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."

Comments

Games too

[sopssa]

It also makes sense with Flash games. Apple has tons of games it sells in the market place. If people could just play free Flash games (and there would be a lot more of them created), Apple wouldn't get so much $$$$$.

I know someone comes to say that most Flash games require mouse and keyboard, but that doesn't make any sense. Obviously the games would be created specially for iPhone and iPad. Just like theres such Flash games for Wii.

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

I think the primary complaint (at least for me) for most flash games is the on hover effect. How do you replicate that with a touch interface? Now we have all sorts of wild gestures, so it reduces the simplicity.

If you can resolve that, I might reconsider my personal stance.

Re:Games too

[Pojut]

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.

Re:Games too

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think the primary complaint (at least for me) for most flash games is the on hover effect. How do you replicate that with a touch interface? Now we have all sorts of wild gestures, so it reduces the simplicity.

So Apple hasn't already solved this for the billion or so webpages that use hover effects? That must suck.

Re:Games too

[TheKidWho]

This argument fails because Apple makes barely any profit on the App market itself.

They make all of their profit on selling the Devices themselves.

Re:Games too

[Pojut]

It really wouldn't be that hard (from an interface standpoint) to modify/create flash games that are designed specifically for a touch interface.

Take a game series like Diablo, or Torchlight. Different gestures could be used as a shortcut for different things (such as switching weapon configs, hotkeys for different spells, etc), or you could just make the interface conducive to two-handing it (one hand for movement and fighting/magic, the other for interface manipulation)

Obviously, there are certain genres that just plain wouldn't work, but hack n slash, RPGs, tower defense games, strategy games...there are a lot of genres that would work quite well with an all-touch interface.

Re:Games too

[Pojut]

This argument fails because Apple makes barely any profit on the App market itself.

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss (and subsequently send him spinning in his grave), a profit is a profit no matter how small.

Re:Games too

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Doesn't seem to be a problem for most sites I encounter. Any decent web dev should be developing sites that still work without hover, the same way they should work as much as possible without CSS or JS.

Re:Games too

[dc29A]

He got modded down because he is clueless. Apple App Store was never intended to be profitable. That said, the high markup on iDevices makes up for it. Yes there are a huge number of games on App Store but its there to fuel the iDevice sales so that people won't have any incentives to switch to Android or WM7 (when it's out). Apple can say: Hey! We got 200k Apps! Buy our iDevices because if you go with Android they got only 50k!

Re:Games too

[WrongSizeGlass]

They can claim security and stability (which are valid points), but it all comes down to money.

And maybe a touch of sour grapes. Adobe treated Apple like a second class platform back in the 90's when Apple was at its weakest. Now that Apple is on top of this market I think Steve Jobs is handing out a little payback. Loyalty, or the lack of it, is hard to forget.

Re:Games too

[jaymz666]

The lock-in to the app market makes the devices harder to move away from.

Re:Games too

[medcalf]

Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to accommodate Flash?

Platform vendors are under no obligation to build a platform that works just like all other platforms so that a particular software vendor doesn't have to rework something that makes money for them (the software vendor). If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

You as a consumer can decide to not buy the platform if it doesn't run the applications you want, of course. And if enough people agree with you, I am willing to bet that the platform vendor would either accommodate the application, or be rendered irrelevant in the market.

Re:Games too

[maxume]

It can still come with large opportunity costs.

Re:Games too

[dogzilla]

This argument makes no sense to me. HTML5 can already replicate pretty much anything these Flash games do and is also outside of Apple's control. Are you suggesting that Apple somehow doesn't realize this?

You should really take some time to look over what's currently possible with HTML5. Quake2 has been ported as a proof of concept, and the first level or so of Out Of This World.

http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/browsers/10-html5-games-paving-the-way/

Re:Games too

[Jaxim]

There are many HTML/JS only sites that do not work for these new touch devices because the developers are still stuck in the mouse click/hover mindset. Same holds true for Flash sites/games. Like HTML/JS developers, Flash Developers also need to be mindful to ensure that their creations work on these new touch devices. Developers need to make tweeks to existing code. There shouldn't be a need to rewrite a site/game from scratch just because one individual deems it so.

Re:Games too

[Skuld-Chan]

So why not sell the apps without a cut?

http://gorumors.com/crunchies/how-much-money-does-apple-make-from-app-store/ - suggests they make anywhere between 240-440 million dollars a year off the app store. Vs. Zero if people just played games on Flash websites.

Many app-store games are former flash website games too...

Re:Games too

[Jugalator]

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.

Can Flash games support touch input and touch gestures well? :-/

Re:Games too

[dc29A]

Yes barely.

Re:Games too

[rolfwind]

That doesn't make sense on several levels.

-Apple said that it was still breaking even on music in the Itunes store. (Not sure if to take their word for it, but still.)
-There are plenty of free games in the app store
-pushing HTML5 is opposite of the walled garden people argue. There is a hulu, Netflix, pandora and Rhapsody apps where people can get videos and music outside of Apple's itunes.

I don't think this is about making money directly. My guess is that Apple's real money will come from selling them new and shiny iPhones every 2 years that perform better and better and have that perpetual upgrade path.

I think the whole flash thing is because is for the reasons Apple says, basically on a 3 inch screen without mouse, you can't offer a satisfactory flash experience and having to rely on Adobe and flash developers to consider mobile devices in their coding -- basically a losing gamble.

Re:Games too

[TheKidWho]

Of course it does, but they aren't making the profit directly from the 30% cut they take.

Re:Games too

[Bakkster]

Apple may not have a profitable App Store, but they probably want to keep it from becoming any more un-profitable.

Re:Games too

[Pojut]

I completely agree, HTML5 is the way of the future...but you are ignoring the fact that although HTML5 is the way of the future, Flash is the way of today. Using your argument as a base, what harm would there be in supporting both HTML5 AND Flash on the same device?

Future proofing is awesome, but not if you lose access to current technology in the process.

Re:Games too

[siloko]

If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

Given the constraints aren't technical but political then the chances that Flash could jump through the requisite hoops are zero.

Re:Games too

[everynerd]

The apps are the main selling point of the devices. Selling devices produces profit. Ever heard the catch-phrase "there's an app for that"?

Re:Games too

[ray-auch]

> If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

They can and they have - at least the technical constraints.

Legal constraints are the issue - Apple have banned any other programming languages like flash from the platform. Adobe were working round that with a pre-processor / converter but Apple have changed the licence to demand that all apps be written directly in Apple-approved programming languages - no pre-processors allowed.

Emacs for iPhone - not allowed (before). Now, if you even use Bison / Yacc or anything similar to create your app, it's not allowed.

Re:Games too

[medcalf]

Hardly. In order for a company to stay in business, they have to make enough profit to invest back into their business to create new products. I mean, look at all the stuff Apple has done that is new and innovative, particularly in the last five years. It takes a lot of money to do that, particularly since for every successful concept that you sink billions into developing, there are dozens of other concepts that you also sink money into but that fail. For a business, unless you are providing a commodity, a small profit margin may as well be a loss.

I can buy a lot of arguments about what Apple is doing being bad for consumers, though consumers don't seem to mind. I can buy a lot of arguments about what Apple is doing being bad for developers, though developers still seem to be developing for the platform. But I don't see the meagre profits from the app store, or from video rentals, or similar low-margin operations (possibly, in fact probably, including their music sales) as being reasonable; they strike me as ignorant of how businesses think. Yes, it's all about money with Apple (and every other successful corporation), but for Apple, the money is in the device sales.

Let me expand that a bit. Apple sells digital music because an easy source of high-quality music that requires little thought to access leads to more sales of music which leads to more sales of music players, which Apple manufactures and gets a high margin on. If Apple could sell enough more music players to pay for the costs of hosting the songs just by giving away the songs, they would probably do it. The problem is that if the songs are all free, then Apple's costs go up (both hosting/bandwidth costs and the costs of royalties to the music companies) astronomically, so it's probably not possible to make more profit on music players from giving away music than from selling it at a nominal cost. If Apple could make more money giving away videos than selling them, they probably would for the same reason. And so on.

So why does Apple so tightly control the app store? Why is it that they want to ensure that apps are not crashing, or even worse crashing the device? Why is it that they want to ensure that applications are not poor performers, or that they don't drain the battery of the device? Why were they so long in allowing multi-tasking, and even then only allowing it in very restricted contexts? Quite simply, if apps for the platform were to do these things, then the ordinary, unsophisticated user would blame the platform rather than the software vendor for the crashes and performance problems they experience. This already happens on PCs: Microsoft gets blamed for badly written third party device drivers, poor third party software and the like. And if users start seeing the platform as poorly performing and underpowered and crash-prone, Apple would sell fewer of those devices and would make less money.

And honestly, this has been borne out by many platforms. Quick, name successful tablets with high volume sales. As far as I can tell, that's just Apple. Quick, name successful smart phone vendors with high volume sales. Discounting Microsoft (though this may change with Windows Phone 7), Nokia, and Palm, all of which are flailing about and unable to adapt to the current market, there are basically Apple and RIM (which both tightly control their platforms) and Google (which doesn't). But note that Apple and RIM are hardware vendors, and Google is a software vendor: they have different priorities. We will see which philosophy is preferred by users, but my long-term bet is that Apple and RIM will survive, and any other smart phone vendors will be basically niche market vendors at best.

So I can't really blame Apple for a lot of the decisions they've made, even the ones I disagree with. They are just trying to represent the interests of their shareholders by making a profit, which is their job after all.

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

But Adobe did find a way to make Flash work on Apple's devices - they added the ability to export Flash as native iPhone code.

Apple responded by changing their rules to require all iPhone apps to be orginally developed with Apple tools.

That's not about the constraints of the device - that's about artificial constraints created for business reasons.

Re:Games too

[TheKidWho]

Posters on slashdot seem to suffer immensely from amnesia.

The OP said

yet would be free...meaning Apple wouldn't get their cut.

My retort is Apple does not make that much from "their cut."

Yes of course the App store is a huge selling point of the iDevices, but the 30% that Apple is getting from them is mostly covering the cost to provide those apps in the first place and to provide the development environment.

Re:Games too

[twistedsymphony]

It's apple's job to accommodate Flash in so far as they want their platform to support the features and functionality that their consumers are sold and expecting from the platform.

Why should apple support HTML or Javascript? or JPGs or any other form of web-media... they support it because it gives their product additional functionality that is desirable to their consumers and expected from the type of product they're selling. It doesn't matter if Flash is the biggest bloated POS closed source platform on the planet... customers want it, and expect it to be supported. And that means Apple should have an interest in making it work and work well with their device. That doesn't mean Adobe shouldn't have a similar interest. but an open Dear John to Adobe from Jobs hardly makes up for the fact that their product still lacks that ability.

Would you have accepted as much if things were reversed and the iPhone supported flash but no-name company would not... how well do you think sales would be going for the iPhones competitor?

With serious competition from Google and HTC Apple doesn't have as strong of a foothold in being able to bully around 3rd parties as they once did.

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss (and subsequently send him spinning in his grave), a profit is a profit no matter how small.

And that's exactly why Adobe wants Flash on the iPhone. That and keeping their stranglehold on developers.

Re:Games too

[DiademBedfordshire]

but the 30% that Apple is getting from them is mostly covering the cost to provide those apps in the first place and to provide the development environment.

$440 Million for the development environment and cost of serving the apps? I doubt it.

Re:Games too

[jedidiah]

Apple benefits from lock-in.

The more you buy from them that's Apple-only, the more you will be forced to by another Apple product.

Vendor-lock in games, video and books prop up future iSales.

Old DRM Music files probably help do the same since many people probably don't care to pay the ransom.

The less tied my Apple experience is to Apple-only elements, the more free I am to dump them when it's time to upgrade.

Re:Games too

[Chris Mattern]

a profit is a profit no matter how small.

Not really. A profit has to be measured against the amount of capital it took to generate it. If your profit is only 0.5% of your capital, you have to ask why you are putting in hard work and risking your capital (all business involves some risk) when you could just sell it all, buy Treasuries, and make more money work- and risk-free.

Re:Games too

[ircmaxell]

Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to accommodate Flash?

Well, it's not. However, it's a straw argument to not provide the APIs to let Flash use the GPU, and then complain that it doesn't use the GPU. That's the problem... Not that Flash is programmed bad, but that it doesn't take advantage of something that Apple's software does when Apple doesn't make it available.

If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

Correct. If it was Adobe complaining about Flash performance on Apple products, you'd have a point. Heck, even if it was a third party complaining, you'd have a point. But it's Apple that's complaining. They are not giving Adobe the tools to be able to make it better, and then slamming them publicly for not making it better...

It would be like Balmer saying that PowerPC sucks because it can't run Windows, even though it's MS's fault that they don't compile Windows for PowerPC... It would be like you complaining that I can't drive your car, after you removed the engine from it. It would be like a conference denying you entry, and then complaining that you never showed up... It would be like your company revoking your computer access, and then complaining that you don't do any work...

Most of Jobs' complaints are straw arguments (and some are blatant lies). That's what TFA was talking about. Sure, there is a decent thought or two in Jobs' letter. But the vast majority of it is pure FUD.

Re:Games too

[jedidiah]

> Wrong, having a nice paid app ecosystem benefits them as well..

MS-DOS and it's successors yield the same benefit. I don't think Microsoft ever "skimmed" their developers.

Re:Games too

[nomadic]

And maybe a touch of sour grapes. Adobe treated Apple like a second class platform back in the 90's when Apple was at its weakest.

You mean, back when it WAS a second class platform?

Now that Apple is on top of this market I think Steve Jobs is handing out a little payback. Loyalty, or the lack of it, is hard to forget.

Apple owes a tremendous amount to Adobe; without Photoshop Apple would even today be in a weaker position.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

I think part of the problem is that Adobe *still* treats Apple like a second class platform. Flash stinks on OSX. It crashes *constantly*. Adobe's CS is a slow bloated behemoth that never bothered (until CS5) to use Apple's native OSX APIs (Cocoa) but instead stuck with their old legacy/compatibility APIs (Carbon). Even when Adobe finally started working on improving Flash, they tried to blame the whole thing on Apple.

I think you're right to point out that there seems to be bad blood between these companies, but I think it's because of ongoing fights between the companies.

Re:Games too

[jonbryce]

Problem is that you aren't going to develop your website for HTML 5, when the browsers accounting for about 60% - 70% of the market don't support it at all, and you have to support two different video codecs for the browers that do support it.

Remember the days when online video meant installing plugins from Real Player, Microsoft and Quicktime, and there were different types of Java plugin? HTML 5 at the moment seems to be a return to those days.

Re:Games too

[yuna49]

But I don't see the meagre profits from the app store, or from video rentals, or similar low-margin operations (possibly, in fact probably, including their music sales) as being reasonable; they strike me as ignorant of how businesses think. Yes, it's all about money with Apple (and every other successful corporation), but for Apple, the money is in the device sales.

Might that be a bit short-sighted over the longer term? Apple might primarily a hardware company today with a smaller content marketing arm, but ten years from now, the profitability of the two might well be reversed. Apple won't be able to dominate the mobile devices market in the future as it has in the past, but it could still be a major player in the ever-expanding business of content distribution. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the often-mooted Apple/Disney deal happen in the years ahead. Disney has already signed on for AppleTV. I bet those programs won't be available via h.264 over Flash.

Re:Games too

[Real1tyCzech]

Yes. If, as with any program, it is programed for that type of interface.

Do you think sites like newgrounds would jump at the chance to make an iPad games section?

Re:Games too

[aardwolf64]

Try playing 95% of the games out there with your finger. There is no left-click/right-click or mouseover paradigm for the iPhone... why would you expect it to even work?

Re:Games too

[BitZtream]

Yea, its too bad that Safari with SVG support is capable of doing almost everything flash is already sans a few sound issues (that have probably been fixed already)

Its easy enough to get around the problem without Flash.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

Apple still needs to run the app store. That requires a datacenter for the servers and a lot of bandwidth. It requires an IT staff to maintain those servers, and designers and software engineers to maintain the store itself. It requires customer service reps to answer complaints, another team to analyze and approve apps and service developers, and a legal team to analyze all the legal implications of all of those things. Then it requires some management time to keep all of those people working together.

You're asking why Apple doesn't just do all that for free? Hmmm.... let me think.

Re:Games too

[BitZtream]

Adobe still treats Apple like a second class citizen.

The Flash Player is ass on a good day.

None of the Adobe products other than Flash Player will install on a Mac with a case sensitive partition.

Adobe took freaking FOR EVER to update their Apps to the new API (Cocoa, and I'm not sure its actually done in CS5 or not, I'll never know since it requires a case insensitive filesystem!)

In short, even if Apple was doing nothing more than trying to hurt Adobe, I'd still be on Apple's side. Adobe has been more of a pain in the ass to me in the last 5 years than MS ever was.

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

But Adobe did that! A major feature of the latest version of Adobe's Flash tools is that they can compile Flash directly for the iPhone so the Flash player isn't required. Apple responded by changing their developer rules so that only applications originally written in ObjC, C, and C++ are allowed.

Adobe's been bending over backwards to make this work, and Apple keeps inventing more obstacles. We're well past the point where Apple can use the platform as an excuse. It's about obsessive control at all costs.

Re:Games too

[medcalf]

So let's say that I create a new, awesome format for video playback that just blows everything else out of the water. Does every platform vendor have an obligation to support my format? If your answer is dependent on the prevalence of the format, how prevalent does it have to be? It seems to me that it's within Apple's rights to refuse to support Flash, and it is within customers' rights to decide whether or not they will then buy the devices.

Re:Games too

[bill_mcgonigle]

Like HTML/JS developers, Flash Developers also need to be mindful to ensure that their creations work on these new touch devices.Developers need to make tweeks to existing code.

And if the market is significant (I think it probably is) those who do will succeed - those who don't will bit-rot. Still, Google went trackball with the Nexus One.

That said, the other side needs to handle mouse-proxy properly too. I wrote my first HTML/Javascript-based touch interface in 1999, deployed on a Vadem Clio. It used X/VNC over pre-B 802.11, and the mouse was set to be invisible in X. Javascript was written to understand the semantics of a 'touch-click', but that was the smallest part of the effort.

Apple can't simply say, "hey, new tech, everybody adapt to our tiny marketshare" and expect to succeed. I don't have an iPhone, but I'd be really surprised if they haven't come this half-way already, for their users' sake.

Re:Games too

[Bazar]

Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to accommodate Flash?

I'm not sure where that question came out of.
The real debate is how apple changed the developer EULA to effectively deny any possibility of a flash developed app running.

History lesson:
The first developer EULA prevented any apps from interperting code. So no emulators, or on the fly compliers. This meant that everything had to run as a native executable.
This denied flash or java from running on the system, in addition to preventing a potential backdoor to the apple shop. (Otherwise you could download a compiler type app (ie: java), and run any program you wished, instead of having your choices controled/taxed by apple's iStore)

Adobe worked around this EULA limitation, by allowing flash developers to create a native executable for the iphone. It was written using flash, but was an actual native execuitable for the iphone.
Apple still controled the iStore, but flash developers could now develop for the iPhone.

Lo and behold, our saviours of the internet, Apple, got around and changed the developer EULA, to explicitly fix that "loophole". Making it against the EULA to write a program that wasn't in objective C (or whatever language apple now demands, i forget)

The ONLY reason i can comprehend for that change to the EULA was to ban the native flash executables. Theres no other practical reason for it.

Adobe went out of their way to support the iPhone, and in return Apple pulled the rug out from under them and banned any use of their application for development/use on the iphone/ipad.
Thats a dick move by apple, the likes of which i haven't seen since Microsoft in the 90's

And to top it off, now they come out telling us how they are only doing whats best for the ipod/iphone. Well that's bloody obvious. Apple want to force as much vendor lockin as possible, and cross-platform tools are the bane to any company trying to force an OS lock-in. Lock-in is great for apple, the iphone, and ipad.
Its terrible for everyone and everything else, including the actual iphone consumers!

Re:Games too

[medcalf]

So why not sell the apps without a cut?

Because if they did that, they would be losing money on hosting apps, rather than breaking even, or making a slight profit. They are trying to maximize their profit (total, devices + software residuals), and obviously they have made the determination that these are the price levels that make that happen.

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

Platform vendors are under no obligation to build a platform that works just like all other platforms so that a particular software vendor doesn't have to rework something that makes money for them (the software vendor). If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

This isn't an issue of Apple not wanting to change their platform to accommodate Adobe; it's an issue of Apple not wanting flash on their platform no matter what Adobe does to accommodate Apple's platform.

Adobe even created a packager for Flash CS5 so that developers could publish Flash projects as native iPhone apps - No Flash Player required - and for their efforts Apple changed SDK license agreement to block these apps.

So, what more do you believe that Adobe needs to do to "build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device" ?

Re:Games too

[pcolaman]

The sad thing is how obvious this all is to those of us who don't have our heads shoved deeply up Steve Jobs' ass, and how all of the fanboys keep defending his strawman argument.

Re:Games too

[Altus]

If customers want it so much, why are they still buying the iPhone when it is well known that flash doesn't work on the iPhone?

What you want may not be what everyone else wants.

Re:Games too

[Cyberax]

"This argument makes no sense to me. HTML5 can already replicate pretty much anything these Flash games do and is also outside of Apple's control."

Not. Even. Close.

Adobe Flash is right now one of the fastest implementations of vector graphics animation. HTML5 has NOTHING close in capability to SWF format - canvas is a frigging joke.

Sure, you can run Quake2 with software rendering in JS drawing on canvas. But the same Quake2 in Flash would require many times less of CPU time per frame.

Re:Games too

[packman]

Bandwidth, their "review" system for the apps, maintaining an SDK & it's documentation, maintaining a scalable online store of that size in different countries, credit card handling, ... all costs them money. There's more to it than you would expect on first sight...

Re:Games too

[MobyDisk]

The FUD must be working. The hover effect in games is not a reason to deny support for Flash. That's silly. The few things that actually require that won't work on an iPhone. Just like they don't work on other touch platforms. boo-hoo.

There's tons of games and apps out there for the iPhone, where the PC version uses hover-effects. But the Nintendo DS version, and the Android version, etc. forego the hover effects. The conversions work just fine.

Re:Games too

[Just Some Guy]

Sure, you can run Quake2 with software rendering in JS drawing on canvas. But the same Quake2 in Flash would require many times less of CPU time per frame.

LOL. I can't even watch a freaking badger without a core loading up.

Re:Games too

[Shadow Wrought]

This argument fails because Apple makes barely any profit on the App market itself.

Much in the same way that all the Spiderman movies, LoTR movies, and Avatar didn't make a profit either, right?

Re:Games too

[mounthood]

> If Adobe can't build Flash to fit within the constraints of the device, then too bad.

They can and they have - at least the technical constraints.

Legal constraints are the issue - Apple have banned any other programming languages like flash from the platform. ...

The iPhone isn't done until Flash won't run.

Re:Games too

[Cyberax]

So? Encode this video in h.264 and check how fast it works.

Try to write a simple HTML5 game with full-screen vector animation. And see how it fails...

Re:Games too

[drerwk]

They can and they have - at least the technical constraints.

I am not seeing any phone that currently supports the whole flash experience: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/supported_devices/ Just the Flash Lite option.

Re:Games too

[uglyduckling]

Can you explain how that's any different from the other smartphones, or indeed any general-purpose OS? I bought a bunch of apps for my Palm TX, guess what - they don't work on my new (non-Palm) phone. Very few software companies support free cross-grading of apps from one OS to another - about the only large company I ever remember supporting that were Macromedia who usually put Windows and Mac executables on the same CD, but that's stopped since Adobe bought them up.

Re:Games too

[kimvette]

Consider that this is not a technical issue but an anti-competitive stance (and I want flash on my iPhone, bloat and all thankyouverymuchstevejobsyoumegalomaniac), along with no bash shell, no multitasking (funny, works very, very well on my jailbroken phone via backgrounder and sbsettings!), no ssh client, unable to use it as a mass storage device, the complications introduced in corporate deployments. Unfortunately, even Windows Mobile/WinCE, the OS from the king of anticompetitive tactics (Microsoft) is much more "open" and easier to deploy and manage, or even simply use.

Jobs comes across similar to one of those looney treehuggers who wants to stop all use of fossil fuels NOW because it's possible to build wind farms, solar farms, and in 20+ years, Mr. Fusion reactors. In the meantime, if we kill all fossil fuel use, we'll be limited to cars with a 200 mile range or less (so a cross-country drive, or even a cross-state drive in most states, would be a multi-day trip due to 8+hour charge times), the economy would collapse hard, and there would be little to no way to manufacture the "green" technologies. Jobs is putting the cart before the horse here. If HTML5 were fully supported by the major browsers TODAY and there were mainstream HTML5 sites TODAY he would have a legitimate point. But it isn't, there aren't, and he doesn't. It is purely an anti-competitive tactic.

