can make a website app through flash for free (such as a game) and Jobs doesn't get to enforce his Apple Tax.

HTML5 doesn't? http://www.osnews.com/story/23097/Quake_II_Ported_to_HTML5

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

I've commented on this in a prior thread just above this one.

HTML5 is still quite new and the Quake port is a brilliant POC. Maybe one day we'll see HTML5 as an important selling point for SmartPhones but alas today, i refer you to this news article.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042210-analyst-html5-far-from-killing.html

Re:Meh

[UnknowingFool]

My understanding about the Adobe/Apple dispute is that Adobe has dragged its feet on using Apple's Cocoa framework and this has caused many of the problems. Way back when the three Apple frameworks were announced (Classic, Carbon, Cocoa) I think it was Steve Jobs said that Classic would run legacy OS 9 apps, Carbon would work in the immediate future to program for OS X but Cocoa was the distant future. Cocoa was much more advanced than Carbon. Over the years Apple developed both Carbon and Cocoa but put more advancements in Cocoa. Originally Adobe used Carbon to transition its products like Photoshop and Flash. But they were reluctant to move to Cocoa as this would require parts of their code to be rewritten. In their roadmap for 64 bit, Apple originally proposed a 64 bit Carbon, but later dropped this when they announced Leopard.

In OS X, Quartz handles image and video rendering; however the advanced stuff exists only in Cocoa like the H.264 rendering. My understanding is that for Flash, Adobe kept it under the Carbon framework. Since it was missing some things that they needed like H.264, they wrote their implementation instead of using Apple's. This explains why Flash on Macs is extremely buggy and CPU intensive. It renders everything in software rather than allowing the OS to use any available hardware. Recently some true hardware (GPU) acceleration has been released, but this didn't solve original issue that total software rendering is inefficient. Using the OS APIs is more efficient as it is more optimized to use any hardware. I guess Adobe wanted Apple to develop the APIs in Carbon but Apple wanted Adobe to use Cocoa rather than develop APIs that they already existed in another framework.

Re:Meh

[repressitol]

"HTML5, the budding specification for multimedia in Web applications, will not displace proprietary rich Internet technologies, such as Adobe Flash/Flex or Microsoft Silverlight, anytime soon, an analyst report released this week said'. OK, understood, it's new and therefore it sucks, and the existing "proprietary systems" are better. You support proprietary systems then? Wait, isn't that why we hate Apple? Dammit is this /. or not. I'm confused :(

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Its brakes when talking about a car.

Fuck the spelling gets worse here every day!

Re:Meh

[oztiks]

No its new therefore its not matured yet for industry acceptance.

Flash has been always the tool for this type of job, it has been that way for quite a long time, you have to simply be patient before we start seeing it fill in the gaps.

HTML5 is the future, but so are flying cars and jet-packs. HTML5 is a more realistic future though and has better POC's

Re:Meh

[Wovel]

Whatever Benjamin Franklin would say would be written on his iPad

Re:Meh

[Wovel]

There is no reason to create their own since there is already HTML5...

Re:Meh

[Wovel]

And of course Apple has contributed more to OSS through WebKit (One small part of their contribution) than Adobe has in total.

Wasted argument

[OS24Ever]

Yet if the FSF can't put out something mainstream people want to use, this entire argument is worthless. Besides, it's just a cycle. Open - > closed -> open -> closed. Just think pre-web ineternet, compuserve, WWW, and now App Store or Facebook.

People don't see 'free' as good because if it's a bitch to use they're going to ignore it. It's gotten significantly better in the last decade but in general term it's still a PITA to use.

Re:Wasted argument

[techno-vampire]

n general term it's still a PITA to use.

I know quite a few Aunt Millies using Ubuntu who'd disagree with you.

Re:Wasted argument

[Anonymous Coward]

ubuntu is the closest thing (rich dictator at top making decisions) to OS X that linux has. But he's not talking about ubuntu, he's talking about the FSF. How many Aunt Millies use HURD?

Re:Wasted argument

[LoneHighway]

n general term it's still a PITA to use.

I know quite a few Aunt Millies using Ubuntu who'd disagree with you.

I bet those Aunt Millies didn't install it themselves.

Re:Wasted argument

[pixelite]

How many Aunt Millies install Windows?
How many Users install Windows?

Re:Wasted argument

[MichaelSmith]

ubuntu is the closest thing (rich dictator at top making decisions) to OS X that linux has. But he's not talking about ubuntu, he's talking about the FSF. How many Aunt Millies use HURD?

Ubuntu is loaded with software owned by the FSF. The entire GNU userland for example.

Re:Wasted argument

[MichaelSmith]

n general term it's still a PITA to use.

I know quite a few Aunt Millies using Ubuntu who'd disagree with you.

I bet those Aunt Millies didn't install it themselves.

Maybe they did, but if not so what?

Re:Wasted argument

[hitmark]

mainstream may well be a flawed target. It has a habit of being hijacked by marketing and other money fueled manipulations that cant be matched by communities.

Re:Wasted argument

[techno-vampire]

For all practical purposes, my older sister is an Aunt Millie. She fell in love with Ubuntu after five minutes with a LiveCD. I watched her install it, because she wanted me to make sure she wasn't nuking her existing Windows installation. As it turned out, she got everything right on her own, although she asked me once or twice if she was making the right choices.

Re:Wasted argument

[hairyfeet]

I know quite a few of them that have automatic updates on, including all my customers. It all "just works". Do you think Aunt Millie could let Ubuntu update without hardware getting broken all over the place? I asked why Ubuntu can't do this basic thing, just update without breaking itself, and I think this comment summed up why Ubuntu is fucked up better than I ever could.

As for Jobs, who doesn't know he is "Mr. Vendor Lockin" by now? Jobs HATES choice, always has, because for him it is all about aesthetics and making everything stylish. Choices just don't fit that mantra, so he don't roll that way. Personally I think it is gonna bite him in the ass with Flash, because while Apple geeks may drool over anything he puts out folks from one side to the other are addicted to those Facebook games like Farmville. I swear Farmville is like catnip to females, and I have sold more new PC and hardware upgrades simple based on "will this make (Farmville, Mafia Wars, that treasure island game) work better? Sold!" so while he may sell to tech geeks in SF/NYC, I don't see them giving them away in fly over states.

So anyone who think Jobs is still a "rebel" or any of that other crap is deluded. He is a master marketer that is solely interested in devices fitting a style and aesthetic. If that style and aesthetic pleases you, you don't mind the limitations or paying nearly 100% markup? cool free market and all. But let us not pretend old Steve really gives a rat's ass about standards or any of that crap. he wants all his "i" devices to fit his vision of what a device should be and do, and Flash is too cludgy to fit his nice sterile designs, at least in his mind, and since he is the boss out it goes. Period.

Now it is anyone's guess whether when the old guy dies if they manage to bring in some "little Steve wannabe" that follows the old man's style to the letter, or another Pepsi guy, we'll just have to wait and see.

Re:Wasted argument

[Gilmoure]

Yeah, why should he be allowed to sell his vision to people who like it?

Damn him. Damn him to hell!

Why not ....

[crumbz]

... Let the market decide? If people value walled gardens over open source or vice versatile, then let users vote with their dollars ornEuros or whatever?

Re:Why not ....

[jedidiah]

The problem with letting the market decide on fascism is that you no longer get to choose anything else.

That is what closed standards do.

Between a Flash app and an Apple app, the Apple app is the one that is more closed.

Plus, with an Apple app it's not just the proprietary API but the whole walled garden that comes with it.

Re:Why not ....

[cbreak]

Many parts of apple's API are not proprietary: Look at OpenAL, OpenGL, OpenCL. Others are proprietary (Cocoa/Core).
Between a flash app and an apple app, both apps are closed. They run on one closed system. But at least apple's closed systems is partially open... (I heard that flash was apparently also opened a bit recently... but I haven't seen any result from that yet)

Re:Why not ....

[jaymz666]

Do iPhone/iPad apps run on non-apple hardware?

Re:Why not ....

[cbreak]

Not without changes to the code.

Re:Why not ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever used an X11-based app on a Mac?
If you had you'd know why "universal" or multi-platform apps suck as far as appearance/usability goes.
And appearance/usability is what Apple is about.

Re:Why not ....

[AHuxley]

Let the market decide ..
Like the US did with banking, post Bell telcos, the desktop and MS, Enron and your power grid, big pharma, big oil ect.
The thing that makes the net unique is many packets still move around the world in the same way.
With hardware, effort, ideas, open network tools, open codecs and a good bank in theory someone can still enter the digital marketplace without an MS, Apple or Adobe.
Apple is really misusing the term "HTML5". Say a county now has paved roads paid for by the tax payer for Apple vans, trucks and cars to move on. Apple wants you paying for a ride in their bus.
Flash wants to coat the bus in bright flashing advertising that may or may not make the bus stop at random times.
Apple, MS, Flash all want to 'own' you as you travel down the bright new html5 road.
Open standards lets you use a truck, bus, car, pickup, bike, local or import - as long as it "works" for your needs, totally bypassing the Apple and MS toll booths and per seat deals.
Its your net, you paid for it via your isp, taxes and hard work, enjoy it.

Re:Why not ....

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't even run in Apple hardware, except iPhones/iPads/iTouches.

Probably you never understood the difference between "portability" and "openness"?

Re:Why not ....

[mvdwege]

Essentially, the FSF is more willing to let the market decide than Steve Jobs.

Think on it. In order for the market to decide, the participants need information. As soon as one of the parties is withholding information, it is no longer a free exchange, but one entity dictating terms. Therefore, the more information about the products and services is available, the freeer the market is. Now, does this open letter increase or decrease the amount of information available?

Mart

Re:Why not ....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because the AppStore agreement forbids the distribution of your app for any other platform.

Re:Why not ....

[KingKaneOfNod]

Are you a US senator by any chance?

If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[dr2chase]

I mean, really. The free software guys care about something that is irrelevant to most of Apple's customers, and vice-versa. What's the point?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[OrwellianLurker]

I mean, really. The free software guys care about something that is irrelevant to most of Apple's customers, and vice-versa. What's the point?

The point is Jobs presented a false argument for Apple's refusal to allow Flash on iPads.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[jedidiah]

"free software guys" make some of the most popular Mac downloads actually.

So clearly there is an interest there from "Apple users". Even members of the flock tend to stray when they are given the liberty.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[dr2chase]

Corporate CEO not entirely honest? Oh, my, bring the smelling salts, I feel faint.

I think it would be different if he were selling addictive poison, cooking the planet, or selling tainted food. Otherwise, this is just standard issue corporate deception.

As I see it, there are several things going on that he doesn't want to talk too much about. First and foremost, above and beyond the slowdown, is that there are no standards for Flash advertising. It's a race to the bottom, and it causes everyone with a modicum of technical skills (i.e., 90th percentile or better among Apple's customers and would-be customers, I think) to install a Flash Blocker. We do this, why? Because it makes browsing better. How can Apple get that same improvement for the other 90%? One option is, he can ban Flash, and promote alternatives for popular Flash applications while he has the market ability to do it. Then there's the slowdown, and the desire to control the platform's evolution, and I would be surprised if he were not looking into the problem of HOW do you present advertising that doesn't annoy people. The App Store may be a model for that, too.

Another obvious problem, not discussed, is the difficulty of virus-proofing the platform. It's not a matter of "user education" -- saying that, is another way of saying, "won't happen, ever". A side-effect of the no-interpreters rule, is that the only "programs" that run, are those that are eyeballed and approved at the app store. Flash, as a programmable widget implicated in previous hacks (e.g., the Flash+UPNP attack on DNS from home routers) is certainly on the list of things to avoid. Acrobat Reader in its full form (recently the cause of a PDF-hosted hack) is another bad guy -- another Adobe product. I don't know quite why Jobs doesn't talk about this (does this make relations with Symantec and McAfee difficult? Is this like talking about death in a hospital?), but it's an obvious reason to rule with an iron hand.

So, I think it's just plain silly to complain about this. He's got good reasons, he's not talking about them, and I think the not-talked-about reasons are much more interesting than the official ones, or the complaints about how this chokes off innovation.

And by-the-way, here's one way to think about what Apple might do, that has not much effect on the consumer, might make life better for them, but would be devastating to other corporations. Supposing that Apple did for the iPod/iPad/iPhone, what I like to do on my home router, which is just plain block all the popular advertising sites. If you want your advertising to be seen by Apple customers, you go through Apple. Why should I complain, that I am deprived of the ability to see ads that I already take actions to avoid? If Apple does a better job with the advertising, bully for them. But the advertisers, whoo-hoo, won't that be fun?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[MichaelSmith]

Its news for me because Apple got an operating system for free (BSD and Mach underlie OSX) because of those free software guys.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[ClosedSource]

I doubt that the developers of BSD would consider themselves "free software guys" in the FSF sense.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[the_humeister]

Corporate CEO not entirely honest? Oh, my, bring the smelling salts, I feel faint.

The problem is that there is a cult of personality surrounding this particular CEO. Name any other CEO who engenders this type of fanatacism. Lou Gerstner? Nope. Larry Ellison? Nope. Jack Welch? Maybe only for certain business types, but for his employees definitely not.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[DannyO152]

That wasn't Jobs' argument. Jobs said a deployment of Flash without hardware acceleration quickly drains the battery. Remember how, famously, Apple has phased out the changeable battery, so they may figure that they have no room for fooling around regarding this matter. He also said that Flash was designed for browser plus mouse. And he said that Apple believes that when developers arrive at a platform through cross-platform tools, customers get least common denominator functionality. Jobs did say, as a counter to Adobe's assertion that Flash was a standard, that HTML5, javascript, and CSS are standards, Flash is proprietary. Seems about right to me. Now we know Jobs is not concerned with customer freedom on the mobile devices because Apple's bread is buttered when it delivers simple consistent devices that are easy to operate and which do what they say they will.

Customers who prefer to exercise their freedom to tinker have other devices to choose from. That looks to me an excellent environment for maximum customer satisfaction.

It may be fair to say the EFF is using this as an opportunity to take some of spotlight, while the tech world is focused on these parties. That's fine, I believe in the EFF's fundamental philosophies and do not want GNU/GPL tools to disappear or be co-opted. I think it is a bit misguided and counter-productive to insist that everyone march to the same drummer.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[hitmark]

funny thing is, if flash has access to a api for talking to the hardware decoder, its video playback drain is probably no worse then a html5 stream. This as in either case the rest of the interface is done in software anyways.

Jobs is basically using the flash issue to pull a smoke and mirrors on the larger issue, the choice of codec for html5.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[hitmark]

some one claim that the BSD license is more open, thanks to it allowing apple to pull such a stunt as they have done.

makes one wonder if chrome would exist if it was not for khtml being under lgpl...

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[diesel66]

well, they got part of an OS...

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Barack Obama. Do you see people driving around with Steve Jobs' face stuck to their car, or on the front of their t-shirt? Jesus H. Christ, I feel like I'm in North Korea or pre-US-invasion Iraq sometimes. Next thing you know, we're gonna have school kids singing songs about this numbnuts. Oh, wait... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPSqL9_mfM

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't Jobs' argument. Jobs said a deployment of Flash without hardware acceleration quickly drains the battery.

Fine. Let the user decide whether or not to install a Flash player. Leave it uninstalled by default, but let users who know enough to go hunt it down to balance their battery with their web needs. Let them turn it off when they don't want to use it.

He also said that Flash was designed for browser plus mouse.

So was the whole web. That argument applies to html as much as Flash. The argument fails.

And he said that Apple believes that when developers arrive at a platform through cross-platform tools, customers get least common denominator functionality.

What?! Again, using Safari on the iPhone to view html from the web is exactly the same degree of "cross platform" as using an iPhone Flash viewer to view Flash content. The least common denominator functionality point applies equally. Again, the argument fails.

Jobs did say, as a counter to Adobe's assertion that Flash was a standard, that HTML5, javascript, and CSS are standards, Flash is proprietary.Seems about right to me. Now we know Jobs is not concerned with customer freedom on the mobile devices because Apple's bread is buttered when it delivers simple consistent devices that are easy to operate and which do what they say they will.

Customers who prefer to exercise their freedom to tinker have other devices to choose from. That looks to me an excellent environment for maximum customer satisfaction.

It may be fair to say the EFF is using this as an opportunity to take some of spotlight, while the tech world is focused on these parties. That's fine, I believe in the EFF's fundamental philosophies and do not want GNU/GPL tools to disappear or be co-opted. I think it is a bit misguided and counter-productive to insist that everyone march to the same drummer.

And yet Apple insists that all iPhone users march to the same drummer. Maybe that's misguided and counter-productive, too. You're right that there are other devices to choose from, and Apple has the right to make a bad device if they so choose. But for those of us who are techies, for instance, everyone on Slashdot, doesn't this completely demolish the appeal of the iPhone? We can have a much more powerful, open experience with Android, for instance. We'll be able to choose whether or not to use Flash in Android 2.2, and we can choose to leave it off to save the battery 90% of the time but turn it on occasionally to fill out that dumb Flash form or see a stupid animation that really shouldn't be in Flash but is. Flexibility is a good thing, and in this case there's no reason giving the simple option of installing Flash would hurt users. Why must the users be protected from themselves?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

*gasp* Steve Jobs is a dirty cheating corporate lying bastard that pretends to be all nice and cool and hippy and a champion of freedom? Well color me shocked! SHOCKED!!

Or wait, isn't it the same old trick Apple's been pulling since 1984?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you pointed out something so oft-overlooked.

It wasn't just the kernel: they got a top-notch compiler (GCC) and toolchain (GNU bintuils) for free. And an HTML rendering engine (KHTML/WebKit). And garden-variety utilities like a decent shell and scripting languages and build tools and ...

In other words, stuff that would have delayed the first usable versions of OS X for years and years if Apple had to write them from scratch. Stuff that might have taken so long to re-write that Apple may not have survived its near-death experience.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Apple survived and is prospering today at least partly because it had been able to fold so much free software into its codebase early on. For them to turn around afterward and build a closed software stack counter to the principles of openness that saved them really feels like a betrayal of sorts.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[eggnoglatte]

funny thing is, if flash has access to a api for talking to the hardware decoder, its video playback drain is probably no worse then a html5 stream. This as in either case the rest of the interface is done in software anyways.

That would only be true if Adobe would actually USE a platform-specific API to improve performance and save battery life. History shows that most of the time they can't be bothered, which is why flash sucks on OS X.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[bennomatic]

I don't know if Jobs presented a false argument, really. He just presented the Apple viewpoint. It's as if Adobe were saying, "I Like Bananas," and Jobs responded, "We do bananas better, and we let you have oranges and kiwifruit as well!"

The EFF has come in and said, "Look, people, there's 50000 varieties of edible fruits, vegetables and animals. Make yourself a slingshot a net and a spear and you can have any of them!"

