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Is Apple's Attack On Flash Really About Video?

jamiegau writes "Here we have a long and in-depth blog post analyzing the faults in Steve Jobs's Letter about Flash. The writer concludes with an interesting idea that it is all about online video."

6 of 595 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Games too by Pojut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not sure why you got modded down...games are a huge part of why Apple won't allow it. Places like Newgrounds, Kongregate, etc...they would be filled with games that worked on the iPad and iPhone, yet would be free...meaning Apple wouldn't get their cut.

    They don't want you gardening outside of their walls, especially if the plants are "given" to you for nothing. They can claim security and stability (which are valid points), but it all comes down to money.

  2. No it's not by dc29A · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's all about keep selling high markup iDevices. To achieve that they need to make sure to have a lock-in. Lock in is achieved by making sure developers only code for your platform. Ballmer's "Developers! Developers! Developers!" might have been funny, but that is exactly what Apple is aiming for. Video lock-in won't work because it's H.264 and other big players can/will just as well sell H.264 format videos.

    When 40% or so your profit comes from iDevices, and a fraction of that from AppStore and/or iTunes, you want to protect your iDevice markup. If Apple allows cross compilers, guess what? People won't be 'loyal' to Apple and will migrate to Android, BB or WM7 devices because their apps are on those platforms as well. The iPhone becomes a commodity, and Apple's profits crater. It's about software lock-in and not about content lock in.

  3. Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie by zeromorph · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Either a strange coincidence or an badly disguised case of self-promotion:

    jamiegau writes:"Here we have ... The writer concludes ..."

    and the blog's name is "JamieG Analysis".

    If you submit your own article why not say it?

    --
    "Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
  4. Re:It's not all about video by pjrc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Adobe's Flash player causes Firefox on Linux to regularly lock up. In fact, playing video from pretty much anywhere but Youtube and Vimeo seems to do it. I installed the flashblock extension, so all flash comes up as a blank box and I can click on it if I really want to see what it is. But I cringe every time, because more often than not, my browser is going to lock up either while that flash object is doing whatever it does, or shortly after.

    It's pretty clear Adobe only invests serious effort in quality for Windows. People who only experience Flash on Windows just don't have any idea how horribly buggy it is on other platforms.

  5. Re:video by BitZtream · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Steve didn't mention it because its bullshit.

    I've had HW accelerated video for ... 5 ... 6 years ... I donno, whenever I started writing that particular app.

    There were NEW APIs introduced recently to make it so even the Geico cavemen could figure out how to do it, but anyone who hasn't been capable of playing h264 video in a hardware accelerated window in the last 5 years should not be called a developer. Hell, there are freaking xcode examples on Apples website dated 4 years ago.

    Like I said ... been playing hardware accelerated video on my mac for years in my own apps.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  6. Re:Games too by uglyduckling · · Score: 4, Interesting

    WinAmp - OK, where do you get those mp3's from - you know you can use those with iTunes too, so you wouldn't be locked-in if you used iTunes. Even if you used the iTunes store, that's now DRM-free for music. For movie downloads that might be a problem, but I'm not aware of any source of DRM-free mainstream movie rental or purchase so no disadvantage with Apple here.

    iPod - OK, you're semi-right with that, although there are third-party utilities to sync the iPod, if you're keen to be completely hassle and lock-in free then the iPod probably isn't the best choice.

    BlackBerry - OK, right, so RIM will freely provide you with equivalent apps for the Android or iPhone if you decide to jump ship? Thought not.

    iMac / Mac Desktop - OK, you know you can install Ubuntu and/or XP if you want to. Again - I'm sure Dell or Microsoft won't supply you with equivalents of the commercial apps that you've bought if you choose to switch to another platform, so you're no worse with Dell/XP than you are with iMac/OSX. If you want FOSS then most popular packages are available for Windows, Linux and OSX so no disadvantage there.

    So pretty much, the only valid argument you make is to steer clear of the iPod, but only on the basis that you might not want to use iTunes, but since you can use iTunes in a non-lockin manner for music that's not really a firm argument either. So I can't really understand why you would be more locked-in using Apple products compared to Microsoft, RIM and Canonical. I really would like to understand - can you explain?