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Flash Is Not a Right
medcalf notes that game designer Ian Bogost enters the debate about Flash by saying
"[A] large number of developers seem to think that they have the right to make software for the iPhone (or for anything else) in Flash, or in another high-level environment of their choosing. Literally, the right, not just the convenience or the opportunity. And many of them are quite churlish about the matter.
This strikes me as a very strange sort of attitude to adopt. There's no question that Flash is useful and popular, and it has a large and committed user base. There's also no question that it's often convenient to be able to program for different platforms using environments one already knows. And likewise, there's a long history of creating OS stubs or wrappers or other sorts of gizmos to make it possible to run code 'alien' to a platform in a fashion that makes it feel more native.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their 'freedom' as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
That's what happens when you choose a closed platform.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I have a dream. That one day, little iPhones, and little Android phones, may one day access the same content. I have a dream, that one day, applications will be judged not by the language of their source code, but by the content of their functionality and aesthetics. I have a dream today.
Anyone else not a fan of this guy's holier-than-thou attitude?
Using your own device in whatever manner you wish is your right!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I thought that would be something more like: http://www.multidmedia.com/software/zinc/ or AIR, no?
I don't see a problem with Apple not allowing a built-in or "Apple Store" version of Flash, per your arguments in TFA. What I *do* have a problem though, is when a device I *own* won't let me install a piece of software that *I* want to install. And when I say I have a problem with it, that means I don't own an iPhone/iPad, and I educate my less-informed family members and friends of what I feel is pertinent to all consumers, whether they know it is or not.
I do have the right to put flash on my personal cell phone.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Or that their "freedom" as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
The more restrictions that are placed on your creation, the less choices you have in creating it.
Is it really necessary to state something this obvious? HTML5 is the way of the future, Flash is the way of today. Why not support both?
Living With a Nerd
Flash may be proprietary itself, but there's a large extent to which it doesn't dictate what you can do with it.
Apple dictates what software you can develop for their mobile products to an absurd level -- everything from what tools you may use to what kind of morality is appropriate (no porn for you).
I don't like either of them, and I am glad to see Apple kill Flash, but I despise the way they're doing it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
With all the FOSS and linux zealots on this site, I predict this topic will hit 1000+ replies :p
I was under the impression that a large part of the /. audience are firm believers in Software Freedom, which should include writing software in any language/environment for any platform, or writing tools to enable such development if none are available.
Also, they would be against provisions prohibiting such activity in any sort of License Agreement, or EULA.
They probably don't like paying for the tools to write even native code for any platform.
They probably just hate Steve Jobs.
The issue isn't that flash is or isn't a "right". I don't care if there is flash player for IPhone or not. The issue is that Jobs is basically telling us what kind of IDE we can use. Apple wants to stomp developers who would build something out in a high-level environment/language, and then translate it to another language that is more appropriate for their target platform.
Jobs has obfuscated this with his letter because he's trying to hide some very nasty politics/business practices.
You can do that, provided you pay for their development kit (isn't that a yearly subscription?), or jailbreak your own phone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
<sarcasm/>
Best Slashdot Co
The iPad is a wed device. One of its primary purposes is to deliver the web to people. It is reasonable for web developers to expect that common web technologies will be implemented on a web device. It's not like we're asking to program a graphing calculator in LISP or something.
is Ian's discussion of creativity in programming, and whether platform limitations enhance or retard that creativity, and in what ways.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
It is not a right to be able to program in any language on any platform. I may even say it is a privilege to be able to program at all on a closed platform such as Apple.
It is however Apple's right to shoot themselves in the foot by becoming an even more closed juggernaut like Microsoft. These companies can literally have no long term future if they keep it up.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their "rights" are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular lan
Really not trying to be rude. And this is going to sound snobbish: are we considering people who do "Adobe Flash" to be programmers now?
Flash Is Not a Right
There seems to be some confusion here. I don't recall the argument being that developers thought it was a right, the argument was that it is a tool that is useful and can probably run with little effort on Apple's mobile devices. So it was perceived that Apple was deliberately stunting some developers. Now, I think Java's been outlawed as well so you should be just as upset about that. Now, as a consumer, the iPad is right out of the question as here we have two empowering functionalities disabled for no apparent reason on my device. And it looks like they're going to do everything they can to stop Java and Flash from ever running on iPads.
... and for what reason? Well, Jobs gives a few reasons but a lot of people assume it's marketshare and money. I happen to side with the latter group and find that despicable under the assumption that it would not take much to get Java or Flash running on an iPad.