I didn't see anything in Jobs' statement that indicated that there weren't other ways to skin the cat as well; he simply indicated why Flash wasn't going to be supported. Supporting Flash wouldn't have made the EFF any happier.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[dhobbit]

funny thing is, if flash has access to a api for talking to the hardware decoder, its video playback drain is probably no worse then a html5 stream. This as in either case the rest of the interface is done in software anyways.

Jobs is basically using the flash issue to pull a smoke and mirrors on the larger issue, the choice of codec for html5.

This would be true if the codec was set in stone. The video tag works very much like the img tag and thus can support multiple codecs. On OSX the video tag is decoded through the quicktime playback system and any codec quicktime supports will work.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its news for me because Apple got an operating system for free (BSD and Mach underlie OSX) because of those free software guys.

I hardly think they got it for free. The best software in the world is no good if you don't know how to use it, and they've hired a bunch of the biggest contributors to open source projects.

They hired Avie Tevanian, an author of Mach. They hired Jordan Hubbard, an author of FreeBSD. They hired Dominic Giampaolo, though his work on BeOS wasn't open sourced. They hired Michael Sweet and bought CUPS off him.

They actually didn't get a whole lot from the freedom fanatics: GNU libc? No. Linux? No. GCC? After contributing to GCC, they're actually trying to escape from further involvement in that project. I don't personally remember them paying for Apache, but the Apache folks are hardly ideological. Furthermore, their independent contributions like mdnsd and libdispatch are rejected as being not free enough, even when they're free enough for the FreeBSD project to adopt.

I don't think there's a lot of lost love between Apple and the freedom fighters.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

The free software guys care about something that is irrelevant to most of Apple's customers at this moment. Many of us happen to have experience with closed environments and the longterm assbiting experience they produce. Most of us have a good grasp of computing history where this is clearly visible as well. If the Apple customers in question remember the warning when the assbugs crawl from the unmaintained covers, they are more likely to learn a lesson instead of just shrugging it off as a typical computer thing.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[dhobbit]

That wasn't Jobs' argument. Jobs said a deployment of Flash without hardware acceleration quickly drains the battery.

Fine. Let the user decide whether or not to install a Flash player. Leave it uninstalled by default, but let users who know enough to go hunt it down to balance their battery with their web needs. Let them turn it off when they don't want to use it.

Turning flash off isn't that trivial even on the desktop. Making that possible on a mobile device is just that much more complicated. Better to just have it off by default and use the html 5 standard better for users, better for device manufactures, better for openness, the only one hurt here is Adobe.

He also said that Flash was designed for browser plus mouse.

So was the whole web. That argument applies to html as much as Flash. The argument fails.

Kinda true, but html is an open standard that can be changed and adapted. Apple has the ability to work through the standards body to make that happen which again helps everybody.

And he said that Apple believes that when developers arrive at a platform through cross-platform tools, customers get least common denominator functionality.

What?! Again, using Safari on the iPhone to view html from the web is exactly the same degree of "cross platform" as using an iPhone Flash viewer to view Flash content. The least common denominator functionality point applies equally. Again, the argument fails.

Again kinda true html, css and javascript while standard are also extensible and degrade nicely if a tag is not supported. This is part of the spec. So Apple can and does offer webkit specific css tags that can be tied directly into OSX or iPhoneOS features. These tags and functions are open source and be implemented by anyone. So in general this is true but not always.

Jobs did say, as a counter to Adobe's assertion that Flash was a standard, that HTML5, javascript, and CSS are standards, Flash is proprietary.Seems about right to me. Now we know Jobs is not concerned with customer freedom on the mobile devices because Apple's bread is buttered when it delivers simple consistent devices that are easy to operate and which do what they say they will.

Customers who prefer to exercise their freedom to tinker have other devices to choose from. That looks to me an excellent environment for maximum customer satisfaction.

It may be fair to say the EFF is using this as an opportunity to take some of spotlight, while the tech world is focused on these parties. That's fine, I believe in the EFF's fundamental philosophies and do not want GNU/GPL tools to disappear or be co-opted. I think it is a bit misguided and counter-productive to insist that everyone march to the same drummer.

And yet Apple insists that all iPhone users march to the same drummer. Maybe that's misguided and counter-productive, too. You're right that there are other devices to choose from, and Apple has the right to make a bad device if they so choose. But for those of us who are techies, for instance, everyone on Slashdot, doesn't this completely demolish the appeal of the iPhone? We can have a much more powerful, open experience with Android, for instance. We'll be able to choose whether or not to use Flash in Android 2.2, and we can choose to leave it off to save the battery 90% of the time but turn it on occasionally to fill out that dumb Flash form or see a stupid animation that really shouldn't be in Flash but is. Flexibility is a good thing, and in this case there's no reason giving the simple option of installing Flash would hurt users. Why must the users be protected from themselves?

I agree with you, Apple knows their market and techies are not the main focus. The focus in the 90% case the general user who doesn't want the c

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[dhobbit]

I'm glad you pointed out something so oft-overlooked.

It wasn't just the kernel: they got a top-notch compiler (GCC) and toolchain (GNU bintuils) for free. And an HTML rendering engine (KHTML/WebKit). And garden-variety utilities like a decent shell and scripting languages and build tools and ...

In other words, stuff that would have delayed the first usable versions of OS X for years and years if Apple had to write them from scratch. Stuff that might have taken so long to re-write that Apple may not have survived its near-death experience.

Most of OS comes from NextStep which already used gcc and bsd binutils. Actually most the system utils are from bsd not gnu. Apple is also replacing gcc with llvm/clang which are also gpl and developed in house.

Apple took KHTML fixed, cleaned it up and released it as WebKit which ultimately replaced the core of KHTML.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Apple survived and is prospering today at least partly because it had been able to fold so much free software into its codebase early on. For them to turn around afterward and build a closed software stack counter to the principles of openness that saved them really feels like a betrayal of sorts.

Actually the "openness" that saved them was bsd and the bsd definition of free software. And Apple is in true sprit of that legacy. The free/open source forms the foundation on which Apple is standing. Apple is a good open source citizen and contributes code back and in a lot of case have created new projects that it released into the open. I guess I don't see the betrayal.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why you call it a stunt. People who release BSD code do so to improve computing for as many people as possible. It obviously improved the experience for a lot of Mac users. That is a good thing. And in many ways that is benefitial for all others too, even without code contributions (which Apple also made). Like portability is easier with a common code base. Like it is the only real competition for Windows desktops. Everyone benefits from this.

I can't really see how anyone would be better off if the BSD license didn't allow that "stunt".

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[mvdwege]

Apple still got all those years of development in Mach and BSD for free. They didn't have to pay those developers for all the work done before they were hired.

And not getting anything from Free Software? The fanbois keep ranting and raving how the Web experience is so much better on mobile Safari compared to other smartphones. Well, guess under what license Apple got WebKit? And as for trying to escape GCC, how about putting up some proof that Apple is trying to write a compiler on their own? And care to explain on what software Open Directory is built? And that's just a few examples, Look here for a complete list.

Really, I understand why you checked 'Post Anonymously'. If there had been a '-1, Stupid' moderation, your post would have been an infinite Karma sink.

Mart

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[drinkypoo]

some one claim that the BSD license is more open, thanks to it allowing apple to pull such a stunt as they have done.

BSD is more Open. It is less Free. The fact that ostensibly intelligent and technical people continue to fail to understand this distinction is probably the single biggest obstacle to Free Software.

makes one wonder if chrome would exist if it was not for khtml being under lgpl...

Absolutely not. Apple hasn't opened much of anything they don't absolutely have to. The one exception is GCD, but if you're trying to create a standard, making it Open is the only sure way to get nerds to adopt it in any number, so is it really an exception?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[maztuhblastah]

Its news for me because Apple got an operating system for free (BSD and Mach underlie OSX) because of those free software guys.

Let's not spread that FUD, shall we?

Mach as it exists in xnu (i.e. Mac OS X's kernel) is basically the product of NeXT and Apple at this point. Further, xnu is a very different beast than the FreeBSD kernel, and almost all of the development has been done by the Mac OS X team and its precursors (i.e. NeXT devs).

A massive chunk of the libraries, from Core Animation to Core Audio, from libdispatch to Bonjour certainly *weren't* from "those free software guys". And the GUI-level userland? Almost none of it's from "those free software guys".

So while it's fun to think that Apple just waltzed in and lifted an OS from the OSS movement, the reality is that Mac OS X has a *huge* amount of proprietary Apple code in addition to its open-source components.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[maccodemonkey]

Jobs actually specifically mentioned this, and said that a lot of Flash videos are not H.264, will not work with the hardware decoder, and would provide and inconsistent user experience.

Not to mention there is always the Flash GUI wrapped around the video.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[jo_ham]

I find it amusing that you consider it "straying" to use free software on the Mac.

I'll let the "flock" thing pass, I realise you're too busy combing the cheeto crumbs out of your neckbeard to worry about generalising.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[ClosedSource]

One can hardly debate without having an agreement on basic terms. Given that RMS and FSF have their own proprietary definition of "free" (i.e. it means whatever we say it means), there is no possibility of rational debate.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[metamatic]

I don't know if Jobs presented a false argument, really. He just presented the Apple viewpoint

No, he didn't even do that.

The Apple viewpoint is "If we act as gatekeepers to the iPhone and iPad app store, we can get 30% from every sale."

Everything Steve Jobs said is just a convenient excuse.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[game kid]

The video tag works very much like the img tag and thus can support multiple codecs.

That's the problem. video is a lot like good ol' object, which already determines video type based on the server or the MIME type in attribute type , and has the same wrong-MIME-related problems. From there (assuming the right MIME), the browser can just use a default player (as Chrome, Firefox, and even IE are sometimes smart enough to do). If said player can't figure out the exact codecs, then some combination of (a) the player isn't smart enough (really, exact-codec-hunting should be the player's job), (b) the video's some old, busted, or old and busted format, and (c) the video is not a video and no amount of "dieflashdie" will save its ass or the user's.

Other than some issues of how default object players would do the whole controls and poster thing, I remain unconvinced that video is not redundant or even bad. With the failed one-format effort, I keep blinking and thinking "Meet the new HTML" and so forth. *sighs* just hoped that we'd all drop img and any other format-specific object tags now that Acid2 checks some object images and stuff. Rant over, do continue.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Wovel]

Is argument was 100% true. Adobe's argument is false. The iPhone has been out over 3 years and Adobe still has not shown flash working on any Mobile platform. The entire basis of this argument as false. What people think the iPhone OS should support, no mobile OS supports.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Wovel]

Must be why they are the most profitable phone manufacturer in the world, the user experience sucks...
(I know what you are thinking, but I am right..Do some research before you respond and embarrass yourself).

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Wovel]

Apple has contributed considerably more to OSS than say umm Adobe. I would hardly call it a "stunt".

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Wovel]

It is absurd to complain about Apple's use of WebKit. If you knew anything about the history of it, you slap yourself for the implication you tried to make.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[hitmark]

huh? are you talking about their 4 freedoms?
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

beyond that the only problem with free is that the english language have managed to give that word two meanings.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[ClosedSource]

What about the GNU's reverse-inheritance part of "freedom"? The concept that software that satisfies the four "freedoms" still isn't considered "free" unless it restricts users from making derivative works closed. In the spirit of Animal Farm, some user freedoms are "freer" than others.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[mvdwege]

You noticed that WebKit was just one example in my post? Of course you didn't, you were blinded by your fanboi rage.

Mart

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[hitmark]

ai take it that the only true freedom is anarchy?

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[hitmark]

depends on the kind of decoder. GPU, DSP or h264 specific IC.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Gilmoure]

You're right. People hate Steve.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[Gilmoure]

Yeah, but Steve never said that, if you don't like how the iPhone behaves, you should use a competitor's hardware.

Re:If it's that predictable, is it really news?

[jvkjvk]

Congratulations.

You have stumbled upon one of the many paradoxes of our current Reality.

To wit: Freedom necessarily means complimentary restriction if there is any force opposing that freecom. In order to protect the greater freedoms, one must restrict entities from destroying those same freedoms.

Thus in this system, the reason why one cannot make derivative works closed is that doing so goes against a "higher" freedom involved.

There is a hierarchy of "freedoms", and some restrictions are necessary to support these.

It's like the 'right' to life or liberty. We support the freedom to live by restricting the freedom of liberty by jailing those who commit murder.

Using your definition of freedom, if I were to be pedantic I would have to say that any license you need to agree to whatsoever means that your freedoms are being curtailed in some fashion.

Of course, you knew all this already, as it has been discussed ad nauseum on this site and still choose to deliberately miss and misrepresent the point.

Nice troll.

People don't WANT free...

[Mark19960]

They want to be told what to do.
That is why people buy Apple shit... because their friends told them to.
The Adobe vs. Apple war... meh.

In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.
Whether it's the government or a corporation.... all they do is herd people and separate them from their money.
This is just a war over MONEY and who gets control over more of it.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[dangitman]

Yes, people just do whatever they are told by corporations. They are all mindless droids who hate freedom, EXCEPT FOR YOU, the true savior of humanity, who is unaffected by marketing, and here to save use all! You're so awesome, you don't even own a TV, or anything made by a faceless corporation, not even a computer.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[R3d M3rcury]

In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.

I wouldn't necessarily put it that way.

I paid $199 for my iPhone and I can't play Facebook games? Well, I guess that's just the way it is. At least until my best buddy starts doing it with his Android/WebOS/Symbian phone. When I see someone in my peer group doing that, that's when I'll say, "Wow! I know what my next phone is going to be!"

Kind of like the Mac and Windows--you'll see one person switch and show off what they can do. That'll inspire someone else. That'll inspire a few more people. And so on and so on.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[dangitman]

I paid $199 for my iPhone and I can't play Facebook games?

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[dhobbit]

They want to be told what to do.
That is why people buy Apple shit... because their friends told them to.
The Adobe vs. Apple war... meh.

In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.
Whether it's the government or a corporation.... all they do is herd people and separate them from their money.
This is just a war over MONEY and who gets control over more of it.

It's called capitalism. It's the most productive economic system so far developed. Look it up its pretty cool.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[dhobbit]

In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.

I wouldn't necessarily put it that way.

I paid $199 for my iPhone and I can't play Facebook games? Well, I guess that's just the way it is. At least until my best buddy starts doing it with his Android/WebOS/Symbian phone. When I see someone in my peer group doing that, that's when I'll say, "Wow! I know what my next phone is going to be!"

Kind of like the Mac and Windows--you'll see one person switch and show off what they can do. That'll inspire someone else. That'll inspire a few more people. And so on and so on.

There are several assumptions in that statement.

1) Adobe will actually deliver desktop flash on Android. This is still a huge question all the demos I've seen are flash video. Haven't seen a lot of demos of farmville.
2) Android manufactures will actually deliver the updates needs to use flash. Most of the currently shipping Android phones won't take the 2.2 update, of the ones that will OS updates are released by the hand manufacturer or the carrier which take weeks or month to get their customizations made and update images released.
3) Flash on Android won't suck. Adobe doesn't have a great record here and could easily get this wrong and cause all the OS to crash, run slowly, kill the battery and drive 1000s of Android users to the iPhone.
4) And all of that needs to happen before Facebook and others start releasing games in html5 or the AppStore.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[captjc]

In the end the user wants to play his Facebook games and Apple says 'you can't on My iPhone or iPad' and they say 'okay' and play on their computer instead.
Do they ditch the iPhone or iPad? Nope..... They go buy another one!
When the general public actually decides to grow a pair things will change.

You are right, even though I don't give a rat's ass about Flash games, I guess the iPod Touch I just bought is completely useless. Apple just stole my money and gave me a brick that looks nice and does a great deal of cool stuff. Oh, No! I just realized OS X won't play my Windows Games. Damn you apple! What? My Wii won't play my XBox games? Boycott Nintendo! My Playstation won't play Advance Wars!!? Call the SEC! Call the Better Business Borough! Let us rise up against these evil companies for screwing us over! Attica! Attica! Attica!
</sarcasm>

Guess what, not everyone cares about what you care about. I don't care about flash, I hated it 10 years ago, I hate it now. If flash is important to you, there are plenty of competitors out there. Don't want an iPad, don't buy one, or get one of the 20+ competitors that will be out by the end of the year or a Tablet PC. There is no law stating that Apple must support flash. If they don't want to, they don't have to.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

In part the sentiment is right. People don't like choices; there have been studies that prove even simple choices cause some degree of anxiety in people. (Sorry, I don't have references available.) This doesn't have to do with "growing a set" though, I rather think it's just human nature. Things are *easier* if you don't have to think about them. If diddling with computers/tech isn't your primary job like it is for many of us -- if these things are just a means to an end -- why wouldn't you want a walled garden?

The only reason that apple doesn't have more users is because people are more uncomfortable with change than they are distressed by choices.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[repressitol]

I paid $199 for my iPhone and I can't play Facebook games?

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Should have been +5 Insightful.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[jo_ham]

There are already facebook and popular flash games on the app store - Bejeweled 2 is probably one of the biggest. It even links back directly to facebook from the iPhone.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[Wovel]

What phone were you playing facebook games on before? What Phone does Adobe have flash currently in production on?

I thought so, what an absurd argument. Blame the facebook developers or blame Adobe, you sure as heck can't blame Apple for something that does not exist on any mobile platform and they have no control over.

Re:People don't WANT free...

[Gilmoure]

My buddy's Android phone can't play Facebook games either.

Damn you Apple!

A good criticism, but...

[A. Bosch]

I RTFA, and I think it's the most well-thought-out criticism of Jobs' anti-Flash editorial I've seen so far The author maintains "the way out of the Adobe vs. Apple cage match is straightforward, and exists already: free software operating systems like GNU/Linux with free software Web browsers, supporting free media formats like Ogg Theora" and later concludes, "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." I agree with that in principle. I guess where I get stuck is, I do like OS/X. I like it a lot better than Linux. I'm not involved in cutting video but I work with someone who is, and they tell me they like H.264 a lot better than Ogg Theora. So...am I part of the problem? Is the Free Software movement not up to the task of competing with proprietary software? I feel like the trade-off I'm currently making with OS/X is acceptable -- for now. I don't see myself buying an iPhone (or iPad) anytime soon, but neither do I see myself getting rid of my iMac.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[MichaelSmith]

I'm not involved in cutting video but I work with someone who is, and they tell me they like H.264 a lot better than Ogg Theora.

A writer may like PDF or FrameMaker ahead of html but if they want people to read their stuff its going to have to be published in html. Where would we be if you had to use a restricted format to read normal web pages?

Re:A good criticism, but...