I want to be able to use my iPhone as a mass storage device so I can manage the phone from Linux, and so I can carry one less device (no more jump drive or external drive to carry to a client site for examp;e).

I use crond, the bash shell and ssh for monitoring servers.

I use backgrounder and have had ZERO problems with performance, nor with apps "randomly" closing when memory gets low.

I jailbroke my phone, and figured out the method to "downgrade"[sic] from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 to get my jailbreak back, and I do not have so much as a single pirated app on my iPhone. In fact I've probably spent $250 on apps via the apple store, and probably $15.00 on music (why do I need to buy music when I've ripped my entire CD collection to MP3? Be glad I bought ANY music from you Apple). All the other software I've installed (via cydia, or compiling/installing via bash, etc.) has been either open source or freeware. And yet, zero stability problems, and I keep sshd turned off when I am not actively using it.

Now, Flash may increase the memory footprint of some web sites, but I don't give a crap while watching videos via hulu or crackle; it's not like I'd want to run a game at the same time. Give me flash! Preaching HTML5 is fine and dandy, but right now 99% of sites that would run the more advanced HTML5 features are now running flash (or silverlight *gag*).

Re:Games too

[UnknowingFool]

I can buy a lot of arguments about what Apple is doing being bad for developers, though developers still seem to be developing for the platform.

One argument I hear again and again is that this restriction by Apple will make it hard for developers to develop cross platform apps. This is a valid point. But I disagree with the characterization that this is a new kind of evil that Apple is creating for developers. This situation already exists. If a developer wants to develop a game for the Wii, Xbox, PS3, and PC, it will require lots of work. There is no magical button you can press that allows a developer to compile a game for all platforms. Flash is the closest thing however each platform will require the developer to tweak each version of the game. Otherwise the game has to conform to the lowest denominator and not be able to use platform specific features like motion control, force feedback, etc. Developing any cross platform app on the iPhone is the same. It won't take advantage of multi-touch gestures, acceleronmeter, etc without tweaking.

The other complaint is that Apple is forcing developers to use Apple tools rather than their own. Not technically true. These restriction state that C or Objective-C must be used. A developer familiar with any text editor and gcc can use them to build; however, using XCode makes things easier.

I think forcing developers to learn Objective C is the true intent of Apple. If a developer only uses Flash and then exports it to iPhone code that developer never has to learn Objective-C. This makes it easier for Flash developers to write code; it makes it hard for everyone to debug code. Remember Apple has to approve apps so they are invovled. If there was some bug in the app, it makes hard to determine where it is. It could be in the Flash code, the Flash API, the translation, or the iPhone API. A Flash developer never learning Objective C would not be able to determine whether the translation had the bug or it is in Apple's API. All that developer would know is that Apple is not approving their app because of bugs they can't find. If the app has already been approved then the developer can't issue patches to his/her customers. Apple would rather not have this situation at all. No porting; learn Objective-C.

Re:Games too

[uglyduckling]

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?

Re:Games too

[peragrin]

It's not just hover overs, but things like scrolling(flash can't handle scroll wheels by default), multiple mouse buttons, multiple monitors, etc.

it isliketheguy who designed apples hockey puck mouse is the primary flash developer. I have been told(as I won't develop for flash ever). That flash has supported scrolls since version 6 yet I have not found a single flash based app that uses them even though scrolls have basically been stanard for thelast decade.

As for multiple monitor support adobe refuses to say why except for secuirty reasons and promptly deletes all posts in their forums regarding the issue. To be fair silverlight does the same stupid crap. All I want to do is pop a video outof thecurrent browser tab and drag it to another display torun atfull screen while I work on another display.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

Apple sells digital music because an easy source of high-quality music that requires little thought to access leads to more sales of music which leads to more sales of music players, which Apple manufactures and gets a high margin on.

It's also worth noting that when Apple opened the iTunes store, there weren't really other decent online stores out there. This meant that you had to go to the store, buy a CD, and then rip it into iTunes. Or pirate. And my point isn't, "Look at how Apple pioneered a new market," (though they did) but rather that they needed an online store to market their product decently. If the record labels had gotten off their asses and done a good job of it themselves, Apple might have simply built iTunes to use one of the existing stores. If Amazon's MP3 store had existed back then, I think it's possible that Apple wouldn't have bothered setting up their own store. However, Amazon's MP3 store was only allowed to exist because Apple set up shop first.

I think Apple must have learned something from that experience: if you want high-quality content delivered to your content-consumption devices, and you want the experience of delivering that content to be good, then you should just do it yourself.

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash has so many APIs for accessing the GPU available to it under Linux that the developer made a whiney blog post about how it was so difficult for him to choose. Yet Flash still does not use the GPU properly, and still runs dog slow even on 3Ghz machine under Linux. And does Adobe get the blame for this? No, Linux developers do. Jobs doesn't want the same thing happening to the iPhone.

tl;dr Adobe writes shitty software, and the OS gets the blame.

Re:Games too

[ThrowAwaySociety]

And maybe a touch of sour grapes. Adobe treated Apple like a second class platform back in the 90's when Apple was at its weakest.
You mean, back when it WAS a second class platform?

Actually, you're both a little off base. Adobe through the '90s treated Apple as its first-class platform. Illustrator, for example, didn't get a syncronized port for Windows until 1997. Adobe had no problem making the technically backward Classic Mac OS a first-class platform for its software.

It's only more recently that Adobe has been neglecting OS X. Starting, I suppose, with the decision (later reversed) to discontinue the Mac OS version of Premiere, but continuing with the latest versions of the Creative Suite, which seem to get worse and worse on OS X with every release, despite increasing OS X market share.

Now that Apple is on top of this market I think Steve Jobs is handing out a little payback. Loyalty, or the lack of it, is hard to forget.

Apple owes a tremendous amount to Adobe; without Photoshop Apple would even today be in a weaker position.

Don't be silly. Businesses like Apple and Adobe don't feel obligation. Adobe supports the Mac because there are still a buttload of designers that use the Mac. With regular software, it''s 95/5, 90/10 if you're lucky. With graphic designers and photographers, it's 67/33, maybe 60/40. Adobe's not willing to cut off that limb just yet. It's certainly sent every signal it can that the Mac enjoys no special status there; it's pure business that keeps Adobe coming back.

Re:Games too

[cowscows]

The solution that they have is that the first tap reads as a hover, and the second tap reads as a click. And yes it does suck. It's a pain, but it's just barely useable for browsing through menus or whatever. But as for a low latency input such that a game might require, it would not work at all.

This isn't just a problem inherent to Apple, it's inherent in the differences between a touch interface and a mouse driven interface. The reality is that websites/applications/whatever that want to work on both types of interfaces are going to have to come up with a design that doesn't rely on the hover effect, or settle for the fact that it'll be cumbersome and crappy on a touch screen.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Except only Flash Lite has been running on most mobile devices, and so far not very well. They say its coming to Android, but I'll believe it when I see it, and can actually use it.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

it's a straw argument to not provide the APIs to let Flash use the GPU, and then complain that it doesn't use the GPU. That's the problem... Not that Flash is programmed bad

Sorry, but I don't think the issue of APIs is sufficient to explain why Flash crashes constantly. If the whole thing were merely an issue of Flash lacking H264 hardware acceleration support, then you might have a point here, but Flash has been crashing browsers for years and years and Adobe has never really fixed it.

Adobe never even pretended that they were going to fix it until Apple refused to support Flash on the iPhone, at which point they started pointing their fingers at Apple's APIs. One of their major complaints was, "We've been using Apple's legacy API and never bothered to move to the new API, and the old API isn't as well maintained as the new one." First, it's not really Apple's fault that Adobe stuck with Carbon for all these years. Second, using Carbon still doesn't quite explain why Flash hangs and crashes all the time.

Re:Games too

[maitai]

Easy enough. A tap is a click, holding your finger on the screen is a hover. That happens to be the way my MSI Wind Top touch screen PC running Windows 7 functions.

My Blackberry Storm 2 also has no issue with hover (since you have to press the screen to register a click)

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

No, Adobe was bitching that there wasn't a low level API for them to use. Completely ignoring the fact that Core Video had been doing hardware accelerated video playback since 10.4, and every one else was able to use it.

Re:Games too

[V!NCENT]

At least Apple is working together with companies behind large websiote that have a high page rank to make use of open standards of the web. HTML, CSS, Javascript, whatever.

Microsoft is killing the open web.

Now if I wanted to run Linux I could. I don't have to give a flying fsck about Apples lockin and Apple wouldn't be undermining _my_ acces to the web.

Microsoft is trying to lock me out with Silverlight.

Who cares? If Steve is after an open web (not open Macs!), then I solute him. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Re:Games too

[shutdown -p now]

HTML5 lacks good development tools on the same level as what Adobe offers for Flash. Writing a Flash game today is a breeze, so long as you have an idea. Writing it in HTML5 means dealing with the mess that JS-in-a-browser is today, to begin with.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Adobe could have used the Core Video API to get hardware accelerated video playback. Its been available since 10.4, and its what everyone else uses.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

no ssh client

There are plenty of these in the App Store. Most of them are free. Hell, my Android phone didn't come with one out of the box either.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Ever paid for an app on your Blackberry, or even just downloaded one? Then you're effectively locked in, especially if that app doesn't exist on one of the competing platforms.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

And they still have to pay for credit card processing and hosting fees on all of those apps. Remember most of the apps are either free or 99 cents.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

They're a publicly traded company. They're required to keep those books open.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Yes, because there's absolutely no lock-in with Windows. They don't have Windows only devices, and Windows only applications. Or Windows only music. How's that Plays For Sure stuff working for ya?

Re:Games too

[ircmaxell]

I was referring to the iPhone (which is what Jobs was referring to), not OSX...

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Adobe still hasn't gone to Cocoa with CS5. Its part of the reason why CS5 isn't 64bit on OS X.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Flash takes WAY more resources to support. Also, Apple doesn't have any control over the performance of Flash on the iPhone. They do have control over their HTML5 performance. If their implementation of HTML5 isn't up to their standards of usability, they can work to improve it. With Flash, they'd be beholden to Adobe to improve it, which they may or may not get around to.

Re:Games too

[Skuld-Chan]

Because its an iPhone? Adobe's flash blog says they get over 7 million hits in several months from iPhone users on their download flash page - where it displays a message says "sorry because of apple we cannot give this to you".

http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2010/02/06/iphone-stats-from-the-flash-player-download-center/

I don't think people in general have any clue really - flash works on their home pc, why not this magical phone I have?

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

"Microsoft is killing the open web."

How so?

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Didn't you just say that Flash is the fastest implementations of vector graphics animation? And now you're telling him to encode it in video instead?

Re:Games too

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple.

Adobe needs to write a tool that converts flash source or binary directly to Objective C.
Hint: Compiler is a text transformation tool, hence this compiler emits flash to Objective C code.

Then developers could use Object C "Compiler" from iStore or GNU and create a "Program" that was using apple approved "Source" and generate iPhone executable.

Now apple can not deny it at all.

Re:Games too

[Eric Sharkey]

I am not seeing any phone that currently supports the whole flash experience: http://www.adobe.com/mobile/supported_devices/ Just the Flash Lite option.

That list is a little out of date. The Nokia N900 runs the desktop version of Flash 9.

On the other hand, many flash games require more CPU than a mobile device can really provide at the moment.

Re:Games too

[Skuld-Chan]

It was the parent who said they made most of their money on device sales, and nothing hardly on app store sales. If true - why not divert that money into running infrastructure.

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

I seriously doubt that Apple plays any role in debugging third-party apps whether they're written in Objective-C or not. So I think this issue is a red herring.

Re:Games too

[Skuld-Chan]

Whats amusing is that link just has a bunch of links to flash videos of an html 5 engine running. Only one of those links goes to a site where you can try to play those games, and guess what?

None of them work - they say press "A to start" I'm pressing A over and over and over again - nothing, and I'm using a supported web browser.

Re:Games too

[Cyberax]

Yes, it's one of the fastest (if not THE fastest) vector animation suit.

Canvas doesn't come close. Hardware-accelerated OpenVG will be faster, but quality of hardware rendering is not perfect right now. Antialiasing is a particularly painful point.

You won't be able to replicate Badgers in HTML5 with less resource usage and the same quality.

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

The difference is that there is competition in PCs and other devices that run Windows. There isn't any competition in the Apple hardware market.

Re:Games too

[jaymz666]

Yep. Mainstream users didn't even really know smartphones existed before the iPhone. The smartphone marketplace is more than just tech nerds now.

Blizzard includes Mac and PC apps in the same box.

Re:Games too

[oztiks]

I've been saying this for ages, and i always get modded as troll. Get told HTML5 is out there and I'm a douche ..

So fuck you very much!

Re:Games too

[hkmwbz]

IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome... All of these are promising or already have extensive HTML5 support.

Remember the days when IE was a single big target you could attack to gain access to just about all computers? Flash is that single target now. It's a security nightmare. It needs to die.

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

In the article Apple execs claim that iTunes and the App Store don't make much profit, but don't provide any actual numbers.

Re:Games too

[rxan]

Let me expand that a bit. Apple sells digital music because an easy source of high-quality music that requires little thought to access leads to more sales of music which leads to more sales of music players, which Apple manufactures and gets a high margin on. If Apple could sell enough more music players to pay for the costs of hosting the songs just by giving away the songs, they would probably do it. The problem is that if the songs are all free, then Apple's costs go up (both hosting/bandwidth costs and the costs of royalties to the music companies) astronomically, so it's probably not possible to make more profit on music players from giving away music than from selling it at a nominal cost. If Apple could make more money giving away videos than selling them, they probably would for the same reason. And so on.

You could then easily argue that if they were to provide access to free content hosted by others then they would still get the device sales and not have to worry about hosting.

So why does Apple so tightly control the app store? Why is it that they want to ensure that apps are not crashing, or even worse crashing the device? Why is it that they want to ensure that applications are not poor performers, or that they don't drain the battery of the device? Why were they so long in allowing multi-tasking, and even then only allowing it in very restricted contexts? Quite simply, if apps for the platform were to do these things, then the ordinary, unsophisticated user would blame the platform rather than the software vendor for the crashes and performance problems they experience. This already happens on PCs: Microsoft gets blamed for badly written third party device drivers, poor third party software and the like. And if users start seeing the platform as poorly performing and underpowered and crash-prone, Apple would sell fewer of those devices and would make less money.

If Apple really just wanted to ensure quality applications and user experience, then why not offer the best of both worlds? Again your argument doesn't hold up. There's no reason that they couldn't have the "sanctioned" Apple App Store and then the "unsanctioned" wild west.

What it really boils down to is control under the guise of security and quality, neither of which are to be found on the iPhone.

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

OOOOOH that would! be nice. Why haven't I considered that as a basic requirement of video for years? Now I'll be looking for that bit of functionality to find it's way in somewhere. I don't know whether to thank you for genius or curse you for the same. My mind may be wracked for years. ;)

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

Touche (pun intended?)!

I hadn't considered that, because I use so few sites with rollover. Good call. Pardon me while I

. /facepalm

Re:Games too

[jonbryce]

IE9 isn't shipping yet. Earlier versions of IE have about 60% of the market.

Re:Games too

[Drakino]

*sigh*. Can we please kill the myth that Apple makes tons of money off the App Store? I know it's hard to keep up with accurate info when Apple releases financials 4 times a year that show that the iTunes Store is purely a break even operation.

Apple makes their money ($$$$$) off the hardware. It would actually save Apple money if they allowed Flash, and didn't have to pay for the bandwidth and server hosting costs from delivering apps (including all those free ones) to people.

Apple is heavily pushing HTML5, and even allows it to be used for apps on the iPhone. Google Voice is a perfect example here. Apple hasn't put it on the app store, but that didn't stop Google from releasing it, oh, and it works on the Palm Pre too. Cross phone development. All using open standards that Apple can optimize for, instead of an Adobe proprietary environment.

Re:Games too

[605dave]

Adobe worked around this EULA limitation

So they thought they found a way around the spirit of the agreement. It was pretty clear to me that Apple wanted developers developing with their tools. But Adobe tried to make that business decision for them by trying to wriggle around the agreement.

..by allowing flash developers to create a native executable for the iphone. It was written using flash, but was an actual native execuitable (sic) for the iphone.

No, just because it executes does not mean it is native. Ever had to run a RealBasic app on a Mac?

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

Well if we had separate mouse and click on the i that wouldn't matter either would it? But touching and holding the screen is a click, not a mouseover.

Also, as the guy above pointed out, I'm also not using CSS/javascript rollovers on my iPhone. I guess devs figured out that was too tricky? Either that or they've replaced them with swipe bars I think.

Re:Games too

[siloko]

Well Flash has been around since 1996 where as of April 2010 HTML5 is still at Working Draft stage in the W3C. So maybe we are at the 'drop-in replacement' stage now but that hasn't been the case throughout Flash's rather long history.

Re:Games too

[fullfactorial]

The ONLY reason i can comprehend for that change to the EULA was to ban the native flash executables. Theres no other practical reason for it.

It's too early to say why Apple is prohibiting 3rd-party compilers. Today it looks like Apple is exerting a monopoly over software, but tomorrow we might learn that Apple was trying to prevent a monopoly in the hardware. Right now the entire iPhone ecosystem is locked into an ARM architecture.

By prohibiting 3rd party compilers, Apple can change chip architectures with only a simple update to XCode, and reasonably expect most apps to be recompiled for the new architecture. Conversely, Flash-compiled iPhone apps might have to wait a year for Adobe CS7 or whatever. Steve Jobs basically said this in his open letter:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

It took Adobe ten years to release a fully MacOS X native version of Photoshop. I can't blame Steve Jobs for not wanting his platform to be dependent on Adobe.

Re:Games too

[Peganthyrus]

I used Flash professionally around 2000. The Mac version was a total piece of shit - slow, glitchy, with extra Mac-only point releases to fix dire Mac-only crasher bugs in the editor.

Since buying Macromedia, all of Adobe's products have been increasingly worse cycle hogs as they started using the shitty Flash plugin for bits of UI here and there. There's no reason for Illustrator to start using ~10% of my CPU when idle just because I opened up the furshlugginer "Kulerz" panel by accident.

I, for one, am glad to see Adobe finally getting their comeuppance for the half-assed job of Mac support they've been doing. Their arguments of "we don't have the OS hooks" are disingenuous when you look at the in-browser performance of something like the Unity plugin.

Re:Games too

[scot4875]

Nobody is arguing that there is no cost involved.

Do you honestly believe that it costs them a significant percentage of that $440 million to keep a data center or two up and running, and to set up credit card processing? (I recently integrated an ordering platform with a credit card authorization system. It took me a couple of weeks, and most of that was testing.)

--Jeremy

Re:Games too

[prockcore]

There's no left-click/right-click paradigm for flash. Right click brings up the flash menu.

Re:Games too

[UnknowingFool]

No but Apple has a role in their store. If an app is bugged, Apple can remove it from their store or not release it. The developer has to fix the bug; if the developer doesn't know Objective C, they might not be able to fix it.

Re:Games too

[chartreuse]

Given the constraints aren't technical but political then the chances that Flash could jump through the requisite hoops are zero.

Yes, that would be true. But merely asserting it's political not technical makes your statement a hypothesis instead of a fact. And it seems an unlikely one at that.

The i-devices, however powerful they may be in comparison to the Apple ][s and TRS-80s of yesteryear, are still severely constrained in terms of memory, battery power and overall processing. There's no automatic garbage collection on them, for example, just retain-release counts, so the programmer is required to deal with memory allocations explicitly. I-devices aren't miniaturized computers so much as enlarged portable game players, firmware in a package like a pocket digital dictionary or book reader, just with wifi/3G, bigger, flashier screens and a touch UI, all competing to suck up all the CPU cycles they can get in order to remain responsive. If designing and manufacturing this stuff under those constraints while maintaining that user-responsiveness was easy there'd surely be more than half a dozen makers of devices like these.

(Hell, if it was easy all the people who complain "I bought this, I should be able to program it in PL/I if I want" -- as though more than 0.1% of them would bother to if they could -- could design and manufacture their own devices and stop annoying the rest of us with their whining. iPhone doesn't do what you want? Get a different phone, with Flash if that's so important, and if your principles are so righteous the market will surely back you up and the iPhone will become a mere asterisk in the annals of Android/Blackberry/whatever history.)

Getting back to the point, because the functional constraints for the i-devices are overwhelming Apple's under a lot of pressure to optimize the use of CPU cycles and RAM while maintaining some degree of coder-friendliness. They optimize the compiler and the OS behind the scenes, so to speak, so the programmer doesn't have to dig into ARM assembler to get a decent frame rate.

Is it not possible that the Flash plug-in (were it available), or the runtimes generated by the Flash-to-iPhone OS converter, interfere with the system optimizations that make the i-devices usable? (Like when Adobe's VM for Photoshop interfered with the Mac OS' VM wayyyyy back when.) I've seen people argue both sides on this technical issue but haven't seen anything that appears definitive.

What I'm saying is we can't tell how much of the Flash ban is political (corporate) until we know how much is technical in nature; it's obviously some of both, to judge from the ongoing PR war, but what proportions? Now that Apple's added a hardware-acceleration API to Snow Leopard that Adobe can use to make Flash on the Mac less of a CPU glutton we may soon have the answer (and hopefully relief) for the desktop, but until real Flash is out for mobile devices like Android I think the question is open.

(The reason, I think, for the banning of interpreters like BASIC may also be about CPU performance, but preventing security breaches a la SQL injections or privilege escalations is surely the major concern. The i-OS isn't terribly secure, if the jailbreaks and exploits reported here are any indication.)

Re:Games too

[ballwall]

But you can only play free iphone games on an iphone. You could (theoretically) play free flash games on any phone. Apple wants the lock-in more than anything else.

Re:Games too

[chartreuse]

it's a straw argument to not provide the APIs to let Flash use the GPU, and then complain that it doesn't use the GPU. That's the problem... Not that Flash is programmed bad, but that it doesn't take advantage of something that Apple's software does when Apple doesn't make it available.

Then why is VLC able to show the same video without pinning the CPU meters and putting the fans into hovercraft mode? VLC's open source, so why can't Adobe read the friggin' code and figure out how to do it themselves?

Re:Games too

[silverbax]

You are correct, but I would add that I've bought, taken over or worked on several businesses with 0.5% profit margin and grew them into 10-20% profit margin businesses. You can't do that with Treasuries, and as long as people are quick to sell instead of growing their profitable base, guys like me will cash in. The difference is that Apple has dynamic revenue, not a fixed interest return.

In other words, if I were in Apple's shoes and profit margins were meager, I'd see how to grow that profit. My motto is always, "if there is revenue, it can be grown."

Re:Games too

[chartreuse]

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.

Do you have any idea of how many free games there are in the App Store already? And all but a very few of them were written in Objective-C. Apple's surely not making much money off hosting and distributing those, but they still offer them.

-1 for argument from ignorance.

Re:Games too

[Sandbags]

Apple has virtually zero profit for the store. A) it exists simply to support the device. B) the overhead is actually quite high, including not just the obvious hosting and approval system, but the dev tools, SDK, emulator, and more that all get developed at apple for zero profit, and developer support too. C) You can make free iPhone apps, no profit is required for apple AT ALL. D) for paid apps, they have the single best money-to-publisher ration in the business, and they provide a pre-screened advertising platform now too making free apps even easier and more profitable to make...

Any flash app can be made into a native app very easily, and very profitably. Apple doesn't have to get a penny other than the once a year $100 to publish the apps (any number of them). This is NOT ABOUT PROFIT, nor is it about market control, its about device stability, security, and user experience, which makes the device more attractive to buyers, and thus make the platform more profitable.

Re:Games too

[Duradin]

That's like saying you're a master cabinet maker because you put your Ikea kit together in two hours and that anyone who takes longer to make any cabinet is an idiot.

I'm pretty sure Apple has a bit more involved in their system than what one guy could setup, test and manage.

Re:Games too

[Windows Breaker G4]

I was going to say just this. How long have they said it's coming and it's still not here? I am betting they can't find a way to keep it from killing batteries or stuttering on most phones. I don't blame apple for not wanting flash, I bet we'd see the battery life be about an hour maybe 2 at best. The iPhone os is based on OS X and any mac user can tell you flash on the full thing doesn't run well at all, never has, probably never will. Likes to freeze browsers completely/cause them to crash. Why would apple want that on their phone based on the same software on a device with far less power and ram?