The outcry is not that Apple is revoking a right but simply that they are deliberately crippling a product
Couple the above with the fact that there are a lot of social games out there and lightweight games running Flash already that might have hoped the iPad would just automagically support their game and I think you understand why there's so much backlash for lack of Flash. It's not a right but it lack of Flash on the iPad is a wet blanket to many.
My work here is dung.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their "rights" are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their "freedom" as creators is squelched for the same reason?
This is a strawman. Nobody complains about the simple fact that they can't use it. The basis of their arguments is that the capability is arbitrarily denied to them on an otherwise capable device. In that context complaining about lack of freedom is justified.
Of course this article is tagged troll; the three people or so on Slashdot who try and explain this every Apple discussion know what's it's like to make sense in a sea of selfishness and entitlement.
"But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their "rights" are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their "freedom" as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
I may be over-simplifying here, but I think it says those developers are whiny, princess bitches.
The new popularism around entitlement for the betterment of one's own convenience or laziness has been around since they invented computers, it's no surprise.
I very much doubt that the sufferers^Wusers of Flash are committed to it. I very much doubt that 99% of the virtual farming Flash users give a virtual shit about what makes their farms go.
Or, maybe the OP meant that they should be committed.
Bam
http://www.pcworld.com/article/173092/3_reasons_why_iphone_wont_get_adobe_flash.html
Apple has ALWAYS been know to be control freaks. They know best mantra. Instead of listening to their customer base on what they want Apple did it's usual tactics of "Apple knows best". The other problem is the backwards compatibility to older iphones. It's literally a technical limitation where users would not have a "seemless" experience. aka their hardware is insufficient to provide a non laggy user experience with flash.
Flash however, like any language, can be written very poorly and Apple is afraid that they can't put enough protections in place should a bad app get on the phone. Security exploits etc...
I don't like Apple. Never have never will... I did buy an itouch because the user interface was great until I realized I couldn't get pictures OFF of it. Now it sits in my room and my Droid happily replaced it.
Apple has a great product but there are MUCH better products out there now than the iphone, with much better service, at much better prices.
Cya iphone.
You sure do!
Now get back to us when you put Flash on a Motorola MC750
All this whining is killing me. It's completely possible. Using one such example Pie Guy. Games can be created and loaded into the iwhatever without the apple store.
If Adobe wants to cater to these people, they need to just alter what their development tools do. Instead of whining about being weaseled out they should adopt their tools to the new standard.
I mean, have you ever heard a hardware company complaining about adopting to metric standards???
I don't develop. I hack, and I mean that in the non-hollywood fashion of - I rip out little peices of code I see and duct tape them together into something I like. As someone who primarily deals in IT, that works great for me. I'm an awesome, albeit, young administrator still learning tons but I know half of this field involves manning up and finding a way.
If you don't wanna find a way, play your old game by you old rules.
I'm sick of it.
You do have the right, but by doing so, Apple also has the right to no longer support your personal cell phone... Not that I think it is right, but it's what happens.
When I wrote code for a living, My employer without exception, told me which language and tools I would use. When I was an IS Manager, I frequently wrote RFPs that specified the use of specific tools. My friends who own retail stores put limitations on their suppliers. Apple in choosing to not stock items that aren't in keeping with their "No Flash" policy is no different from your corner shopkeeper refusing to stock merchandise made in China. If you don't like it, quit buying Apple.
I do have the right to put flash on my personal cell phone.
And, if Adobe ever releases a version that runs on the iPhone, Apple won't try to stop you. Assuming you can figure out how to do it, of course.
This ain't rocket surgery.
think again
Bogust suggests that cross-platform software may be making developers lazy, and turning software into one big cross-platform monoculture.
That may be true, but he's missing the real issue. As long as those products are viewed as some sort of computing device, one expects them to do what computing devices do, and the hardware is capable of that. Computing devices, those that are Turing complete, are general purpose. The platform may impose constraints like speed and memory - consider them to be challenges. (limitations by another name)
No, the real issue here is that one buys a piece of hardware which is a general purpose computing device, with very livable hardware constraints.
THEN the provider artificially constrains that system.
Here's the issue another way...
We're used to buying physical things, which become ours, and we can do with as we please.
We're used to buying books, movies, and music, and understand that we're not supposed to make illegitimate copies of them. (The question of what constitutes "illegitimate" is a quagmire, of course.)
More and more physical things come with embedded computing devices. Those embedded computing devices run software. Those who wrote the software are making more obvious limitations upon the "permissible" use of that hardware that is shipped with their software.