[A. Bosch]

> Where would we be if you had to use a restricted format to read normal web pages? Oh, absolutely; I agree. I'm not a video expert; I was told the quality of the Ogg Theora video paled in comparison to H.264, which is why I mentioned that comparison. I feel like "Open/Free vs Proprietary" sometimes means "Pretty Good vs Very Good." And sometimes "Pretty Good" isn't good enough.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[assertation]

That has always been the crux of issue of why the FSF has not been more prominent then it is. It is long on making ideals short on making software that someone who is not a computer enthusiast would be enthusiastic about using.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[the_humeister]

Just because Adobe's reader is the most prevalent doesn't make PDF any less of an open standard.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I share your mixed feelings about the "non-free" OS/X vs. the "free" but sometimes inadequate Linux, at least on the desktop (on the server Linux is and will continue to be my OS of choice).

However, contrary to you, I found TFA unfortunate and disappointing. RMS's arguments used to be deep, comprehensive and well constructed; this one (Sullivan's) I find sorely lacking and out-of-focus. For instance, Jobs centers his thoughts around standardization, which is reasonable to assume is done for the sake of interoperability; Sullivan is eager to introduce the idea of "freedom", which although of course central to the FSF is irrelevant to the "Flash/no-Flash" debate. Sullivan insists that by banning Flash Apple is trying to control its users, which is not entirely true since said users *opted into* a system they knew lacked Flash, i.e., they (we) voluntarily accepted that preexisting state-of-affairs (personally I actually appreciate the current freedom-from-Flash in my browsing, but that might be just me; in any case, there is no doubt that I and all other iPad users, just like iPhone and iTouch users before, have literally bought into an ecosystem without Flash). Apple offered and we took, under conditions we considered acceptable: no Flash, no foul!

On the other hand, Sullivan states that "... 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", to which the minimum you can say is *citation needed*. I don't remember seen any such thing in the EULA, perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places. On the other hand, the jailbreaking community eagerly flaunts its prowess with any new Apple release, and as far as I know no END USER has ever been targeted by Apple's legal actions. Would Apple have a basis for going after said end users? Are the "discoverers" of the jailbreaking mechanism also breaking some part of the EULA? If not they, what about the distributors of software for jailbroken iDevices, are they infringing somehow? As Operations Manager of the FSF I suspect Sullivan is in excellent position to clarify these and many other similar points. Shame he decided to simply parrot the party line without really contributing anything relevant to the discussion.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[wrook]

If the trade-off you are making for yourself is acceptable to you, then be happy with your choice. From your post, it seems that you understand the benefits of software freedom. You realize that you are giving up those freedoms, but you are willing to do so because it seems that the software you use has features that you haven't seen in Free* software. As a personal choice, I, for one, won't criticize you. However, I will caution you that your support of a company that isn't necessarily working in your best interest may cause you problems in the future.

I think it would be fair to categorize me as a software freedom evangelist. Maybe not a "big E" evangelist, though. I'm not going to say that you will go to hell for using proprietary software. But willingly giving up your freedoms does make it slightly harder for others to help you out. Free software tends to get "paid" through wide adoption. More users create more business opportunities to make money. By choosing to use proprietary software, you select for a future where software freedom is more difficult; for example where big business ties up software development to the point where nothing can be written without a patent deal. Some claim this is already the case with respect to video codec development.

There are alternatives, though. I don't like the normal Gnome or KDE environments very much. But I use Compiz with GnomeDo to achieve a desktop environment that is similar and even more powerful in some cases than what is available on OSX. I can sympathize with your friend over the choice of suitable video codecs. Hopefully the opening up of the V8 codec will address his concerns. But in the end, you need to choose the tools that will allow you to succeed in your endeavors.

Wherever possible it is great if you can adopt Free software into your usage patterns. It will be beneficial to a great number of people. I understand if you have to use some proprietary software where you don't have any choice. But in other areas if you can use Free software, comment on it, send bugs, etc, etc, that software has a better chance of improving. It does make a difference.

* Sorry for using a capital F in "Free". I've lately adopted it in order to distinguish the difference between freedom and free of charge. I suppose I could use FLOSS, but Open Source is a movement (which I also support) which tends to focus more on process rather than end results. They aren't necessarily interested in software freedom or the plight of the end user. They are more interested in efficient development. Anyway, the F is not intended to seem pompous.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[zioncat]

I RTFA, and I think it's the most well-thought-out criticism of Jobs' anti-Flash editorial I've seen so far The author maintains "the way out of the Adobe vs. Apple cage match is straightforward, and exists already: free software operating systems like GNU/Linux with free software Web browsers, supporting free media formats like Ogg Theora" and later concludes, "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." I agree with that in principle.

I too RTFA, and am now convinced of superiority and holiness of free software. I'm going to ditch my iPhone for Openmoko, pronto.

Wait...

Re:A good criticism, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

(This is not a knock against you, but a comment to the quotes you pulled out.)

And where is the open source hardware tablet that is anywhere near as well built as an iPad or iPhone?

Also, last I heard, no one is stopping Adobe from creating a flash player for the iPad as long as they are willing to go through Cydia.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[greg1104]

I'm not involved in cutting video but I work with someone who is, and they tell me they like H.264 a lot better than Ogg Theora. So...am I part of the problem? Is the Free Software movement not up to the task of competing with proprietary software?

It's been possible for a couple of years to encode for H.264 on Linux. H.264 is unfortunately encumbered by patent issues which certainly works against its adoption in more free software programs. So in this particular case, free software's ability to compete with proprietary is strangled by the ridiculous software patent situation. This makes it yet another case where corporate and legal douchebaggery is getting in the way of forward progress for free software, and therefore the world at large.

Now, had the argument been "[iMovie|Final Cut] is an easier to use and more stable video editor than anything I can get for Linux", that's both true and not so directly the result of corporate malfeasance. It's just paid software that is better polished than what you can get for free, which does happen. When using Apple's video software, I certainly go out of my way to use open standards whenever possible for what the program outputs though, just to keep myself from being forever dependent on them. I don't trust or let myself become reliant on products from Apple and Adobe, but that's also the case for Microsoft, Google, Sony (shakes fist at now non-Linux running PS3), and most other software vendors. They're all trying to keep your in their respective walled gardens.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[greg1104]

Where would we be if you had to use a restricted format to read normal web pages?

There are plenty of Flash-only web sites out there to demonstrate exactly where we'd be. The best possible outcome from what Apple is doing would be that becoming a less viable plan for businesses to follow. I'm glad they're making this stand because it pushes companies toward real standards instead of Flash, but I'm not falling one minute for the idea that Apple's own products are any less proprietary than Adobe's.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[bennomatic]

The difference I see is this: If you depend on an app that's written in Flash, you'll depend on Adobe for as long as you're dependent on that app. If you're dependent on an HTML5 compliant web-app, you'll be able to move from iPhone to Android to WinMob7 to anything and still access it.

Yes, Apple is a walled garden, but it's only walled for Apple users. Adobe wants to plant their seeds in everyone's garden.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[MidnightBrewer]

Unfortunately, the criticism is pretty self-serving. The FSF is saying how this clearly illustrates their point that free software is the only way to go, but pretends not to notice that their free software doesn't do any good unless they have hardware to run it on. Until there is an equivalent competitor to the iPad that is also open-source friendly (which will literally never happen), then people are just going to have to deal with Apple and Adobe's competition with each other. Apple is trying to protect its own customer base by ensuring they have a good experience on their hardware. I *want* that. Adobe wants to subvert the application development structure of the mobile computing market for their own financial gain, and in doing so, threatens to ruin my day by encouraging the development of second-rate, lowest-common-denominator software that doesn't actually take full advantage of the capabilities of the device and hampers Apple's attempts to upgrade the operating system should Adobe decide that it's not in their best interests to upgrade their software to keep up with Apple's development cycle. They would, in effect, have a say in that development cycle, which would result in a bunch of pissed-off users who blame it on Apple.

Adobe has a terrible track record in their arrogant disregard for their supposed partners, or even their customers. They are very strongly driven by what they determine to be the most profitable direction to go in at any given moment, and spend the rest of the time smiling and playing lip service as if it was all part of some bigger plan. They have over a decade-long history of burning Apple and specifically in the area of OS development cycles, which has forced their users to refrain from upgrading their operating systems (or even better, forced them to buy all-new hardware), just to cater to Adobe's dictates.

The FSF may have a philosophical interest in this argument, but even they should acknowledge that the users are the ones who need to be taken care of, and that's exactly what Apple is trying to do. When there is an open-source friendly, comparable product released in the next year or so, then they will have a leg to stand on, but until then, they're offering nothing for something; not exactly a bargain.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[dhobbit]

Remember what this is all about.

It's not about Adobe, Apple, FSF, Flash, iPads, etc. It's about money.

Where do you spend your money and how do the groups listed above get some share of that money. Apple doesn't want flash because they feel it hampers Apple's ability to deliver the best product to get your money. Adobe wants flash on everything so they get paid from everywhere for doing the least amount of work. FSF wants your money to help fight the evil corporations that are trying to steal your money while screwing you over. Once you get past that then you can look at this problem in 1 of 2 ways.

1) Which technology is the best?
2) Which makes my life better?

Open is great and the FSF crowd has produced some great stuff. But after 30 years they still haven't connected with the average grandma, they haven't simplified the UI enough so I don't have to think, and they wanted produced independent video codecs that compare to the commercial ones. And that's okay because the other thing in this argument is freedom. The freedom for you and I to choose which platform we want to use. And if everyone uses the open specs and standard it doesn't matter.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[dhobbit]

I'm not involved in cutting video but I work with someone who is, and they tell me they like H.264 a lot better than Ogg Theora.

A writer may like PDF or FrameMaker ahead of html but if they want people to read their stuff its going to have to be published in html. Where would we be if you had to use a restricted format to read normal web pages?

PDF is an open standard. If I recall it's also royalty free.

But either way we'd be in just about the same place. Until recently (4 or 5 years) IE controlled 90+% of the browser market at which point MS could have just as easily switch from html to doc. What keep MS on html was critical mass and fact that html can do things doc can't.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[tyrione]

I'm not involved in cutting video but I work with someone who is, and they tell me they like H.264 a lot better than Ogg Theora.

A writer may like PDF or FrameMaker ahead of html but if they want people to read their stuff its going to have to be published in html. Where would we be if you had to use a restricted format to read normal web pages?

Every major operating system has pdf viewers. PDF is an ISO standard. Sorry but authors [talented writers, not bloggers] who make a living getting their work published aren't targeting html.

Re:A good criticism, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Until there is an equivalent competitor to the iPad that is also open-source friendly

N900? WePad? OpenPandora? more?

Re:A good criticism, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they got their hands on one of these. :)

http://www.notionink.in/adamoverview.php

Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

With all of the "nice PR" of late with Apple and Jobs snotty assed attitude... I can't believe I am saying this, but Jobs, you have alienated me to the point where I will never buy a apple product until you pack up your shit and get out!

Re:Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

With all of the "nice PR" of late with Apple and Jobs snotty assed attitude... I can't believe I am saying this, but Jobs, you have alienated me to the point where I will never buy a apple product until you pack up your shit and get out!

Unless you can show some proof that you ever have bought an Apple product in the past your comment is totally meaningless.

Re:Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neckbeard jumps up and down (note moobs a-jigglin') and shakes his fist at Steve Jobs' Gulfstream passing overhead. Jobs opens another bottle of Cristal and looks fondly down at the blonde triplets servicing him. Yes, I'm sure he'll miss your patronage.

Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

The FSF is hijacking this debate for their own cause. In fact, the choice is between open standard (html5) or Adobe's format. Another choice you have to make is Apple walled garden vs open platforms (FSF).

Everyone is just trying to get publicity from this. The funny thing is that IF Apple would open up AND accept Flash everyone would go back at bitching about Flash.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[jedidiah]

The FSF isn't hijacking it. It is correctly framing the discussion. HTML5 isn't going to do anything to replace the bulk of Flash web content out there. Most of that is already replaced with "apps".

That's the single most annoying thing about the iPhone/iPad. It takes a common protocol and a common interface that works the same across multiple diverse operating systems and takes us back to the 80s and 90s where every little thing like Google Maps would be a seperate single-platform-only probably windos-only proprietary application.

HTML5 is infact just a red herring.

HTML5 isn't going to replace Flash. Proprietary Apple apps are. Proprietary Apple apps already do.

I can choose between a platform that's more closed than a Nintendo and proprietary apps to match, or another proprietary standard that at least lets me pick the OS of my choice.

Jobs is all about the vendorlock. His populist rantings are just a smokescreen.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[cbreak]

So google maps is more than just a HTML + Java Script web application that requires no proprietary software to run?

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe has long been all about getting a lock on the industry.
Look how many of their products have become pseudo-standards.
PDF, Flash, Postscript, .PSD and so on. They are every bit as bad in this respect as Microsoft.
And they don't care which platform you use them on as long as you use them. They do object mightily when some platform excludes them, for obvious reasons.
And the addicts line up to complain along with them. Going so far as to slander anyone who doesn't allow Adobe to dominate that platform, too.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Cronock]

HTML5 isn't going to replace Flash. Proprietary Apple apps are. Proprietary Apple apps already do.

I'm sooo buying Apple stock, you've convinced me.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[thoughtsatthemoment]

Google might be different. It has a motive to promote HTML5 to make the Web richer and more addictive.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

The FSF isn't hijacking it. It is correctly framing the discussion. HTML5 isn't going to do anything to replace the bulk of Flash web content out there.

If that's what they're doing, you completely missed their point!

Yours is a rant against HTML5. I didn't see the FSF denouncing any standards, HTML5 or any other. You're crying in pain and anger about apps and how having "every little thing" like Google Maps (which is in itself a *huge* amount of data, but I digress) is a throwback to the 80's and 90's; the FSF is OK with that, what they want is MORE apps, they just don't want the AppStore to be the only alternative.

Did you actually RTFA, or are you just giving your own rendition of "hijacking the discussion"??

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[gyrogeerloose]

HTML5 is infact just a red herring.

HTML5 isn't going to replace Flash.[...]

I wouldn't bet on that.

One of Adobe's biggest Flash users is YouTube; however, for the last six months or so it's been possible to view YouTube videos using HTML5 if one chooses. Go try it out some time. It's still in beta and there's a few bugs in it but it works and doesn't cause the fan on my laptop to run the entire time like it used to when I was viewing in Flash.

Forget about all the other bullshit about Apple and Steve Jobs and Adobe. Flash is a resource hog, it requires software available from only one source to view and very expensive software to develop. The Web will be better for everybody once it's gone. Well, everybody but Flash developers, and I suspect that they're the people who are currently rushing to its defense.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Jobs is all about the vendorlock."

In the iPhone OS vs the world case, yes. But in the html5 vs Flash case it is Adobe who's looking for "vendorlock". Designers are "locked" with Flash if that's the rich media format for the Internet. The Flash format is open now, but still fully controlled by Adobe, no innovation can come from others with it.

I know people likes to mixed up everything just to prove their points, but in the spirit of the FSF, Steve Job is good here, Adobe is bad. I can enjoy rich html5 on every platform thanks to opensource projetcs like FireFox or WebKit. Flash only works on what Adobe decide to support.

Now bring on the offtopic rants about h.264 being own by Apple (which is innacurate), the AppStore being locked, the iPhone being closed source, etc.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

"HTML5 isn't going to replace Flash. Proprietary Apple apps are. Proprietary Apple apps already do."

Source please.

Re:Just hijacking thé dedate

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this insightful? Quake has already been implemented in HTML5, why can't HTML5 replace flash? Certainly all those Android devices, Mac OS X computers (which can't run iphone/ipad apps), and Windows computers are going to need to be able to run this stuff too.

I think, to justify your insightfulness, you should be providing more evidence that Flash will get replaced by a technology that exclusively runs on a minority of smartphones and a tablet device of which to describe as a "minority" would be kind.

It's like you hacked Slashdot and sucked the insightfulness of the GP into your post.

No closed OSes ever??

[RoadNotTaken]

He's implying that no-one should access the web with a closed OS under any circumstance. That seems ridiculous. There are many items that may benefit from web-access that don't need full/open access. I think right now people are arguing over whether or not a phone is such an item. Personally, I don't want root access to my phone. I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

He's implying that no-one should access the web with a closed OS under any circumstance. That seems ridiculous. There are many items that may benefit from web-access that don't need full/open access.

I'm not the least bit bothered by you accessing the web with a proprietary browser. When the web requires that proprietary browser it's a different story.

Personally, I don't want root access to my phone. I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

There is a big difference to not using root access and not having root access. If you don't use root access, you can have the convenience of the companies expertise benefiting you. If you don't have root access, you are at their mercy, which may or may not turn out well for you.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to use root access but there is no reason not to have root access unless you can't be trusted. So mentally incompetent wards of the state shouldn't have root access, everyone else should though they may decide it is to their benefit not to use it.

Think about it like free speech - do you want to give up your right to free speech just because you don't feel talkative right now? That would be most foolish.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

Personally, I don't want root access to my phone. I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

That's a false choice.

This is ripe for a car analogy actually. You can pop the hood, swap in OEM parts, and tinker to your hearts content, and accept the consequences. Or you can leave it alone, and have it serviced exclusively by factory trained technicians in factory authorized dealers.

The point is, most people leave their engines unmodified (and receive the security of the factory stock maintained engine), but EVERYONE has the freedom to pop the hood.

Why exactly do you think you need to give up that freedom?

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[maxume]

I think you are framing it in the wrong direction. The current market situation is that the freedom you speak of is not present.

So why do we need to fight for it?

(I certainly prefer devices that I can mess around with, and I probably won't participate in a walled garden like the ones Apple is building, but the people buying iPads don't think that they 'need to give up that freedom', they simply want the shiny and don't care about the freedom (so 'need' doesn't even enter into the analysis of it))

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[masmullin]

best.car.analogy.ever!

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point is that some of the people buying IPads do want the freedom.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly do you think you need to give up that freedom?

Because in this case, the "car" that gives me the freedom to switch parts is kind of crap, and I can't figure out how to get it to do many of things I need. And the freedom itself doesn't offer me anything that I already need or want, nor does it seem like a worth-while tradeoff (for my needs) for the alternative, which is...

The "car" that doesn't give me this freedom is focused on making the few parts I can choose from work *really* well, and saves me the time of figuring it out myself, and manages to anticipate functionality I didn't know that I would find useful -- in a way that I can easily discover it for myself.

Granted, this car analogy is described in black and white, whereas in reality, there are shades of gray, but the two options do tend to personify the given descriptions.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[maxume]

Sure. But they need to recognize the risk inherent in the "buy and bitch" approach.