Re:Games too

[Sandbags]

Practical reason 1) Use of AIR means developers can not benefit from adjustments to Apple's APIs until Adobe does, meaning non-native devs can't have the same feature/function head start as mnative devs, putting them at an instant disadvantage when taking oportinuties from new functions. (aka, native apps will corner the market and become popular before AIR cathes up so devs can write similar apps)

practical reason 2) If apple makes an update that alters an API cal for security reasons, any apps coded in AIR can not take advantage of that change, and will remain broken, until not only Apple and the Dev make a code change, but the Dev has to wait on Adobe, meaning again, native apps have a significant market advantage to interpreted code.

Practical reason 3) cross compiled code is more bloated, more difficult to inspect for code flaws, harder to read by a human, lacks significant commenting by the developer (since it was only present in the original AIR code set, not the C code set pre-compile), and the developers are completely removed from seeing the direct results of their code efforts and lack the ability to performance tweak their code directly (they can make all the tweaks they want, but Adobe can very easily undo that work).

these are BIG reasons for any developer to stay the hell clear of intermediary apps. Yes, selling an app across multiple platforms is a plus, and tools that make that process more efficient can, in some cases, lead to better profitability, however, proper code architecture, and a native understanding of the local APIs is STILL NECESSARY as even cross compiled code between platforms can only take advantage of very basic functions, and code efficiency and specific feature use still need to be cross-coded for each platform individually.

There are a lot more small reasons to avoid these interpreter or cross-compile platforms, these are just a few, and hopefully this leads to some insight for you and others on this matter.

Re:Games too

[agent_vee]

Apple created a artificial restriction to make cross platform development harder. Sure cross platform development has never been easy due to real technical reasons but Apple didn't have to go and make it more difficult.

Re:Games too

[Sandbags]

Point of failure: The VAST majority of apps in the apple store are COMPLETELY FREE, and there are NO restrictions on that. Apple only makes money if you choose to sell your app directly for money, and even then, they have the best terms for that in the market. EVERY other app store takes a bigger chunk...

Re:Games too

[samkass]

Adobe still hasn't gone to Cocoa with CS5. Its part of the reason why CS5 isn't 64bit on OS X.

Actually that entire sentence is the opposite of true. Adobe did go to Cocoa with CS5 which is why it is 64-bit on OSX. The reason CS4 wasn't 64-bit is because Adobe believed Apple when they promised a 64-bit Carbon API, then wasn't prepared when Apple reneged less than a year later at the last minute.

Re:Games too

[putzin]

I don't think this is about making money directly. My guess is that Apple's real money will come from selling them new and shiny iPhones every 2 years that perform better and better and have that perpetual upgrade path.

No, this is specifically about controlling how Apple can make money now that they own a very large walled garden. I think it is interesting that Apple clearly created a natural monopoly. Steve must thank whatever deity he believes in for Android, or he would own a near complete monopoly in the mobile space right now. The iPhone was timed perfectly, with hardware and software built to exacting standards. Apparently, now it's time to find new revenue streams out of that. To me, it's fairly obvious where Apple is going now that iAd is being shopped (and from what I've read, at fairly steep costs to users). It seems that Apple just needs to own all the mechanisms for getting ad content into their devices. Adobe would be a competitor here, with a mechanism for delivering ads outside of Apples direct control. And the ad market using Flash is huge, so the effort for moving into the Apple space would be minimal. Plus, even if the profit is meager, Apple doesn't want to lose revenue generated by the app store.

I think Apple is attempting to build a not so subtle monopoly. They saw Microsoft get away with it, and realized the regulatory control and potential punishment is minimal any may not impact the bottom line short term in any meaningful way. Why not do it? They built some wonderful devices that make an extraordinary profit. Why not insulate themselves from competition?

Re:Games too

[broken_chaos]

I don't think this is really true. Apple has specifically said tools that allow programming in other languages are allowed.

Um, yes it is true. They have a very short list of 'approved' languages.

Specifically, this:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Emphasis mine. This bans anything not coded in Objective-C, C, or C++ (as far as native code goes -- and only JavaScript in WebKit for interpreted languages), as well as banning any third-party toolkits, frameworks, and most libraries (even if they're written in one of the 'approved' languages). About the only thing they haven't dictated (yet) is what text editors you can use to write the code.

Re:Games too

[GameboyRMH]

In Maemo's MicroB browser you just drag from the left edge of the screen to get a cursor, then you can do pretty much everything you can do with a mouse.

Re:Games too

[Urkki]

I think the primary complaint (at least for me) for most flash games is the on hover effect. How do you replicate that with a touch interface? Now we have all sorts of wild gestures, so it reduces the simplicity.

If you can resolve that, I might reconsider my personal stance.

Nokia N900 solves that quite interestingly. Dragging your finger to the screen from one side creates an actual visible mouse cursor you can use pretty much like a normal mouse. Haven't used it much, but seemed to work pretty well with Flash stuff, as well as with Google Maps.

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

Damnit, I KNEW I shoulda gotten an N900, but I'm "supporting" my extended family on 3G's, so I got myself a nice 32GB 3GS (and six months before "4" no less, but my WinMo was finally annoying me too much!!!).

Re:Games too

[UnknowingFool]

I would also argue that Apple is making it easier to develop on the iPhone. By eliminating Flash from the development it reduces the sources of problem as well as ensures that all developers know Objective-C. Also Apple isn't making it more difficult by your admission; Apple is not making it easier. That's a small but important distinction.

Re:Games too

[flintmecha]

How would that make the iPlatform dependent on Adobe?

You make it sound like MacOS X would have benefited by not allowing Photoshop, rather than waiting 10 years for it.

Adobe should be held responsible for making Flash not suck. Until then, any negative impact Flash would have on an iDevice wouldn't be Apple's fault. Flash game drains the battery? Not Apple's fault. Flash app bogs down the CPU to unusability? Not Apple's fault. I know Apple is paranoid about dirty peasant software contaminating their high-class appliance (unless it's a fart app, those are OK) but wouldn't everybody win if they were allowed the freedom and treated like adults?

Apple apologists like to talk down about Flash and complain about its performance and say how thankful they are that Flash isn't allowed on their phone, but if it were, who would be forcing them to download and use those Flash apps? If a person is savvy enough to know that an app written in Flash is going to suck, they don't have to us it. Right?

Is there something about all of this that I'm missing?/p?

Re:Games too

[ekgringo]

Not only have I bought an app for my Blackberry, the app didn't work and my Blackberry later died and so even if it did work, I couldn't transfer it to my new Blackberry since it was "activated" according to the specific hardware. At least with the iTunes store, I can transfer my purchases to a new iPod or iPhone device.

Re:Games too

[icebraining]

Have you ever played Flash games? Almost none uses right-click, it usually brings up the Flash menu. You got a point with hover, but I think it's way less than that.

The major problem is the keyboard, not hovering.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

I was responding to the part of your comment about Flash and GPU acceleration. I was assuming that referred to OS X.

Re:Games too

[Altus]

VLC on the mac doesn't do this and I find it a bit annoying when I want to show a video on my TV running as a second monitor. To work around it I have to make the TV the primary monitor. Quicktime handles it properly.

Eventually this will annoy me enough that I will consider looking at VLCs source and trying to fix it, though as I understand it the source is extremely complicated and has a high ramp up time (due to it being a streaming server and not just a video player).

Video playback apps should do this by default. It shouldn't be a big deal.

Re:Games too

[dangitman]

The real debate is how apple changed the developer EULA to effectively deny any possibility of a flash developed app running.

No, there are two parallel debates going on. One is over the lack of the Flash plug-in for web browsers on the iThings. The other is about exporting Flash apps to native iPhone apps.

Unfortunately, due to the abysmal state of the tech press, and the general ignorance of its readers and commenters, these two arguments are often confused and you end up with people arguing about different things at the same time. Look at the linked article, for example. It is actually about the Flash player/plug-in, not Flash as an iPhone OS authoring tool. Yet you change the topic to it being about the authoring tool aspect.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Derp. You're right. CS4 wasn't 64 bit. CS5 is. However, it was known for a while that Carbon wasn't going 64bit. It was also known that Carbon was there simply to help developers move their MacOS Classic stuff over to OS X with a minimum of hastle, so they could get something out the door while working on a native, Cocoa implementation. Adobe also had plenty of time to come out with a Universal Binary version of CS3, but refused to provide Intel Mac support until CS4.

Re:Games too

[Culture20]

Simple.

Adobe needs to write a tool that converts flash source or binary directly to Objective C.
Hint: Compiler is a text transformation tool, hence this compiler emits flash to Objective C code.

Then developers could use Object C "Compiler" from iStore or GNU and create a "Program" that was using apple approved "Source" and generate iPhone executable.

Now apple can not deny it at all.

Sure they can. IIRC, the new EULA says "Nothing not Originally Developed in C, C++, or Objective C" Not much to do about that. Hell, you can't even write your program in pseudocode on a whiteboard.

Re:Games too

[dangitman]

How would that make the iPlatform dependent on Adobe?

Because if a large amount of developers start using Flash to develop applications with, and then Apple wants to change the development environment, add APIs and features, then Apple is dependent on Adobe updating Flash to support those changes before developers can use them.

This has actually bitten Apple before, when a huge number of Mac developers used Metrowerks Code Warrior to develop Mac apps, but Code Warrior didn't keep up with changes in the APIs.

You make it sound like MacOS X would have benefited by not allowing Photoshop, rather than waiting 10 years for it.

That doesn't make any sense, because Photoshop is not used to develop Mac applications.

If a person is savvy enough to know that an app written in Flash is going to suck, they don't have to us it. Right?

But if a person is not savvy enough to know that, who are they going to blame for the poor performance? They are going to think their iWhatever sucks and has poor battery life, or is slow and unresponsive. They might even call Apple's tech support, or return their device because of it. They certainly aren't going to think it's Adobe's fault. How many typical users even know what Flash is?

Re:Games too

[ircmaxell]

Nope, I was referring to the iPhone at that point. See: Thoughts on Flash, the section entitled "Battery life"

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. ...SNIP... The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

The iPhone does have a hardware H.264 decoder... And that's what I was referring to when I said GPU. Sorry for the confusion...

Re:Games too

[Tromad]

Actually it appears to me cross platforming is easier than ever. The 360 and PC versions can be nearly identical (the PC version will run like shit but gamers don't care). The PS3 version does probably need a good 2nd team for development but the Wii version can be offshored because they don't really care about quality. Today I see more crossplatform games than ever, even MAC is gaining steam.

Re:Games too

[BasilBrush]

I know Apple is paranoid about dirty peasant software contaminating their high-class appliance (unless it's a fart app, those are OK)

Interestingly, the very first App Store rejection that made a news story on Slashdot was for a fart app. Yes, originally Apple took a taste decision, and didn't allow fart apps. And of course the reaction on Slashdot was that it was terrible that Apple was censoring such apps. Surely it was for the consumer to decide whether they wanted such a thing?!

And Apple relented. They allowed the fart app.

Soon enough, hundreds of other app authors realised that they too could code up a fart app in an afternoon and make a bit of money. And so there were all variety of fart apps available on the store.

But were the posters on Slashdot happy? Of course not. Now they use the existence of fart apps to have a cheap swipe at the triviality of some apps on the app store. The result of the very freedom that they championed is now something they mock.

This irony proves the incorrectness of the thrust of your post: "Until then, any negative impact Flash would have on an iDevice wouldn't be Apple's fault." So you claim, in the very same post where you imply it *IS* the fault of Apple that there are fart apps.

FACT: If running Flash apps meant that the iPad only got a 5 hour battery life, people like you would be blaming Apple for the iPad only having a battery life of 5 hours when the specs say 10 hours.

Re:Games too

[donny77]

It's not quite that simple and neat. This goes back to a deeper history between Apple and Adobe. Apple is releasing over 100 new API's with iPhone OS 4, how long until Adobe supports them? Adobe and Apple had a pretty good relationship. Apple develops OS X and as a result of wanting to progress eliminates backwards compatibility. Adobe pleads with Apple, and Apple writes Carbon wrapper with the promise Adobe would migrate to the new APIs. But Adobe never did. Until Apple cancelled the 64 bit Carbon and told Adobe Coccoa or 32 bit only!

Now apple is looking at Flash and seeing the same problem down the road. If Adobe refuses to take advantage of new APIs and features that requires what they deem as too much effort, then the platform will suffer. Especially if Flash becomes the platform of choice for developers due to portability. Adobe has screwed Apple before. Apple doesn't want to see Adobe take control of their platform and screw them again.

Re:Games too

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Sorry but I tend to not agree, considering that the browser of my n900 copes very well with the issue, having a "mouse emulation" mode that you can enter or leave.

Re:Games too

[RedK]

You're wrong. Core Video is for manipulating individual video frames, not for hardware accelerated video playback. Apple hadn't made available any hardware acceleration for video decoding until 10.6.3.

Read the doc if you don't believe me : Core Video Programming Guide

Re:Games too

[cowscows]

Interesting. How does it work?

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

But anybody can use the hardware decoder. They've had a framework available for it since the beginning of the SDK. One of the introductory sample projects is how to get video to play.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Read Apple's financial statements. They barely break even on the App Store. Most apps are either free or 99 cents. They still have to pay hosting and credit card fees on that as well.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

By "decent" I mean a store that was easy to use, easy to find what you're looking for, has all the major labels on board, and once the music was purchased, had an easy method of keeping the music organized and transferring it to a mobile device.

Yeah, there were a couple online stores around back then. They were terrible and/or had a terrible selection of music available.

Re:Games too

[cbreak]

mplayer, the open source movie player, offers superior movie playback performance than any other player on OS X, including but not limited to flash. It does not use any private API.

Re:Games too

[s73v3r]

Core Video is for playing video if you want higher control in manipulating it. I.E: Color Correction, transformation, or compositing. For simply playing a video, a developer should use QTKit, which is the basis for the QuickTime player.

Re:Games too

[wickedskaman]

You leave out the fact that many web devs work under ridiculous constraints put upon by end clients including tight deadlines as well as technically poor choices "because it looks good" or because they refuse to try to understand the benefits of good technical designs. Many end clients want everything for cheap and done yesterday! In the end web devs have the skills to develop for most circumstances but are not given the appropriate time or resources to do so.

Re:Games too

[nine-times]

Because they still want to make a profit.

You're saying that Apple takes in at least $240 million from selling apps, Apple claims that the App store isn't very profitable. If both are true, then Apple is spending about $240 million on building/running the app store.

So let's say they don't take any cut from anyone. That means they need to take $240 million from their iPhone/iPod/iPad profits and dump it into a money-losing venture, which also probably means they'd be increasing the price of every iPhone/iPod/iPad sold.

Now the truth is, developers are generally benefiting from having a good storefront to sell their applications on. There are problems with the store, sure, but overall it's beneficial for someone to be hosting a marketplace. Apple's share is... what, 20%? That's not unusual. I think RIM charges a percentage for distribution. I believe the Android market takes a 30% cut of all sales. When you buy a ringtone from your cell phone carrier, the carrier takes a slice too (I think something like 50%). The point is, they're providing a service to the developer, so they're going to charge some kind of fee.

Now if you want to complain about Apple *forcing* developers to go through the iTunes store, I'd probably agree with you. That fact aside, however, there isn't anything particularly wrong with how Apple runs the iTunes store.

Re:Games too

[HermMunster]

A few months back when this discussion first started taking place I pointed out that this was about content. What this blog does is make it clear how that content will be controlled.

If you've been in the industry for any length of time you know that Steve's artistry with words emanates from his ability to speak around something while emphasizing his strengths. That's the jobsian reality distortion field.

Steve has always had the ability to say that "your product sucks" while sounding phropetic. He uses that tactic to drive his people internally. He insults them into creating better products. He also has a way to compliment them. Documented history demonstrates how he compels people though insults, and that this is the dominant method he employs. Those same behavior traits ruined his initial attempts at running and directing Apple. Early in Apple's history there were outright screamfests. They became so distracting that repeatedly Steve had to be counseled.

Don't get me wrong, Steve can motivate. I think he's just loosing it. When you watch the first demo he gave of the iPad clearly he was uncomfortable with what he was saying as if he was wondering if his reality distortion field would influence people has it had with the iPhone. The iPhone presentation brought applause and praise but the iPad brought skepticism and alarm. So much so that the whole technology industry has had this constant ongoing rampage of a debate about how Steve is wrong or right.

There's a poll on who you think Apple's main rival is. It lists the obvious names. At the bottom it has "other". What I would choose is the other option, with a comment that Apple's main rival is the consumer, because if that wasn't the case this discussion wouldn't be happening, and we'd have the choice to run flash on the iTechnology products.

Re:Games too

[HermMunster]

I think it is called "satisfying the customer". Can't satisfy them you can't operate in the market. Jobs is trying to be the tail wagging the dog.

Re:Games too

[Pentium100]

iMac / Mac Desktop - If he installs Linux and/or Windows on the Mac then why buy a Mac (and pay more) in the first place? And I'm sure it is possible to buy a laptop made by Acer and have it run the same apps that ran on a Dell laptop, since they both can run the same OS.

Re:Games too

[kimvette]

I'm not whining. I am happily using a jailbroken phone. That doesn't mean I can't state that I dislike Jobs' megalomania.

Re:Games too

[maitai]

He was asking if there was a way to do it on a touch screen device. Which there is (since other devices handle it no problem). It's simply a limitation of the iDevices.

Re:Games too

[MichaelSmith]

Whats wrong with saying that a press and release within $DELAY is a click and going past $DELAY is a hover?

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

But it's the developers' problem and thus isn't a logical reason for Apple to require Objective-C apps.

Re:Games too

[zuperduperman]

> I think the primary complaint (at least for me) for most flash games is the on hover effect

Sorry, this is irrelevant FUD. In what universe are hover effects a necessary requirement for Flash apps? If hover does not work on mobile devices then guess what - people will not make Flash apps for mobile devices that use hover effects! And if they do make stupid apps targeted at a device that rely on features the device doesn't have (why anybody thinks this would happen is beyond me) then Steve has all the power in the world to ban those apps from his app store.

The reason he doesn't want these kind of apps is obvious. Flash is a portable platform. A Flash game made for iPhone will run unchanged on Android. And Blackberry. And Windows Phone. He *knows* that if this stuff is allowed then the iPhone will lose its exclusivity & market advantage overnight as the world is swamped with Flash mobile content since developing once instead of 3 times cuts the cost dramatically. It's all about lock in, control, power. It's anti-developer, anti-competitive and ultimately anti-consumer because choice is reduced and cost is increased - all to benefit Apple's bottom line.

Re:Games too

[ignavus]

Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to accommodate Flash?

Why is it Apple's job to modify their platform to exclude Flash?

Re:Games too

[zuperduperman]

> Because if a large amount of developers start using Flash to develop applications with, and then Apple wants to change the development environment, add APIs and features, then Apple is dependent on Adobe updating Flash to support those changes before developers can use them.

This is just misinformation. Nothing stops any cross platform framework from including hooks to let you call native APIs directly. People use cross platform tools for the bits they do well and supplement them with extra native code for the platform specific parts.

Re:Games too

[zuperduperman]

> practical reason 2) If apple makes an update that alters an API cal for security reasons, any apps coded in AIR can not take advantage of that change, and will remain broken, until not only Apple and the Dev make a code change, but the Dev has to wait on Adobe, meaning again, native apps have a significant market advantage to interpreted code.

Your reality distortion field seems to have affected your perception of the development process. Do you really imagine that Apple regularly alters API calls and all the applications in the app store get recompiled by their developers???? Do you actually think Apple even needs to modify the signatures of their API calls to make them secure? This is just a fantasy of yours.

Re:Games too

[zuperduperman]

> They make all of their profit on selling the Devices themselves.

And guess why people buy the devices? Because (among other things) of the App Store. Because it has applications that other platforms don't. Why don't other platforms have those applications? Because they were written in a non-cross-platform way! Why were they written that way? **Because Apple has banned cross platform apps from the app store**.

Re:Games too

[dangitman]

This is just misinformation.

No, it's not.

Nothing stops any cross platform framework from including hooks to let you call native APIs directly.

That's certainly true. But if the "first-party" adds something to the API, how long will it be until the third-party supports it? It might be one day, it might be two months, it might be never.

People use cross platform tools for the bits they do well and supplement them with extra native code for the platform specific parts.

Some people do. Other people don't. It all depends on the competence/laziness/diligence of the developer. I'm of the opinion that people who "develop" using Flash would be on the "not likely to add native code" side of the fence. After all, who develops in Flash, apart from those too lazy or incompetent to use good tools?

And besides, the situation you have described is basically how it is with the good cross-platform iPhone OS developers - the bulk of the application might be in C++, and they add the tweaks necessary for the particular platform, and that's perfectly acceptable to Apple. But somebody developing in Flash is just not in the same league.

Re:Games too

[uglyduckling]

Sure. It depends whether you want the premium hardware/styling of a Mac. Certainly within the MacBook range, if you look for a genuinely equivalent Sony or Dell machine the prices are broadly similar. The point of the discussion was perceived 'lock in' which seems to me to be a myth.

Re:Games too

[medcalf]

Not true. They give you crash reports, instrumentation output and a few other things, depending on the problem they find. They don't do the debugging themselves, but they do give you lots of information to work with.

Re:Games too

[cowscows]

That'll work for menus and such, but wouldn't be playable for a lot of games that are already out there, it'd take too long for the hover to take effect

Re:Games too

[dudpixel]

Android 2.2 will have flash "out of the box". Its not currently available, but when it is, it will be big news for Android.

We shall see if flash will be the key to Android's success going forward.

Is flash popular and desired enough to really damage the iphone? we shall have to wait and see. Popcorn anyone?

Re:Games too

[dudpixel]

whoa there buddy, we got it once you threw in the car analogy...

Re:Games too

[vertinox]

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.

In theory, you could write an HTML5/java game that behaves pretty much the same way as flash.

A lot more difficult to do from the developers perspective, but its possible.

Actually... What am I talking about "in theory. There are working examples out there of HTML games that play on iPhone via browswer.

Take this for example:

Its an html5 game that actually runs in the iPhone browser.

Re:Games too

[dudpixel]

This argument fails because Apple makes barely any profit on the App market itself.

They make all of their profit on selling the Devices themselves.

what??

you claim that 30% of all Apps sold on the App Store is making them barely any profit?

The App Store reportedly made $30M USD in its first month. Cant imagine how well its working for them now. Could you elaborate on why you think they barely make a profit on the App Store?

Re:Games too

[plan10]

Wait, so you're saying Apple is keeping Flash off the iPhone to actually protect FLASH developers?

*head explodes*

Re:Games too

[UnknowingFool]

So you're what you're saying is that Apple should accept apps written by people who don't know Objective-C and can't debug them if there are problems.

Re:Games too

[mjwx]

The solution that they have is that the first tap reads as a hover, and the second tap reads as a click

No,

Tap and hold counts as hover, tap counts as click. Android has implemented this system from the start and is is quite easy to use. Amongst Android users it's known as "tap and hold" or the "long click" and is often used in lieu of a second mouse button (Android really is a phone sized computer, so it requires a "Windows XP" level of literacy to operate).

Is this level of sophistication beyond the Iphone?

But really, anyone who still claims the war on Flash is anything else then Apple maintaining dictatorial control over what runs on their Iphone is beyond deluded.

Re:Games too

[blackpig]

Interesting. How does it work?

Open browser,
Swipe finger onto the screen from the left side,
A mouse 'icon' appears, touch it and the mouse pointer becomes active,
You can then drag the pointer wherever for 'mouse-overs' or copy-paste' etc.

Not ideal but it works quite well with a bit of practice
Mind you, the N900 does have the best mobile browser.

Re:Games too

[mgblst]

What an idiotic thing to say. I own an iPhone, and I am happy flash doesn't run on it, but this doesn't mean everybody thinks like me.

A lot of people don't know flash doesn't run.

A lot of people still think it it worth the price, but did wish that it came with flash.

Are you so ignorant to deny these people exist?

Re:Games too

[mjwx]

-Apple said that it was still breaking even on music in the Itunes store.

Apple uses the Itunes store to push overpriced Apple Hardware in the same way that Sony/MS underprice their consoles and take large license fees from each game or push premium online services.