The iStuff wasn't the beginning of this trend, merely the current, most blatant example. But remember, it's getting hard to find any item of significance that doesn't have some sort of embedded computing these days. Imagine if practically everything you buy comes with license restrictions. artificially limiting what you can do with the product, enhancing the makers' revenue streams, etc. Since I have "car analogy" in my signature, imagine a car (with built-in GPS, of course) that starts bucking, misfiring, and generally misbehaving when you drive into a non-dealer repair or aftermarket accessory shop.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
RIght, you can put flash on your own phone... oh wait there ISN'T a working version of flash for anyone's phone yet.
Yes they have been very controlling. In the last 2 years they seem to have bumped it to 11.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why does this strike me that this is more about a bunch of so-called, "developers," who are getting all huffy about not being able to easily whack out Whack-A-Mole and Fart apps for the i(Pad|Touch|Phone), than about a true fight for a "right" to develop as you please? So develop stuff in Flash -- you just won't be able to publish it via these devices. Why is this a big surprise? It's not as if Apple's hidden the fact that Flash isn't supported. It's not like you USED to be able to use it and now you can't -- they've been VERY open about their dick-waving with Adobe.
Hey -- I want it to have Flash, too. I'd like to have a Ferrari, but it's just not in the cards, ya know?
A million baby entrepreneurs thought that the iPad would SURELY have to allow the use of Flash and they were already counting the stacks of bills in their minds garnered from the various apps they were going to whack out in a hurry using Flash; now that dream has been shattered and they're getting all surly about it. Wah.
Blog,Twitter
It says Apple violated a well-established social norm, aka, a "right".
Apple wants it's products to be unique and have different capabilities compared to other companies products. In fact Apple is famous for having unique features and exploiting that fact till the competition catches up. If Apple spends tons of money making a new feature for the iPhone or iPad like a new hardware 3D accelerator and release it to their developer community, they would want to see this special ability used in the software created for their product. If a significant portion of the developer community uses Flash or a Flash translation layer to make their programs , then Apple is at the whims of Adobe if they decide to support the new feature. Adobe might say hmmm only the new iPhone ultra 2000 has the 3D accelerator system, and it would cost us money to develop for it, but the majority of phones do not have this feature we should probably just skip it. Then when consumers compare the new Android phone and the new iPhone they will say "hey these things work exactly the same for the programs I want to run" This might be good for Adobe, and the cheaper non-3D accelerated phones, but it would be devastating for Apple. You do not want your developers coding to the lowest common denominator in terms of functionality and features. You want the developer to exploit your strengths in the products they make.
Spacecase
No you don't. My old flip didn't have Flash either. It wasn't my right to have Flash. I knew there was no Flash when I bought the iPhone.
And, if Adobe ever releases a version that runs on the iPhone, Apple won't try to stop you.
That's the problem, Apple stops that from happening.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
This seems to be the ethical equivalent to 'opt out' instead of 'opt in'. More freedom (or 'rights') should be the default, not the other way around.
Sitting at a point of near perfect ignorance about this, are there any programs available for translating Flash into a format that is more acceptable (to Apple)? I've dealt with lots of crufty old numerical and molecular file formats where such-and-such a software suite refuses to import or accept a not-invented-here format and I've often found or written a translator or filter to get from one to the other. Can it be that there is nothing remotely adequate for getting from Flash to MPEG-4 or H.264 or whatever? Because if there are such, why is there such a fuss? and if there aren't such, why hasn't one of you brilliant coders written one for some potential income?
"[A] large number of developers seem to think that they have the right to make software for the iPhone (or for anything else) in Flash, or in another high-level environment of their choosing. Literally, the right, not just the convenience or the opportunity. And many of them are quite churlish about the matter. This strikes me as a very strange sort of attitude to adopt."
I'm quite churlish because A) I bought the thing, and B) I should be able to code it in whatever the !%^!^ I want. That doesn't mean that Apple has to specifically support it in any technical way at all, but to actually legally prohibit it is stupid and unnecessary.
To voice the inevitable analogy, it isn't Ford's fault if I want to bolt something onto their car in an unapproved manner that they don't like, and Ford doesn't have to do a fricking thing to make it easier for me. But to legally prohibit me from doing so with MY PURCHASE is dumb, and probably itself illegal.
The irony in all this is the fact that I have zero interest in writing Flash applications or having them run on an iPhone or iPod Touch anyway, but I would like the flexibility to run interpreted languages if that fits the task at hand.