For example, Stallman is careful to purchase hardware that he feels maximizes his freedom, rather than hope that the manufacturer will come around after he complains.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[GlassHeart]

Your car analogy is a good one, let's take it further. Now let's assume that most people like to add parts to their car engines without any understanding, just like today's computer users download random crap on the Internet to install. You assume that people will fall into two camps: knowledgeable ones who pop the hood to tinker, and ignorant ones who leave it entirely alone. Your assumption is largely correct with cars (although a relative has been asked by his mechanic to stop tinkering), but quite wrong with computers.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it annoys the repair workers when people screw with their engines and makes them difficult to fix.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[pla]

There are many items that may benefit from web-access that don't need full/open access.

"Need"?

This has nothing to do with "need". People buy internet enabled phones to, y'know, use the internet. Not to play in a very pretty garden with very high walls.


I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

Same here - Thus I have a $19.95 "dumb" phone that always works for its single purpose - Making phone calls (I'll admit I've used it as an alarm clock a few times, too, but sure as hell didn't pay extra for that functionality - And it doesn't refuse to let me set it for before 7am because the manufacturer likes to sleep in). If, however, I wanted internet access from it, I'd feel pretty pissed off that I couldn't get to a third of the internet because some CEO has a bug up his butt about interpreted code.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

Really, I think all apple has to do is ship iphones with 'use app store only' turned on in options, and it can set up its walled garden app store, advertise the hell out of it, and make it the standard. Do all that and most 'ignorant' people will stay in the garden.

Top that up with making it easy to reset the device back to a supported state. Then if people get out and things go sour its a quick fix.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Bing Tsher E]

A better analogy is that people like knowing that there are nine or ten completely separate businesses within a half hour of where they live that they can go to have their car serviced. They aren't locked in to only have service done at the Dealer. In fact, they can even buy the parts themselves to do a lot of the maintenance, if their time is worth less than the money.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Kristoph]

I could buy a car I can fix or I could buy a MUCH better car I have no hope of fixing given my skill set.

That's the choice we all have.

The iPhone is a choice like anything else. You don't like it, don't buy it.

K

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[RoadNotTaken]

OK well how about a refrigerator that can access recipe sites via the web. Or your car's navigation system that can get your routes from your desktop via the web. These things are coming. Would you argue that all of these devices should allow the user to have full access to the entire web and all the problems that may come with it? Do you want to get a virus on your refrigerator?

Now, I think whether or not a phone is such an appliance is an open and interesting question. But surely you think there are SOME devices that should be closed and only have access to certain protocols/sites.

Steve Jobs is in favor of closing off one device that has numerous other important functions, not the whole internet....

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, most people leave their engines unmodified (and receive the security of the factory stock maintained engine), but EVERYONE has the freedom to pop the hood.
Why exactly do you think you need to give up that freedom?

The ability to "pop the hood" for modern vehicles is roughly equivalent to the ability to open the case on an iPad or Thinkpad. Doing so doesn't make it "open" like the FSF describes "open". Confusion on this point is misguided at best.

I spend my dollars on the best product. Most often for computing devices I spend money on Apple products. They are the best products for my needs. Last time I checked it wasn't illegal to choose something other than Apple products. When it is illegal, I'll consider your arguments. Until then, you simply are spouting noise.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[bennomatic]

And some subset of users of Apple iProducts 'jailbreak" them. Sounds like they have freedom, too. And Apple has the freedom not to support that activity. Everyone's free. Free not to buy a company's products, free to modify them if they don't need vendor support. Free Free Free!

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

And some subset of users of Apple iProducts 'jailbreak" them. Sounds like they have freedom, too.

Jailbreaking your phone is like buying a car with a locked hood, and a contract not to open it. The fact that you can still take a crowbar to it when you get home and likely not get sued for it is not: 'sounds like they have freedom'.

Freedom is having the right or privilege to do something. Being able to get away with doing something is not freedom, and relying on being able to get away with something as a substitute for a right/privilege will eventually fail you.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most people are not in the habit of handing the keys to their car over to any random party that claims a need to install some unspecified modification under the hood in order for their car to get to the desired destination.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[kramerd]

To be fair, you have the ability to pop the hood, but it might void the warranty. By which I mean it will void the warranty if you use unauthorized parts or change the spec so you are no longer within factory standards (yes, even for the radio, you can't replace the speakers if they affect the gas mileage, now your headlights don't need to be replaced when they fail 2 years before the end of warranty).

Same as your cellphone. You can tinker however you want, but if that breaks it (or could have broken it), you are SOL.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that:
1) no one is going to void your warranty if you pop the hood of your car;
2) you don't need to break the DMCA to pop the hood of your car;
3) you don't see people blogging about how cool the fact that they can't pop the hood of their car is.

I remind you that, outside of Steve's reality distortion field, people actually expect hardware they bought to be "fully theirs".

Once, Benjamin Franklin said something along the lines of "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither".

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[mjwx]

And some subset of users of Apple iProducts 'jailbreak" them. Sounds like they have freedom, too

Until the next update.

If I use a third party spark plug in my Toyota, they aren't going to send a guy around to ensure that I've used the correct component. In fact Toyota will still honour the warranty. That is freedom in the context of this conversation.

Jailbreaking is not "freedom". It's just loosening the chains, you're still tied up and the chains will be tightened the next time the guard does an update. Even a Jailbroken Iphone is beholden to Apple.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Registered Coward v2]

Personally, I don't want root access to my phone. I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

That's a false choice.

This is ripe for a car analogy actually. You can pop the hood, swap in OEM parts, and tinker to your hearts content, and accept the consequences. Or you can leave it alone, and have it serviced exclusively by factory trained technicians in factory authorized dealers.

The point is, most people leave their engines unmodified (and receive the security of the factory stock maintained engine), but EVERYONE has the freedom to pop the hood.

Why exactly do you think you need to give up that freedom?

Because I simply want my device to work; and do not want to pay any extra or be inconvenienced by others using their freer device.

To your car analogy; I could care less what you do to your car; until you decide to widen it 10 feet and block traffic on the pay road I use; or make it go 200mph on the same road and cause an accident, or put in a gigawatt stereo that I can here a mile away.

More to the point; Apple is taking away none of your freedoms; they are offering a specific user experience for a specific fee. You are free to chose to buy it or not; but they do not need to cater to every desire of every customer.

In the end; you get to vote with your dollars; which is a real measure of freedom. People make those choices every day, and cost / convenience / performance win out. I see very few Linux advocates build a laptop from scratch so they can have their own 100% free solution; it's simply too costly and time consuming; so they compromise by buying an existing machine and then get Linus up and running. Of course, if they have problems getting it up and running then they have no room to complain to the manufacturer about their lack of support any more than someone who mods a car and then has a problem has to expect the manufacturer to solve the problem. I chose a Mac because it works; and therefore I can spend my time making money. There are trade-offs, but I can live with them because the overall experience meets MY needs. I like Linux, but it simply takes too much time to get and keep it working and trying to find workable alternatives to the programs I need to make it a viable business solution, FOR ME. If it works for you, great. You have the freedom top chose your platform.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[pla]

OK well how about a refrigerator that can access recipe sites via the web.

That sounds like a great feature... But if I want to play cheesy flash games or even look at porn while standing in front of my refrigerator, my call, not Steverinos.

For the car example, you could arguably make a case that non-relevant browsing counts as a safety issue. But only while moving... Again, if I want to play cheesy flash games or look at porn while parked in my garage, my choice.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[drinkypoo]

This is ripe for a car analogy actually.

No, it isn't.

You can pop the hood, swap in OEM parts, and tinker to your hearts content, and accept the consequences.

It's illegal to make emissions modifications in some states, without approved parts... i.e. they paid taxes, mostly in the form of application fees. These fees must be paid every year to get a new C.A.R.B. E.O. number, even if the parts have not changed, nor has the engine upon which they are installed. I have an ATS 088 Turbo kit. It is an upgrade for the ATS 085. ATS 085 was made in 1985 and has new E.O. numbers for '86 and '87, for which filing fees were paid, though neither the engine they were installed upon nor the kit changed one whit. The CARB signed off on each new year without testing, because nothing changed... but they still get paid, even though nothing changed. In '88 they changed it and went through a whole new application process. Each subsequent year up until 1993 or 1994 or whenever the Powerstroke took over for the 6.9/7.3 liter International motor (actually, the powerstroke is based on the same block, then modified, but never mind that) the kit was simply blessed by the CARB again, because nothing had changed on kit or truck. I have a '92 and there's no difference in the turbo kit or its installation from '88. They still had to fork over cash every year for certification of that fact.

Or in other words, it's all about the money. Jobs' goal is to stop you from using flash to access boatloads of free apps that don't go through the store, because then he can't even advertise to you.

Or you can leave it alone, and have it serviced exclusively by factory trained technicians in factory authorized dealers.

False dichotomy proving that an automotive analogy does not fit here. By law you can have your car serviced anywhere, using OE-spec parts, without voiding your warranty, due in part thanks to the Magnuson-Moss warranty act. The same is true of commodity computers.

The point is, most people leave their engines unmodified (and receive the security of the factory stock maintained engine), but EVERYONE has the freedom to pop the hood.

But numerous states put the modifications you're permitted to make in a walled garden... though none are so egregious as California, where I live... but since we have more people and more cars than anywhere else in the nation, it's relevant.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

It's illegal to make emissions modifications in some states, without approved parts...

Not quite. As far as I know its illegal to license those vehicles for street use. You are free to make the changes. Its a fine point to be sure, but the more important and relevant aspect is that you are free to do whatever you want within the confines of state legislation vs having a 'thou shalt not do anything not approved by the ford motor company' contract.

Further, cell phones, even the most open ones you can buy have equivalent restraints. After all you cannot legally use one after they are modified to operate on unsanctioned frequencies, or at different transmission level, etc.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[JAlexoi]

I'm sorry, but you are likening Apple's restrictions to those of law. This leads me to believe that you must be a brainwashed fanboy. Or you just decided to write a lot of text out of context.

By law you can have your car serviced anywhere, using OE-spec parts, without voiding your warranty, due in part thanks to the Magnuson-Moss warranty act. The same is true of commodity computers.

And still Mac Mini is not serviceable without voiding the warranty.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[JAlexoi]

I'm happy to give up full freedom on my phone in exchange for it NEVER failing to do what I need it to do.

And iPhone still does fail, therefore you gave away you freedom for what? Pretty promises? Good for you!

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[cyber-vandal]

Does it? http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9127978/Apple_iPhone_Jailbreak_hack_violates_the_law

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Jobs' goal is to stop you from using flash to access boatloads of free apps that don't go through the store, because then he can't even advertise to you.

Excuse me? Flash has been excluded from the iPhone from day 1, long before iAd was a gleam in Steve's eye.

If he was interested in squashing ad competitors he'd have disallowed AdMob and other advertising for mobile firms years ago when 2.0 came out.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[sixsixtysix]

this makes too much sense. so it all comes back to where they can and can't get paid.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[sixsixtysix]

If I use a third party spark plug in my Toyota, they aren't going to send a guy around to ensure that I've used the correct component.

sure, RIGHT NOW they won't. give it awhile. i see a bleak future where everything is licensed and eualed.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Wovel]

In many cases your Warranty is exactly that..

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Wovel]

One other point..As of today there is not a working production implementation of Flash on ANY mobile OS. How is that Apple's fault?

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Wovel]

Since no smartphone supports flash as of today..Your argument is umm silly. The best mobile device to access the Internet, right now today is in fact the iPhone.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[mjwx]

sure, RIGHT NOW they won't. give it awhile. i see a bleak future where everything is licensed and eualed.

Ignoring the fact that auto companies have already been slapped down for trying this, if we do nothing to stop the likes of Apple from attaining that future we'll end up getting it.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

In many cases your Warranty is exactly that..

But nobody disputes that I have the right to invalidate my warranty. Apple actually disputes that I even have the right to make modifications. They aren't saying "You may do it, but it may void your warranty", they are saying "You may not do it."

That is a big difference.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[vux984]

I could buy a car I can fix or I could buy a MUCH better car I have no hope of fixing given my skill set.

Just because YOU can't figure out how to fix the much better car doesn't mean all of us can't. And I hate to burst your bubble, but an iphone is not some magical future phone that only apple engineers could hope to figure out.

That's the choice we all have.

Its a false choice. Some of us can fix either car.

The iPhone is a choice like anything else. You don't like it, don't buy it.

Another false choice. If I don't like it I have more options available than 'don't buy it'. I can also stand on a soapbox and tell other people that its bad model so they don't buy it. I can also apply pressure to a government that represents my interests to weigh in on my behalf.

Personally, I like things like emissions standards, and the fact that its illegal for my bank to require me to have their life insurance to get a mortgage from them (tying), and that lead isn't allowed in childrens toys...

I really doubt 'don't like it don't buy it' all by itself would have accomplished any of this stuff.

Maybe you believe the market will really address everything, and that 'don't like it, don't buy it' would lead to a better world. I wish there was someplace you could go live like that. But I have little interest in being there with you.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Gilmoure]

But Apple can force everyone to only use iPhones and then what will you do? It'll be like that SNL skit where Steve Marten gets that big tv installed and then a face is making him do jumping jacks all day long.

Re:No closed OSes ever??

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh. . . jail breaking an iPhone is illegal. as in something you are not free to do. as is something that you -could- go to jail for helping people do.

This has never been a "jailbreak your iphone if you don't need vendor support, it's a "if you jailbreak, we will brick your iPhone if we can, and we are legally pursuing those who help you jail break it"

Typical con

[DNS-and-BIND]

This is pretty typical for a confidence man or a salesman - he doesn't ask "do you want my product or not" but rather, "do you want the green one, or the blue one?" The trick is accepting the false premise in the first place. As soon as you try to follow the red queen as it jumps around from left, right, and center, the con man has you.

Re:Typical con

[Gilmoure]

I thought the question was Green or Blue.

When did Red enter in to it?

Re:Typical con

[DNS-and-BIND]

Never underestimate the stupidity of ordinary slashdot commenters. The "red queen jumping around" part was an incredibly obvious reference to the game of three card monte, a well-known scam that only suckers or Marxists would fall for.

It is a choice

[cbreak]

Apple is presenting users with a false choice between Adobe's proprietary software and Apple's walled garden.

It is a real choice, but there are obviously more options to chose from than the enumerated two.

Re:It is a choice

[oiron]

A false restriction of choice, then.

It's not between "closed flash" and "closed implementation of HTML5 with patent-encumbered H.264", but between "closed flash", "closed H.264" and "open Theora". Yes, we know that Theora itself may be encumbered, but if someone has a patent on it, let them speak out and then we shall see.

Re:It is a choice

[bennomatic]

Yes. This is a much more accurate description of the events. Mod parent up insightful.

Re:Ol' Jobby-Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel! :)

Right != Ability

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have proprietary software from a vendor I trust than the legal right and theoretical ability to edit software code. For most applications I don't have the time, skill, or knowledge to fix problems I find. For example, I'm still dependent on Mozilla for upgrades, new features, and bug fixes to Firefox. Individuals can submit patches, but Mozilla still has the ability to reject them. Users could fork the code, and I'm sure some have, but how often will that solve my specific problem. But I'm not worried about these limitations because so far I trust Mozilla.

As for Apple vs Adobe, I have my opinion. Neither are perfect. But we should be criticizing them when they abuse users whether or not their code is proprietary.

It's a matter of money

[CityZen]

Say what you want about Jobs, but one thing is clear: he's a businessman first and foremost. He knows how to make money. Regardless of what he may say about Flash, the decision to keep it off certain Apple products is a business decision that is aimed at making Apple more profitable.

Re:It's a matter of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you want about Jobs, but one thing is clear: he's a businessman first and foremost. He knows how to make money. Regardless of what he may say about Flash, the decision to keep it off certain Apple products is a business decision that is aimed at making Apple more profitable.

Of course but it's the motivation behind it. He doesn't want shitty bloated closed flash on his hardware because it makes the product look bad. So yah it's about making money but why shouldn't it be? No company is going to make a product as refinded and useful as the iphone and then just not protect it. Comparing flash to apple hardware isn't fair either. If I want to watch video on the web I pretty much have to put up with flash. If I want a phone or and os I don't have to buy apple. Simple as that.

Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

For example:

A free Web needs free software. You cannot have a free Web if your access to the software you use to engage the Web is limited to an arbitrary number of computers, or if you are not allowed to conduct business on the Web using the software, or if you are forbidden from asking someone to develop additional features you need.

The web is a separate entity to the client software that accesses it. If somebody accesses the "free web" with a proprietary client, that doesn't make the web any less free or open. The "free web" is dependent on open standards, not the open source nature of browsers. As long as open source browsers exist, I don't see what the FSF's problem is, users still have a choice.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[MrHanky]

Users don't have the choice to get support for Theora video on Apple's iWhatever platform, for instance. So if "the free web" wants to support Apple, "the free web" needs to support the proprietary h.264. Does "the free web" have the resources to support both Theora and h.264 at the same time? If not, either Apple's customers have been denied access to the free web, or free software support of the free web is impossible, which makes the free web remarkably unfree.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is fine as long as the web site is accessible to any software. But it goes south in a big hurry if specific software is required to access any part of it. Which is a common problem with either of the two companies this thread is about. Yes, the FSF definitely has a complaint here.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

Users don't have the choice to get support for Theora video on Apple's iWhatever platform, for instance.

And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?

o if "the free web" wants to support Apple, "the free web" needs to support the proprietary h.264

And yet Firefox supports the proprietary Flash plugins. Outside of certain sites, the web isn't particularly "free."

If not, either Apple's customers have been denied access to the free web, or free software support of the free web is impossible, which makes the free web remarkably unfree.

Many of Apple's customers are denied access to certain web elements because of the lack of Flash support. But there is full support for the "free" web if your definition of that web is open standards. But video formats are an entirely different kettle of fish. HTML doesn't define video formats, much as it doesn't define image formats. It's a tangential argument.

What I really don't get is why there is so much outrage over H.264, but nobody is complaining about FOSS browsers supporting Flash.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[masmullin]

incorrect. since the webbrowser is what the user interacts with directly. If the webbrowser so choses, it can limit access to this "free web." This access limitation could be purposeful or it could be a bug, either way, the user is impeded.

with a free webbrowser the user can fix the bug, or change the code away from the purposeful limitiation.

The user is not free with a proprietary software accessing a free web.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[masmullin]

And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?

Incorrect. The users have the option of changing the code themselves and buying whatever personal licence they need to use the H.264. Thats the point!

The Mozilla guys just haven't done that for you... BUT YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF! you can find the firefox code here (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.6rc2/source/)

Have at it. Thats freedom baby!

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

Incorrect. The users have the option of changing the code themselves and buying whatever personal licence they need to use the H.264. Thats the point!

That's a pretty pathetic point. Mozilla says that they don't want you to use H.264, so the solution is to code it yourself, and buy a license? Not exactly user-friendly.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

since the webbrowser is what the user interacts with directly. If the webbrowser so choses, it can limit access to this "free web."