-There are plenty of free games in the app store

But your still beholden to Itunes. This means that any investment made be it monetary or time means that a consumer must buy another Iproduct or lose that investment. Plus Apple still demands the US$99 per year fee just for listing.

-pushing HTML5 is opposite of the walled garden people argue

Not when they are pushing Apple's implementation of a standard that hasn't been finalised yet.

Here Apple is trying to pull an IE on us. Apple is attempting to make their platform a de-facto standard so they can control the type of content that is available on it, OK MS only wanted people to use IE not complete control.

Apple doesn't want you using HTML5, they want you using Apple's iHTML5 so that Apple can control what is able to be used on it. Is the Canvas tag available in Safari as it's currently implemented on Chrome on Android. The same as IE and web standards, Safari will never completely implement the HTML 5 specification, the threats against Theora and other Open Source codecs are part of Apple's attempt to gain control over the HTML5 specification.

Re:Games too

[Wovel]

How again does Apple make money by hosting the countless free apps they already have available??

Re:Games too

[Wovel]

There are 10s of thousands of apps on the appstore hosted by Apple that generate no revenue for Apple. They get nothing on free Apps today. iAds will not be required for free apps, and people will still be able to host free apps even if they use other ad solutions.

Your argument makes no sense.

Re:Games too

[Wovel]

Did Microsoft distribute the apps and as many free updates as a developer wants? Did Microsoft process payments? Did Microsoft distribute free apps and collect nothing at all?

Re:Games too

[Wovel]

There are tons of free games in the App store.. It actually costs Apple money to distribute them and they do not make a penny on them..

Re:Games too

[cowscows]

Cool. It still wouldn't work for many games that require hover, but it sounds like a decent solution.

Re:Games too

[samkass]

Actually, no, it wasn't known for awhile. Apple pulled 64-bit Carbon support a few months before release. Prior to that they had explicitly stated that 64-bits would be supported in Carbon, and had even had an entire session on it at the preceding WWDC. I'm not saying that Adobe didn't drag their feet too long in porting to Cocoa, but Apples notoriously bad future roadmap communication is what held 64-bit Photoshop back. You can't change gears on a project like that in a few months.

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

> I think the primary complaint (at least for me) for most flash games is the on hover effect

Sorry, this is irrelevant FUD. In what universe are hover effects a necessary requirement for Flash apps? If hover does not work on mobile devices then guess what - people will not make Flash apps for mobile devices that use hover effects! And if they do make stupid apps targeted at a device that rely on features the device doesn't have (why anybody thinks this would happen is beyond me) then Steve has all the power in the world to ban those apps from his app store.

A) Yeah, it was sorta a FUD point, but at the same time, most of the games that people LIKE on flash right now benefit from hover. I watch my nephew play flash games on his netbook, and I see it quite a bit. So to use EXISTING games on the iPhone/iPad requires hover.
B) I totally failed to include in my consideration normal html/js/css rollover, but I don't see that day to day on my own platforms except gmail (IMAP to phone), twitter (echofon so the web interface is pointless to me, yay hypercards, who cares) and maybe a couple others, so I really don't notice mouseovers except in the case of flash.

The reason he doesn't want these kind of apps is obvious. Flash is a portable platform. A Flash game made for iPhone will run unchanged on Android. And Blackberry. And Windows Phone. He *knows* that if this stuff is allowed then the iPhone will lose its exclusivity & market advantage overnight as the world is swamped with Flash mobile content since developing once instead of 3 times cuts the cost dramatically. It's all about lock in, control, power. It's anti-developer, anti-competitive and ultimately anti-consumer because choice is reduced and cost is increased - all to benefit Apple's bottom line.

Yeah, I know. What's your point? I prefer apps that use the hardware without an extra layer. If I want generic apps, I'll use a webapp. So really the flash apps that don't use phone specific features should just be webapps. Then when you write a webapp then I won't have to care what my platform is, will I?

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

Does the video go black but the sound continues to come out when you move it to the secondary monitor? I've run across that before, and my solution was to straddle the two screens and leave the window, so I only see a portion of the video. let go of the move handle. Now move it again to the secondary monitor. Then I usually see video. Totally wonky, but it fixes it for me.

Re:Games too

[Altus]

Interesting, I wonder what is going on there.

What I was seeing with VLC was that it would actually go full screen on the primary monitor even if the window was on the secondary monitor. I could make the window full screen but then I would have controls on the bottom of the TV.

It could be that they made it play on the primary monitor to get around the bug you were seeing.

Re:Games too

[Caetel]

I'm not trying to enter the argument either way, but I would imagine the average person doesn't know that Flash doesn't work.

Re:Games too

[ClosedSource]

Well, there are a lot of assumptions you make in your question, but essentially, the answer is yes, they should. Does Apple provide any warranty on the apps that are sold in the App Store? Does the App Store include any ugly or worthless Apps? The answers are "no" and "yes" respectively.

If you use the principle of Occam's razor, you'd come to the conclusion that Apple's actions are based on financial self-interest, not on ease of debugging.

Re:Games too

[RogerWilco]

I think you'd call me an Apple fan boy, but even I agree that this was a very bad move on Apple's part. It's indeed obvious that Apple just did this to block Adobe.

I can see the reasons behind their older rules, both technical, because with an interpreter running on the phone you loose control over CPU usage, and as a business, because then sales don't have to go though the iTunes store.

Sure, some of Steve's points are true, like touch interfaces and the hover effect, but those are also true for CSS/HTML sites that use it.

The new rules don't make a difference to either, so there must be something else going on. I'm not sure if the writer of the article is right and all of this is about video. I think that would be a very dangerous move for Apple, as they are a hardware company and should focus on selling their devices, even if they do make a lot of money from the iTunes store too. I think the iPad would sell a lot more if it had Flash support.
There is definitely some reason why this is going on, Steve is one of the smartest players in the industry. I still think Apple would do better to work with Adobe instead. Together they would be able to accomplish much more. Maybe Apple just got fed up with Adobe dragging it's feet in supporting OSX and cocoa, but this is not the way to go about that, and I don't think Steve would do such a thing.

It will be very interesting to see if at some point it becomes clear why Apple is doing this. The whole current argument is a smoke screen that much is clear.

Re:Games too

[vuffi_raa]

Actually I heard a pretty good argument recently about the game and app aspect, the fact is that if you can use flash as a development platform and can compile and hybridize applications, you don't need to port code in order to move to other platforms whereas if you are forced to use objective c then porting becomes more difficult and you end up with timed exclusives on all releases, forcing people that want a specific game or app, at least for a period to purchase them from the app store rather than having a web based or platform based alternative that runs identically to the ipad/iphone versions. Sucks for the public, sucks for devs, good for apple.......

Re:Games too

[pcolaman]

He does have a few points, but as you said, in the end it's obvious it is a smoke screen. I doubt there is any reason beyond control that is an explanation for what Apple is doing though.

What I do find ironic is how many people defend Apple's actions in an area they obviously have a stranglehold on, whereas MS got blasted for very similar actions back in the 90's. Granted, the exact circumstances are not the same, so don't worry about getting into the semantics because I know what the semantics are. But when it comes down to it, it's about control of a platform, and if the US Government deems anti-competitive practices over the control of a platform to be monopolistic manipulation for the sake of keeping the monopoly intact, then it should hold true for any other party that does the same.

Maybe Apple doesn't hold the same percentage of control in this situation that MS did with Windows then, but it's quickly moving in that direction with the lack of great competitors in the MP3/MP3 + Phone/Smartphone arena. If you count iPod Touch and iPad, Apple really does have a dominant control of that market. And the iPhone is quickly outpacing most of its competitors.

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

Well so the problem with that is this: Any time you want to tailor to a specific platform, you loose cross platform abilities. Anytime you want to tailor to cross platform, you have to develop to the lowest common denominator.

Do you want the most bang for the buck?

or

Do you want the most generic app?

Most users don't care, because most apps are generic anyways. But for games, the part that is important is usually the graphics, which means the best performance is the most native. Granted, not always true, and there are ways to optimize. But flash has not in my experience been designed to be a DirectX replacement. Does that make sense?

Re:Games too

[vuffi_raa]

I know what you are saying but flash CS5 besides the new script abilities has a cross compiler for iphone/ipad as well as HTML5, so anything that you do really is cross platform and in order to make changes to say the UI or resolution it is just an .as swap nad a recompile from the same .fla/.as.with the new flash.

Re:Games too

[V!NCENT]

Silverlight, Internet Explorer ("We do our best to improve the complience! Realy you must believe us!" - yeah right, like you did before, eh?)
The DirectX(-ish?) rival to WebGL.

And some more, but your point is not wanting to know why, is it? You want me to start a flamewar and you want me to say things that you can bring down. I have experience with overintelectual dumb-asses. I can garantee you that you can't win with the exeption of making fun of my poor grammer and spelling as I am not a native english speaker...

Re:Games too

[drachenstern]

So how does that game work on XP? Does it still have the multitouch support? Or does Flash not offer multitouch support?

See, cross platform does not mean full utilization of the api set. If I get an app for my iPhone, I expect it to work like an iPhone app, not an XP app. By the same token, on XP I expect to have a menubar, right click support, etc. (Omitting that Flash doesn't usually DO context support anywhere)

So once again, yeah it's great that you _can_ compile, but you're not releasing an app for my device, you're releasing a generic app.

But I get your point. Also, why not just export Flash to HTML5/js?

Re:Games too

[vuffi_raa]

in general the only difference between multitouch and single touch is the implementation of the ui, your usual pinch and expand multitouch commands could easily be implemented for example with ctrl+up or down, buttons slaved to keys, none of that would change any of the underlying code or design of the game, it is just an adjustment of a ui layer.

Re:Games too

[bingoUV]

Discounting Microsoft (though this may change with Windows Phone 7), Nokia, and Palm, all of which are flailing about and unable to adapt to the current market

In what sense is Nokia "flailing about" and "unable to adapt to the current market"?

Commercial success? tick
(Being on Slashdot) hacker friendly? tick

Mobile phones is a major source of income for Nokia. Minor source for Apple. Still total profit of Nokia is similar to that of Apple. RDF?

Re:Games too

[MikeFM]

You've been able to do most of what Flash is used for for at least a decade. People are just to lazy to do it without their brainless click-and-point design tools and there is evidently no money in making tools that don't lock you in to crappy proprietary solutions. It's been fairly recently that we've even seen sites that really used Flash in such a way that was hard to duplicate without it. (Mostly because of crappy incompatible browsers that people use - IE.)

Re:Games too

[dwightk]

Very few software companies support free cross-grading of apps from one OS to another - about the only large company I ever remember supporting that were Macromedia who usually put Windows and Mac executables on the same CD, but that's stopped since Adobe bought them up.

blizzard

Re:Games too

[517714]

Apple want to force as much vendor lockin as possible, and cross-platform tools are the bane to any company trying to force an OS lock-in. Lock-in is great for apple, the iphone, and ipad. Its terrible for everyone and everything else, including the actual iphone consumers!

Pardon me if I seem obtuse, but you have made a lot of sweeping claims without any supporting information. I do not dispute the claims, per se, but I reject them on the basis that you have provided no evidence of their validity.

Why is vendor lock-in bad? Is there a scriptural basis for this conclusion, or was it a revelation? It seems to me that it only affects the vendor and those who choose to be locked-in; while it doesn't strike me as a good thing, I do not understand what the harm is. Is this harm long term or short term? If some developers choose to do something that harms them (presuming you can establish that) how does it hurt others who choose not to be locked-in? How doe it affect the consumer of the product? How does it hurt Apple's competitors? How does it hurt consumers of Apple's competitor's products? How does it hurt people who do not use products of Apple or those of its competitors?

Re:Games too

[Sandbags]

Modify, replace with a new API, add functionality to an API, close an API completely, yes, and they have already done it a few times, and it has already caused developers to adapt. For Apple, they give most devs a good few weeks seeing it in Beta, and that gives good devs the abiltiy to react quick and be ready on revision launch, for others they're not far behind. If they have to rely on Adobe to act first, then and only then react to adobe, their apps will be broken for MUCH longer.

This more applies to new APIs than fixing existing ones, granted, but it's a serious disadvantage to devs to be behind the ball EVEN ONE DAY in this marketplace.

Re:Games too

[Sandbags]

...and you protect a drug addict from himself by removing the drugs too.

Re:Games too

[jon3k]

The Appstore makes them MILLIONS. How do you think they get people to buy iPhones?

"There's an App for that."

Open your eyes.

Re:Games too

[hkmwbz]

What on earth does your comment have to do with anything?

I KNEW IT!

[Monkeedude1212]

Apple is a secret sponsor of Betamax, its making a comeback!

Re:I KNEW IT!

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Not just Betamax, but BoIP (Betamax over IP). We all now 350x480 should be enough for everyone.

Hard to take him seriously

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Advice from someone who requires horizontal scrolling to read the text they're quoting? I don't think so.

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[bwalling]

Oh, please. Your discussion of the scrolling text boxes is what this article's author would call "a very good example of miss direction[sic]."

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[nine-times]

Yeah, that was the first red flag. Second was the repeated use of the term "iTechnology". Is he trying to coin a term? Third, it's long. Too long. Not that I'm opposed to long articles, but his arguments are unfocused and padded with silly things like this:

If apple was so perfect, how come they cannot stop the jail breakers. How come they send out security patches on a regular basis.

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[elfprince13]

Also, he rambles, abuses the English language, and is all about the Tu Quoque and the Straw Men. Also, I'm not sure he managed to spell technologies correctly, out of the dozen or so times he uses it (and he manages to spell it incorrectly in different ways).

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

 is for preformatted text, such as HTML code. He should have used 
, which is for block-style quotes. Browsers rely on the correct semantics to display elements appropriately.

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[snowgirl]

Advice from someone who requires horizontal scrolling to read the text they're quoting? I don't think so.

Cyanide and Happiness Webcomic Link

(This comic is Safe For Work, but many if not most of their comics are not, and some of their advertising is not either... you have been warned.)

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[Yakasha]

Advice from someone who requires horizontal scrolling to read the text they're quoting? I don't think so.

It is even harder to take him seriously if you actually read his rant.

Re:Hard to take him seriously

[ashidosan]

At least now, Steve Jobs is trapped in a crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors.

No it's not

[dc29A]

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.

Re:No it's not

[onefriedrice]

It's all about keep selling high markup iDevices. To achieve that they need to make sure to have a lock-in.

Not really. Their "iDevices" (the iPod and iPhone) are actually quite successful despite Apple having no access to locked-in customers. Before the iPod, Apple didn't have any small electronics in the market to speak of. Again, the iPhone comes out with an entirely new operating system, and they didn't even plan to make it programmable. Other players in the market did enjoy varying amounts of lock-in when Apple entered the mobile phone market, and they've lost some customers to Apple. To say that Apple needs lock-in to sell devices is a little naive. This is not to say that Apple does not use some forms of lock-in to retain customers, but it clearly isn't something they need.

Re:No it's not

[BitZtream]

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.

Wrong.

BlackBerry and WinMo simply aren't competition for the iPhone. They may think they are ... a few people may write about them as if they are, but anyone who has physically touched both devices knows better. The only people that actually think the BB or WM7 devices are competition has never actually touched both devices.

The iPhone was a land slide hit BEFORE the AppStore existed. If the AppStore lockin is what made the iPhone popular then I'm in awe of how Steve managed to get millions of the devices sold and make it a world wide sensation ... BEFORE he even announced the part that people wanted.

People don't by an iPhone because of the AppStore. They by the iPhone because its a good, usable, user friendly device that has the features they want.

Then theres Android. There are three types of people that buy android devices.

1) The geek. The true geek loves his/her Android phone. Unfortunately there are only 8 true geeks that own Android phones and they all work at Google. These people love their Android phones.

2) The wanna be geek. This is the person who really isn't a geek, but is a Linux/OSS/GPL fanboy/fanatic. They own a Android phone because it suits their current angsty battlecry and current method of 'sticking it to the man'. These people don't like Android but they'll never admit it. They want you to think they love it because they want you to love it to, and by proxy, love their precious Linux. This portion consitutions almost ALL of the android phone owners in existence.

3) The normal person who thinks Android might not suck. This group is really hard to estimate size for. Unfortunately, this group owns an Android device for some length of time less than that allowed to return it. This group of people will buy an Android device, realize that it has nothing special to offer and to put it bluntly, it isn't an iPhone. At this point, they Android device gets returned and they go buy an iPhone. The only exception to this are those people locked in contracts with Verizon and T-Mobile, they continue to suffer at this point due to the missing iPhone on their respective networks and their unwillingness to move to a new provider for various other reasons (such as AT&Ts shitty service coverage).

In case you haven't really noticed, Cell phones, even smart phones were a commodity 5 years ago, probably closer to 10 at this point. People aren't buying iPhones because of the AppStore. They are buying iPhones because they break the mold of shitty devices and now everyone else in the world is trying to copy it. Your argument is that by allowing flash it would allow people to use other phones ... but ... they can already use flash on other phones now ... So your argument becomes 'only the iphone has good games and they aren't in flash so I can't run them on other phones' ... in which case maybe ... just maybe ... its time you realize why the iPhone has the great games and no one else does, if you haven't figured it out yet, skip back to the top of my post and start reading again.

Re:No it's not

[UseCase]

Bingo!! So many people throw this issue around like it is an emotional or philosophical thing between Adobe, Apple and M$.

The point is that Flash (even before Adobe bought it) eroded OS specific (lock in) software sales in every domain there was a flash solution floating around. The technology allows commoditization of hardware/OS. IMHO, if the sponsored IDE had stayed as cheap as it once was most consumer software would be written using Flash, and all big OS vendors would be beholden to it. This was the dream of the java runtime developers at one point and Flash almost realized that dream.

I think Flash as a technology would be much farther along without Adobe, controlled by a small company that was driving it to work well on all of the platforms it is deployed to.

On a side note lots of people are applauding the Google, Adobe cooperation like it is about brotherly luv and providing the user with choice. I don't buy it. Google needs a differentiating factor and having flash support is a big one. Google doesn't care about online store revenue and is not courting developers in the same way as Apple. There business model is different and doesn't depend on those things. They will and should take advantage of the current anti Apple blog climate to emphasis this difference.

Re:No it's not

[MrHanky]

Weird how all your "arguments" against the Android platform is against its customers, and that all your "arguments" for the iPhone are so vague that they aren't even wrong.

No wonder Apple and its fanboy cult is so quickly falling out of fashion.

Re:No it's not

[fermion]

Recall that when the iPhone came out, there were no Apps. Everything was standard based web apps, that would run on any machine. This made sense because the iPhone was only one of many devices a consumer could use, and no one was going to write just for Apple products, there was no profit in it. It made no sense for Apple to support technologies that were not, at least in principle, universally supported. While Flash runs on many computing devices, and may run on more in the future, at the point when the iPhone came out, and at this point, it is not a leading mobile technology.

But developers wanted Apps, so Apple gave it to them. Now we are talking about programs written for the Apple products. Apps were requested specifically so that developers would not have to go through interpreters. There are rules on Apps. We could run flash in a browser environment, but then we would be back to the situation that developers seemed to hate when the iPhone just came out.

So there is no lock in. Developer can write rich apps to run through the browser. Developers can write rich apps for Android and pull market share from Apple. Everyone complains that Apple is too constrictive in the App vetting proces. It is not Apple responsibility to make it easy for a developer to write Apps for both. Developers as business people must fund development, just like if one were to sell parts for Honda and Toyota. But no one seems to writing Android apps, they just want to write Apps for iPhone and be able to run them on Android. Go figure.

Re:No it's not

[Yakasha]

Really?

It's not about things like this?
Read the comments. See how many people are ditching Firefox because of flash? I know people in my office that switched TO IE. Who the hell switches to IE unless they're really upset?

Read a little lower and you find the real culprit: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558055

Which is solved by removing flash. I did. No more FF crashes.

Re:No it's not

[icebraining]

Other players in the market did enjoy varying amounts of lock-in when Apple entered the mobile phone market(...)

Such as?

Re:No it's not

[dangitman]

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.

Wait, are you talking about Apple or Adobe? Because I'm pretty sure that Adobe is rather keen on developers only developing for the Flash/AIR platform. And if Apple wants to lock developers out of other platforms, then why are they supporting HTML5 and open web standards? Anybody can make a web app that can work on iDevices, without any intervention from Apple. It's Adobe who is arguing for a proprietary web.

It's quite amazing that people are railing against lock-in, and for openness by arguing for Flash.

Re:No it's not

[tecnico.hitos]

They are arguing for Flash because they want to choose the plataform they want to develop for. Apple is ignoring a significant amount of web content, making developers and animators go through hoops to have their content available for those devices. Additionally, now they are creating arbitrary rules to stop third-party tool from compiling into native code. Is there a legitimate reason to allowing only languages X,Y,Z?

They aren't just atacking Adobe, they are making the life of a lot of developers harder for no reason. HTML5 isn't mature enough and hasn't tools as good as Flash. It isn't an adequate substitute yet.

Re:No it's not

[dangitman]

They are arguing for Flash because they want to choose the plataform they want to develop for.

No, you mean "put that choice in Adobe's hands."

Apple is ignoring a significant amount of web content, making developers and animators go through hoops to have their content available for those devices.

Whereby "jump through hoops" you mean "conform to web standards."

Is there a legitimate reason to allowing only languages X,Y,Z?

Yes. It's their platform, they can do whatever they please with it. On the other hand, the internet does not belong to Adobe.

They aren't just atacking Adobe, they are making the life of a lot of developers harder for no reason.

But by support Adobe and Flash, it just prolongs the current sucked-up state, and propagates a proprietary web. Remember when Realplayer and Microsoft screwed up the web in a big way, and web developers had to put in extra effort to make things work with them? Why would you want to continue that kind of situation?

Hell, in the "enterprise" world, there are still internal web apps that require IE6 and proprietary hacks to work. This is something we don't want. It's like kicking a drug habit - it might cause some short-term pain, but the sooner you quit, the better off you'll be.

It's not all about video

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, since I disabled plug-ins Safari doesn't crash or freeze every day. In fact it's now so rare that I'm actually shocked when it happens. Adobe let all their non-Windows software rot away and can't be bothered to code properly, so screw them.

Re:It's not all about video

[Brett Buck]

I guess I am not following the issue - I have been running various versions of Safari since it first appeared, and it has crashed, at most, 2-3 times in however many years it has been. What is it that people are doing that causes it to crash? I am not doing anything special, and I haven't even bothered to block any plugins, or Javascript. Flash seems to be fine - an abomination, to be sure - but functionally fine.

Re:It's not all about video

[pjrc]

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.

Re:It's not all about video

[StuartHankins]

My daughter loves flash games, and there are several relatively large sites we visit. Even though I have the latest & greatest FireFox they cause all kinds of problems... problems that I don't see when I'm not going to these kinds of sites. For most of my day I'm on random sites and with NoScript and AdBlock Plus enabled I don't see most of the Flash content (obviously I have the flash game sites we visit whitelisted, and that's where I see the issues).

Issues include random intermittent freezing, huge memory usage, huge CPU usage (my fans go from 4000rpm to almost 6000rpm), and mouse lagging. On occasion the entire system freezes and I have to reboot. Except for the system freeze, exiting out of the site returns everything to normal in a few seconds. I am on a MacBook Pro dual core 2.4 using OS X 10.4.11 with 4 GB RAM.

Re:It's not all about video

[Malc]

The Flash implementation on OS X is terrible. When I'm watching streamed catch-up TV from say BBC iPlayer or Channel 4, I have to fire up Windows in a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro. The native performance under OS X is unwatchable.

Re:It's not all about video

[snowgirl]

Seriously, since I disabled plug-ins Safari doesn't crash or freeze every day. In fact it's now so rare that I'm actually shocked when it happens. Adobe let all their non-Windows software rot away and can't be bothered to code properly, so screw them.

HOLY CRAP!

I haven't been on any of my macs in a long time (my primary crashed and died, and the other one is 9 years old), but suddenly, now, all of my problems with web browsing make sense...

Re:It's not all about video

[nortcele]

People who only experience Flash on Windows just don't have any idea how horribly buggy it is on other platforms.

I second this experience from the perspectives of Linux, Solaris, and OSX. Also the Adobe Acrobat Reader is horrible on those platforms. Especially working behind a corporate firewall. Dang thing wants to call home to Adobe all the time. Gave up on it and just use xpdf or Foxit. Adobe kind of had a monopoly going for flash and pdf. They started adding more junk to the applications and didn't focus on reliability. Looks like the horse has left the barn for good.