You know there is this nifty function in iTunes that lets you sync your iPod Touch with you computer including pictures. So, you may wanna actually wanna learn how to you use your "iTouch" before you start bitching about its limitations.
First off, IANAL but, In the US, we have anti-trust laws designed to stop companies from doing this kind of stuff. The don't, necessarily, require the company to have X% market-share before some of the laws apply. Has Apple crossed the line here? I don't know, I guess we'll find out when the recently announced legal issues resolve themselves. The point is that there are laws that limit how much a company can control what you do with a product you've purchase from them even when it comes to your future use of that product with their services. A prime example is in the automotive industry. Car makers aren't allowed to just void your warranty for not using "Ford" brand gasoline; "Ford" brand tires; "Ford" brand spark plugs; etc. They don't get to void the warranty just because you installed an after-market tail pipe or radio. From my perspective, I can see them having the right to refuse to host a Flash plug-in on the iTunes store (though, Microsoft's recent issues in the EU with providing a list of alternative browsers might suggest possible issues for Apple in the EU) but the thing I see as most contentious would be their refusal to allow anyone to install software onto the device that isn't provided through iTunes and their, active, banning of users that jailbreak their device. This is the behavior that I can see the US government/courts coming down hard on.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Yes, I find it rather annoying that the thousands of flash sites i could go to do not work and will never work on my phone. What i find more annoying is that I am forced to use the Safari browser. The browser is pre-bundled. Sound familiar to anyone? The difference here is that unlike with windows where i could go download opera or firefox and use that browser instead, there is no option to do that with the iPhone or more appropriately, the iPad. Where is the class action now?
Apple made their ijunk devices, but for them to try and dictate what language or development package you use to create your apps is not a right that Apple has.
It is little different than a car manufacturer trying to tell you which brand of gas you can use on your car.
If that needs any more explanation, it is a very long conversation where a variety of things have to be explained to you, and I don't have that kind of patience.
The government (in this case Apple) is telling you how to communicate. ObjectiveC is the new Newspeak, thanks a lot apple!
I'm sorry, but who's left in the tech world who can legitimately stand up for this farce of a company? I mean Microsoft still has its zealous FUD machines yes, but Apple's been fare more 'evil' the last few years than MS in the past 10.
Bye!
I don't consider it a misunderstanding over their "right", but a complete lack of understanding of the platform for which they want to develop. There's a lost art of having to program devices with limited memory and energy budgets. Thanks to the desktop, the solution wasn't to code more efficiently and have the developer bear the pain, it was just far easier to push it to the user in the form of more memory and faster processors. And yes, more energy.
This can't be done on tiny devices, and the write-once run everywhere mantra comes at a hefty expense. I also agree with Jobs' point that high level abstractions and languages *do* reduce the application down to the lowest common denominator.
At some point, Adobe and their peers will want to start putting their libraries inside the iPhone OS. We've all seen how intrusive and bloated Adobe Reader has become, that's just the kind of behavior I hope to avoid on my phone. Sure, Flash would be nice, but am I willing to get it at the cost of allowing Adobe to modify files in the OS? The alternative is that these Flash applications carry the necessary libraries with them and these simply Flash games are now pushing tens of megabytes in girth.
Furthermore, where does it end? They permit Flash, then Java and hey what about .NET /CLR for applications? How about Visual Basic on the iPhone? Wait, that we've left out the Fortran programmers so we need to support them as well.
Here's an idea. Instead of being a "Flash Developer", how about you just be a developer and understand that a language is a tool and like all tools, there's a right one for the job. Tiny device programming is a different art form, one of where less really is more and it isn't necessarily an easy world in which to work.
Sorry to be a buzz kill.
Adobe, write a jailbreak application that installs Flash.
Then, when they're sued by Apple, the DOJ gets involved.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language?
What does it say? It says that the programming community has been trampled by artists and artist mentalities where engineers used to be the dominating group. People who actually understood how and why things worked they way they do.
But to a certain degree, Apple is losing a large market of programs by now supporting the developers who write their software in a certain (very popular) language.
But mostly I think these people are twerps who need to adapt or find a different platform.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Yes, it's true that Flash is not a right. And yes, it's also true that by "choosing Apple" you're choosing a "closed system". But none of it get to the core issue.
Why do people write software? Most people (aside from those that just do it for their own jollies) write software so that others can use it and share in its benefit. As for software corporations, there's a big financial aspect tied to the motivations, but the want for mass-consumption is still there.