Do you have a reading comprehension problem? My web browser deliberately limits access to ads, and I like this. That doesn't make the web any less "free."

Do you really not understand this simple concept? The web is a different entity to the client software that accesses it. Different web browsers have different features and different restrictions. This is completely tangential to whether the web itself is "free."

Are you saying the web would be more free if my web browser forced me to watch ads that I don't want to watch?

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[thoughtsatthemoment]

What I really don't get is why there is so much outrage over H.264, but nobody is complaining about FOSS browsers supporting Flash.

Because FOSS is a utopia that will never be realized so they just selectively "tolerate" a few offenders from time to time.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[jkabbe]

The FSF's problem is that they want everything to be free and open -- and aren't willing to draw lines anywhere in the middle. Sometimes they remind me of PETA complaining about Obama swatting a fly. It's ok to promote free and open software. But to act like we should all accept inferior software just because its "open" is, well, cuckoo.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[oiron]

And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?

I think that should be obvious - Mozilla has literally no way of offering H.264 without illegally implementing patented code.

And yet Firefox supports the proprietary Flash plugins. Outside of certain sites, the web isn't particularly "free."

Not support so much as allow; something that Apple refuses to do on the iPad and iPhone...

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?

Because it's not their fault? They have nothing to do with the stupid software patent licensing restrictions that prevent them from offering that option.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[macshit]

Users don't have the choice to get support for Theora video on Apple's iWhatever platform, for instance.

And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?

Because in Apple's case it's an explicit choice they're making, to exclude free formats in the hope that they can prevent them from becoming popular. They could easily include them if they decided it was a good idea.

In Firefox's case, they can't (legally) include it.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[MrHanky]

The difference is that Mozilla can't legally include h.264 support, but they can and do legally implement support for third party plug-ins. Adobe makes one such plug-in, Sun's Java is another. Apple's HTML5 implementation is non-free only, which is dangerous to the free world if their products become as popular as the hype suggests.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[Anonymous Coward]

h.264 is patent encumbered. Mozilla can't use it. There is no such problem standing in Apple's way when it comes to supporting Theora, it wouldn't even cost them anything.

Firefox does not support flash, firefox supports plugins. Adobe writes to a plugin for firefox. Adobe Flash supports firefox, not the other way around.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

I think that should be obvious - Mozilla has literally no way of offering H.264 without illegally implementing patented code.

Why would they have to implement H.264 itself, rather than allow the user to add it via a plug-in, just as with Flash?

Besides, your statement is not true - what's to stop Mozilla licensing H.264 just like everybody else does?

Not support so much as allow;

Yet this is what Mozilla is saying - they won't allow H.264 support via the HTML5 video tag. So, if you're upset about Apple not allowing Flash on the iPhone, it would be hypocritical to also not be upset at Mozilla for not allowing H.264 in Firefox.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

They have nothing to do with the stupid software patent licensing restrictions that prevent them from offering that option.

How is Mozilla prevented from offering H.264?

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

In Firefox's case, they can't (legally) include it.

Why not? It's not like they would be denied the right to license it.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

The difference is that Mozilla can't legally include h.264 support

Why not?

t, but they can and do legally implement support for third party plug-ins.

So, why won't they allow third-party plug-ins for H.264 via the HTML5 video tag, but they will allow the Flash plug-in?

Apple's HTML5 implementation is non-free only, which is dangerous to the free world

Dangerous to the free world? That's about the worst hyperbole I've ever heard. What, people's human rights and democracy will be taken away if a browser supports a non-FOSS CODEC? Again, why is H.264 such a dangerous threat, but Flash is not? How about GIF?

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[dangitman]

There is no such problem standing in Apple's way when it comes to supporting Theora, it wouldn't even cost them anything.

Incorrect. Theora may very well be patent encumbered, and it could cost Apple a lawsuit.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[masmullin]

So? The point is that you CAN if you need to. With proprietary software you simply CANNOT.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[masmullin]

Do you have a basic comprehension problem? Do you RTFA ever?

Do you really not understand this simple concept that the web itself cannot be free if the portal that accesses it is not free.

I am saying that the web would be LESS FREE if your web browser forced you to watch ads that you dont want to watch.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[drinkypoo]

I really don't see why you couldn't have a firefox extension that would handle this by rewriting the video tag. It seems like you could do it with greasemonkey. Can't you embed an H.264 video and play it with VLC just by embedding the object in the page, right now?

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[maccodemonkey]

I think that should be obvious - Mozilla has literally no way of offering H.264 without illegally implementing patented code.

Sure they do. Almost all the platforms they support come with a H.264 decoder. They just need to use the decoder that comes with the OS. That is why OS vendors include the library in the first place, after all, so that software vendors don't have to pony up for the H.264 license themselves.

If they didn't want to merge this into the main branch they could even implement it as a plugin.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[MrHanky]

The difference is that Mozilla can't legally include h.264 support

Why not?

Because it's patented.

So, why won't they allow third-party plug-ins for H.264 via the HTML5 video tag, but they will allow the Flash plug-in?

Mozilla allows for Flash because it allows for plug-ins. It's free software, not North Korea or Apple. The HTML5 video tag, however, is part of the HTML5 specification, so if you want to support HTML5 you need to support the video tag. If you do that through a plug-in, you don't support HTML5.

Dangerous to the free world? That's about the worst hyperbole I've ever heard. What, people's human rights and democracy will be taken away if a browser supports a non-FOSS CODEC? Again, why is H.264 such a dangerous threat, but Flash is not? How about GIF?

Nice strawman you got there. I've never said there's a problem with Apple and Microsoft supporting h.264. Since you depend on that assertion to "win" the argument, I can only conclude you're a very dishonest person.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[isilrion]

Besides, your statement is not true - what's to stop Mozilla licensing H.264 just like everybody else does?

Is there any licencing option for H.264 that would allow Firefox to remain free software? I highly doubt that, but you seem to know better than Mozilla's and the FSF's lawyers. Please, point them at that option, I'm sure everyone will be grateful to be able to put this matter behind.

(But, if there is no licencing option for Mozilla... then it is your statement the one that is not true.)

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[Wovel]

Indeed it may be. The Theora developers seem to think that since it was coded from the ground up, it can not possibly infringe on any patents. The Theora developers would be wrong. People think Jobs is spreading FUD, he was actually responding to a call to use Theora, which is something they obviously considered. I doubt Apple will be part of the group going after Theora for it's patent violations, but I also doubt he just made it up as many seem to think.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[oiron]

Since they didn't, apparently that's a legal minefield too...

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[maccodemonkey]

How so? Mac developers use QTKit all the time, which uses H.264 as it's primary format, and no one has gotten sued. Windows 7 just added H.264 for it's media playback frameworks, and I haven't heard of anyone getting sued over there...

I really don't think there is a good technical reason why the Mozilla folks don't implement H.264. I do think they are doing it for political reasons though. As soon as they implement H.264, H.264 is supported in all major browsers, meaning H.264 will when. They're purposely being the wrench in the gears to stop H.264 from being standardized.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[maccodemonkey]

when = win. I can spell. Really...

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[oiron]

That's because Apple and Microsoft have paid for the licenses for H.264, as have (in all probability) any other large enough companies who develop on those platforms.

Or are you suggesting that Mozilla ignore a possible legal minefield, because "everyone else is doing it"?

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[jo_ham]

H.264 is not proprietary.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[jo_ham]

They can pass off the video handling to a plugin, or to the underlying OS. If only Firefox had some built in way of doing that, that would make it possible....

"literally" - I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[jo_ham]

Sure they can. They can just buy a licence. They quite demonstrably *can* include it if they wanted.

The Mozilla folks are *also* making a choice - for different reasons to Apple, but it is very definitely a choice, not a legal blockage that is giving them no options. They are in exactly the same position as Apple.

Re:Article doesn't make sense

[Gilmoure]

It's their choice, not yours. You don't have the right to chose non-free/open software.

Search and Replace per Mr Jalopy

[MauiMaker]

Mr Jalopy posted a note on doing a search & replace of Adobe w/Apple and Flash w/closed. It reads rather well. Probably NOT what Steveo intended but if the turtleneck fits...

From: Steve

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your codec. No big deal

Steve

Sent from my iPad

Think about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash video is an embed in an embed. First you add the flash, then you embed the video in the flash file.

Everybody has Jobs all wrong

[tkrotchko]

Steve Job's isn't a tech visionary, he's a *salesman*! That's all you need to know.

Re:Everybody has Jobs all wrong

[MichaelSmith]

This was the bit of pure luck which got Apple off the ground. If Jobs and Woz had been even five years older Jobs would have laid all these NDAs and contracts and such onto Woz and he would have bailed out of the partnership in disgust.

And Apple wouldn't have happened. It needed the tech guy and the marketing guy to be young and immature enough not to hate each other.

Re:Everybody has Jobs all wrong

[Cronock]

Steve Job's isn't a tech visionary, he's a *salesman*! That's all you need to know.

A salesman that has an uncanny sense of knowing where the market is going, the flexibility to quickly adapt and be there right on time, and a company behind him that churns out products that continue to be top notch in satisfaction year after year.

Re:Everybody has Jobs all wrong

[myowntrueself]

I think that Steve Jobs looks at what L Ron Hubbard achieved and wants to do better.

Re:Everybody has Jobs all wrong

[JAlexoi]

That is the whole point. We should not listen to him on tech matters. He's absolutely useless(his stance on language limitations has proven).
And that is why his blog posts, emails and opinions on technical matters are totally irrelevant.

Re:Free Software is up to the task

[Anonymous Coward]

But proprietary vendors don't want the competition. Steve Jobs mentioned the MPEG-LA consortium is looking through their patents to see if they can shutdown Ogg Theora before it takes root. OS/X is based on Free Software. The only thing that would be necessary to complete the task if if Mr. Jobs relicensed the remainder of OS/X (the Aqua interface for example) under a Free license and everybody would win -- Mac Heads (great documentary!) would get their desktop, Free Software people would benefit from the infusion of cool software and the remainder of the proprietary software people would have to scramble to keep up.

But... I don't see that in the future with Mr. Jobs at the head of Apple. Based on what I have observed he sees Free Software only as a means to an end --- selling more Apple hardware (which is a good thing) but only on his terms of usage (not so good for the *rest of us* -- things like "Thou shalt not write flash, Thou shall not use a cross-compiler, etc. on the iphone.").

apple should drop that $99y just to come free apps

[Joe The Dragon]

apple should drop that $99y just to come free apps other phone systems do not have this level of lock in.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

apple needs to drop the App Store censorship too!!

[Joe The Dragon]

apple needs to drop the App Store censorship too!!

That is likely why no flash.

And that is whyyyyyyyy...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a PC. *snap snap* :)

"Life without walls..... Apple's walls..."

Re:And that is whyyyyyyyy...

[xororand]

Aye... and who needs Windows in a world without walls?

Re:Free Software is up to the task

[A. Bosch]

> But... I don't see that in the future with Mr. Jobs at the head of Apple.

No, me neither. Wozniak, maybe. Jobs, no. But you make an excellent point, thank you.

It's not a debate.

[DJCouchyCouch]

Steve Jobs told the world Apple's strategy and it's pretty darn unambiguous. No amount of bitching or pointing out holes in his letter will change that. Accept it and move on.

Re:It's not a debate.

[Bing Tsher E]

Part of 'moving on' is making the rest of the world around you aware of the shortcomings of Apple's strategy.

I mean, there are millions of less tech people out there who rely on us tech types to advise them and help them make the right choices. We have the right to, and are actually responsible to communicate and discuss and raise our objections to what we see as a bad deal.

Re:It's not a debate.

[Wovel]

Are there shortcomings? Why does everyone but me and Steve and like 3 other people seem to live in an alternate universe where Flash runs on all these mobile devices and the dang iPhone is just lagging behind?

Adobe MIGHT have flash working on Android by the Q4 2010, don't hold your breath. When would that update reach users?

Re:It's not a debate.

[Bing Tsher E]

Adobe MIGHT have flash working on Android by the Q4 2010, don't hold your breath. When would that update reach users?

If Adobe's practices are like every other software outfit's, obviously that would mean the update would reach users by about Q3 2010.

Re:apple should drop that $99y just to come free a

[larry bagina]

other phone systems don't have 185,000+ apps either.

Microsoft cant, Apple can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it not okay for Microsoft to offer only internet explorer with windows, but apple can restrict the flexibility of there OS to make you have to choose their software? Unconstitutional if your ask me.

Re:Microsoft cant, Apple can.

[grapeape]

Because Microsoft does not make its own hardware...it licenses its software to other vendors. If MS were to release a self contained PC/OS of their own they would be allowed to lock it down as tightly as they wanted.

The truth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Often the worst/inferior solutions for the masses are the best.

And often less is more, even when we sacrifice the ritual of trusted computing.

It's inevitable.

Steve jobs is a liar

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs has one reason and one reason only for disallowing Flash on his platforms: If flash could be run in the browser, the entire app market would fall apart--the same useless apps would be available for free on the internet. Apple wouldn't make any more from the app store. Anything else Stevo says about Flash is complete BS and misdirection. /story

Re:Steve jobs is a liar

[gyrogeerloose]

Steve Jobs has one reason and one reason only for disallowing Flash on his platforms: If flash could be run in the browser, the entire app market would fall apart--the same useless apps would be available for free on the internet. Apple wouldn't make any more from the app store. Anything else Stevo says about Flash is complete BS and misdirection. /story

It's already possible to write free apps for the iPhone/iPad using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and make them available on the Web and has been since the day the iPhone OS was released. So far, it hasn't made much of a dent in the number of apps available at the App Store. In fact, when Apple originally announced that Web Apps would be the only way to write for the iPhone, people screamed about it until they released a SDK.

In any case, Apple doesn't make all that much money on the App Store. It exists purely as a selling point for their hardware, which is where the real profit comes from.

Re:Steve jobs is a liar

[Wovel]

You can write completely free apps for the iPhone using XCode too.. Sure you have to join the developer program, but $99 a year for tools is cheap compared any equivalent flash tools.

Re:Steve jobs is a liar

[gyrogeerloose]

You can write completely free apps for the iPhone using XCode too. Sure you have to join the developer program, but $99 a year for tools is cheap compared any equivalent flash tools.

Oh, yeah, certainly. And the tools are actually a free download, the yearly fee is strictly for access to the App Store. The limitation for apps built in this way is that you have to distribute them via Apple's App Store. That's the one advantage to building Web apps--you can distribute them freely on the Web.

In any case, either sort of iPhone development is way cheaper than Flash ($599 for the authoring tools) or WiMo development, where not only do you have to buy the tools ($799 for Visual Studio) and pay a $99 yearly fee, you have to pay a $99 application fee for each app you wish to distribute in addition to the 30% cut Microsoft takes.

Re:Steve jobs is a liar

[gyrogeerloose]

Correction: the $99 yearly fee for iPhone development is for the signing key needed to distribute apps, not strictly for access to the App Store. You do get that as well, though.

Defending a closed Web?

[gig]

There is no choice when it comes to open standards. It's a Web developer's responsibility to build HTML5, it's a platform vendor's responsibility to include HTML5, it's a browser maker's responsibility to render HTML5, it's a tool-maker's responsibility to make their tools compliant with HTML5. The spec is not optional. Your website also has to use UTF-8 and TCP/IP and ISO MPEG-4.

Consumers use the Web now. Regular people with phones, not tech people with PC's. You can't ask them to patch their system, use an alternate browser, install a plug-in, update a plug-in, or do any kind of I-T work at all. The model is CD/DVD players. A CD put into a CD player has to work. You have to make your CD to Red Book spec, and CD Players have to be to Red Book spec. End of story.

Flash developers do not use the Flash tool to make Flash ... that is an Adobe conceit. They use Flash to make Web apps. In the HTML4 era (1999 through 2007), a Web app was HTML4 plus an embedded plug-in for Mac/PC. The entire Web was Mac/PC, and most users were techies. In the HTML5 era (2007 forward), a Web app is HTML5 on any unknown platform. The users are everybody. That is the reality. There are dozens of HTML5 platforms and only Mac/PC has a Flash plug-in. Adobe's FlashPlayer team is less than 8 people. How are that going to support dozens of platforms? How will the 3-4 updates per year be distributed to what will soon be 10 billion devices? Stop holding your breath.

What has to happen is Adobe has to upgrade their nonstandard, proprietary, closed Web app tool to export HTML5 Web apps. They have to respect the Web app spec just as music tool makers had to respect Red Book. End of story.

It's unbelievable to see FSF support a tool where developers write JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and include ISO MPEG-4 and wrap it up in a closed binary that only proprietary software from one vendor can render. Not to mention, Flash is 14 years old and has had 3 different owners. What if Microsoft buys Adobe (with cash) and screws it up even further, or Apple buys Adobe (with cash) and shuts it down? The Web cannot depend on a single $599 Mac/Windows tool to create and publish audio video. In 5 years, the Web will look like TV. Adobe cannot be the only one who makes VCR's. There is not even a Flash authoring tool for Linux!

Standards are not an issue of choice. See HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD which together killed the fucking DVD! No, we are not going to have both standard and nonstandard Web apps. There is only one Web, and it's open, and you can build and publish whatever you want, with any tools, on any platform, as long as you respect the HTML5 spec. Users can use any device, from any manufacturer, to view the Web, as long as that device respects the HTML5 spec. The lack of choice with regards to the spec enables unlimited choice in everything else. See the billion CD/DVD players and exponentially more media and the world enriched by music and movies. Now, we are doing that for the Web with HTML5.

 

Re:Defending a closed Web?

[Anonymous Coward]

Respect the HTML5 Spec? The HTML5 Era, since 2007? Are you fucking insane?

HTML5 is still a draft standard, and if people are throwing around the video tag on a few sites (not Facebook), that is no more remarkable than former support for IE- and Netscape-specific extensions back in the 90s. HTML5 is a long way from replacing the functionality of Flash on the internet.

Since when does the FSF support Flash? I guess even 5-digit UID users can be inveterate Apple fellators.

Re:Defending a closed Web?

[Bing Tsher E]

There is no choice when it comes to open standards. It's a Web developer's responsibility to build HTML5, it's a platform vendor's responsibility to include HTML5, it's a browser maker's responsibility to render HTML5, it's a tool-maker's responsibility to make their tools compliant with HTML5. The spec is not optional. Your website also has to use UTF-8 and TCP/IP and ISO MPEG-4.

Wow. I guess my hand edited HTML with some dashes of PHP in it is just plain immoral. And not only that, obsolete.

I wasn't aware we'd run the HTML5 flag up the pole, and that the infidels were being collected and shut up in a dungeon. I better take my site down fast.