I'm having a hard time getting a tear to form in my eye over Adobe's flash problems. However, (and I say this as an OSX fan) if you thought Microsoft abused their monopoly... just give Apple a chance. They'll outdo Microsoft there too.

Re:It's not all about video

[Tromad]

Flash on windows might be better but it isn't exactly rosy. Flash is often an instant way to make my otherwise blazing fast (to me) core2duo feel like a 800mhz pentium.

It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

Why develop an app with XCode for one platform when you could develop it in Flash and have it run on multiple devices. Flash represents a threat to the App Store. Jobs can say it's about the power and crashes, but he could have set expectations with Adobe when the iPhone first came out. It's all about money and controlling the market place.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Graff]

Why develop an app with XCode for one platform when you could develop it in Flash and have it run on multiple devices.

Because you can develop an app with XCode and have it run on multiple devices. It really isn't that difficult.

Flash is just another layer of middleware which is not necessary and ultimately just gets in the way. It gives quick results but the true headaches are borne by the users and also by developers down the road once you are locked-in to using Flash and want to do something that it doesn't yet support.

Apple's stance helps all of us. It promotes an alternative to Flash which forces Adobe to clean up its act and open and improve Flash even more. Perhaps it will even get them to come up with some nice HTML5 authoring tools and technologies. We all win.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Duradin]

Ok, so why not make an ObjC/C/C++ to Flash compiler like the Flash to Apple App compiler?

I'd also like to point out that there are free apps, even games, in the app store. X% of 0 is *drumroll* 0, so there is a segment of the app market that generates no direct profit for Apple other than the dev fee and may even be generating revenue for the dev by in app ads (that need not be done through the upcoming baked in Apple ad services).

Re:It's about the App Store

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Flash is just another layer of middleware which is not necessary and ultimately just gets in the way. It gives quick results but the true headaches are borne by the users and also by developers down the road once you are locked-in to using Flash and want to do something that it doesn't yet support.

Then let the market decide. GP was right. It is all about locking the developers in, making them choose between creating software for Apple, or all of the other platforms. It's a despicable business practice and as a hobbyist developer I will not have my toolset dictated to me so long as the end result runs natively on the device.

Re:It's about the App Store

[pitdingo]

Obviously you have no clue what you are talking about. You _can_ develop cross platform via XCode as the parent said. C and C++ are not Apple's tech last i checked. The market is deciding. Bad devs who only know Flash will have to learn real development. The vast majority will fail and make room for those who know how to develop. No one is forcing you to develop for Apple products. I know i will enjoy less competition.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Altus]

The market doesn't get to decide, the developers do.

Developers choose the shortcut more often than not. I have seen it over and over in my professional life (Developing high end, multi-platform commercial applications). The result is often a sub par quality app that runs on more than one platform. They often lack the newest features available on the platform because the person who makes the middle ware hasn't gotten around to supporting them and may never, especially if the feature only exists on one platform.

The end result is, users suffer with apps that are "good enough" instead of apps that are great, and alternatives dont show up because nobody wants to put in the time and energy to make a better app when there is already one that dominates the market. Sure, if the market is big someone will come along and challenge the incumbent, but for smaller markets and more specialized apps they will not.

This is about user experience, which is what Jobs has been all about his entire career. Most people, even here, don't understand what that means or how it works.

Re:It's about the App Store

[imikedaman]

Are you seriously that angry over having to replace like 0.01% of your code base to port it to a different platform? That's just sad, dude. You also act like the Flash runtime will be 100% consistent across all platforms, even though we already went through this with Java for the past decade and it was neither consistent nor efficient.

Re:It's about the App Store

[MobyDisk]

Because you can develop an app with XCode and have it run on multiple devices. It really isn't that difficult.

Fill me in on this. How do I write something in xcode and compile it to work on Android?

Re:It's about the App Store

[onefriedrice]

Then let the market decide. GP was right. It is all about locking the developers in, making them choose between creating software for Apple, or all of the other platforms. It's a despicable business practice and as a hobbyist developer I will not have my toolset dictated to me so long as the end result runs natively on the device.

The market is deciding. As a player in the market, Apple has decided to try to derail Flash adoption for the reasons Apple listed in Jobs's letter. As much as that may suck to you personally, or anyone else who misses Flash on their Apple devices, you'll have to at least agree with Apple that Flash is a proprietary system that should be avoided in the face of open web standards.

As another player in the market, if you actually disagree with Apple concerning Flash, you have the choice to not only not buy their devices but to also support alternatives. Simple.

Re:It's about the App Store

[pitdingo]

I know you are just a troll, but i will bite...take a look at C or C++. Do those run only on OS X?

Re:It's about the App Store

[pitdingo]

Hi. I am a bad developer too. I just want to write one app, to the lowest common denominator and ignore the innovation of the hardware and operating system upon which it runs. Once all the hardware and operating systems have the same features, i will upgrade my app. thanks.

Re:It's about the App Store

[s73v3r]

Then let the market decide.

Why not let the market decide whether or not people care enough about Flash to stop buying the iPhone?

Re:It's about the App Store

[s73v3r]

No, but you can put your app logic code in a C/C++ library, and create thin layers of UI in the phone's native language. I know Android allows you to make native libraries in C/C++. However, I believe Windows Phone 7 is only managed (.NET) code.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

Sure, XCode can compile cross platform in the same way GNU gcc can. Which is to say there is a lot of work to get apps, in particular graphical apps, to work cross platform. And you certainly aren't going to have a single binary payload that works on all the platforms.

It is a fair point to say there is some heavy overuse of Flash on websites that should be replaced with HTML5, CSS, or even available JavaScript.

But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about competing with the app store. That could be embedded web games (ala Farmville) or Flex (embedded)/Air (standalone) apps which are used in many industries and are responsible for trillions of dollars in financial transactions.

Finally, it doesn't matter how much Adobe cleans up their act. As long as the applications don't need the app store in order to be sold apple is going to keep changing the rules.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

Sure, plenty of free apps but that really doesn't matter. Apple cares about apps people pay for. If there's an app someone is going to pay for on the iPhone/iPad then they want a cut. Flash means someone can create competing market places, competing in game/app currency systems, and competing ad services.

Re:It's about the App Store

[jprescott12]

Xcode is not a language, it's a development environment. You can use the gcc/g++ compilers directly from the command line to compile the source code. The source code lives whereever you want, and you can compile and link to build the executables using whatever compiler you want. So, on your Mac, you can install the Xcode environment (to get the Mac g++/gcc tools, code signing tools you need for signing and certification for the App Store, etc.), install Eclipse and the Android development environment (to get the java runtime environment, c/c++ support tools, JNI support tools you need to run c/c++ code under the Android java VM), and both environments can build executables using the shared source code base (some pieces, views especially, will need to be tailored to each environment, Cocoa Touch for iPhone, iPad, Touch, whatever is used on Android, etc.).

Re:It's about the App Store

[snowgirl]

Flash is just another layer of middleware which is not necessary and ultimately just gets in the way. It gives quick results but the true headaches are borne by the users and also by developers down the road once you are locked-in to using Flash and want to do something that it doesn't yet support.

I most strenuously object! I have quite never received a base of code from a prior developer, which hath any problems upon the maintenance thereof. All bases of code which hath been purveyed upon me for continued development have been of only the utmost caliber, and utilizing only the most well supported of libraries of code. Why I have never once met upon any problem with obsolescence, deprecation or forced engagement of any libraries of code.

I perchance believe that thine own opinion doth preclude any earnest representation of factual statements in this endeavor and I, with only the most honest of politeness, do request that thou recusest thineself from this most honest of discussions.

Re:It's about the App Store

[ceoyoyo]

How is it a threat to the App Store? If you develop a Flash app you still have to sell it through the App Store.

Jobs doesn't want quick and dirty runs-(poorly)-on-everything ports in the App Store. Rather than reject them for being "crappy" he's decided to reject them because they're not written in C, C++ or ObjC.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

By web standards I assume you're getting back to the video aspects of HTML5 with H.264 video. H.264 is certainly a well documented standard, but it's hardly open. It's encumbered by huge patent pool and they could put the hammer down on open source developers starting in 2015. Technically they could start going after certain commercial implementations of H.264 right now.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

Yeah, it's a full port dude. iPhone/iPad apps have all sorts of proprietary apple libs they compile against. You gott'a strip it out and port it to whatever the target platform is. That's not anything like Flash where a single app works on multiple platforms.

The idea that maintaining your app for multiple platforms with the XCode tools does not fly.

Re:It's about the App Store

[Kagato]

That is spoken like a person who's never had to actually manage an app across multiple graphical platforms.

Re:It's about the App Store

[jprescott12]

The question was "how do I write something in Xcode, and compile on Android?" What I said was how you do it. The "view" and "controller" components of your application are going to be either fully system dependent or partially system dependent. Much of the application's code can be made system-independent (mostly the model, but, some of the controller stuff). I've got million line simulations that run on Mac OSX, Windows, Linux/Unix/Solaris, etc.. Now, most of these are mostly mathematics and physics, and all of that code runs unmodified for the most part on all these systems. The animation and UI components all have to be tailored to Windows, Mac OS X, X-Windows, but, doing a good design assuming multiple platforms can make that manageable. Single Flash app that runs on all platforms is exactly what Apple does not want for their mobile customers. I have Click2Flash to manage my exposure to Flash on the Web, try to avoid Flash sites, and all the Flash games and applications I've seen always look and act lame on my Mac.

Re:It's about the App Store

[MobyDisk]

(Disclaimer: I am not an Apple developer. Nor a troll)

As far as I know, you can't write a native C or C++ app on the iPhone. To do anything on it, you have to use Apple's APIs. Since those APIs are not available on other devices - you can't write something in xcode and compile it on Android. There's no common APIs between them. Apple is 100% proprietary.

Now, you could write a C++/GTK application in xcode and run that on an Apple OS X computer and on Windows/Linux/etc. But I don't think you can do that on an iPhone. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[zeromorph]

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?

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[PhilHibbs]

And Jamie - learn to write. The possessive form of "Jobs" is "Jobs's", and the comparative conjunction is spelt "than", not "then". I haven't read enough of your article to pick out any more errors, since it's evidently not worth my time to read it if it isn't worth your time to write it correctly.

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[Chris Mattern]

Really? I thought it was " Jobs' " was the correct possessive (example) of anything ending in "s".

[facepalm] How do people get through elementary school without learning this? That form is correct only for *plurals* ending in "s". The possessive of Jobs is indeed Jobs's. The possessive of lawyers is lawyers'. An exception is made for words ending in a "z" sound, as that is rather hard to pronounce.

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[LordNimon]

The possessive form of "Jobs" is "Jobs's"

Not necessarily. The possessive of "Jobs" could also be "Jobs'". Frankly, I think "Jobs's" looks stupid, but a lot of people say it's valid English. In high school, I was taught that "Jobs's" is wrong, and that's what I believe.

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[PhilHibbs]

My surname ends in 's' and I've always been taught to put 's after it just like everyone else's. It's what we say, so why not write it that way? In traditional usage, the only cases where you drop the s but keep the ' are ancient names such as Moses and Mars. I just checked Wikipedia, and apparently The Economist says to keep the s, the Chicago MOS says you can drop the s but recommends keeping it. So maybe I'll let him off this one - but not the "then", yuck!

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[oh_my_080980980]

And he's a flash developer....hmmm....self promotion....

Look douche bag Steve Job's letter was 100% correct, there's no FUD there as you state. And hey captain obvious, JOBS MENTIONED VIDEO. Wow you act like it's some kind of secret. It's not.

FYI MOST PEOPLE CAN'T STAND FLASH! We just deal with it because of the morons who can't build web sites or videos without flash.

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[snowgirl]

Really? I thought it was " Jobs' " was the correct possessive (example) of anything ending in "s".

[facepalm] How do people get through elementary school without learning this? That form is correct only for *plurals* ending in "s". The possessive of Jobs is indeed Jobs's. The possessive of lawyers is lawyers'. An exception is made for words ending in a "z" sound, as that is rather hard to pronounce.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/possessives.htm It appears the first rule is consistency. I agree with the apostrophe "s" for names ending in "s", as that is how their are pronounced, and like a good descriptive linguist, I ascribe to following the actual speech rather than arbitrary rules. However, the arbitrary rules (the same ones that dictate the spelling "mnemonic") are such as they are.

As another note, what exception are you even talking about in this matter for words ending in a "z" sound? "Lawyers" ends in a /z/, "Hippos" ends in a /z/, "Leaves" ends in a /z/, "Dads" ends in a /z/. Yet, "Laughs" ends in /s/, "Hats" ends in /s/. In fact, the only words that end in /s/ instead of /z/ in the regular plural, and singular possessive are those that end in an unvoiced plosive.

Re:Oh, Jamie, oh Jamie

[Yakasha]

Really? I thought it was " Jobs' " was the correct possessive (example) of anything ending in "s".

[facepalm] How do people get through elementary school without learning this? That form is correct only for *plurals* ending in "s". The possessive of Jobs is indeed Jobs's. The possessive of lawyers is lawyers'. An exception is made for words ending in a "z" sound, as that is rather hard to pronounce.

[facepalm] How do people get through college without learning this? The topic is debatable, like whether or not you put a comma before the last item in a list. Some people say "always put the s", others say "put the s unless it is difficult to pronounce." Written text (books, magazines, etc) most often ignore the "difficult to pronounce" rule and go with the first. But, this is an informal message board that is treated more like spoken word so both are acceptable.

All English rules are like that: "i before e except after c and when it's not", so, don't be an English grammar nazi... you will always lose, even when you're right.

Re:G(a)nash

[extrasolar]

I saw that too. The way to look at it, I guess, is that Gnash is the GNU replacement for Adobe's Flash program and a counter to their proprietary technology. On the other hand, Ganash is the open source version of Adobe's Flash technology that justifies putting Adobe Flash in all Apple products and, indeed, in all products period.

it's what it's always been

[lapsed]

What makes the Internet so threatening to incumbent companies is the way in which it's layered and platform-independent. New protocols can be deployed on the existing network as long as they conform to its rules. Flash is different, in that it is not as open as the Internet's underlying layers, but the way in which it threatens Apple's vertically-integrated hold on everything from the user to the bandwidth provider operates in the same way. It's a mistake to focus on the killer app -- the real threat is a platform that enables the distribution of a range of applications, some of which have not yet been imagined.

God save flash!

[__aagbwg300]

Before Apple sunk their teeth into flash, a lot of the posters here also bashed it. It is ironic that as soon as an 800 lb gorilla attacks it, taco and dawson rush to defend it as a superior alternative. Does everyone remember what a pain in the ass it was to get flash support on linux systems? Now that it is available, it is just another user-approved attack vector. H.264 is not perfect, or "free" at all but every criticism Jobs has made of flash is spot on: flawed security, resource pig AND THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR for cross platform development. For God's sake, can we please just flash die for a more modern alternative?

Re:God save flash!

[melikamp]

I agree completely. Jobs' diatribe, while hypocritical, was also spot on. Flash has virtually no redeeming qualities. Using it for watching videos when every major browser can simply download video files and stream handles and "open them with", is freaking retarded. Flash was obsolete long before HTML 5 was even on a drawing board.

Re:God save flash!

[Skuld-Chan]

For God's sake, can we please just flash die for a more modern alternative?

Which is?

And don't say html 5 - have you played with that? I doesn't really seem ready to deliver RIA's like Java and Flash have been delivering for years because its buggy (what do you know - its an unfinished standard). I think this video illustrates it best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4

My own experience with html 5 video btw was buggy at best - anytime you paused you couldn't resume and had to reload the entire clip. His experience in that video above was it didn't work - because the video he tried to view was Theora/OGG - which the iPad/iPhone don't support.

Re:God save flash!

[cpghost]

Does everyone remember what a pain in the ass it was to get flash support on linux systems?

Still painfully aware of it here on FreeBSD/amd64. But, on the sunny side, sometimes it's a bliss not to be "supported" by Adobe.

Re:God save flash!

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Apple sunk their teeth into flash, a lot of the posters here also bashed it.

Yeah, and I think everyone agrees that Flash is a bloated piece of crap and that it would be great if we could replace it with HTML 5.

But that's not why people are complaining about Apple's dickhead move. I can accept them deciding not adding Flash support to Mobile Safari.

But what I won't accept is:

1. Them disallowing a competing browser to be written for their phone that DOES support Flash.
2. Them disallowing Adobe to write a plugin for Mobile Safari to add Flash support.
3. Them disallowing ANYONE from using Flash as the basis for a mobile app on the iPhone.

So, I don't like Flash. But Adobe isn't being the anti-competitive dicks here. Apple is. Adobe wrote a technology that allows a Flash app to be translated to an iPhone app. People who use that will still have to fork up money for the iPhone developer's license and Apple will still get their percentage of sales on the App Store, so why the fuck would they ban that?!

Simple: they're anti-competitive dicks.

Re:God save flash!

[pkphilip]

Pray tell, what alternative do you have for flash apps (not video)? HTML5? Show me a single authoring environment for HTML5 which can compare with Adobe's flash authoring environment - I am referring to authoring environment for scripted apps not video.

Re:God save flash!

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

HTML5

Do you really think it's going to take even a year for reliable video support to be in at least Safari and Chrome?

Re:God save flash!

[_xeno_]

His experience in that video above was it didn't work - because the video he tried to view was Theora/OGG - which the iPad/iPhone don't support.

Having tried that demo in Safari, the reason it didn't work on the iPad was... uh...

Well, I have an idea. Based on my own HTML5 tests on my iPhone, the <video> element isn't actually implemented in the browser, instead you get a little "play" button which you can press to open the video in - well, a separate video player. Kind of like how videos work in the YouTube app, you get a video window which you can touch to display controls, including a "done" button to exit the video and go back to where you were. (Although my test page is using JavaScript to embed the video, so that might screw things up.)

I have no idea if this is how it works on the iPad, but if it works the same way, that would explain why it didn't work - because HTML 5 video isn't played embedded in the page, but in the "video" app. Kind of.

Re:God save flash!

[jedidiah]

It is my perogative to be "tasteless".

Of course the blithering Apple fanboys can't tell the difference between the individual choosing to dump a product and a Tyrant imposing that choice.

Re:God save flash!

[CannonballHead]

Obsolete?

disused: no longer in use; "obsolete words"

Really? Flash is obsolete?

I think you mean it COULD be obsolete, and something would fill the gap. But most products are that way. Apple could be obsolete, and something would fill the gap, too.

Re:God save flash!

[melikamp]

It's just "disused", not necessarily by a majority. I uninstalled Flash from all of my computers: I see absolutely no point, and I am not alone. For surfers like me, it is totally obsolete, and the gap is filled by downloading files and playing them in VLC.

Re:God save flash!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Steve Jobs wasn't being hypocritical.

he says that his stuff's closed too but he's not forcing his closed model on other platforms and when it comes to the common denominator, the web, he wants an open model.

Re:God save flash!

[shutdown -p now]

Well, that's an easy one. I don't like Flash, but I don't like locked-down (from development perspective, at least) platforms much more.

Re:God save flash!

[tnordloh]

Let's face it, a good number of people who buy Apple products do it because of a religious fervor, or for gadget cred; in other words the technology/openness/usefulness of the device isn't really in question.

iPad users will spend the next couple of years unable to access certain content on the internet; Apple has a proven record of not caring about such trivial matters. It may actually be for the best that some company is willing to essentially kill their own market share to do what they believe is 'right', from a technology perspective. They are in a position of trend setting; occasionally spending their 'geek cred' to get rid of something like Flash isn't really that bad.

Re:God save flash!

[jez9999]

Please explain how you can stream live video (no, not a Youtube-style download, LIVE video, not prerecorded) without Flash.

Re:God save flash!

[s73v3r]

2. Them disallowing Adobe to write a plugin for Mobile Safari to add Flash support.

As far as I know, there are no plugins at all for Mobile Safari. Why should Flash be able to get one?

Re:God save flash!

[oztiks]

Please mod parent up. Makes a compelling statement.

Re:God save flash!

[Raffaello]

That's his point. Apple disallowed all plug-ins just to be sure Adobe couldn't put flash on the iPhone.

Re:God save flash!

[Skuld-Chan]

Well Safari the web browser has been around since 2003 - you tell me.

Re:God save flash!

[melikamp]

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/streaming.html

Re:God save flash!

[s73v3r]

There have never been plugins available for Mobile Safari. Even long before this current argument.

Re:God save flash!

[CannonballHead]

I think most people still use it though. Unfortunately, sure, but that seems to be the case.

Re:God save flash!

[SashaM]

I think this video illustrates it best:

Most of the examples where he tried to interact with the "game" and failed were simply not written to respond to iPad's touch events. It's pretty easy to add touch listeners, but they just haven't.

Re:God save flash!

[walshy007]

Which is?

SVG

Re:God save flash!

[mjwx]

(what do you know - its an unfinished standard)

Which is why Apple seems so dedicated to getting people to use it.

Apple is trying to do to HTML5 with Safari what Microsoft did to web standards with Internet Explorer all those many years ago. Do you remember the harm that caused, it took 10 years to begin a change that still hasn't finished four years later (please let IE 6 die).

Apple wants to have de-facto control over the way HTML 5 is implemented so that apple can deny certain functionality (some functionality of the Canvas tag comes to mind) and dictate which codecs are used (hence the Theora/OSS codec threats).

Apple are not fighting adobe tooth and nail just to let HTML 5 cut their lunch and remove the App store from game distribution on the Iphone.

Re:God save flash!

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yes, they will both have reliable support for H.264 in HTML5 within one year. That's my bet.

Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Apple's post was anti-adobe. This post is Anti-Apple, and pro-Adobe.

How about just putting them where they belong? Apple makes computers. Adobe makes software. We are talking about standards and the web. Any standard on the web should be completely free, period. The best free standard we have so far is HTML5 + Ogg + Theora. Period. The fact that a huge patent troll is saying they've got something against Theora doesn't make Theora any less free. The same thing was said against virtually all Free Software. And to this day, noone has ever been able to remove a Free Software project from us based on patents. Every single patent troll out there has said that they have patents covering everything from drinking water to clicking buttons for 20+ years. And Free Software is still there. Free standards are still there.
The has been cases of Privative software stealing code from GPL projects, where the GPL won and this guys had to either arrange a settlement or release their code to be GPL compliant.
But there has not been A SINGLE CASE of infringing GPL code loosing a legal battle. So, why are we taking MPEG-LA more seriously than we took SCO? It's the same crap, different smell. Just another troll that we need to ignore until it goes away.

So, Apple, Adobe: Sell your shit and STFU. Regardless of how much you pretend that standards, and the whole industry revolves around you, it doesn't. You're just another company trying to succeed in this market. We will buy your stuff, or we'll buy somebody else's stuff. What you say is not important. And what you pretend to be standards, are NOT. In the meanwhile, we will continue developing Free Open standards, and Free Open software that uses them. We will eventually prevail. We always do.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[Skuld-Chan]

So standards on the web should be free, but its ok to have proprietary lock in for the iPhone?

Having Flash on the iPhone might be a false choice, but I don't honestly see what leg Apple has to stand on with this issue.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[pkphilip]

All this discussion about Flash vs HTML5 seems to miss the point that Flash isn't just video - there are tons of apps and interfaces out there written in Flash - not just slideshows and ads. There are games, presentations, demos etc.

There is not a SINGLE content creation tool for HTML5 which can hold a candle to Adobe's flash authoring environment.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

So standards on the web should be free, but its ok to have proprietary lock in for the iPhone?

It's their product. Don't buy it. Was that so hard?

Standards allow you to choose who you buy from. All of your data is YOURS, and you can transfer it anywhere you want. With open standards, vendor lock-in is very hard to achieve. You can just move all of your stuff away to a new device after all. It is all this gray areas of do-what-you-want-and-patent-it that allow vendor lock-in to exist.

Where Apple should stand is very obvious: Sell your devices just like everyone else, realize the device belongs to the user, remove all the locks, and implement free standards. Not that hard.

Off course, Apple believes that they have a more profitable position made of draconian limitations and patent-encumbered formats. Time will prove them wrong, hopefully.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Great. You know what, there are also a lot of amazing demos, presentations, etc, written in ASM for the C-64. How come they are not supported on the web? Ah, right,because they are binary executables and have no place on the web. Same thing for Flash. If you can't do it in one of the standard Markup languages or using one of the standard scripting languages for the web, then don't do it. I miss the flexibility of client side CPP + GTK on the web too. That doesn't mean we should allow such executables to work from the web, or that they would be web apps at all.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[medcalf]

Actually, yes, that's exactly how it should be. The point of the internet (not the web only) is the free exchange of information regardless of which device is in use. It's fine for devices to be locked down and proprietary. But it's not fine for the standards of communication between devices to be locked down and proprietary. If IE breaks the standards, web developers should design their pages to the standards and IE users should suffer: web pages should not be browser-specific. (It's fine if they have special code to handle special cases for certain browsers, but they shouldn't break the page for other browsers in order to attain browser lock-in. MS is famous for this, and Sharepoint still doesn't work right on anything but IE.)