In this case, Adobe being such a crybaby about this situation is both an insult to Apple, but also a very big compliment. There is so much fear that the iPad will revolutionize... something (Granted I don't know what, as the most entertaining thing I've managed to get out of it is tapping flying Dragonballs to a musical beat) and become so ubuiquitous, that Adobe not being able to take part in it the way they've currently done with so many other forms of computing environments makes them throw e-hissy fits.
But it's neither party's fault. Apple could just as easily fail, like so many others before them (including their younger self) at creating a tablet like device, and this entire argument would be moot. On the flip side, were flash able to take more than just the left mouse button (wait, why doesn't Apple like Flash again?) and anything other than Tab as an input; had Flash actually overran the internet, I'm sure Apple would have been more than happy to play along or make exceptions.
I know there will be many who would argue whether the latter were true, but just look at Visa. They only went public _two_ years ago, but even before then they were THE name in plastic. Discover, MasterCard, AmEx? You had to ask if those would be accepted, after you saw a Visa logo on the door. There's nothing wrong with programming for a "closed" system, as long as everyone else is using it. But right now Apple just doesn't think Adobe has enough market share to be worth being "Open" for, and Adobe is scared Apple is on its way to becoming the next Visa.
Look, any proprietary company that cares about the stability of their product is going to be interested in keeping their platform very tightly controlled. Instead of talking about closed platforms, tell people to decide for themselves.
I did my research. I'm an existing Apple user. I can live without Flash, so I decided to buy an iPhone, and later, an iPad.
Flash is not the center of my universe. In fact, I do think the web would be better without it (that's why I use flashblock). But that's why the iPad and iPhone are devices I'm comfortable using (among other reasons).
If you can't live without flash on your device, or if you want to run any old crappy app under the sun, do your research. Don't buy Apple. Buy a product that supports what you want.
The market will speak and the product that succeeds will be the superior product.
I'm tired of this flamebait crap that tries to tell people what to think. Everyone should be making their own decisions for what product supports features they want.
"My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. -- And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. -- Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion. -- We shall prevail!"
Yes, Apple fans, you missed the whole point of Apple's "1984" commercial. Apple's real plan was revealed, but you all thought it was a joke. You were wrong. That was the plan. There, you see the ideology behind the iPhone and the iPad. It took 25 years to bring it to fruition. The Information Purification Directive is now a reality.
Read the early writings of megalomaniacs to see what they intend. Early bin Laden, early Lenin, early Business Roundtable, early Jobs - they all revealed their master plan well in advance.
no, its a wrong :)
easy I know.... but couldn't resist
aftertaf (http://www.lesptitsballons.fr)
It's a right as much as Microsoft had to capitulate to the right to allow users to not use IE. Same thing. You can't just say "you can't use this" on computers. Microsoft already set the outcome for this fight in favor of Adobe.
someone points out that Flash is insecure as hell, and that the iPhone market share is significantly larger than the Mac OS X market share. I don't want that garbage on my PC, and I sure as hell wouldn't want it installed to my iPhone without my knowledge because some asshole iPhone dev doesn't know how to do real programming.
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Adobe and Flash in particular, any market that excludes it has my support, and my business.
I'm offended that Apple won't let me write iphone apps in Fortran.
1. Get a piece of copper wire about 7.5" long
2. solder the ends together and form the wire in the shape of the loop
3. put wire loop in microwave
4. microwave on high as long as desired
We're certainly on the road to the future spelled out here.
I don't think the problem is that apple is trampling someone's "rights". I think it is more that apple is just continuing to act like a dick. (Whcih shouldn't be a surprise, since the dickery of Steve Jobs is well documented.)
I can't speak for others, but my personal beef is that apple is putting restrictions on the development process instead of the result.
I have ZERO problem if they want to put restrictions on the result. "Your binary must adhere to these rules, and behave thusly." That's fine.
I take great exception if they say how I can make it though. Saying "you can't use these tools" is silly. They shouldn't care what tools are used. To me, saying "you can't submit anything that was written in flash" makes exactly as much sense as saying "You can't submit anything that wasn't written by someone with blond hair."
(And yes, I'm equally insensed about Java, Unity, or anything else, as I am about Flash.)
Also I'm mostly annoyed by the obvious hippocracy that it shows on the part of apple. (Which again, really shouldn't surprise me by now, but meh.) Because as countless people have already pointed out, it basically outlaws a very large percentage of stuff that is already in the app store. No one REALLY expects apple to come down too hard on the non-flash things here. They are basically just issuing a law that makes it so EVERYONE who uses any kind of middleware is illegal, so they can pick and choose their enforcement to suit their whims. The app store approval process already has a wide reputation for capriousness. They already pick and choose apps to ban inconsistently, frequently refuse to provide reasons, and refuse to provide any real recourse, or point of contact. This is only going to make this problem worse.