Steve is correct

[Katchu]

Flash is an incredible CPU hog on my little Mac, it only has 2 CPUs. And Flash is the ONLY THING THAT CAN CRASH MY MAC!!! I just spent an hour last night repairing my HD because of Flash crashing and leaving two craps disconnected from the rest of the file system. If I never saw Flash again I'd be happy.

Re:Steve is correct

[pantherace]

If it crashes your Mac, it's not Flash's fault. Any Operating System should handle misbehaving applications. Sure, Flash may not be good, but blaming an OS' failing on an Application is ignorant. The Application should under almost any circumstance, not touch the file system directly, as you suggest happened to you. Any application that does should be required to run under a privileged account. Also, your assertion that flash is the only thing that can crash it, is highly unlikely, as any other application could do whatever flash did, and would likely cause your Operating System into a similar failure.

What you describe is a minor failure of Adobe's software, and a MAJOR failure of Apple's software. Either that, or it's a hardware failure... an Apple hardware failure.

Re:Steve is correct

[Katchu]

As I point out in a reply below, when Flash locks up my dual core Intel chip, I sometimes want the use of my computer after several minutes. The fault is mine in forcing a restart. A good OS should be tolerant of this, and there is a good recovery provided by OS X. It is just that Flash is the only thing that drives me to do this. I admit to using only several dozen applications, none of which cause this problem. I'm sure I could write one that did if I weren't so ignorant ;^). On my PCs, I find Flash happily consuming CPU cycles and memory long after the browser session has ended. That doesn't sound like a well-behaved application, but on the PC I enjoy running the task manager and killing rampant processes. Maybe Mac OS X needs to allow a few more CPU cycles to Activity Monitor. There is a way to force quit processes, but with a system locked up, I can't access that function before my patience has run out (several minutes). So maybe Mac OS X isn't a great cop in allowing Flash to take over. So Steve is apparently right. Don't let it take over. A more subtle approach would be to lock down Flash with the OS, but then the app that is depending on Flash to do its thing would be hanging waiting for Flash.

Re:Steve is correct

[jo_ham]

What he likely means is that crashes on OS X are mainly due to Flash, not that the whole system comes down. I haven't had a full on deadlock or a kernel panic on OS X for a very long time, and the last one I had was hardware failure, but I do have software issues from time to time. Looking back over my crash log, unexpected quits (crashes) are the very, very slanted towards the flash plugin. I have a couple of misbehaving apps in there (Illustrator CS crashes on startup in 10.6, and the Finder has occasionally barfed), but it's mainly flash.

In the time before Safari 4, a flash crash would bring down the browser for sure, these days, now that plugins for Safari are handled by a separate process a flash crash just brings down that process and often leaves Safari untouched.

What Flash *doesn't* do is bring down the whole OS when it crashes, but it by far the biggest contributor to process crashes on my box. When it crashes the processes just restart and everything carries on as normal. When the Finder crashes (very rarely, usually due to a funky file preview) you just have to wait a few seconds for launchd to bring it back up again and you carry on. Underlying stability of OS X is pretty good in crash situations.

Re:Free Software is up to the task

[zippthorne]

Maybe, but after Jobs basically ends Apple with your plan, what then?

Proprietary vendors don't want competition. They especially don't want competition from their own products sold by someone else!

It's the name of a logical fallacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

> It is a real choice, but there are obviously more options to chose from than the enumerated two.

It's called "false choice" because the limit on the number of choices is artificial. The fact that you actually can choose one of the options is irrelevant. The important part is that you have more than just the choices presented to you and someone is using false rhetoric to distract you from that fact.

So no, it really is a false choice, even though you really can choose one of the options presented to you (as well as other options not shown).

Re:It's the name of a logical fallacy.

[mr_matticus]

It's called "false choice" because the limit on the number of choices is artificial

Yeah, but in this case, it's the same "false choice" as asking someone whether they are traveling by car or taking public transit to a destination 25 miles away.

It's technically true that someone could bike or run, and some people might even advocate that biking is the "right" approach, but it's thoroughly impractical expectation that cars and public transit should shut down, and everyone should just bike.

I don't see anything in Jobs' letter that would preclude the use of free and unpatented standards in addition to, or in place of as a personal choice, but the FSF's notion that something like Theora is a practical option to the exclusion of H.264 is completely unrealistic, bordering on deluded.

Several Misconceptions

[sjobs]

Several Misconceptions H.264 is an open standard in that you are free to implement your own version of it for any platform that you see fit. It is also open in that no one company or group retains total control of the standard. While you may have to pay licensing costs to use any version of H.264, as I said, you are free to implement your own version (there is an open source version called x264). Also, the app store is the best way for Apple users to obtain quality software that is free of errata, defects or security holes at a reasonable cost. Adobe's Flash platform however, has several defects. One such defect is that it uses more battery life than it should on mobile platforms. Our devices are designed to be efficient and have a good battery life. With Flash, the battery life on our devices would be less than optimal. Flash also has several security holes, as is on the Mac and Windows. We do not intend to let a security ridden framework on our devices. I hope this cleared up any misconceptions you may have had.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[myowntrueself]

Also, the app store is the best way for Apple users to obtain quality software that is free of errata, defects or security holes at a reasonable cost.

You can add to that; free of any offense to Steve Jobs and his vision of the future direction of Apple or his personal ideas on propriety. Free of any apps that might compete with something that Apple has secretly planned. Free of apps that have names that Steve Jobs believe infringe on his copyright (eg with the word 'pad' in them; that word belongs to Steve Jobs).

Cool kind of freedom you have there.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

While you may have to pay licensing costs to use any version of H.264, as I said, you are free to implement your own version (there is an open source version called x264).

Yes, and the licencing is the problem. Due to its licencing, H.264 is incompatible with the design goals of the web. See the W3C's patent policy:

http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Licensing

Until H.264 can meet the W3C's licencing requirements for web standards, it will remain a poor technology choice for the web.

Apple's website used to have a page endorsing the W3C's patent policy at http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/. However, it appears to have been either moved or removed. Fortunately, it has been archived:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050407171053/www.apple.com/about/w3c/

I encourage Apple to stay true to that expressed commitment and support open, royalty-free media formats to contribute to building an open web.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[Protoslo]

x264 almost certainly violates MPEG-LA patents. Hope that clears things up for you...sjobs. What chucklehead modded this up?

Theora is only a viable alternative because it avoids the H.264 standard altogether.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[oiron]

Steve, if it's really you (and even if it's not)...

Several Misconceptions H.264 is an open standard in that you are free to implement your own version of it for any platform that you see fit. It is also open in that no one company or group retains total control of the standard. While you may have to pay licensing costs to use any version of H.264, as I said, you are free to implement your own version (there is an open source version called x264).

And free to be sued by MPEG-LA if I even try to distribute it? Strange definition of freedom you have going there...

If there were some sort of exception given for non-profit use/distribution, or something of that sort, yes, I'd agree with you...

Also, the app store is the best way for Apple users to obtain quality software that is free of errata, defects or security holes at a reasonable cost. Adobe's Flash platform however, has several defects. One such defect is that it uses more battery life than it should on mobile platforms. Our devices are designed to be efficient and have a good battery life. With Flash, the battery life on our devices would be less than optimal. Flash also has several security holes, as is on the Mac and Windows. We do not intend to let a security ridden framework on our devices. I hope this cleared up any misconceptions you may have had.

Alright, but as the end user, is it not my choice to use it, even if it'd drain my battery in a... Flash?

Right now, I've got an Android device, which also has a market, but it has a small configuration flag: "Unknown sources: Allow install of non-market applications". It's hidden deep enough in the settings that one can't trigger it accidentally, but it's there, just like the option to install Windows or Linux (or my own homebrew OS) on a Mac using Boot Camp is there.

I hope that this helps clear up any misunderstanding of what the community is complaining about right now.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[mbkennel]

Steve:We do not intend to let a security ridden framework on our devices.

Actually, they're your customer's devices. You get to keep their money.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Under US law source code is speech and speech doesn't violate patents. Furthermore there are no licensing fees just for implementing the codec, only for using or distributing more than 100k encoders/decoders and commercial broadcasts. x264 is widely used by Youtube, Facebook and other companies.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[Protoslo]

Youtube, Facebook, etc. all pay MPEG-LA licensing fees, no different from if they used CoreAVC or some other implementation. x264 is certainly fully encumbered by the patent pool, since it implements H.264.

Source code may be speech for the purposes of munitions export laws, but that doesn't bear on whether open source software can violate patents. If you undertake an unauthorized public performance of a current hit song, that is speech too--but you are still on the hook for royalty fees. Free speech can still violate copyright, and free software can still violate patents. Just because MPEG-LA doesn't sue certain parties, doesn't mean that it couldn't.

If Firefox, for example, included x264 to implement a hypothetical future HTML5 standard and didn't comply with MPEG-LA's licensing demands, even if Mozilla didn't distribute the binaries, it would be (almost certainly successfully) sued. That is the whole reason /. discusses this (again) every day.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[Wovel]

Make a commercially successful flash player and see how quickly Adobe drags you into court to collect their royalties. Theora will soon be tested, I doubt it will survive the coming patent challenge. Unfortunate, but people should be allowed to be paid for their work if they choose and not have their ideas borrowed for the sake of free software.

Re:Several Misconceptions

[oiron]

Operative point: their work, not mine (though of course, I don't work on video codecs)

That wasn't the point, anyway; I was arguing that even though the copyright of x264 is free, it wouldn't be of any help to free/open developers because the royalties are for the patent.

they also don't have nazi censorship!

[Joe The Dragon]

they also don't have nazi censorship!

Re:iFear...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're talking about Apple fanbois. Most likely if they didn't have Steve Jobs to verbally fellate, they would be cruising around in pairs in Mazda Miatas, wearing matching turtleneck sweaters over their pale, emaciated, hipster douchebag bodies. It's called a steak, gay boys. Try it sometime. And I'm not talking about tube steak, either.

The real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

What Jobs wants is to make the iPhone/iPad a unique experience so that people continue to buy iPhone/iPad. Everyone else wants the iPhone/iPad to be just like every other device thus eliminating the need for an iPhone/iPad.

One is innovation driven by capitalism.

The other is lack of innovation driven by ideology.

Steve Jobs is a cunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs is a cunt.
If you don't believe me just look at the way he treated his daughter, Lisa, until later in life when he changed his mind an threw cash at her.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[gyrogeerloose]

Okay, so he has been a dick in his personal life. That has nothing to do with the topic. If you found out that Linus kicked his dog* would you stop using Linux? Or, if you're a Windows user, it's a well-known fact that Steve Ballmer has a violent temper which sometimes manifests itself through flying furniture (he's also a terrible dancer but, then again, so is Steve Wozniac). Is that enough to make you stop using Windows?

Lots of people have personality flaws. Hell, everybody has personality flaws, including you and I. That's life, get over it.

* Hypothetical example, I'm not claiming he does.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[drinkypoo]

Okay, so he has been a dick in his personal life. That has nothing to do with the topic. If you found out that Linus kicked his dog* would you stop using Linux?

One thing is not remotely like the other. If I found out that Linus was trying to anticompetitively leverage software patents, I probably would switch to *BSD because of what it would likely mean for the future of Linux: nothing good. Likewise, while Steve Jobs is doing this, or for that matter, doing any of the other shit he's been doing to limit user choice, I would use something else. And I do.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[gyrogeerloose]

Sure, that's fine and makes perfect sense. But the post I was responding to was a complaint about Jobs's personal life.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[drinkypoo]

Sure, that's fine and makes perfect sense. But the post I was responding to was a complaint about Jobs's personal life.

I find that if a person is an asshole, or clueless, or willfully ignorant, or any of that stuff in one area of their life, it spreads to all areas. Jobs has always been a megalomaniac. When he came back to Apple there were numerous reports of dickish stuff like throwing Newtons and shouting "get these damned scribble pads out of my office!" I don't know about you but I can throw a newton (even a messagepad, with its nice ergonomic throwin' handle) a hell of a lot farther than a chair.

Right now Jobs is anticompetitively supporting H.264 as the sole "standard" for video in HTML5 video containers. That's an asshole move, and if it succeeds, it's going to affect all of us negatively. So I'd say Jobs being an asshole is pretty relevant to users.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[gyrogeerloose]

You seem to be missing the entire point of this sub-thread, then changing it's direction to make your own, entirely different point.

I'm not saying that Jobs isn't an arrogant dick--I sure as hell couldn't work for him--only that a post complaining about his treatment of his daughter isn't relevant to this thread.

I can't claim to hang with the same crowd as CEOs of large, successful corporations but I've met and occasionally worked with a few in the past, mostly by random chance. With only a couple of exceptions, they all exhibited a degree of of megalomaniacal dickishness. It seems to come with the position. If one were to exclude buying a service or product on the basis of the personal behavior of the CEO of the company that developed it, he or she might have go live in a cave.

Re:Steve Jobs is a cunt

[jo_ham]

Theoretically though, if he announced tomorrow that the iPhone OS was getting VP3 support, what would your reaction be?

I think that GP has a point that regardless of what Jobs does, the level of resentment from some people here (not necessarily you) and at the FSF will twist his meaning. If he announces Theora support I'm sure someone will claim it is an Embrace, Extend, Extinguish move in some way.

The current video situation on the Web is not ideal - H.264 is technically excellent, but it is patented. It is the "next mp3" - ubiquitous, and hampered for free software. It is a big step forward from what we did have though, where WMV (as just-different-enough to mp4 to be broken) stood a chance of becoming the defacto standard.

Little steps - HTML5 container first, then video formats.

out of curiosity

[llamapater]

i understand it's anticompetitive and all that but they seem to let people submit apps(http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action) looks like there using java or something how hard would it be for someone to write a plugin wrapper for flash to work? or would they just not let that in the app store? even with a bad contract the volume of people buying that plugin wrapper should cover cost heck adobe could write one and suddenly there getting a quazi royalty from apple customers for something they normally give away could call it the smug tax and just mentioning this because some comments i'm reading are acting like you can only browse early 90's html pages on the i-(whatever we were talking about) without flash there are ways to get a nice looking web page with interactivity without flash and these other methods tend to load faster something important on a hand help computer buy a book on CGI and dynamically produced html pages FFS

Re:out of curiosity

[jo_ham]

Imagine trying to run underwater, assuming you are weighted down so that you can stand on the bottom of a swimming pool.

You running the length of the pool underwater compared to someone standing on the side doing the same thing should give you an indication of just how bad the performance of flash on OS X-based hardware is, combined with mobile computing power, even with hardware acceleration for h.264.

Thoughts on Horses

[Anonymous Coward]

You know who else was a *salesman* who kinda saw the trends early?

Henry Ford

Re:Thoughts on Horses

[Draek]

And Bill Gates, too. Except he was more successful than Jobs will ever be ;)

Let's assume "self-serving" has a meaning

[xigxag]

In what way is the FSF agenda "self-serving"?

Re:Let's assume "self-serving" has a meaning

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

The FSF agenda is self-serving in that it forwardly promotes its own ideology without regards to the impacts it has on others who may or may not agree with the FSF agenda. Additionally, it tries to bring GNU/free into the debate when it doesn't necessarily need to be there, only so that it can make statements about the GNU definition of free, and why it thinks people should care.

(I'm not saying people should or should not care, but it's kinda annoying. It's much like if a Audi enthusiast and a Nissan enthusiast were talking about 4-wheel-drive system designs and a third party (like the FSF) chimes in to make a legitimate comment about each, and a speech about why everybody should buy American cars.)

Now, obviously, the FSF isn't the only self-serving organization, since well, capitalism pretty much requires a company like Adobe or Apple to place its own interests pretty darn high in the list in order to make money.

Want an example?
How about the FSF open letter to Google to open source VP8? A simple, "hey, we know you bought On2. Can you open source it? Because that would help settle the H264/HTML5 patent issue once and for all, and would let the web have one baseline video standard. That'd make things easier since we can't all pay for H264. That'd be cool."
Instead, the FSF goes on for a page making it sound like an epic battle and even a little threatening. To me, the tone is pretty much "Open Source VP8. You know you can turn the tides in industry. Do it. You're either on our side or you're evil." Something like this, could be taken as a bit humorous. Or dramatic. Or a bit of an asshole move. It depends on the reader.

I started reading it and thought it was pretty good until the 2nd paragraph, where I felt it went from "That'd be cool" to "Hey, you can help or cause, or be evil." Is that the right kind of tone for a letter like this?

So here's my comments on John Sullivan's response letter:
1) Yeah, the iPhone App Store isn't GNU/free. We know that already.

2) Steve Jobs wasn't talking about freedom. But John is trying to frame the debate around freedom. Steve Jobs is talking about why people should stop using Flash, and use HTML5 instead.

3) And while re-framing this debate, John says, "And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all--it is the ability to control those users." Uh.. John, I think you have it wrong. In fact, searching for the word "freedom" doesn't even appear in Steve's letter.
We know you don't like the App Store. But that's not the issue under discussion. This is about Apple versus Adobe with regards to why Apple refuses to allow Flash on devices and why Steve's telling people to use HTML5.

4) Open and free are different. H264 is open. H264 is not free. But H264 is also widely expected to work for most people. Yes, H264 has a patent licensing issue. But that has nothing to do with this debate. It's a completely separate issue.

5) John is attempting to mix arguments from multiple related debates, confusing the issues. Furthermore, John using these debates as a foundation to do promotion for the FSF and the GPL while not actually helping the debate under question. That's an example of "self-serving" without helping find a solution.
Here's the debates I see:
Flash versus HTML5.
H264 versus Theora/VP8/patent-unencumbered.
GNU/Free versus proprietary platforms. (iphone OS versus other stuff)

Steve's letter addresses "Flash versus HTML5". I agree with Steve here. Flash should go. HTML5 is better.
See how clear I am? Nowhere did I say I supported H264 or Theora or GNU or walled gardens. Between Flash and HTML5, I pick HTML5.
And given the FSF's stance, John, you should agree with me and Steve too. Once that's settled, then the other two debates open up.

6) Agree or disagree? "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[Junior J. Junior III]

When will it be out?

Re:I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[mbadolato]

As soon as they finish the Herd kernel to run it

Re:I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[drinkypoo]

I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad
When will it be out?

Wow, what year is it? Guess what? You've been able to buy tablet PCs and run Free operating systems on them since the early nineties. Behind the curve, much?

Re:I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[ckarras]

As soon as a pad is sold with an OS compiled with GCC so that they can retroname it the GNU/Pad

Re:I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant a non-shitty device the size of a book. Judging by sales, the early 90s didn't produce anything that fills the bill. Or maybe you can bring us up to date? Ok, I'll make it easier. It can be a clumsy size, but it does have to be non-shitty and have sold more than 10,000.