It's actually a variation of the argument between statists and libertarians: libertarians don't care what you do with your own self and property, but do care about the commons. Statists care about what everyone else does with their selves and their property, as well as about the commons. The design of the internet is, in this sense, libertarian: the devices can be anything at all, so long as the protocols and formats are all agreed. Flash is nothing new in this regard; Adobe simply follows the horrid path blazed by REAL.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[Altus]

Yes, yes it is. The iPhone is not a global communications network, the iPhone is a device that some people like to use and others don't. The fact that the guy next to you has an iPhone is not hampering your ability to use the internet. Adobe not supporting your platform really does hamper your ability to use the internet.

They are 2 different things, stop acting like they are the same.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[jedidiah]

> It's their product. Don't buy it. Was that so hard?

If Apple and their lackeys have their way, it will be.

It will be DOS all over again but with less user and developer freedom.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[Princeofcups]

So, Apple, Adobe: Sell your shit and STFU. Regardless of how much you pretend that standards, and the whole industry revolves around you, it doesn't.

You do realize that standards are just a consensus of the the majority of the 800 lb gorillas, usually against a smaller group of 800 lb gorillas who are pushing their own standard? Standards committees are not filled with benevolent open source developers. They consist of representatives from the major corporations, all jockying for advantage over the others.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[onefriedrice]

So standards on the web should be free, but its ok to have proprietary lock in for the iPhone?

Correct. There is nothing wrong with proprietary lock-in. It may be a consideration in a market abuse investigation, but apart from that, the only thing you can do is to choose not to buy their stuff. Clearly Apple is not the only player in the mobile phone market (by far), so we obviously aren't looking at an antitrust situation. So if you don't like what Apple offers, don't buy it. Meanwhile, other people will decide they like Apple's goods and they will buy. Simple.

Having Flash on the iPhone might be a false choice, but I don't honestly see what leg Apple has to stand on with this issue.

The leg they have to stand on is the iPhone ecosystem, including the App Store and the device itself, is not a web standard to which all browsers and devices must comply. As far as I know, Apple never claimed to be anti-proprietary, just pro-"open web standards."

Many will take my previous statement and try to argue that Apple's h.264 support is a contradiction, but let's get real. H.264 won long before it was a contender for the standard HTML5 video format. It's a shame that Theora wasn't very competitive back when h.264 was being used in embedded applications and major video sites were choosing video codecs, but that's history and the present is the present.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I fully understand how that works. But that has been changing lately. We do our own formats, and if you like it you can use them too. ODF, Ogg, Matroska, Jabber, etc. We are producing our own standard formats and protocols, and using them in Free Software. The rest of the industry can use them if they want to.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[pkphilip]

Great. You know what, there are also a lot of amazing demos, presentations, etc, written in ASM for the C-64.

This is the dumbest comment against flash that I have ever heard.

Why don't you point me to a single platform apart from Java applets (which are not supported on iphone) for doing these sorts of interfaces apart from Flash?

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[jolyonr]

You're right, but you're also very wrong.

>Any standard on the web should be completely free, period.

Totally agree, and it's a disgrace that HTML5 won't specify a free codec as mandatory for VIDEO.

> The best free standard we have so far is HTML5 + Ogg + Theora

Correct, and in an ideal world that would be what we would all be using. But it simply won't happen. With hardware H.264 decoding in portable devices NOW that people want to use, Theora is the least-best solution technically. And don't forget Microsoft and Apple wouldn't support Theora in a million years. They finally have some leverage over Firefox and the open source community, and they'll exploit it however they can.

The battle is already lost on Theora. In exactly the same way that MP3 became the standard for audio and OGG audio lost. Sure, Wikipedia has Theora video, but Youtube doesn't, and won't.

Website developers have to be able to figure out how to support video on all devices and browsers. At the moment H.264 is the only solution that can do that, or can realistically be expected to do so in the future. It's the only format with hardware support, it's the only one that works on smart phones, it can work with Firefox if you use a Flash video player to play the content.

The real battle is not about Theora or H.264, the real battle is to kill software patents completely. Then all these issues become irrelevant.

Jolyon

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Dude, come on, it's not that hard to get.

The web is what it is, not what you want it to be. Flash is NOT part of the web. Period. The web is whatever HTML is at a given point. Before HTML5, the web was actual HTML + CSS for Formatting + Javascript for scripting + Images + MJPEG video. That was it. Flash is NOT part of the web. You can download a PDF document from the web. Your browser might allow you to see that PDF document in-line. That doesn't make PDF part of the web. Same thing for Flash. What you are doing is downloading and viewing a file in SWF format with an external program. Your browser just happens to show it in-line and provide some stupid integration. That doesn't make Flash part of the web.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[pitdingo]

Why is the interface written in a proprietary technology to begin with? Why target a proprietary run time which uses a standards based web browser as its container? It makes no sense. If your app can not work using web standards, why use a web browser? You take the web out of web browser. Simple, stick to standards, have your devs do the: if( IE ) do all sorts of crazy stuff to make work because MS sucks; else works in all other browsers;

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[Skuld-Chan]

It's their product. Don't buy it. Was that so hard?

I didn't - the problem is once a product reaches ubiquity it becomes a problem for everyone.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[Locke2005]

Apple makes computers. You mean like the iTunes/Quicktime software I run on the Windows 7 PC I built myself? I think it's more accurate to say "Apple makes software designed to leverage hardware sales. If Adobe isn't leveraging hardware sales with their software, then Apple's opinion is 'screw them!'"

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[snowgirl]

The has been cases of Privative software stealing code from GPL projects, where the GPL won and this guys had to either arrange a settlement or release their code to be GPL compliant.

As well, some of the private software violators have simply folded due to public pressure.

But there has not been A SINGLE CASE of infringing GPL code loosing a legal battle.

There have been cases where GPL code has been found to contain code that was not validly contributed, either because of legal reasons of people adding the code when they weren't supposed to, or when said code was done essentially for hire resulting in a "taint".

However, due to the open source nature, this code has typically been yanked as soon as possible, and replaced with reengineered code.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[illumin8]

In the meanwhile, we will continue developing Free Open standards, and Free Open software that uses them. We will eventually prevail. We always do.

Absolutely. What we have now on the web is simple:

- In one corner, you have Apple loyalists and Obj-C developers getting fired up because their platform is dominating mobile computing.
- In the other corner, you have Flash developers who invested years of their life writing code for a proprietary problem thinking they're going to lose their jobs now.

Everyone needs to kill these religious arguments and just use whatever is the best tool for the job. The only reason why we're seeing such a rabid response from the Apple fans is that they perceive Apple, a perpetual underdog, is under attack. The only reason we see such a rabid response from the Flash developers is that they perceive their software development environment of choice is dying (as it probably should).

Learn how to code in standard languages like C, C++, Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. and you will be able to write code that will run on ANY platform, open or closed. Developers need to put up or shut up and quit leaning on the crutch that proprietary tools give you. I don't give a fuck if you can create a new GUI in 30 seconds flat with Adobe InterfaceBuilderHooHaa CS5 or not. If you don't understand the code it is generating you will never be a good developer. Learn the concepts of computer science, and languages don't matter any more. Languages can be learned. Programming skill is something that takes time, but can transfer to any new language.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[dangitman]

Adobe not supporting your platform really does hamper your ability to use the internet.

That's because Adobe has tainted the internet with Flash. If we stuck with standards, we wouldn't depend on Adobe's support of our platforms. That's the whole frickin' point.

Re:Why does it all have to be either pro or anti?

[plan10]

You are incorrect, and are mixing patents and copyright

SCO was a copyright claim. Firstly they claimed that Linux was copied from Unix, then they claimed that they owned UNIX copyright.

MPEG-LA is not claiming any copyright over anyone. They are not claiming ownership of x264. However, they WILL claim that any open source implementation of h263 encoder or decoder infringes on their held patents.

One Linux company has already lost a patent case. Tom Tom lost to Microsoft because of FAT patents.

Yes,

[Mr Stubby]

Next...

video

[J-1000]

videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

This is really good SPIN. Steve is right in that the very OLD verion of flash before 2007 (3 years in internet time is a VERY LONG TIME.) version 9, did use a CPU based codec. But as stated above, H.264 is now the standard and all sites using flash are now using the same H.264 files in flash as is compatible with the Hardware accelerated decoders. As such, Flash 10.1 is as efficient as that can possibly be on these mobile devices. Steve implies Flash cannot do this. Again deceptive and untrue.

But lets get into the OSX story here. Apple like to blame Adobe for the poor video performance on OSX. Unfortunately, again, Steve has failed to supply the full story. The reason Flash on OSX is so slow and buggy is as follows.

1. Video, Apple has refused to, until recently, supply the API required to implement it. Flash 10.1 for OSX will have Hardware acceleration as, the API has only just been made available. Steve conveniently failed to mention this. (See Adobe will accelerate Flash video using new Apple API)

That's a pretty dang good point.

Re:video

[UnknowingFool]

1. Video, Apple has refused to, until recently, supply the API required to implement it. Flash 10.1 for OSX will have Hardware acceleration as, the API has only just been made available. Steve conveniently failed to mention this. (See Adobe will accelerate Flash video using new Apple API)

This is partly true. It is true that Apple until recently did not supply the APIs for hardware acceleration. What is not true is this wasn't the real cause of Adobe's Flash on OS X problems. What the poster did not reveal (or didn't know) was that Flash until recently didn't use Apple's APIs for video rendering like H.264. Instead Flash implemented their own code to do so. Now the downside of Flash doing this way is that it relied on the CPU to render video. Using Apple's APIs would have had the OS determine and optimize rendering based on any available hardware. I think this was due to Adobe still using the Carbon framework which didn't have the APIs while the Cocoa framework had them.

Re:video

[Windows Breaker G4]

Even with access to the API, adobe is only implementing it on a few machines, most any machine that's not brand new won't use it because adobe can't be bothered.

Re:video

[BitZtream]

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.

Re:video

[Just Some Guy]

That's a pretty dang good point.

No, it's not..

Oh, that's right: VLC is developed by a megacorporation with close knowledge of Apple's secret internal APIs, and not a small team of Open Source developers. That's why their software can play back the same MP4 stream with 1/3 the CPU of Adobe's.

Re:video

[Anonymous Coward]

Um - that might be because Flash has to go through the overhead of rendering video through Safari, and VLC doesn't.

Try comparing the CPU usage of a YouTube video between the Flash version and the HTML 5 version. In my tests, the Flash version uses considerably less CPU than the HTML 5 version. And this is under Safari.

Re:video

[Just Some Guy]

Um - that might be because Flash has to go through the overhead of rendering video through Safari, and VLC doesn't.

No one - including Adobe - seems to be making that argument.

Try comparing the CPU usage of a YouTube video between the Flash version and the HTML 5 version. In my tests, the Flash version uses considerably less CPU than the HTML 5 version.

So the Safari object for displaying video also currently sucks, assuming you're correct. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of Flash.

Re:video

[Skuld-Chan]

Adobe actually talks about this here: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different_problems.html

Re:video

[Just Some Guy]

From the comments on that post, replying to a statement implying that other browsers don't implement HTML5 video any more efficiently than Flash implements its video playback:

Safari 4.0.4 running in 32-bit mode under Mac OS X 10.6.2, on an iMac with a 2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 3GB of RAM.

Using http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwvuirSEAA and viewing the 720p version sized to 960 pixels wide (the larger size in the browser window), streaming.

Using Flash Plugin, 100-115% CPU (105% typical). (!!!)

Using Quicktime Plugin (that's in the browser via Click2Flash), 30% - 40% CPU (35% typical).

Unfortunately YouTube's HTML5 beta doesn't appear to work with anyhing but standard def videos (I can't get it to work with that video anyway). So, with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEIZ_FFmjnw

Using Flash Plugin, 65-70% CPU.

Using Quicktime Plugin, 15-20% CPU.

Using HTML5, 15-20% CPU.

Pesky facts.

So despite Adobe's claim to the contrary, another poster gives the conditions to reproduce other browsers and other frameworks using much less CPU than Flash to display video inside a browser window. If it's inherently more difficult for Adobe to make their complex processing pipeline work well, then maybe they should consider the possibility that their architecture is at fault.

Re:video

[GasparGMSwordsman]

VLC also only does 1/10th of the things flash does when it displays video. NOTE! This is NOT a bad thing. Flash does all kinds of things, most of which are useless if you just want to watch video. VLC does almost nothing but render video. Unsurprisingly the specialized video app does its specialized task faster than the non-specialized app.

That being said, VLC is a great example of open source success.

Re:video

[ceoyoyo]

I had a GPGPU example running on a web page in Safari (for giggles) about four years ago. If you can get full GPGPU access through a web page writing a little video decoder shouldn't be a big deal.

Re:video

[Just Some Guy]

See my reply to the sibling post before yours. If Flash is so hopelessly complicated that it can't be implemented efficiently, then Adobe needs to address that. In an app installed on tens of millions of systems, it should have optimized code paths for such an extremely common use case.

Re:video

[illumin8]

This is really good SPIN. Steve is right in that the very OLD verion of flash before 2007 (3 years in internet time is a VERY LONG TIME.) version 9, did use a CPU based codec. But as stated above, H.264 is now the standard and all sites using flash are now using the same H.264 files in flash as is compatible with the Hardware accelerated decoders. As such, Flash 10.1 is as efficient as that can possibly be on these mobile devices. Steve implies Flash cannot do this. Again deceptive and untrue.

That's a pretty dang good point.

No, it's not. He is SPINNING his response to make it sound like Flash has had hardware acceleration since 2007, but it has not. In fact, Flash 10.1 is still in release candidate phase which means it's only available in a beta form.

The shipping version of Flash does not currently support hardware acceleration of ANY video playback, H.264 or not. FUD, FUD, and more FUD, from an Adobe Flash developer.

Re:video

[jafac]

. . . yeah,just not on a dual G5 PPC. . .

Re:video

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Many features is not the same as hopelessly complicated.

Your trying to say that it does not do ONE THING very well. That may be true. But the goal of Flash is not to do one thing. It is to do many things, which by most accounts it does very well.

One of the big difference between VLC and Flash video is that Flash can include with the video various features including custom menus, DRM systems, automatic streaming control (adjustment of the throughput of the data stream if your internet connection slows or speeds up). These are just a few of the features that Flash includes that VLC can not do (by default). *YOU* may not want or need them or some of them, but some people do.

You simply can not compare two projects that have wildly different intentions and goals and expect meaningful conclusions. If you want to have meaningful comparison, look at a system that has all of the same features (and not just those you use) as Flash and compare them. Failing that, find a set of systems that combined, have the same features.

On to my last point, if *YOU* don't like Flash, don't use it (I actually don't like Flash very much either). But if Flash meets the needs of the person(s) that created XYZ project, then what exactly is it to you? I have written projects in most of the languages you have heard of and probably several that you have not. Each situation has its own set of needs and each languages has its own set of features. Some times one will work perfectly in a situation and some times it wont. Unless you have taken the time to fully analyze a situation (something that usually takes a period measured in months or years) you really are not qualified to make educated statements on a choice of this tool or that language.

Re:video

[Just Some Guy]

Your trying to say that it does not do ONE THING very well. That may be true. But the goal of Flash is not to do one thing. It is to do many things, which by most accounts it does very well.

But when that "one thing" is "viewing every video on the #3 website in the world", you'd thing they'd spend a little effort in making it not suck. I'd get your general point if the subject at hand were, say, that Flash is slower than necessary at converting WordPerfect 5.1 files to color palettes. You can't dismiss cruddy video playback - which is the reason many people have Flash installed in the first place - as "just one thing".

Re:video

[GasparGMSwordsman]

Two issues:

But when that "one thing" is "viewing every video on the #3 website in the world", you'd thing they'd spend a little effort in making it not suck.

1) Again, your looking at the language by what *YOU* care about. What percentage of Flash is written for video? The last credible study I read was about 3 years ago and had only about 5% of Flash projects related to video. The majority were interactive applications such as non-video web sites, games, corporate systems (think data input/validation or shopping carts) and computational systems.

Your argument sounds like it is that the majority of development for Flash should go to what is most used for. In which case only about 5% of development funds should go towards video. If you have a more recent study of how many projects use Flash for what and how popular Flash is, please feel free to share it, as I said the last study I saw was a bit out of date now. (Also, for those of you who don't like Flash, there are ways of viewing video on youtube without it.)

You can't dismiss cruddy video playback - which is the reason many people have Flash installed in the first place - as "just one thing".

2) I do not accept your premise. I view Flash videos off of several sites fairly regularly. *I* have no problems. I have not had a crash related to Flash in at least 4 years. Not on Windows (Win2K, WinXP, Vista or Win7). Not on Mac (OSX 10.3 to 10.5). Not on any other System that I have used (Linux and VMS, although the last does not use Adobe's Flash player).

Nor do I have a problem with the CPU usage, even on a low spec machine, I can still compile a project, have 6 terminal windows open, another browser open with a dozen tabs. All while watching a video.

Re:video

[mjbkinx]

Adobe just uses the API Apple introduced a month ago, they didn't write it themselves, obviously. Some restrictions apply.

It has never been about videos

[bdunogier]

It comes as a surprise to me that some would conclude apple doesn't want flash because of videos... It doesn't happen much, but flash & videos is one of the few areas where I agree on the long term: flash has brought us http video streaming, but it has now been accepted as a mandatory feature, and HTML5 will make it available without flash, and will let us benefit from HW decoding. Flash for videos is dying, imho.

Now, as many have said, it is about apps and games. It is very easy to implement any kind of app or game using flash, and there are tons of skill developers around. If flash was available on iPhone, it would just mean less iBucks for apple, and that is not gonna happen.

Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[Raffaello]

Granted his grammar is poor and he does ramble but his main point (which he takes forever to get to) is simple and worth taking note of:

Apple wants to dominate on line video the way they've come to dominate on line music - through iTunes/iPods/iPhones/iPads. For this to happen, Flash must die, since it is currently the #1 means of on line video delivery.

This also explains why Apple have resisted putting Blu-Ray drives in their desktops and laptops even though Blu-Ray won the format war two years ago. Apple wants to kill physical video distribution too so that users will choose Apple's on line video distribution through iTunes instead of buying HD video on physical media.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[the_B0fh]

err, no, according to apple, it's the crazy licensing requirements.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[Thanshin]

err, no, according to apple, it's the crazy licensing requirements.

It makes no sense to use as counter point that the subject said otherwise.

Obviously Apple wouldn't say "We don't install blurays because we plan to destroy flash and monopolize online video.".

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I don't buy that. Online video is not going to be a complete replacement for Blu-ray anytime soon. Apples knows this.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[wvmarle]

Apple may currently still dominate on-line music sales, it is not for technical reasons any more. Most if not all major labels nowadays, and independents for longer, sell their music DRM free. The DRM was the only thing locking stores to devices. That's gone.

That they still dominate is that they apparently have a music store that people like better than the other stores.

And in the case of video, Apple is pushing a DRM free format, so anyone can publish video that plays on Apple's devices.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[s73v3r]

So in order to make their device the #1 portal for video consumption, they're going to push... an open standard format that anyone can make a viewer for?

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[Raffaello]

Show me a single Apple machine with a Blu-Ray drive. Oh, that's right, there are none.

Big players like Apple, MS, etc. like to be part of various consortia for two reasons:

1. To control their direction (e.g., HTML5 and Apple's Mac, iPhone, iPad)
2. To know what they need to counter in their own offerings (e.g., Blu-Ray and Apple's iTunes Movies & TV Shows)

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[snowgirl]

Granted his grammar is poor and he does ramble but his main point (which he takes forever to get to) is simple and worth taking note of:

Actually, as a linguist, his Grammar is perfectly fine... his spelling however is not.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[Raffaello]

So in order to make their device the #1 portal for video consumption, they're going to push... an open standard format that anyone can make a viewer for?

Viewer, yes. Well designed, popular, searchable store, with millions of customers' credit card numbers on file? No.

No business cares how you watch stuff. They only care that you buy it from them. If you pay them for it, they're quite happy to have you watch it on a free linux based player embedded in the seat of your toilet if you like.

Apple believe that they can own any on line media distribution system because they can leverage the existing popularity of iTunes to do so.

Why did apps for the iPhone become so popular and profitable when Apple still had only a small overall share of the cell phone market? Because iTunes was a pre-existing channel with millions of paying customers into which they could push iPhone apps.

Apple gets this one thing that their competitors don't: a user-friendly channel in the immensely confusing and frightening (to most people) on line world will beat open source and/or superior technology every time.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[s73v3r]

You missed the point. They're pushing an open standard for video viewing in HTML5 that anyone can implement. HTML5 has nothing to do with the iTunes store. They make no money on HTML5 video.

Re:Bad Grammar, Insightful Point

[willy_me]

Show me a single Apple machine with a Blu-Ray drive. Oh, that's right, there are none.

But there are also no WindowsXP computers with Blu-Ray drives - or more specifically, WindowsXP software that will allow you to fully utilize the Blu-Ray drive and decrypt the content. A big part of Vista was implementing an OS that would prevent decrypted data from exiting the computer. Play a Blu-Ray movie on a monitor connected via DVI and you get a resolution reduced copy of the movie. You have to use HDMI if you want it in full resolution - the reasons for this are purely political.

So getting software licensed to access Blu-Ray is impossible unless the underlying OS supports all of those "trusted computing" initiatives that have been gaining strength these past few years. And while Apple also supports many of these initiatives, what they really have to do is convince the Blu-Ray people that their OS is 100% secure - hence the reason for calling the license requirements "crazy".

Hard to Believe

[whisper_jeff]

Is it really so hard for people to believe that Flash on a Mac is so poorly implemented as to suck, Flash on mobile devices is poorly suited (due to touch interface) and is a significant memory drain, and that Apple really does not want to be at the mercy of a 3rd party developer when providing features to their customers. Why are people so intent on find some alternate reason when the reasons that have been outlined are actually valid and true? When Flash doesn't suck on a Mac (including iPhone OS); when Flash isn't a memory drain; when Flash is suited to (multi)touch interfaces; when Adobe actually steps up to the plate and takes development within the Mac ecosystem seriously (how long did it take Adobe to release Creative Suite optimized for OSX?...), then, and only then, can we discuss other reasons that Apple may be interested in keeping Flash off their mobile devices. Until then, however, there are some very significant and glaring reasons that Adobe doesn't deserve to have Flash on the iPhone/iPad.

Translation: Adobe, get your shit together. When half your market uses a Mac, you need to take them a lot more seriously than you currently do.

What a joke...

[Jugalator]

From his rant:

For Apple you have to purchase expensive iTenchnology. For Adobe, you get a free Flash Player.

What kind of rubbish is this?

Is he comparing a free software plugin to manufactured hardware? What's going on here?

AFAIK, Apple provides free access to H.264 movies, since Safari is free as well.

Re:What a joke...

[Mr Stubby]

I think he just means that to develop for Flash vs App store there is a payment required to Apple for the later while flash is free.

Re:What a joke...

[Xuranova]

You can dl a quality free Flash developer tool?

Re:What a joke...

[dingen]

Yeah, he does this all the time. Even when referring to HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript, he states:

So compare both, I can use Adobe flash technology and build workable results without paying Adobe a cent. I have access to all the source for the tools that make the swf files. Not so with Apple. So who is more open again?

This is a ridiculous statement and makes no sense whatsoever. Why the hell would anyone pay anything to Apple in order to create a website powered by HTML5, CSS3 & Javascript and featuring H.264 video?

Re:What a joke...

[Windows Breaker G4]

I was wondering that too. As far as I know playing H.264 videos is free, hell if you have a mac you can use imovie (comes free with a new mac) to encode your own h.264 videos. If you don't QT pro is $30 and you can encode all day long (basically iMovie just adds a gui to quicktime, almost everything it does you can do in quick time pro though it might take a bunch more effort). How much does flash cs 5 cost again?

Re:What a joke...

[bynary]

To be able to run Flash, I have to buy something.

Re:What a joke...