So yeah. I don't get mad at apple because I feel I have some "right" to use flash in particular. But I do feel that I have a "right" to develop using whatever tools I see fit, whether they be Adobe's products, or blond-haired employees, and that apple should get out of my business, and only concern themselves with my product.
Last two years? It's always been like this, it's just that now more people are noticing it.
Of course developers can code in whatever suits their fancy. Like that flash-in-the-pan or the proven stalwart, FORTRAN.
But there is no guarantee it will run -- even in the unlikely event it is bugfree. The device owner many have chosen an OS that has security features to prevent bugfests from running.
A bigger question is whether Apple prevents other OSes from running. That might be an illegal extention of monopoly power.
The more I read and talk to people (developers other than myself) about this issue the more I am beginning to realize that the outrage is more from companies who develop content for other larger companies than from developers. Most developers realize that they will have to learn new technologies, APIs, languages, paradigms, etc in there professional careers. In fact most developers expect things to change. From C to C++, Win32/MFC to .NET, Carbon to Cocoa (the list could go on) developers have been updating and reinventing themselves constantly to maintain viability.
I think the outrage and expectation is coming from the media design and development companies used by large commercial companies to create web and kiosk applications. They do not want to spend the dollars to train there current staff on the new technologies and do not want to hire the talent necessary to move forward in the new platform ecosystem. They want the current set of technical expertise they have to remain eternally viable. Flash is the crutch that many of these types of companies lean on. It allows them the biggest bang for there buck and reduces the risk to them. These companies have nice work flows set up around flash and a huge set of already written action script code on which the can leverage new product on regardless of platform quickly.
I think, the complaining and outrage will continue for the near future as these companies reorganize and rebuild there cpodebases to leverage the new technologies and platforms.
My 6 year old Sony Ericsson phone had flash. So did my 7 year old Dell Axim PDA.
It may not be a right, but it should be. Just like the phone company doesn't have a right to determine who I call or when or how, Apple shouldn't have a right to tell me what I program in or what software I install on hardware that I own.
And we have two ways of achieving that: (1) fight Apple and their business, hopefully bankrupting them at some point, and (2) pass new laws.
Let's pursue both ways.
In both the US and the EU, antitrust law might limit Apple's ability to ban developers from using methods they don't approve of to develop apps. Apple's power to control its platform is not absolute.
The fact is, the platform is fully capable of supporting Flash, but mandates, by virtue of choice, that it be banned -- supposedly on the basis that it is "closed". That's a staggering level of hypocrisy which is simply not RIGHT, any way you look at it.
Sure, piss off your developers. Good way to lure them into buying your Mac and learn your language to write against your libraries and publish software on your app store (after paying another IIRC $30 that tells Apple you're a developer). I don't see how this benefits Apple in the long-term. Say what you want about Ballmer, but at least they knew better then this and it payed off.
Also, AFAIK you send your apps for approval AFTER building and signing it. And there sure is no way for an iPhone to see the difference, a CPU only ever runs machine code. Of course this is obvious but just to show the absurdity of this whole ordeal.
While I have been longing for _years_ for Flash to go away, the issue is not that people think they have a god-given right to use Flash.
The issue is that Apple is, once again, showing people that they are among the least moral and most agressive companies on earth. It just so happens that, this time, a lot of people that usually don't care are hurt. While one can argue that anyone commiting themselves to Apple must know about Apple's tactics beforehand, most people did not notice, or care, up to now.
Who cares if you can not use an iPhone, iPad or iPod without activating it via iTunes?
Who cares if you can not get content onto those devices without iTunes or the App store?
Who cares if for years, Apple gave back only tarballs to KHTML & KJs from which WebKit stems, making meaningful backporting of code near to impossible?
Who cares if Apple does its best to lock you into their complete ecosystem of devices & software?
Who cares if people can not use Flash? Ah, OK!
So while I would tend to agree that Flash needs to go away _and_ while I agree that people should have known beforehand, I can understand the indignation of the people who are bitten, now. They are now unable to use something they have become comfortable with.
The way Steve Jobs tells them to go eat a shovel and the fact that they can do nothing is somewhere between sad & amusing.
PS: This is not only about Flash. The _much_ more important issue is that people are now unable to use independent frameworks for their work.
Was it me or is Jobs saying that Flash is evil because it a proprietary format so he does not want it anywhere near his proprietary platform?