Re:I can't wait to buy the FSF gnuPad

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of a more compelling experience than email and Twitter using "Mobile EMACS". :-)

All kidding aside, this argument is rather silly. I am an Apple product owner (a rather recent convert, mind you). I understand Apple's gripe here, but Mr. Job's argument is less than honest. The truth of the matter is that that iPod, iPad, and iPhone are all intended to primarily be portals into iTunes. Flash applications, and other cross platform products like Java, are squarely in Mr. Job's crosshairs, as enabling those products on "his" device would allow applications to be deployed without collecting revenue through iTunes. Note the quoted word in the last sentence, "his". A co-worker made this point to me last week, and it hit squarely home. Mr. Job's believes this is "his" device - "his" platform, for which he is allowing you to purchase the rights to use it in the manner that he best sees fit.

All of this drivel from Jobs about being close to the hardware to develop the most optimum experience for the user is just being dishonest about what his actual motivations are. Having these devices act as a portal to iTunes, where Apple controls the content and pricing is not a bad business model. Its obviously proven to be successful. Open letters like the one posted last week are more intended simply to get Apple more press, which from this thread seems to appear to be working.

At one point, Apple were forcing html iPhone apps?

[pizzach]

The FSF isn't hijacking it. It is correctly framing the discussion. HTML5 isn't going to do anything to replace the bulk of Flash web content out there. Most of that is already replaced with "apps".

I swear, you can't make anyone happy here. Where were you when Apple was forcing most applications on the iPhone to be made with HTML (and thus open and thus interpolerable)? I swear, you can't please anybody on slashdot. Your shit if you do, and shit if you don't.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

but it's their control over the thing that makes it as easy to use as possible.

When is the last time you used Apple's YouTube application (which ironically, CAN play YouTube videos). It is an utter JOKE. But too bad - if you decide to use a regular browser to deal with the many deficiencies in Apple's application, you can't play videos! How is this good? It's pathetically comedic at best.

Re:apple should drop that $99y just to come free a

[Bing Tsher E]

That's a rather loose interpretation of 'apps' though. I have an iPod Touch and I like it quite a bit. But you scratch your head sometimes at what gets promoted as an 'app' in the 'Store.'

Because it's such a walled garden, there are separate dedicated Radio Player apps for hundreds and hundreds of radio stations. Each has it's own icon on your screen. So each player is counted as a separate App.

And don't get me going about the dozens of 'Sex Position' apps, or the Fart Apps. There's an app now called JaredAllen that is basically a fan page for the guy.

So there are 185,000+ 'apps' but many of them are tiny little nothings. And there are huge gaps in the library that can't be filled because of how the whole operation is structured.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[Kristoph]

Your argument might make sense if it were not for the fact that you can, in fact, watch YouTube videos in the iPhone os browser :-)

K

Furthermore, Bob sucks harder than Newton.

[xigxag]

And what about gaming systems? The Xbox

More kitchen-sink argumentation? Look, if you had said from the outset that MS are evil incarnate, and even worse -- not friends of open source -- I'd have agreed with you. But your initial point, before bringing in Zune, Xbox, and what have you, was that Microsoft Windows and iPhoneOS are essentially the same in terms of dependence. It's on that point that I strongly disagree. Your other points are more or less true, or at least reasonable, but nobody was disputing them in the first place.

Re:Furthermore, Bob sucks harder than Newton.

[eluusive]

He did not equate iPhoneOS and Microsoft Windows. Notice how he was quoting someone? "At least Microsoft allows me the freedom to be "tasteless". He was responding directly to the 2nd Reply from "jedidiah" that equated the two. Please read the whole thread before in interject nonsense.

Steve Jobs makes sense

[herdnerfer]

The way i see it, Steve Jobs is just trying to make the easiest, crash free computing experience possible. I don't think Steve Jobs had the average slashdot reader in mind when he came up with the iPad, iPod, or even iPhone. He had joe sixpack and aunt jemima in mind. Coming from a large family, and being one of the few with extensive computer knowledge, i am always called upon to fix viruses, remove spyware, reinstall OSes due to unrecoverable crashes and when i see the iPad, i see a solution to MOST of this. I know my sister with an iPad to do her internet surfing with isn't going to click on some stupid pop up and download a virus, or play some new facebook game and get some crappy software installation required message. And without flash, she isn't going to suffer from computer freezes and crashes. Even if it does get some unrecoverable error, she would just hook it up to her computer, click restore from backup, and a few minutes later she is off to the races. I know the iPad cannot replace all computing tasks, especially with lack of printing support, but for everything most people do, this "closed system" works better and protects them from theirselves. Now it would be nice if they gave advanced users the option to unlock certain restrictions, but it is just not practical. There are plenty of people out there who know just enough about computer to want to unlock protected settings and still end up calling me every weekend to fix it. There are plenty of full tablet PCs out there, and have been for a while. Go get one of those if you cannot stand the restrictions iPhone OS brings. I for one say, boo flash, yay iPhone OS, and go Steve.

This nonsense is getting rather old

[Whuffo]

No company (including Apple) is obligated or required to design their products to suit the whim, desire, or profit motive of some third party. If Adobe, Xiph, or the FSF doesn't like the way that Apple's products are designed, then they are free to purchase some other company's products or to purchase nothing at all. These simple truths should be obvious to anyone. There's far too many comments from various companies, industry pundits, and posters here that complain about Apple being controlling - because Apple doesn't design their products the way that the commenter wants. Think about this for a moment - who is being controlling here? And just exactly what basis do any of them have for dictating the way that Apple should design their products?

That includes you, the one with your cursor hovering over the reply button.

All of this nonsense sounds very much like a bunch of children complaining that they didn't get to blow the whistle when the train left the station. If you don't like company X's products - don't buy them. Buy something you like better or design a better product yourself. Company X isn't forcing you to do anything no matter how you try to claim they are. Those who wished to supply some piece for Company X's new product but were not invited to are welcome to try selling it to someone else; maybe Company X didn't need or want it, or maybe it's junk and they rejected it for that reason. Whatever the reason, those are the breaks. Nothing any wanna-be supplier can say will make their products or company look better or improve their public image one tiny bit.

And for goodness sakes, try to keep things a bit more civil. Raving doesn't improve the way you're perceived or make your point more valid.

Re:This nonsense is getting rather old

[Anonymous Coward]

No company (including Apple) is obligated or required to design their products to suit the whim, desire, or profit motive of some third party. If Adobe, Xiph, or the FSF doesn't like the way that Apple's products are designed, then they are free to purchase some other company's products or to purchase nothing at all. These simple truths should be obvious to anyone.

You don't ever express any opinions on any company's behaviour or any perceived problems or limitations with any products or services?

I'm very puzzled by this "shut up about your complaints and opinions, just don't buy their products" argument that to me seems especially to come up when Apple gets criticized. I find it not only perfectly legitimate, but activly good for the market place and consumers, to critize, debate and express opinions on all of this.

Re:This nonsense is getting rather old

[Gilmoure]

Hey! Slashdot has spoken and they don't like Apple or the iPhone. Except for all the Apple zealots that keep going on and on about how the iPhone/Pod/Pad is the best computer eveh and it has an app that will let you walk on water.

(how did you see my cursor was over the Reply button?)

Re:This nonsense is getting rather old

[Whuffo]

I don't care much for the way Apple acts too. But I do like some of their products. A few years back I bought an iPod Nano (1st Generation) to use as a portable music player. I was impressed by how small and thin it was but the ear buds it came with weren't very good. So I bought some Etymotic in-ear headphones. With those, it sounded great and I used it every day for a little over two years.

Then the battery wouldn't hold much of a charge. I checked to see what it'd cost to replace it and Apple wanted $100 to replace it. They wanted nearly as much as the Nano cost new; no deal. After thinking about what to do for a replacement for a while I decided to give them another chance and bought a first generation iPod Touch. That little gizmo is still working and holding a charge just fine. I like it a lot; the "point and drool" interface made it possible to leaf through a multi-thousand song library in moments. I didn't need all the added functions but over time I found some of them to be very useful. What it brought me was a way to have all of my favorite music in my pocket. I could play them in the car through the car stereo with an inexpensive cassette adapter, and on my (or someone else's) home stereo. No more dragging a bundle of CDs around.

I would have bought an iPhone instead of the Touch but I had too much experience with AT&T's so-called phone coverage and the price was too high - so my cell phone is a Blackberry. That's been an eye-opening experience - it's so full of software bugs that I have to pull the battery to reset it every few days. I'll try an Android phone next - as soon as the contract on the Blackberry is done.

When the iPad came out I saw it as a way to have all of my music library and a bunch of e-books in a portable package. Once again, I bought a first generation Apple product and I've been using the iPad for almost a month now. So far, so good - right now it's got over 5,000 songs on it as well as over 3000 e-books and there's still room for lots more. Is it perfect? Nope. But it does what it was designed to do and I'm very pleased with it's performance and stability.

That said, I still don't have any love for Apple. But knowing their products I don't totally agree with the claims of "locked down" and "control". All of those songs were MP3 files from here and there and the e-books were converted from PDF files using Calibre. None of those songs or books were purchased from Apple and they didn't stop me from loading whatever I wanted from whatever source onto the Touch or the iPad - that's a freedom that many other media players don't offer.

I'm not an Apple zealot; I just appreciate a well-designed piece of equipment. Those who want the iPad to be a general purpose computer and find fault with it because it isn't one are missing the point entirely. It's not that and it's not a giant-sized iPod Touch either. Slashdot may have "spoken" but after reading those threads and knowing the product it's clear to me that most of the people don't have any idea what they're talking about. Nothing new there. The thing that I wonder about, though - is how many people listen to the hate tales and never think to give one of these gizmos a try?

Re:This nonsense is getting rather old

[Gilmoure]

Heh. I like how all these rants against Apple and Steve always talk about how the Apple Fanboise are gonna mod down their posts but ya know, all I see are reasoned replies on the pro-Apple side.

Also, I think any UID posts below, say, 50,000 should include automatic /sarcasm tags. I think that's about all I ever post anymore.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

With, or without jailbreaking?

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[bennomatic]

Who modded this insightful? YouTube now supports direct H.264 video without the Flash wrapper. It works fine!

Re:apple should drop that $99y just to come free a

[gyrogeerloose]

apple should drop that $99y just to come free apps other phone systems do not have this level of lock in.

Check the cost on developing for WiMo sometime. Microsoft charges a registration fee and a $99 per app submission fee on top of taking 30% of the revenue.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[dhobbit]

without

Citation?

[wall0159]

Can you back up this claim with evidence, or are you just another astro-turfer or troll?

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[eluusive]

Yes it does. http://www.youtube.com/html5

Performance Concerns > Freedom

[CrystalX]

In Steve's post, he is more concerned about the poor performance of Flash on mobile devices than how "free" it is vs. H.264. Granted he brings up both points, but it's the first one that's the real focus.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[root_42]

FYI, you can use YouTube's HTML5 version nowadays as well, using YouTube's standard webpage in Safari.

Free? Or just open?

[Cronock]

I see a major misunderstanding here between Free(as in speach), free(as in beer), and "open". Apple is promoting "Open". They are still a for-profit company selling closed devices to access an "open" system. They have no shame here, nor should they.

They make a device to access the web, one non-standard plugin doesn't make the grade for being usable on their hardware so it's not supported. Their options are: 1. Request Adobe fixes their product for mobile devices (10.1, sure we will see with Android being the guinea pig) 2. Apple makes their own workaround (good, but this hack job will probably not good enough or legal). 3. Exclude it as other, more open, standards can fill the void. Apple chose #3. Sorry Adobe, its just business.

Other companies are captalizing on this, as they should be! They are betting on farmville addicts choosing their (possibly inferior) platform over Apple's because of flash support, so they get some sales from people that wouldn't have chosen them without it.

Apple has no problem with that, they just want the people that bought their product having a better overall experience, and then buying v2.0 and v3.0, and also telling their friends. We long-time mac users know what it's like to not have everything, but the stuff we do have actually works

Re:At one point, Apple were forcing html iPhone ap

[Cronock]

If it doesn't have a start menu or a knockoff start menu(yes I'm looking at you Linux), then it's obviously evil here. How dare you question them in their own house! But in all seriousness, apple didn't want any other apps on their device until the public demanded it basically. They did want them to be web based, which sucked beyond imagining. Apple is making this OS more and more open constantly, but they won't ever be "free", that's just unrealistic

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[marmoset]

Not only does it work fine in the stock Mobile Safari, but it's a cleaner view than in most desktop browsers because there's lex extraneous embed chrome in the webview: http://l.freeke.org/wkwlg

Re:Free? Or just open?

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are saying make total sense, and I would have agreed with you if it wasn't for Apple's history regarding what's "Open" and what's not. Adobe control (with flash) the media on the internet(sort of). Apple wants to stay in control over the machines they built, this is not about standards or anything, this is about Apple kicking out flash from iProducts so they can retain the sort of a monopoly they have,

OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[mjwx]

ONLY THING THAT CAN CRASH MY MAC!!!

No,

Your Mac crashes because the OS cannot gracefully handle an error with an application, imagine how often your Mac would crash if the same amount of low quality software that windows users have access to were available. For fecks sake even Windows can do this now, I've not had Flash crash my Linux, Win 7 or XP boxen in years because they are capable of handling the problem gracefully. At the absolute worse, a bad plugin takes down my browser, not my OS.

BTW, Flash works just fine on my Ubuntu 9.04 (yes, I'm getting around to upgrading) laptop, C2D T series 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM and an Intel GMA 4500HD and you're telling me a "superior" Mac has problems.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[Katchu]

What happens is that Flash simply draws all CPU resources and after 45 minutes or so, wanting to use my computer, I force a restart. This is deadly to most operating systems, especially if the OS itself is locked up. Yes, the OS shouldn't let Flash do that. And the police should protect me from criminals because lord knows it can't be the criminals' fault they do bad things. But they do. I'd just as soon not have criminals around. Or Flash. I never asserted Mac was "superior", that is an inference from your sensitivity, perhaps. I stated that the only software that causes problems on my particular Mac is Flash. Oh, I was able to get a BSOD in Windows running on Parallels on the Mac. That assured me Windows was running as expected.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[Wovel]

Flash used to crash Safari, it no longer does. Safari no isolates extensions so they only crash themselves. It never crashed the MAC. It does hog the CPU, Adobe has always had access to the same API that silverlight and VLC uses to provide excellent performance, but refused to do any actual work till they had access to the API they wanted.

The number one reported problem for Mac users is Flash crashes, and it is 100% Adobe's fault. Flash has a lot of issues on Linux too. You saying it doesn't means you either do not actually use it on Linux (most likely) or you are in denial. It works alright on Windows because it is the only platform Adobe spends actual time developing for.

The problem everywhere is that performance of flash on any platform is totally dependent on Adobe's mood.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[mjwx]

Yes, the OS shouldn't let Flash do that.

And most OS's don't.

Windows and Linux both seem to be able to handle this fine on hardware that is inferior to the standard Mac designs (my laptop is a year old, but has a 7.2K RPM disk which is irrelevant in this case as we are talking about CPU and RAM bound applications, not I/O bound).

When flash (or Java) starts ferreting away resources on my Win 7 box at work Win 7 closes the browser, the browser does not close Win 7. This is the same case on XP and I also assume Ubuntu (never had it happen to me on Ubuntu for some reason). My browser has been unable to take down my OS since I switched away from IE 6 those many years ago, one of the biggest advancements MS made with IE 7 was to sandbox the process, security implications aside this means that the browser is not able to easily crash the OS and there is a lot more bad code running in Windows then Mac (*cough* Dot Net *cough*).

I know you desperately need to hate flash because Steve Jobs told you to (he also told you that it makes Mac's crash so stop parroting FUD) but really, if this is true it is the result of an OS not being able to do it's job properly, not because of a poor browser plugin. It is an unreasonable expectation to expect 100% of code to work 100% of the time on 100% of machines, it is not an unreasonable expectation to expect your OS to gracefully terminate a rouge process, Mac's cannot do this (sitting there waiting for the spinning beach ball when in Windows I could Ctrl-Alt-Del or Linux issue a Kill command is only one of the reasons why I stopped doing Mac support) whilst Windows and Linux can.

Just to clarify, I think windows is a bloated, buggy piece of crap but I do have to be honest, given the amount of crap code you can run on Windows, it handles it quite well.

Oh, I was able to get a BSOD in Windows running on Parallels on the Mac

You must be special. The last time I got a BSOD was when my graphics card overheated on my gaming box (summer days here easily get to 40 degrees C). BSOD's are only caused by bad hardware or bad drivers and Apple's Windows drivers are pretty crap, it's almost like they don't want you to run the OS of your choice on your own hardware.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[mjwx]

It never crashed the MAC

So Steve Jobs and the GP are lying?

You saying it doesn't means you either do not actually use it on Linux (most likely) or you are in denial.

Anyone who disagree's with you is lying. Perhaps I simply know how to set up my PC so it does not suffer from these problems. No matter what OS you're running, nothing can protect your from a bad implantation, to fall back on the old /. standard, if I never change the oil and water in my car, is that Toyota's fault for supplying me with a car that needs to be maintained?

In all seriousness, could you fanboys get together and at least be consistent in your FUD. Thank you.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[Wovel]

The GP is confused and Steve Jobs said crashes on the MAC not that it crashed the MAC.

And sorry if you think flash is great on Linux you are in a tiny minority of delusional fan boys. Your right , no configuration will protect you from Adobe's bad implementation. Thanks for agreeing with me.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[jo_ham]

He doesn't know what he's talking about - crashes on OS X are pretty graceful - at least as graceful as on Linux. An app crash can't bring down the whole OS, even if the Finder crashes the system brings it back up with minimal fuss.

Now that Safari hands off the flash plugin to a separate process, a flash crash doesn't even bring the browser down any more. This has been the case since Safari 4.

Re:OS is the problem, not a bad application.

[soppsa]

Sadly I bet you still cannot play 720p flash videos on your Ubuntu laptop, while someone running Windows on the same laptop can. That is why I hate Adobe (Macromedia)...

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[tyrione]

but it's their control over the thing that makes it as easy to use as possible.

When is the last time you used Apple's YouTube application (which ironically, CAN play YouTube videos). It is an utter JOKE. But too bad - if you decide to use a regular browser to deal with the many deficiencies in Apple's application, you can't play videos! How is this good? It's pathetically comedic at best.

Doing research before spouting off makes you credible. You clearly got a high rating because some one was just as bad at research as you clearly demonstrate.

Why don't the FSF comment on consoles?

[gilesjuk]

Everyone seems to accept the walled garden concept of games consoles. So why is Apple's approach to the iPhone and iPad any different?

Your console is subsidised, your mobile phone is often subsided on a contract. No difference as far as I can see.

Re:Why don't the FSF comment on consoles?