[ceoyoyo]

Worse. He's comparing Flash to Apple. All of Apple. That's where I quit reading.

Even the usual comparison of Flash (proprietary) to H.264 (proprietary) is wrong. The proper comparison for video, which is the subject the article is harping on, is Flash (proprietary) to HTML5 (open standard). Most Flash video uses the encumbered H.264 codec, just as Apple has suggested H.264 is the ideal codec to use with HTML5. So the codecs are the same. What's the difference? The container, and one container is indeed proprietary while the other is an open standard.

What it is *really* about...

[CondeZer0]

It is all about control.

Apple's control over users, over developers, over content providers...

Re:What it is *really* about...

[bobmax48]

Do you really believe that it is about control? I am not sure why there is so much animosity on this subject. None of the phones are now using the newest Flash and so why is everyone bitching? I know that every time I go to a Flash site I can watch my laptop battery running out of a charge and the fans on the processor are running at full speed. I use Flash in most of the video work that I do only because the students do not want to upgrade to Quicktime or any other players. Personally I don't care if Flash is used or not although I do know that anything in H.264 is much more efficient then Flash when it comes to the use of the processor.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[iainl]

On the other hand, it's really about Apple's control over their own hardware, and what ships on it. Unlike H.264, for all that they need to licence it, Adobe are the only people who can supply a Flash player to run on the iPad, because it's a nasty little piece of undocumented junk. Jobs wants the code in the box to be their code, because then he's got control over how good it is, what exactly it does, and who fixes the bugs.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[CondeZer0]

> On the other hand, it's really about Apple's control over their own hardware, and what ships on it.

No, the hardware is owned by whoever bought it, once Apple sells you something they don't own it anymore.

> Adobe are the only people who can supply a Flash player to run on the iPad, because it's a nasty little piece of undocumented junk.

This is true, and Adobe is as much of a control freak as Apple, and Adobe certainly wishes they could be as good as Apple at controlling others.

Just as Apple controls and locks users and developers of the iPhone/iPad 'ecosystem', Adobe tries to control and lock users and developers in the Flash ecosystem, the only reason Adobe doesn't exert quite as much power as Apple is because they have not been able to, but they sure would like to.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[CondeZer0]

You didn't write what I read. This is not about video, and it is not About flash, it is about Apple's control.

Adobe are the same regarding Flash: they try to control its users and developers.

Just because Flash is a turd doesn't mean Apple's policies are any less evil.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Exactly.

I've got one hell of a rash because I emailed steve whether or not I could change my underwear and haven't received a response yet.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[the_humeister]

Except a lot of Flash videos are encoded in H.264. The *.flv format is just a container.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[oh_my_080980980]

The only people who are complaining are flash developers. No one cares about flash. We don't want our cell phones or browsers to crash because of some god dam !@#$%^ site that is so heavily reliant on flash!

Re:What it is *really* about...

[steveha]

If it is not really about control, then why did Apple say that programs must be written by hand in Objective C?

If a Flash translator can output Objective C code, which is then compiled down to native code as per usual; and if the resulting app conforms in all ways to the Human Interface Guidelines and other requirements; and if that app runs efficiently and provides an excellent user experience... that app is still forbidden. Why, exactly?

steveha

Re:What it is *really* about...

[dangitman]

Apple's control over users, over developers, over content providers...

What about Adobe's control over the internet, developers and content providers?

Re:What it is *really* about...

[mjwx]

Do you really believe that it is about control?

Yes. You have to be pretty naive not to say that Apple has a pathological need for control by now.

I am not sure why there is so much animosity on this subject.

Number 2: We want information, information, information
Number 6: You wont get it
Number 2: By hook or by crook, we will
Number 6: Who is Number 1
Number 2: You are Number 6
Number 6: I am not a number, I am a free man.
Number 2: (Maniacal Laughter)

Apple defenders always make me think of the opening to The Prisoner. It seems fitting when everyone in the iVillage is telling me to fit in and do what Number 2 is iTelling me to do and I seem to be the only one interested in escaping.

Point in short, we hate being controlled, to serve another master against our own needs and wishes (back to The Prisoner refference). It is quite a natural thing for this to be repugnant and cause quite strong emotion and quite an unnatural thing for it to be welcomed. But I expect a few Roman slaves thought their servitude to be a good thing. Apple's pathological need for control over what I do with my gadget is repulsive to most normal people. Apple's secret to sucess is to brush it under the carpet before a somnabulet audience.

None of the phones are now using the newest Flash and so why is everyone bitching

Well except for the N800 and HTC Hero.

But Apple prides itself on being innovative and a technology leader but restricts the kinds of technologies that can be used. It's propaganda claims that you get the entire internet in a little white box yet it fails the most basic tests of RIA. The problem is not that Apple doesn't support flash, the problem is with Apple's hypocrisy, the LG Shine doesn't support flash but then again LG never promised me a full internet experience where as Apple did and is now telling me I don't need a significant portion of the internet.

Re:What it is *really* about...

[iainl]

> No, the hardware is owned by whoever bought it, once Apple sells you something they don't own it anymore.

True, once you've bought it. And I'm not going to defend Apple from claims of control-freakery. But I do think that it's at least in part about controlling their hardware while it's still theirs - i.e. making the product experience shiny enough that you'll want to buy one in the first place.

Re:G(a)nash

[Raffaello]

Ganash is a delicious chocolate glaze

You've misspelled it.

Ganache is a delicious chocolate glaze

Ganesh (or Ganesha) is an indian god with an elephant's head

Ganash therefore, is the equivalent of a chocolate Easter Bunny, but for Hindus.

Glad I could clear that up for you ;^)

Re:poorly written response

[Altus]

Really, this is poorly written and poorly argued. He pretty much lost me when his response to the first Jobs quote turned out to be focused solely on the openness of video standards when the quote was just about flash in general and not about video specifically.

There are reasons to disagree with steve but this guy misses the mark by miles. Also, its pretty clear that Apple's reasons have little to do with video and everything to do with having fully features native apps instead of flash apps dominating their platform. From Apples point of view, this makes a lot of sense. It may not be what some people want, but it makes sense for Apple.

Misinformed, illiterate, adobe-lover

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we reading this illiterate fool's ramblings on /.?

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[Altus]

Never mind the fact that you don't need an iAnything to use the web or to have a high quality web browsing experience. If you don't have flash though, you are locked out of a lot of content. Flash is impacting the openness of the web; Apple, with their iPhones and iPads does not impact the openness of the web.

Its a clear distinction and an extremely important one.

Learn English

[aitikin]

Last I checked, .au TLDs were from Australia, an English speaking country. I have read two paragraphs and it's getting painful. Hell, the headline almost turned me completely away when I got to it. "Apples attack on Adobe..." What are apples throwing themselves on some bricks somewhere?! I hate being the grammar nazi, but sometimes, it has to be done.

Flash only has three uses

[MBCook]

Flash only has three big uses on the web.

The first is video. Flash is not needed for video. It became the standard because it could do things the object tag couldn't, but it's not needed. The video tag does what most users need, and people will figure out ways to do the rest. For most users (who just want to see Hulu/Vimeo/YouTube/whatever), the video tag will be all they need. Flash isn't necessary here for most users (especially mobile).

The second is animations. There are some very impressive things done in HTML5 and JS, and most of the stuff I see on the web done with flash could be done in HTML5 (or really just needs a redesign). Very few sites do more than make objects show and hide and move around. iPhone users don't need a special plugin to use terrible interfaces, they should be made in HTML5 or have a simplified version available. So Flash isn't necessary here for most users, especially mobile.

Games are the best argument for flash, it's the standard and works well (when the programers know what they're doing and don't code an idle loop to use 100% CPU). Steve Jobs is right that a great many of these wouldn't work on the iPhone because of the keyboard and mouse expectations that can't be translated. Native code would work better, and being able to get to farmville but having a horrible time trying to play it would make iPhone users mad.

Games is the best reason Adobe has, I'd like to be able to play 'em on my iPhone some times. Steve is right that it's better for most users that the games get made for the device instead of trying to rejigger the interface.

Re:Flash only has three uses

[CannonballHead]

Steve is right that it's better for most users that the games get made for the device instead of trying to rejigger the interface.

"Made for the device" == "downloaded from the app store."

Allowing Flash on the iPhone isn't going to suddenly mean that everyone is forced to play games not written for the iPhone. I am very certain that Flash developers, as crazy as it may sound, might rewrite their games so it works well with the iPhone interface. Sorta like how there are entire mobile versions of websites. I guess if Steve Jobs had the iPhone a few years ago when mobile versions of sites weren't prevalent, he would have argued against having a browser on the phone - after all, I don't see how it would work well with the small screen!

To me, this is either very short-sighted (giving devs another platform isn't going to make them NOT develop iPhone-pointed games! keyboard and mouse expectations can't be translated, he's right, so if I were a developer, I'd write a new one so I could make more $$$ ... I thought that's what developers do?) or he has some other motive.

Re:Flash only has three uses

[MBCook]

I agree that's Steve's way of doing it: it should be on the app store. Maybe if Flash were available, most of the web games would make themselves work well with touch interfaces, but the early experiences when you suddenly get all these new free games and almost none play well wouldn't be a good experience for customers until many games got updated.

Perhaps Android getting Flash will fix the interface problems (since devs will make their games work with it), then the issue won't matter as much.

I think games are the real issue, so all this argument over whether Flash is good at video or how Apple wouldn't let Adobe accelerate video is just kind of... odd. It's a red herring. I don't care if the App store has more "push button to make sounds" apps, no matter what language they're written in. If you make a financial tracker, I'd like it to act like an iPhone app, but a developer who cared enough could probably do that in Flash.

But games have become big business.

Re:Flash only has three uses

[tecnico.hitos]

The second is animations. There are some very impressive things done in HTML5 and JS, and most of the stuff I see on the web done with flash could be done in HTML5 (or really just needs a redesign). Very few sites do more than make objects show and hide and move around. iPhone users don't need a special plugin to use terrible interfaces, they should be made in HTML5 or have a simplified version available. So Flash isn't necessary here for most users, especially mobile.

I guess you are talking about the kind of animation designers do. There is still animations from animators, of which is somewhat popular. There isn't a single animation tool for HTML5 as good as Flash(is for Flash). Just converting them to video isn't the best choice, since they often offer some interactive elements(like easter eggs, chapter selections) which would be lost. I don't think "compiling" into HTML5 would be a good idea either since HTML5 is still in an early stage, doesn't perform as well as Flash and has incompatibilities in the implementations between browsers.

Re:Flash only has three uses

[MBCook]

Right, I meant the "let's have the button fly in from the left and bounce around" animation. True vector animation doesn't have a replacement yet. The canvas tag could theoretically do it, but I've heard things about it's speed and it's real drawing, not moving vector objects around like Flash so it would be much much more difficult to do.

Animated SVG should be able to do some of it, but since static SVG often doesn't work well in browsers right now, the animated version would be a pipe dream to try to use.

Most animation I see on the web on people's websites is things sliding around, pointless eye candy that showing/hiding/moving images could do. Take this VW site. A quick look makes me think quite a bit could be done with HTML, but it would be really complicated. I understand using flash for that. A few months ago a friend showed me a car company's web site (someone smaller, not one of the biggest 4 or 5) that just had an amazing video of an exploding (as in exploded diagram) car that seamlessly transitioned to let you click around to different models and they swung in and out and... I have no idea how you could do it in HTML.

But compare that with Toyota and Honda's main pages. Both have pop-up lists of cars that you can hover over to get more links. Toyota did it all with HTML, Honda used Flash. Honda has a little more animation, but nothing too fancy. So many companies just use Flash to show a little slide show of clickable images, like Gamespot does.

For these simpler uses, Flash is no longer necessary. Flash has enough abilities that it (or something like it) will always have a place. But the "we need to use Flash here" bar is much higher than browsing many popular sites would have you believe.

help me understand

[MarkvW]

Why does Adobe really care? Can't they just redesign Flash CS5 to create HTML5 output in addition to .swf output?

This "debate" appears really stupid to me. What am I missing?

Re:help me understand

[FlyingGuy]

It is the "My Dick is bigger then yours!" fight.

But really it is about controlling the machine and more importantly the user experience on the machine.

Why does the iPhone / iPad attract so many users? I will give you a hint, not because it has the apple logo on it.

It is because you have an extremely well thought out AND consistent U/I that just plain works. The iPhone was a paradigm change plain and simple. If you could use one application on the iPhone you could use them all no matter what the task was. Apple has no, I repeat NO, upside in introducing a program that does not conform it is as simple as that.

Steve Jobs may in fact be a salesman but he knows quality when he sees it and dropping Flash into the middle of the iPhone ecosystem would diminish that quality it is as simple as that.

Re:help me understand

[MarkvW]

Your post does a good job of describing why APPLE cares about HTML5 and control over its platform, but it doesn't address Adobe's apparent unwillingness to just suck it up and adapt to Apple's ecosystem.

What pressures (if any) are keeping Adobe from just redesigning Flash in a way that facilitates the creation of Apple-compliant applications. If Adobe can rework Flash to make it Apple-compliant (and they sure ought to be able to do that), then what other legitimate gripe does Adobe have?

Re:help me understand

[VGPowerlord]

What pressures (if any) are keeping Adobe from just redesigning Flash in a way that facilitates the creation of Apple-compliant applications. If Adobe can rework Flash to make it Apple-compliant (and they sure ought to be able to do that), then what other legitimate gripe does Adobe have?

Because Apple's latest App Store developer agreement stipulates that applications for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch have to be originally written in C, C++, or Objective C. Meaning that the Flash to iPhone feature built into Flash CS5 makes applications that don't conform to said agreement.

So, no, Apple specifically updated their licensing agreement to exclude apps originally made in Flash.

Re:help me understand

[MikeFM]

But they still can use HTML 5 in apps either web based or submitted to the app store. HTML 5 is one of their approved methods.

Tree surgery

[Old Thrashbarg]

Flash 'developers' are like tree 'surgeons' - the definitions of these words are being stretched somewhat

Re:G(a)nash

[SliceofPi]

Wow, nicely done my friend. I just moisturized my nether regions while reading your fantastic insight into clarity. 10 XP points for you.

Re:Flash: The Internet's Undead Ghoul

[WrongSizeGlass]

I would love to see more vampire analogies here on Slashdot. Now, if someone combines a vampire analogy with a car analogy I believe we'll have reached 'analogy panacea'.

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[jedidiah]

> Apple, with their iPhones and iPads does not impact the openness of the web.

Stop swimming in the cool-aid.

Proprietary apps in place of actual web sites impacts the openness of the web far more horrendously than Flash does.

At least Flash is not limited to the iPhone.

Jobs can whine about HTML5 all day because it won't impact much in the end. His proprietary apps will still be replacing the open web while everyone is distracted by the big red herring.

Disney time..

[leuk_he]

"other big players can/will just as well sell H.264 format videos.".

Surely, as long as apple is the middle man. And don't forget that Steve Jobs did a lot in Disney (he is in the board of directors). That is a location where video content comes from. (And i gues that the NO porn attitude comes from, if you want to talk about apple /disney interaction).

Pot calls kettle black, kettle complains

[Omnifarious]

But it's just as black.

Flash is a despicable disgrace. Most of the time when I talk to a Flash developer, the thing they're the happiest about is the control they get over my computer. This is directly because the Flash player is a piece of garbage closed source tool that purposely caters to developers over end-users. The Open Source gnash (not ganash) player has an option to pause a Flash program. The Adobe player will never, ever end up with that option, ever. Giving me control over my own computer is against Adobe's best interest. Adobe's Flash player is little more than a widely deployed trojan horse that, IMHO, is little better than spyware (Flash cookies anyone? Where's my control over those?).

I wouldn't complain so bitterly about this if the gnash player were actually a decent drop in replacement for the closed source Flash player, but it isn't. I have to either choose my freedom and Flash that is broken most of the time, or Flash that works while giving up my freedom. I will choose my freedom, thank you very much, but I will be bitter about the stupid choice I'm forced to make.

So, when one maker of a closed, proprietary platform that steals people's freedom purposely does things to the detriment of another closed proprietary platform that steals people's freedom, I can't help but cheer. And I hope Adobe finds a way to play nasty games with Apple too. The more these two companies can find ways to hurt eachother, the more the rest of us benefit.

Hard to take YOU seriously

[Stick32]

Advice from someone who requires horizontal scrolling to read the text they're quoting? I don't think so.

Advice from someone who values substance over presentation. If your going to try and dismiss someones point of view, point out the flaws in his arguments, not the way he presents them. Otherwise, you should expect people to take you far less seriously. How this got modded 'Insightful' is beyond me... Then again this is /.

Re:Hard to take YOU seriously

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Why not? This is all about web technologies and that includes such things as usability. It seems to me that usability isn't a big deal to him. If he can't grasp such basics, that makes me wonder how valid his arguments are on the related subject.

If he really believes in the validity of his arguments, perhaps he should put the time in to present it more clearly so that people will take him more seriously and take the time to read it. It's not like there isn't a whole world of opinions out there on this subject, all competing for attention. I'm certainly not going to read every single one of them.

Re:Hard to take YOU seriously

[D Ninja]

While I agree with you that substance is very important, it is definitely not always the most important thing (or, at the very least, cannot be separate from how you present). While the content is ultimately what will survive, the presentation of something is what captures the attention, makes people take a second to listen a bit more. Heck, even Apple takes advantage of this with the beautiful designs of their hardware. Usability and presentation matters. And, of course, as Jeff Atwood points out: "Pretty things work better." (Not-so-much as they actually work better, but people give them more leeway and are more prone to their ideas.)

Let me ask you - why do you capitalize, use punctuation, and utilize HTML tags in your Slashdot post? That stuff shouldn't matter if the content is there (at least based on your argument). To some extent, you do the same thing.

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[Altus]

Stop swimming in the bullshit.

How many websites have closed their doors in preference to an iPhone application?

Unless the iPhone becomes the primary device that most people use to access information on the internet there is really no risk of that ever happening. Meanwhile trying to use the web without Flash is pretty hit or miss.

money and control

[josepha48]

First it is always about money. Don't bye the hype, Steve still wants more and so do those apple folk, but who doesn't! If flash is on the ipad/iphone/itouch/ipod then games and applications can be written in flash and the whole itunes store is bipassed. If that happens apple looses money. At that point they become a hardware company.

The second issue is control. Apple is a control freak company. One thing that has got them success is that they control so much of what people have access to in the way of hardware / software especially on their ip/it devices. By keeping this control in their hands they can make sure that the user has a good experience at least with the software ( for the most part ). Let's face it they have shown how much they like control by banning developers and apps from the itunes app store.

Re:money and control

[Yakasha]

Apple users have a good experience because Apple keeps so much control. Because they have a good experience, they are repeat customers. To say its all about money... of course it is. But not from the App store. It is from offering products that buyers enjoy.
Linux caters to developers... and as a result, only nerds want it on their desktop.

Why not improve an open source flash player?

[IYagami]

I mean, if there are lots of problems with the Adobe Flash player, it could be a good idea for several companies (Apple, nVidia, etc) to improve one of the existing open source Flash interpreters (Gnash) and use it.

They could subsidise open source developers and have a flash player less prone to errors and available in multiple architectures (ARM, x86, etc..)

Adobe Disinformation

[catchblue22]

After reading Steve Job's very logical list of reasons for not supporting Flash, and the tit for tat response of the Adobe executive, I suspect that Adobe is trying to create an astroturfing campaign to "refute" Steve Job's claims. I found the Adobe executive's points were similar to the Monty Python "Argument Sketch", in that they were mostly just contradiction, with little evidence or logic provided.

On my mac, Flash just sucks. It is plain awful. I use ClickToFlash to avoid flash applets, so I am very aware of the effect of opening Flash. When I open a Flash web video, after a short period of time my CPU cooling fan comes on, and gets faster and louder. Even after the video is finished, my CPU fan continues and continues. Only after quitting the browser does the CPU cool back down and the fan stop. My laptop is almost always nearly completely silent. The only other apps that rev my CPU fan up are video editing programs such as Final Cut Pro. And even then, this only happens when I am rendering movies.

Before Safari started separating the browser processes from the Flash processes, I used to have many browser crashes. When I explored the crash reports, I would inevitably see that Flash played a prominent role. And browsing crashes were the only crashes I was getting on my system. Thus Steve Job's assertion that Flash is the main cause of OS X crashes gybes with my personal experience.

For the Adobe executive to assert that Flash's poor performance is due to OS X is a patent absurdity worthy of a global warming denier. And I find it suspicious that after hearing the Adobe executive sound off on his opinions, that we are beginning to see blog postings suddenly appearing that support his assertions. The timing of this makes it seem that a corporate decision has been made to counter Apple by paying or influencing bloggers to tow the Adobe line.

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[bhtooefr]

Flash sucks.

The problem is, Steve Jobs could have stuck to the facts, rather than making stuff up to smear Adobe with, and there wouldn't have been this backlash.

Also, Adobe is improving Flash.

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[catchblue22]

Flash sucks.

The problem is, Steve Jobs could have stuck to the facts, rather than making stuff up to smear Adobe with, and there wouldn't have been this backlash.

Also, Adobe is improving Flash.

Ummmm...please be specific. What assertions are you referring to?

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[bhtooefr]

The biggest one is claiming that Flash is a closed standard - Flash as a standard is open, $free, and Free. Anyone can implement a Flash compiler, and anyone can implement a Flash player, using specs provided by Adobe, without having to pay any royalties to Adobe. (Now, the video codecs are another story, but that's still not royalties to Adobe.)

Also, there was the whole, claiming things that are problems with Flash as unique to Flash, when they also apply to H.264 and HTML5, thing.

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[walshy007]

The biggest one is claiming that Flash is a closed standard - Flash as a standard is open, $free, and Free.

Yes they have released specs, but they are nowhere near detailed enough for a decent actual implementation, if they were gnash wouldn't have to reverse engineer most of the stuff they do.

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[bhtooefr]

I was under the impression that Gnash had done that reverse engineering before the Open Screen Project, and therefore before the specs were available.

Re:Adobe Disinformation

[catchblue22]

Also, have you used alternate browsers like Opera?

I used FIrefox and Safari. I had the same Flash crashes. And in looking at the trace files for the crashes, Flash was always the cause.

I uninstalled Apple, so to speak, and chose to gave up their slick interface, shiny new "toys", and the largest, well cultivated app garden.

I don't believe you.

Steve Jobs is full of shit and he knows it...

[PortHaven]

The posted link is a great article debunking much of his lies.

Heck, I've seen demonstrations of Wii remotes used to control Flash. With AS3, you simply write your classes to interpret the touch

Here is a link to a group developing multitouch functionality for Flash and Flex. So once again, Steve Jobs is talking out his arse.
http://gestureworks.com/

And in a war on openness. Adobe kicks Apple's butt. Heck, let's look at Adobe versus Apple.

Adobe Flash Player - proprietary but open platform
Adobe Flex - open sourced
Adobe Flash Video - use of several common codecs of your choosing.
Adobe Flash Development Tools available on a multiple computing platforms.
Adobe Flex/Flash Builder license offered freely to those unemployed (very nice gesture)

Apple requires use of their development IDE for i-platform
Apple requires purchase and use of a Mac to run their IDE
Apple acts as a gate keeper for what you can install on your i-platform
Apple restricts access to your own device.

And Apple iTunes is far crappier buggier piece of software than anything Adobe offers. I am lucky if I can go through 2 syncs without issues.

--

This is about money and market control. Steve is pissed that A

Re:Steve Jobs is full of shit and he knows it...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

iTunes hasn't exposed tens to hundreds of millions of machines to active, in the wild vulnerabilities.

Flash and Acrobat Reader on the other hand...?

The source to OSX's kernel's freely available. The source to the WebKit underpinnings to iPhone Safari is freely available *and* the basis of their three main competitor's browsers(WebOS, Android and soon, BlackBerry) and in one case, the entire presentation layer(WebOS).

Apple's advocating that the W3C standards go in so far as web development. not their own. that's not proprietary, that's *OPEN*.

Flash sucks, but it's a necessary evil.

Re:Steve Jobs is full of shit and he knows it...

[JonJ]

And in a war on openness. Adobe kicks Apple's butt. Heck, let's look at Adobe versus Apple.

This is pure bullshit. Apple - iCal Server is Open Source Apple - Darwin is Open Source Apple - WebKit is Open Source Apple - LLVM and Clang Apple - Darwin streaming server Apple - Launchd Apple - OpenCL Apple- libdispatch They're certainly more open than Adobe, a company that overcharges for their software as long as they can.