I guess he understands that you should not mix evil with evil.
It is arrogant for Apple to take this position. "Flash" is not a standard in the strict sense. But it is a standard in the defacto sense. Further, it is a user and developer expectation. When flash is omitted, there is a "hole" left in its place... a sense of incompleteness or brokenness is sensed by users and applications alike.
In a world where these things matter, and they DO matter, Apple has not observed the problems demonstrated by Microsoft's own lack of completeness and standards compliance. While the general view is that Microsoft is complete and the rest of the world is broken, it does not take away from the struggles associated with bad user experiences and how hard people work to avoid them.
Now comes Apple with its increasing number of hand-held devices. The iPod touch and iPhone offered an impressive but incomplete experience. This is forgivable given the small size of the display and low power of the processors used. Even the most simple of users could understand that. But with the iPad, the more powerful, closer-to-being-a-real-computer, handheld device, the expectations of the user rise. As these expectations are unmet, disappointment and even resentment arises. How is it that Apple can be so arrogant as to forget that they are only participants in creating and influencing the user experiences and expectations we see today.
Apple did not invent the tablet computer. More or less, that is what the iPad is. Apple can call it anything they like, people will still see a tablet computer and expect it to do the things tablet computers do.
No one's saying Flash is a right. People however are flummoxed at Steve Job's iron-clad insistence to keep Flash OFF the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Essentially, he's pulling a Microsoft and BREAKING the internet experience by saying "our users don't need to access that flash enabled site or play their facebook games, if you're a shitty facebook developer, come and re-develop your game for my iPhone using my tools which cost you $100 and that's IF we let you"
Well, in the meantime Google has been working with Adobe and playing nicely.
We see a new version of Chrome coming out with a more tightly coupled flash player, and we'll be seeing flash on Android phones IN THE BROWSER.
And at that point, when Joe six-pack sees he can play Mafia Wars and Farmville from his Facebook page on his Android phone and use media heavy sites that use flash on an Android device BUT NOT on the iPhone, Joe Six-pack will wonder why he'd want to pay more for the iPhone or buy an iPad where the "internet is broken". When he can PAY LESS for an Android phone that does the things HE wants to do.
And on that day, the AppStore and iTunes and all this walled garden tyranny from Jobs will start to see a huge drop in market share and the iPhone will slip to number 2 while Google mops up with Steve Jobs' sorry, old, tired and just fucking ornery ass.
If Steve Jobs is still CEO in 2011, Apple stands to see a market drop they haven't seen since the mid-90's.
He's a fossil, a relic and just doesn't get the message. You can't control the internet or the technology that the internet will embrace.
While HTML5 has some great new features, it is simply NOT the flash killer people are making it out to be.
The iPhone is an internet platform, but he's thinking he can use it to control the technology on the internet itself, and that's just not the case.
Apple has taken a very closed and tyrannical attitude when they need to be more open than ever and that's why Jobs needs to be ousted.
Google understands that however, and that's why they will win this fight and why the iPhone will fall to the wayside if Jobs is not replaced soon.
Seriously, the army of Google Android devices vs the iPhone/iPad is starting to look like a repeat of Windows x86 clones vs Macintosh
Yes it was. It just wasn't within your capabilities to make it happen. Don't confuse the two.
You know there is this nifty function in iTunes that lets you sync your iPod Touch with you computer including pictures
You know there is this nifty function in iTunes that wipes your iPod when you try to sync it with a computer other than the one you loaded the pictures onto it from in the first place.
The real problem is that the OP expected to be able to use his mp3 player as a flash drive.
Don't take this as a flame against flash developers...
But I've noticed that--much like PHP developers--there's a lot of people that *call* themself PHP or flash developers--who..are just that. They just--aren't very good at it. They don't really deserve to be called a software engineer, or even a programmer. They're...a drag and drop monkey. And it is a credit to Adobe that these people can get programs working at all.
This may be Apple's way of...installing an artificial application quality filter--if they don't permit flash to work on it, they've filtered out a lot of the developers that aren't...skilled enough to learn another language. Sure, it won't stop all the "e-fart" apps--but it probably filters out a lot of them.
Adobe publishes the specification for Flash, but the license stipulates that you may only use it to create authoring tools, and that Adobe remains the sole source of Flash playback software. Some may argue that this merely covers them against a Microsoft Embrace->Extend situation, but I'm pretty sure anyone who has tried to use Flash on x86 linux will remember how poor a job Adobe does in making the player. Adobe could barely make a version of Flash to run well on a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM; you really think they can make it run on a cell phone?