[Gilmoure]

Because all the Apple Fan Boises keep going on and on about how the iPhone is the best computer ever made and how it's better than a Linux/XBox/Windows sandwich and how Steve can beat up Linus and Bill Gates with one chair tied behind his back.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

Posted by an AC. Instant credibility.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

First, this is a beta - they're testing it. Second, this is an example of someone else fixing a problem created by Apple, who refuses to let its users exercise choice based on what provides value to them.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

What research do I need to do? I have an iPod touch - I log into YouTube using Safari, I can't play any videos. I log in using Apple's sorry excuse of a substitute, I can play videos, but there are several things I can't do. What am I missing here?

Re:Free? Or just open?

[LaRainette]

WTF are you talking about ? How is iPhone OS an "open" platform as opposed to any of its competitors ? I see how you could try to (dishonestly) convince us that Apple's software is more Open than adobe : that's arguable but why not. What I cannot see is how iPhone OS is an open platform, when you compare it to other similar platform (i.e. mobile OSs) The iPhone OS locks you into the Appstore, which is itself censored by Apple. How is that open ? Symbian, Android, WebOS (RIP), MeeGo, Blackberry OS are all more Open. (Not to mention Symbian and Android are Open-source but that another debate) Jobs is just using the fact that Adobe's software (which is rather closed) doesn't work on the iPhone (which is also a very closed system) to attack adobe but in fact the only thing that we see here is the following : systems have to be open because else we don't have interoperability which is exactly what we get when we take the champions of closed system together : Adobe and Apple. Now I already am hearing morons yelling in the back of the room about how Apple supports Open-source and blahblahblah webkit blahblahblah. Webkit is not an Apple product.It's not developed by Apple. Apple just uses it and by paying very little money has ensured the control over it's development strategy. But don't be fooled Apple and Adobe has very similar approach to the CE business. Both this company use free (as in beer) sotfware to capture an audience and then lock these people into their integrated solution. So yes this article says Jobs is a hypocritical lying piece of crap. Because he is.

Adobe needs an FPGA implementation of Flash

[KJSwartz]

I'm not a fan of Flash after dealing for the past several years with a 400MHz (yeah, MHz) PPC G4 and what I believe to be USB 1.0. Up until the latest OS upgrade, Apple supported their old product line and I was happy - unless I was reading the local newspaper's website with its plethora of flash animations. Scrolling became a Herculean task with killing the browser its only outcome. So I'm not happy with any software implementation that acts AS IF it uses spinlocks for cross-platform timing.

Steve Jobs did his job: made an executive's decision and holding the entire company AND - THEIR - CUSTOMERS to that decision. Flash or Battery Life? Flash or Responsiveness? Apple got spanked in the 90's for selling monitors with one inch less viewable area than what was advertised clearly as monitor dimension. Apple learned its lesson to deliver hardware that meet its specifications.

Adobe really needs to look into offloading much of their flash implementation into the most energy efficient component of mobile devices - its FPGA, not software. Keep the processor free to perform the collect-and-forward tasks of data streaming. Adobe, if they are really serious, would provide a reference design and Altera/Lattice/Xilinx firmware libraries (Cores). Apple should investigate making FPGA space available to their developers & downloads for their customers just as if it were code space.

Now that would be truly visionary.

Re:Tired of all these

[daveime]

If you feel the necessity to swear, just fucking do it you asshole. Self-censoring your own words just make you come across as an immature teen, who has just discovered the pleasure of cursing, but still puts in asterisks in case Mummy sees what you are doing and scolds you for using "naughty words".

And you posted anonymously anyway, so what the hell, just go for it.

Re:Free? Or just open?

[NekSnappa]

Your reading comprehension needs some work. Your first sentence shows that you couldn't understand the parent post's first sentence.

He said that Apple makes a closed device (iPhone) for accessing an open platform (the web). Please learn to read with both your eyes and mind open before typing your next rant.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[NekSnappa]

Everything Goolge does is beta and the /. Crowd eats it up. And yet Youtube putting up a beta version of their site using and open standard bypassing a proprietary format is a bad thing in your mind.
Who's the hypocrite now.

Flash != Flash Video

[pkphilip]

All these discussions about how Flash needs to be replaced seems to miss the point that there is a lot more content out there in Flash format - not just video. What alternatives are there for replacing Flash presentations on the web, flash demos, games etc? Are we talking about replacing them with java applets? But java doesn't run on the iphone, does it?

So then what is actually being said is that ALL content in flash format - whether video or plain actionscripted files, should all be replaced with....what exactly? Javascript and HTML canvas? so Jobs is recommending that content which has taken 100s of 1000s of hours to develop in Flash should all be recreated in HTML5 ? for what? so that Apple can continue to prevent users who purchased Apple products from running content on the devices they purchased?

Re:Flash != Flash Video

[Wovel]

No mobile devices currently support flash. Adobe MAY get to Android by the end of the year. When do you suppose they might get to WinMo 7? This is the problem with Flash, support is completely at Adobe's whim.

Re:Flash != Flash Video

[pkphilip]

Not true.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/nokia_s60.html

Re:Flash != Flash Video

[pkphilip]

Also this.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/10/05/full_flash_support_headed_to_android_webos_symbian_blackberry_and_winmo

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[rreay]

[blockquote]What am I missing here?[/blockquote]

The fact that you're wrong. You should actually try things instead of just doing thought experiments.

On a touch in safari when you click on a youtube video it opens the video in the youtube player and plays just fine. This works if the video came from youtube.com directly or was embedded in another site.

Re:Free Software is up to the task

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

But proprietary vendors don't want the competition. Steve Jobs mentioned the MPEG-LA consortium is looking through their patents to see if they can shutdown Ogg Theora before it takes root.

Ogg Theora has been out there since 2001. If it hasn't taken root by now, it ain't gonna.

ugh bad link

[drinkypoo]

Forgot to delete edit off the end... try this link if the other doesn't work.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

I sincerely hope that no one contributing to this thread is in any kind of support position. What happens when I click on a YouTube video in Safari is that it opens the usual page with video and comments, and where the video should be playing is an error message, and I quote, "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video." So where does this "thought experiment" end, exactly?

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[DinDaddy]

Without. Just tried it on my wife's.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[jo_ham]

The very first iPhone, and every iPhone since has shipped with a youtube viewing app. It's one of the basic features of the phone.

Or share a car. Or teleconference

[Anonymous Coward]

Or share a car. Or teleconference. Or any number of a hundred things you have not thought of.

Re:Or share a car. Or teleconference

[mr_matticus]

Sharing a car is still traveling by car, and teleconferencing isn't going anywhere.

But yes, there are plenty of other options, like riding a horse or building a personal hovercraft. The point remains that any of these options is an impractical mandate that 99% of people aren't going to use. For the 1% that will, more power to them.

A false choice traditionally means the preclusion of a viable option from the list, and the FSF's position is not a viable model for all applications on the web any more than their position is viable for all software development. There is certainly room for it among the other choices, but not discussing it when talking about prevailing parties isn't denying its existence. It's simply recognizing the reality that the third choices aren't viable candidates for dominance.

Flash debate just flash in the pan.

[Anonymous Coward]

This crap is still considered relevant? My god, are you all n00bz?

Steve Jobs is a smart man, who generally knows how to get what he wants.
And most of the time, it's to have people talking about him and Apple products, in that order.

As some sage advice giver said on the WIndows 7 vs System Restore thread,

"Outright saying 'Why anyone Wants to run Windows'
ignores that different people want different things from their
computers. Your solution is not theirs."

Same goes for why anyone would want to have Flash, Steve.

Same goes for why Apple doesn't need Flash on their machines, Slashdot.

There's nothing to see. Move along.

Re:Free? Or just open?

[Anonymous Coward]

He never said iPhone was open in any way, in fact he said it was a "closed device for accessing an open system", the open system being the web. I believe the open standards that Jobs are pushing are the in the HTML 5 spec, which is a positive in my book. I dislike Flash, it's a bug ridden security hole. Why does the hatred of Jobs make people support Adobe over an open spec (HTML 5)?

Re:Free? Or just open?

[man1sh]

He said that Apple makes a closed device (iPhone) for accessing an open platform (the web)

It means that by making mobile Safari free from the Apple store like policies gives Apple bonus points. My friend, web has always been free and every OS out there has allowed you to access the web freely. Apple does not get any kudos for it.

We are still comparing the high closed and restricted App store.

They are betting on farmville addicts choosing their (possibly inferior) platform over Apple's because of flash support

You sound like a blind Apple fanboy. There are people who like to play farmville. No problems. It is important for them. Yes. Apple loses those customers just because of it's stupid hypocrisy.

Re:Free? Or just open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple iPhone and iPad are in the same extreme of anti-open, closed platforms as Playstation or XBOX or Wii. All software requires blessing of platform creator. Essentially, all these devices are almost "rented" not bought.

Apple is the antithesis of open. Antithesis of a PC.

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[symbolic]

I don't believe I ever made any such statement. Not only is it in beta, you have to join. Hit me up when its available as an option on the front page or in the user settings.

Power is its own reward

[ClosedSource]

Ever tried to obtain a list of voting members of the FSF? The FSF is just RMS inc.

What about the battery life?

[Anonymous Coward]

Closed vs. Open is only one reason Apple doesn't currently use flash, there are other good reasons like battery life.

To all the people pushing the Android option...

[avatar139]

...Please RTFLA before stating how "open" it is compared to the iPhone SDK: http://www.android.com/market/terms/developer-content-policy.html With that said there are two problems I have with the FSF commentary: 1. I know people love to use the car metaphor but I feel it's an apples and oranges comparison because the average can open up their car hood check and refill the oil without causing the engine to stop running, whereas the average user of a computer cannot be expected (or trusted) to do the same. Apple allows people to use the Terminal for command line troubleshooting which frankly is more powerful than the average user should have. I love how the FSF always implies a certain level of arrogance by Apple in locking down certain portions of the operating system but personally I think it implies more arrogance the FSF's part by assuming that people are willing to take a bunch of time to learn (or for that matter care) about the difference between the GPL and proprietary software licensing. I appreciate Free and/or Open Source as the ideal software development method, but I'm realistic enough to realize that unless the GUI and for that matter, the overall user experience for Linux and other GPL projects improve to where the average user can use it Linux is going to remain a tech enthusiast and corporate server level OS. If and when that day comes I will happily switch but for the moment I find the user experience on my Mac to be less of a headache than the alternatives for personal use and I know many feel the same way. 2. Regarding the whole H.264 verses Theora debate, Steve Jobs is pushing the HTML5 standard as a flash alternative, and while I don't have enough hands on experience with as a method of streaming (seeing as few sites use it as of yet) to offer an educated opinion on how well it works, if the FSF has a problem with the H.264 codec as part of the HTML5 standard specs they should be taking it up with the WHATWG which is the organization responsible for drafting the specs, not Apple. If anything given the proprietary licensing of Flash coupled with the fact that to the best of my knowledge there is no existing free/open development tools for Flash if anyone is being hypocritical here it's the FSF for giving Apple flack for trying to push HTML5 as an open web standard alternative to Flash! As a side note I know people have been phobic about H.264 particularly where license fees are concerned (and I'd be lying if I didn't say I shared some of those concerns) but IMHO I have been using it for video work with both open source and proprietary software both types of which have existed without licensing and revenue problems to date, so if that does become a concern then I expect an alternative (such as Theora) will emerge into widespread usage as necessity dictates but until then, I'm realistic enough to expect the majority of users and developers to push H.264 as a part HTML5 because the majority of users already have it. Personally in the end I think mass usage is still the ultimate standard regardless of what any interest or organization may try to dictate and while I may not always agree with the majority of users and try to educate them about better alternatives to me that's still the true freedom of the web...

Re:Free? Or just open?

[Phil06]

Free (as in you can only buy beer from my store)

devil's advocate time

[dsmithhfx]

Is it just possible, that as part of a Steve Jobs exit strategy, Apple is providing Steve with enough rope... ?

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[Wovel]

Everything on google is perpetually marked in Beta. People used GMail for like 5 years before the beta ended.

Criticisms fine, but the letter was unfair

[matunos]

While Sullivan is free to criticize Apple for their proprietary software- and I wouldn't expect any less from the FSF- it is unfair to imply that Jobs is a hypocrite for his opinions on Adobe Flash.

Sullivan quotes Jobs, but he doesn't offer the full quote: "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."

Jobs is admitting right there that Apple has many proprietary products, including iPhone OS. He is separating the OS from web standards, and while I agree with Sullivan that the web includes more than just HTML, I think he is stretching it to include the OS running on the device as part of web standards. The fact is that Safari follows open web standards (and developing standards), and Apple does not filter the content you can reach using Safari.

Sullivan's criticisms of Apple's walled garden are fine for what they're worth. Yes, Apple could, if they wanted to, filter content from Safari as they do for standalone apps, and being stuck using a proprietary system such as the iPhone can make it difficult to circumvent. But those complaints are the same general closed-source complaints that the FSF has been making for a long time. Steve Jobs ' letter did not say that everything Apple makes is dedicated to openness or user freedom- he was targeting his comments specifically about support for Flash in the context of Flash being the dominant format for videos on the web.

It sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are citing trademark laws, which you have to aggressively "protect" (read ambush everyone and everything legally, heavy-handed, or grant license), or lose.

Patents a company can let everyone "abuse" until the last year, and then demand "damages" for every year till now.. Yeah, patent-law sucks, especially when it starts to usurp the software industry.

It seems the current patent system encourages leeches and parasitic behaviour, which sucks life out of creativity and innovation, and suck you dry for money and blood, even when you have success.

Re:It sucks!

[Tjebbe]

It seems the current patent system encourages leeches and parasitic behaviour, which sucks life out of creativity and innovation, and suck you dry for money and blood, even when you have success.

One would almost think this system is written by lawyers.

profittrek

[profittrek]

I think Steve Jobs is a just a DORK. We just want your computers Steve...NOT YOU; Climb back under the rock you came out from! ....you DWEEB

Not as impractical as you make it sound...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of fallacies are commonly used. They don't stop being fallacies, though.

As for the matter of it being an impractical choice, there are a lot of smart coders working on making a free codec into something practical.

Re:Not as impractical as you make it sound...

[mr_matticus]

A lot of fallacies are commonly used. They don't stop being fallacies, though.

In order to establish this situation as a fallacy of false choice, there needs to be a viable option outside those discussed, and the discussion must be presented as being collectively exhaustive.

Simplification for convenience doesn't always rise to the level of fallacy--propositions that have technically possible, but practically impossible, additional options aren't false choice unless the proposition forecloses other options. In other words, discussions about whether the Democrat or the Republican will win the presidency does not present a false choice unless there is a condition that there are no other candidates in existence, and not mentioning them is not the same as denying their existence.

For example, consider the response to your asking your boss for a day off: "would you prefer Friday or Monday off?" That's not a false choice fallacy. It's just a choice. Despite there being additional options in existence, and despite the fact that you might truly want Wednesday off, you have two viable options. A false choice requires that you be able to choose the unlisted alternative.

That doesn't really exist here. There is zero chance of Theora being adopted as the sole codec of HTML5. There is simultaneously a low chance that H.264 will be the sole codec, but a virtually guaranteed probability that it will be the most popular codec.

As for the matter of it being an impractical choice, there are a lot of smart coders working on making a free codec into something practical.

And those codecs might conceivably achieve hardware support in time to make them viable options for HTML6. But no achievement will make them viable for HTML5 to the exclusion of H.264 and/or Flash-native codecs.

Missing the Point

[eyendall]

Surely whether Apple/Jobs are good or bad, have an agenda, have misbehaved in the past, want to rule the world etc. is irrelevant here; Jobs made some telling points about Flash's shortcomings which rang true to me. Don't shoot the messenger. I use a Mac and Flash is one big pain in the ass for me. I have to use Flashblock or all I see is that damned spinning ball.

"We are all born ignorant but one has to work hard to remain stupid". Steal this sig.: I did

a few points

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few points since everyone seems to be arguing the same tired things in circles:

1. There is NO flash developed for iPhone/iPad, in fact there isn't really a functional Flash Mobile app period. Why is that? Don't you think it is telling? I mean you are all arguing strongly about VAPORWARE.
2. Anyone who is a creative, running on a mac, (or their IT support) could tell you how horrible Adobe has been at bringing their products to the Mac post "classic" days (IE the LAST DECADE) given their lackluster performance in this endeavor, can you really blame Apple for telling them, Not with our phone.
3. Perhaps if Adobe had been willing to work with the published API's, instead of breaking the developer agreement and trying to write their own, this wouldn't be an issue. Apple has over 50 million active users on iphone/touch, they also know that flash is a buggy, resource hogging beast that crashes their computers. Why would Apple be willing to bend the rules to allow this to be inflicted on THEIR customers?
4. Adobe screwed the pooch on mobile flash development years ago, they bet wrong and their own ex-employees say so: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/adobe-flash-jobs/
5. I have yet to find a viable reason to *need* to jailbreak my iPhone (Or the first one I had), the app store has plenty for me. I am like the millions of other customers who appreciate the app store for it's convenience, ease of use and seemless user experience. One stop shoping, I know it's gonna work, I'm not worried about using my credit card on some random site. ALl you geeks seem to lose sight of these things in your "open" VS "closed" crusade. Face it 99% of people prefer: "JUST WORKS" in their electronics. Yeah my cable box software sux, but it works and if I want cable, guess what? I'm stuck with it.

All of the Adobe crying is sour grapes, that CEO will be ousted within 6 months, his management decisions are accelerating the demise of flash, thus making his acquisition of Macromedia a big expensive blunder that will not see increased value to the shareholders of Adobe.

Re:Free? Or just open?

[natsacks]

I think it's more about wanting to have the freedom of having both HTML5 and Flash work.

Re:Free? Or just open?

[soppsa]

Blackberry OS is actually definitely less open. While yes you can deploy your own apps without paying a fee, thats not the way it always was. Aside from their awful Java SDK, the actual OS is very closed. Can't update your software on Linux, in fact Mac support was new to late 2009 for that. I'd always hoped Blackberry would goto a Linux OS, but maybe RIM's purchase of QNX will at least give them UNIX under the hood, even if it isn't an open UNIX... The rest of your mobile platforms are great though :)

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[soppsa]

The HTM5 wrapper is beta, but the direct h264 support is used by many devices including smartphones, to get around flash... i.e. even after Androids get flash they won't be using it instead of their built in Youtube player...

Re:Jobs needs to get off his high horse!

[Acaeris]

But that isn't the browser and the reason YouTube videos can now be viewed in the browser on iPhone is because YouTube doesn't use flash to show the video on iPhone (but equally, the iPhone can't see any annotations on videos on YouTube because only the flash player has support for this at the moment).

You also can't view YouTube videos embeded on other websites on the iPhone as it the embed feature is done through a flash player (and is one of the things HTML5 will have trouble replicating due to it requiring cross site javascript).