Re:Steve Jobs is full of shit and he knows it...

[ceoyoyo]

Come on, the comparison is between Flash + some video codec (Adobe) or HTML5 + some video codec (Apple).

If you want to compare irrelevant parts of the given companies as some sort of background information why not include, say, Creative Studio (Adobe's "developer tools")? It costs more than XCode plus a computer to run it.

There are free, open, cross platform developer tools for Flash you say? There are free, cross platform developer tools for the iPhone too (GCC). In fact, XCode is just an IDE wrapped around GCC. You do have to sign your executables if you want to submit them to the app store. I'm not sure if someone has figured out a way to run codesign without actually having a Mac but I doubt such a thing is impossible.

Re:Flash: The Internet's Undead Ghoul

[zmollusc]

Oooh, a Nazi Vampire Car analogy, would be even better. And a Beowulf cluster of them would be even more so.

Nope, no cigar.

[Tei]

Flash by his nature will eat all available resources and more. Maybe you have to blame more on the flash authors than in flash itself.

If you give access to hardware acceleration, these people will consume that too. Now, a single flash banner can put your CPU at 100%, tomorrow a single flash banner will put the GPU at 100%. The diference is that for these devices withouth a GPU, today netbooks, Flash just works. If you give these morons access to hardware acceleration, soon you will need a very good GPU on your netbook to cope with Flash banners,.. OR REMOVE FLASH, that is what some people do anyway, or if you buy a iPad, it come "pre-removed" so you don't have to remove it (maybe you are a greatparent and you don't even know is possible).

Re:Message to Steve

[pandrijeczko]

The iPhone in it's current form (software wise) is a resounding, thumping, ball-busting success.

There were over 1.2 billion mobile phone sales in 2009 alone - based on that, the million or so iPhone users is less than 1% (or 0.1% of a European billion).

That's hardly a "ball-busting success".

Can't help but laugh a little

[tenzig_112]

I find it weirdly ironic that some of the same people who have been drcrying Flash as the scourge of the Internet for a decade are now rushing to its defense, perhaps because Apple happens to be a bigger company and we all love a good David v. Goliath rumble. Regardless of the reason, a great number of us (even Flash developers) want to move on to something newer, better, and more standardized. That was true before the iPhone's release and it remains true to this day.

It's about censorship as well there app store lock

[Joe The Dragon]

It's about censorship as well there app store lock in.

Apple user == Battered wife

[Requiem18th]

The possessive form of "Jobs" is "Jobs's"

EOL
Jobs'
EOL

Is also admissible. But come on, that's not why you don't want to read it, your problem is that it call Jobs on his bullshit and you can't have that.

That people come here defending Jobs choice as anything but detrimental to his customers is appalling, batter wife syndrome indeed.

They're both guilty. KILL THEM ALL!!

[twilightzero]

Apple's criticisms of Flash are spot on, but I'm 100% with the author in being Adobe's side on this one. Apple is deliberately spreading lies and half-truths in order to harm Adobe, further lock in developers and users, and push more iDevices. Remember, Apple is a hardware company and that's where the biggest part of their profits come from. iTunes? Just a way to sell zillions of iPods and make a little profit on the side. App store? Just a way to sell more iPhones/iPod touches and make some profit on the side. Holding features back from each new generation of software? Just a way to sell more of the next generation of hardware when you make the feature not compatible with the previous version.

Adobe's a PITA, Apple's a lying controlling paranoid scumbag. Kill 'em all.

Couldn't be worse

[nilbog]

I can't imagine someone misunderstanding the issues more than the guy who wrote this. I don't even know where to begin, but I'll point out a few problems with his "in depth analysis." But if you don't read my comment, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the concept of a straw man argument and a red herring before reading the article, because this guy LOVES them.

First, everyone loves to point out that while Jobs claims flash is proprietary, his own app store is the most proprietary thing ever! The flaw with this argument is that we're not talking about Flash vs. the app store. We're talking about Flash vs. HTML 5. There are not any tools, as the author claims, required from Apple to use HTML 5 video on your site. HTML 5 is an open standard (h.264 is not, flash is not, the app store is not.)

Second, the author's arguments about performance and how Flash performs better than HTML 5 are moot. He ignores the fact that Apple includes hardware decoders for h.264 and compares software decoding to software decoding. Ignoring any negative feelings you have towards Apple (I have plenty), it's not hard to argue against H.264 direct to the browser being a better experience that h.264, wrapped in flash, to the browser. Even with hardware acceleration Flash video uses massive amount of CPU on my computer - watching an HD video will almost always kick my fans into high gear. Watching the same video on an iPad or something is a much better experience - no fans, no heat, no lost battery performance (note: battery life is the iPad's killer feature).

The rest of the article accuses Jobs of misdirection while picking out really specific and uncommon examples where he might be wrong. Flash games aren't just bad on the iPad because of mouseovers, they're bad because they were designed from the ground up for keyboards and mice. There is usually some keyboard input required - how are you going to get around that? There are mouse hovers, but also mouse movements, etc. Think of the page itself - how would the browser know if you are trying to scroll down the page or trying to move something in the flash game? The whole experience doesn't make sense. Sure, 1/10 flash games might work well with touch, but it's not worth it. Games are not even a question here - video is the only thing seriously in question.

I have problems with Apple as much as the next guy, but not supporting Flash in their mobile devices is one of the best things they've done in a long time. As a web developer I have been looking forward to newer technologies taking over where Flash has continually failed. Change will not come gradually - it will only come if a big player in the market forces it, and that is what Apple is doing. They're not saying HTML 5 is going to take over tomorrow, but they're willing to make sacrifices to move the transition along.

I hate Apple, but I hate Adobe even more. At least Apple has a vision and gets their vision right. Adobe has been a mess for as long as I can remember.

Technical constraints

[SgtChaireBourne]

The problems with Flash are many and technical. It's so badly designed from a security perspective, that it's almost like a Microsoft product. The giveaway that it is not is that it runs on a handful of linux architectures. Games could just as well be written as Java Applets, which would increase the security and portability of the games. For movies, Flash is just plain wrong and other wrappers should be used, Ogg Theora being the obvious choice after MPEG or QuickTime.

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[s73v3r]

Care to point out how "proprietary apps" are impacting the web more than wrapping Web content up in proprietary plugins?

Fixed some typos

[kimvette]

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole
authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely
available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and
available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Here is the corrected version

Apple’s iPhone products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Apple, and Apple has sole
authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, App availability, etc. While Apple’s iPhone products are widely
available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Apple and
available only from Apple. By almost any definition, iPhone is a closed system, and so are iPhone applications because Steve Jobs prohibits open source apps from being offered via the app store.

Re:Fixed some typos

[Drakino]

"because Steve Jobs prohibits open source apps from being offered via the app store."

Odd. Why am I able to download the source code for Doom iPhone version then?

Besides, the point of that part of Steve's letter was because Adobe keeps throwing the open word around, Apple isn't. "Open screen" this, and "open flash" that. Wheres the "open" flash player, and other bits needed to allow someone to play back Flash 10.1 content without any Adobe involvement?

Re:Fixed some typos

[droopycom]

While true, it may not matter.

Why ?

Users dont buy Flash, they buy iPhones. Obviously most users dont care about iPhone being proprietary, and in the end, Apple will do anything to please the majority users enough so that they will buy more phones. That include keeping a tight control on the platform.

Users want to buy iPhones and Apps. They dont really care about how the way the apps were programmed, or if its open. They may care about the price and the quality.

Apple will occasionally switch their stance when they think its ultimately beneficial for them. For example, see how they want from only webapps to native apps. They saw how it would benefits the users, and allow them to sell more phones. They gave the users want they want.

For sure they will not make things easy for developers. Their strategy is please the users first, the developers will come. They will only encourage the developers if it eventually make it better for the user.
Microsoft in the past and Android now have the other strategy: please the developers (Who said: "developers! developers! developers!"), they will create great apps and the users will come for the apps, not the phone.

At the start of the PC era, Microsoft picked the right strategy and won against the Apple. Things have changed, PC and Smartphone users are not just geeks anymore, so Apple strategy might work better now....

Time will tell.... But the DOJ might be the wild card here....

Re:Fixed some typos

[illumin8]

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary.

Apple's iPhone products are 100% proprietary.

You're both right so shut the fuck up already.

It would be really nice...

[Kintar1900]

It would be really nice if it was possible to get an anti-Adobe viewpoint from someone other than an Apple fanboy, and an anti-Apple viewpoint from someone other than an Adobe fanboy. As it stands, most people who have any vested interest in this argument are heavily committed to one side or the other for their livelihood. That tends makes honest debate unlikely.

Re:It would be really nice...

[Lawrence_Bird]

Let me simplify this for you:

Adobe/Flash = conservative republicans, possibly neocons
Apple/iSteve = liberal progressives, possibly authoritative/fascists

Re:It would be really nice...

[E IS mC(Square)]

Adobe/flash fanboys? When did that happen?

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[jprescott12]

I only have a handful of 3rd party apps (Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) on my iPhone that even NEED the Internet. Of the remaining 70+ applications (I'm not a big app collector), all of them run locally on my iPhone, and provide useful information and calculation capabilities locally on the phone. I don't need the Internet for a calculator, as a place to keep my expenses, notes, and all the other uses I have for a hand-held computer.

Horrible "analysis"

[Yakasha]

He links to a Flash Software Evangelist's website as "proof", claims Apple is "just as bad" as Flash in terms of security and performance, says anybody working with HTML5 is "foolish at best"... He is a flash loving Apple hating blogger that doesn't say anything new and uses (imo worse) similar "misleading" and "bad form" tactics that he derides in Jobs.
I think the best part though was right in the middle, where I stopped reading. He showed very clearly that he is completely missing the core of what Jobs is trying to do. Jobs is trying to ensure that the end users of the iPad/iPhone/iPod have the best experience possible. Yes, that makes the lives of developers a little more difficult at the start because they have to change a bit. He even agrees with jobs that Adobe's goal is not the same as Apple's:

“It is their(Adobe) goal to help developers write cross platform” Yes exactly. As a developer, that is exactly what I want.

But that is NOT what the USERS want.

Imagine a tool box with only a Hammer in it. That is what Steve is trying to justify here.

No, Steve is trying to justify a million dollar home. See, the fridge is shiny and cold, foundation solid, rooms large, and its energy efficient. To make sure it is all of the things he thinks the buyer wants, he doesn't let the builders use asbestos. Cancer doesn't sell houses. Crashing, unblockable popups, and buggy interfaces don't sell iPads.

I'm sorry...

[bynary]

...that I gave that guy's blog a hit.

How do you figure?

[JSBiff]

That was one of the main points that the linked article bangs on (repeatedly), but I just don't see it.

App store is for 'native apps'. But, lots of apps don't need to be 'native apps'. Apple is actually, I believe, correct that HTML5+JavaScript will allow you to do anything you could do with Flash (well, eventually, at least - the article /. linked to does mention that HTML5 isn't *actually* a final standard yet; also, people have mentioned that there aren't a lot of developer tools yet for HTML5 the way there are with Flash, but in time, there will be).

The linked article author made a big deal about how for Flash, there is an open source compiler you could use to create your Flash 'app', then run it with Flash Player, but the author also made the BOGUS assertion that, somehow, with HTML5+JavaScript, you are locked into using Apple's iTechnology development tools.

That's only true to the extent that, today, iTechnology might be the only dev tools available for HTML5+JavaScript (other than, of course, hand-coding everything yourself in a text editor). But it won't be true a year or two from now.

HTML5+JavaScript are completely open standards that *anyone* can develop tools for. You can then just put those HTML5 apps out on the web, and iPhone/iPad users will be able to access them via Safari, with no Apple App Store approval necessary, no Apple taking a 30% chunk out of your profits, etc.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the features of HTML5 the ability to even make apps available 'offline' once they've been loaded once? (I remember reading somewhere, probably /., not too long ago, about how Google was discontinuing the Gears platform, because it was obsoleted by HTML5).

How is Apple censoring HTML5 applications delivered over the web? How are users locked into the App Store for such HTML5 applications?

Nether are OPEN.

[repetty]

The author's second real paragraph: "Nether are OPEN."

I stopped there.

Author: Please edit and resubmit.

Re:Nether are OPEN.

[Skapare]

Send both where they belong ... nethernetherland.

Why chase a proprietary format?

[Uksi]

Open source player to be someone's bitch?

Re:Apple customers

[JohnBailey]

Don't you people get tired of using the same defense (apple user are iDiot who buy overprice iCrap) over and over again?

Ahh.. You mean the truth.. Nope. Much easier to give a consistent solid argument that to dogmatically parrot the latest PR fluff from Apple.

But not being technologically illiterate, and not usually being someone's granny, we are obviously not the people Apple are marketing to.

Favorite quote FTA:

[m2pc]

"Looking at the facts, we can see it is Apple and not Adobe that is responsible for a lot the the problems Steve likes to blame Apple for. " Say that again?

Flash is an application environment..period

[Danathar]

Flash is popular in so much as it can do things you can't do with a regular browser without add-ons. Adobe is getting nervous because the Web is catching up to their plugin. Period.

True, but it's an equal choice

[snowwrestler]

Let's compare.

To code for Apple iPhone OS you use an open standard (Objective C), but most people only know how to work with it in a proprietary IDE (Xcode). It runs in a proprietary, closed environment (iPhone OS) and can provide a fun gaming experience, as well as access and play H.264 video.

To code for Adobe Flash you use an open standard (SWF), but most people only know how to work with it in a proprietary IDE (Flash). It runs in a proprietary, closed environment (Flash Player) and can provide a fun gaming experience, as well as access and play H.264 video.

So though it's all about control, I don't see how one is any better than the other.

Re:True, but it's an equal choice

[CondeZer0]

Where did I say that one is better than the other? Apple and Adobe are equally 'evil', and have the same interest in control.

If anything is good about this whole situation is how two of the most restrictive platforms around are trying strangle each other.

HTML5 embedded ads

[Kensai7]

What an amazing read!

And I never thought of this lurking problem of HTML5 ads. This is serious guys. Although I don't block any content, I know people who habitually use Flash blockers to stop intrusive advertisement content. With the the advent of HTML5 all hell will break lose.

Anyway, I hope Flash won't die and I find Google's decision to implement a native Flash player in the latest Chrome a right one.

Re:Apple customers

[riceboy50]

I am a software engineer who has a degree in CS as well as a background in networking and IT (yes, mostly Windows). I use Apple stuff almost exclusively for my own needs. It's just less trouble and more satisfying to use. Denigrate them all you want, but a lot of other "technologically illiterate" people like me agree.

I don't want a fan in my phone

[guspasho]

Flash absolutely requires that the fans in my system turn on and start pushing out hot air. I really don't want an iPhone that has to have a fan.

Open != Free

[lotus87]

Open standards != free products.

There are many open standards out there, but they do not mean free products. Look at any other engineering discipline, and you'll find ample sets of standards that help define, build, & create control systems, cars, structures, etc. None of those standards necessitate free products. We have been spoiled in software engineering that in the past many open standards have resulted in free products. Those days are over.

Content is king, and $ is the name of the game. Apple & Adobe are jockeying for long-term position in content delivery - i.e. future revenue. They're investing tons of $ to control eye-balls not just now, but years into the future. Companies (think P&G, ESPN, NY Times, WalMart) have to make money to survive. They will send their $ to whoever controls the most eye-balls. In the recent past, that was television, now its TV & internet, and in the future it will be internet driven, but the receiving devices will not be computers as we think of them. No one knows what they will be. Apple is trying to shape & dominate those devices. Adobe wants to make sure it doesn't get cut out. Google & Microsoft are playing catchup, but aren't necessarily Adobe's friends in this fight.

Adobe is no saint bearing the flag for free or open. They want lock-in to their products/platforms as much as Apple does. Let's be honest, these are massive companies engaged in a turf battle that each recognizes carries significant long-term value for their shareholders. The principles of open/free/compatible are nothing more than pawns used to gain competitive advantage.

This is all about the benjamins...

Personally, I don't care about Flash. I developed in ShockwaveFlash w/ Lingo 10+ years ago, and fundamentally, that's the same core technology set that Adobe's still peddling as Flash now. More bells, more whistles, more tools, same idea. As a company, they have every right to protect their cash cow (see Microsoft).

Like Apple or hate Apple, you have to say they're innovating, and they're not afraid to toss the past, even their own cash cows, in favor of the future. Integrated easy to use devices are for certain a big part of the future, and they proved it by refining the phone in a way no one else had the creativity to do.

I work at Apple. I am a big fan of Flash games.

[tlambert]

I work at Apple. I am a big fan of Flash games.

Several of us in the Apple Core OS Kernel team are. The Robot Unicorn game is the latest making the rounds between offices; there were a lot that preceded it, like Derecho (both of these would easily lend themselves to touch interfaces, BTW).

However, there's no arguing that most flash games are CPU and power intensive. They love to use idle loops for sound and video synchronization, and they love to render frames in real time, rather than pre-rendering things like cut scenes. This eats CPU and battery life like there's no tomorrow.

Flash enables bad programmers to successfully write programs which end up being bad programs. This is bad for everyone. Among other things, it means there are fewer people to ask me "would you like fries with that?" because they are too busy writing crappy code.

Additionally, Flash itself likes to crash. A lot. Moving the plugin out to an external process was a pain, but it makes it really really obvious who is eating the CPU cycles, and who is actually crashing, when it doesn't take your browser down with it, making it look like a browser crash. Even then, we still get most of the crash reports and most of the blame.

As a user of their technology, I've helped Adobe engineers root cause a lot of issues, including some serious performance problems with their LSO ("Local Shared Object" / "Flash Cookie") implementation (you would not freaking believe what was going on there). Things are slowly getting better.

But there is no way I would in good conscience put Flash on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, at least without an implicit "click to Flash" or similar disruptive interception mechanism to indicate to the user that they are doing something bad. Even then, I still think it couldn't be allowed any more than any other interpreter that would allow you to run arbitrary code downloaded from the net.

-- Terry

The lesser of evils

[Skapare]

Choosing between a primarily closed source insecure system and a closed source system that is likely insecure and has more evil corporate hooks? I just hate having to choose between the lesser of evils while they keep getting more and more evil. So what if Dirac and Theora are not the most efficient. At least they work and I can patch the security holes when they are found.

Now that Flash player is available for Linux...

[vijayiyer]

Funny how all the Linux zealots who were anti-flash prior to Adobe's release of flash player for linux are suddenly pro-flash when Apple is trying to force a move to HTML5.
Don't you realize that this is good for you too? For those of you who hate Apple, Apple's move has no downsides, since you're not a customer. You will, however, reap the reward that is a Flash-free world. Why complain?

The bullshit in here is so deep it's hard to walk

[Whuffo]

These stories are becoming a daily (or more often) thing here on Bashdot. After reading more than a few of these thinly-disguised anti-Apple pieces I'm starting to see some common themes. They're all using half-truths and outright lies to promote their point - but what point are they trying to prove?

Among the first to get involved were Adobe employees. They started by identifying themselves but they're still at it and working more covertly. Read the messages carefully and you'll see the Adobe party line being espoused. What they're after is to keep people dependent on Flash - it's partly profit motive but more of a control thing. Adobe wants to control the market for web video and other fluff. As long as they're on every machine they can attract developers to target their player. But their control is slipping and they're fighting back in any and every way they can. Here's a tip for the less well informed: Flash plays H.264 video; keep that in mind.

Next we have the so-called developers who can slap together an "application" in Action Script and put it on the web. We've all seen the results of their "efforts" and once again, it's pure self-interest - they can't compete with real programmers and when they're facing that possibility they're kicking and screaming. The iPhone and iPad are a significant deal and there's big money to be made in coding apps - those Flash "codere" are not going to get a piece of that pie and they're pissed off.

Then there's the "big software company" representatives enjoying the furor and tossing in their little barbs to stir things up a little more. If you think there aren't paid shills for this company posting here you're not paying very good attention. Their music player failed - yeah, they sold a few but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really count. And they have been in phone operating systems for several years and - well, they might as well have stayed home. They don't see these market failures as being their fault; they prefer to blame the competition and anything they can do to take the market leader down will improve their fortunes - or so they think. Remember "Plays for sure" and MSN music? What happened there? Consider this carefully before trotting out complaints about lock-in and DRM.

And then there's the usual cast of trolls who delight in mayhem - here's a hot topic, let's jump in and spread some half-truths and lies just for fun.

Let's not forget the open source zealots who hate anything that's proprietary. They make quite a noise but fail to recognize that they represent a very, very small slice of the population. They'd like to control Apple and make them conform to their idea of what the software world should be like. That's a valid opinion - but only an opinion. They can kill a few days trying to get their box to play some audio file and feel it's worth it because it's FREE - but the rest of us just want to listen to a tune and don't want to have to recompile the kernel before we can get the music to play.

Recently, we're hearing about antitrust concerns because Apple insists on certain compilers to compile apps for their mobile devices. Oh noes, that must be a proprietary lock-in, right? Has anyone ever looked at what that requirement actually says? It's not as restrictive as you might think. No, I'm not going to tell you - go look it up and be better informed.

That brings me to the one thing that all of these groups have in common - they've never owned or handled the devices they're talking about. They're having so much fun with their trollish day in the sun that little things like truth or knowing what you're talking about aren't important. I've got to say that my opinion of some people has been readjusted after seeing what's been written over the last month. If you have an opinion - that's valid and every bit as important as anyone else's opinion. But it's not a fact - and this is where so many intellectually dishonest people reveal their true nature: there are opinions, and there are facts. Try not to confuse t

They *have* solved it.

[Narcocide]

By not allowing Flash.

First Post!

[geoffrobinson]

Well, it would have been...But I have Flash running in another tab.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I work at Apple. I am a big fan of Flash games.

[Nazlfrag]

I have a few questions for you then. Any language allows bad programmers to design bad programs, why would you deny good programmers the chance to write good programs?

As for crashes, I'll grant you Flash on OSX and Linux is unstable yet has anyone even tested the robustness of their cross compiling tool? I also agree their cookie implementation is atrocious, perhaps an alternative local storage method could be presented and cookies disabled?

I'm glad there's Apple employees who see the worth of flash games, and can see your stance on interpreters (though I strongly disagree) but what is wrong with their cross compiler tool coupled with the existing App store approval process?

Duh

[gig]

It's not healthy to have one $16 billion company monopolizing online video. In a few years, websites will look more like TV stations. You lose the open Web entirely if you can't publish video without a $599 tool that only runs on Mac and Windows. All devices have hardware H.264 decoders now, even PC's. HTML5 has an API for controlling audio video, there is no need for Flash anymore. If no need, then it is just a toll booth.

Re:Message to Steve

[Wovel]

There are 100million devices out there running iPhone OS and they sold 8 million iPhones in the last QUARTER. Your numbers need some help..

I think you missed a few decimal places on the European billion too.

Re:Is the opinion of a Flash dev.

[Wovel]

Why don't you advocate Adobe drop all of their licensing restrictions on Flash and allow everyone to develop their own flash players. If flash is that important you should demand Adobe give up control of the spec and allow the free development of flash players.

(Note I know more about gnash than you do, if your response includes anything about gnash or any other open source flash player it means you have never read their faq and have never read an Adobe licensing agreement).

Re:G(a)nash

[Wovel]

The Gnash developers also acknowledge they are most likely violating the Adobe TOS and they hope to avoid being tied to them by not using any Adobe software at all.

A company like Apple would be sued long before they released their own flash player.

Re:Message to Steve

[pandrijeczko]

US Billion = 100,000,000

European Billion = 1,000,000,000

No decimal points missing as far as I can see - perhaps spend some money on maths classes rather than overpriced gadgets.

ClickToFlash

[ernst_mulder]

ClickToFlash http://clicktoflash.com/ is a godsend. Earlier on in this whole Flash debate broke loose someone mentioned it and I've installed it on all OS X systems I use. Some of those are quite old and slow but disabling Flash using ClickToFlash makes web browsing a whole lot quicker on those machines.

ClickToFlash presents the user with a grey square with the word Flash whenever Flash is encountered on a website. The user has the choice to load the Flash content when clicking on the square. Sites can be whitelisted. And as an extra the source url of the Flash content are shown when hovering over it so it's quite easy to distinguish adds.

Fire back

[jon3k]

Adobe should announce an immediate end to all future development on the Mac version of all Creative Suite applications. A huge number of creative professionals care far more about the applications than the OS and would switch to Windows. This would be devastating to Apple who markets itself as the "creative" computer.

Of course, it could be pretty devastating to Adobe as well.