Everyone seems to forget that iPad is a dedicated device--a large iPod that happens to run certain apps developed for the iPhone. It is no more a general purpose computer than a Nintendo DS, a router or the cable box sitting on top of your TV. (although some routers actually CAN run Linux and general purpose apps legally--within licensing terms--so I guess those are general purpose computers.)
Nobody has the RIGHT to develop apps on an iPad--period. Apple ALLOWS many people to develop apps for their dedicated device, but that doesn't make it a general purpose computer (Many people can develop apps for a cable box too--that's what I'm doing--but the cable company still controls deployment just like Apple).
This misunderstanding is actually why you hear many of your more technical friends say "iPad, why would you get one of those???", they want it to be a computer and notice that it doesn't fit, but perhaps don't understand that it's not in any way targeted at them. It's just not a general computer computer, it's not intended to be one and it won't be as long as Apple gets their way.
Disclaimer: I love my iPhone and have finally displaced all my windows computers (mostly) with Macs. Still I really dislike Apples anti-competitive practices and will be waiting for the Unix iPad clones this Christmas--I may even start adjusting the Mac/Linux ratio away from Mac soon.
i want my 16-bit applications to run on 64 bit XP so I'm suing microsoft
I have to say that I think that morally (even if not legally) Apple is in the right here. The bottom line is that Apple (or any other company) has the right to make their products as restrictive as they want regardless of their reasons for doing so. If they want to approve every app that goes on their device they have the right. If they want to support only certain programming languages and API's, it's their right. If they want to enforce a Draconian EULA according to which users rent their device instead of owning it, that's their right. They invested the time and money to develop the product so they should be able to excercise complete control of it.
Even in the case of Ford mentioned above, they should have the right to do that with their product. The fact that most consumers are ignorant and do not care or read/research the EULA is not Apple's problem. I despise Microsoft but I think they had every right to bundle IE in Windows and integrate it into their shoddy OS.
That being said I personally have no interest in the iWhatever nor would I be interested in a Ford car as described above because of said restrictions so I excercise my right not to buy it. I don't rant and rave about how Microsoft is evil (well, maybe sometimes), I just don't use their products and don't recommend them to anyone I talk to. These companies' restrictions or crappy products are just an opportunity for someone else to come along and develop a non restrictive product that, in the end, will force Apple/Ford/Microsoft to open up or improve their system or else lose significant market share. These whiny developers should, if anything, only be angry at the technical and legal ignorance of the consumers who allow the iWhatever to become the dominant product and to that end should back educational campaigns and/or competing products
I know this view is extremely Randian and I'd love to hear some opposing viewpoints.
There are two questions here:
I personally don't think Apple is in the right here on either point, but the first one is somewhat defensible. The second point isn't defensible in any way.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
You don't even have a clue. Apple has said in clear terms that it will do everything possible to prevent you from running anything that allows a Flash app to load.
STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID!
Apple just wants you money. They care nothing about you or your experience.
What is the reason then? Or are you going to wave your hands again?
Developers invest their own time and (sometimes) money learning to develop for a platform.
Some of the value of that investment accrues not to the developer, but to the platform owner.
There is constant struggling and squabbling among all parties to capture more of this value.
Typically, vendors create walled gardens (e.g. with restrictive licensing or non-portable features) to try to contain the value created by developers, while developers try to break out of those gardens (e.g. by writing compatibility layers).
The case with Apple and Flash is a bit unusual, in that Apple is walling the developers out, not in. But the underlying struggle is the same: Apple and the developers are both trying to get a bigger piece of the pie.
Adobe spent a lot of time and hard word making Photoshop, After Effects, Premier and Acrobat work on the MacOS. Macromedia did the same with Director, Flash and Authorware. If Mr. Jobs would spend a second thinking back to why Apple survived his countless blunders, it was because these companies were creating top of the line software for their platform. His lack of respect over the iPhone/iPad would lead me to believe that there is a threat that he may revoke the same privileges on the MacOS.
Adobe (imo) should start talking about ceasing support for all Apple platforms, thus destroying all of there niche markets. That may get Steve-O's attention. If he wants to shut out his biggest supporters, then it may be time to call it quits.
1980ish: Apple releases the Mac, a closed platform. Easy to use, very successful. IBM then releases the PC, with off-the-shelf components. Only the BIOS is closed. Compaq reverse-engineers the BIOS. IBM's (now) open platform goes on to thrive due to its lack of control. Apple enjoys some success with Filemaker Pro and such.
2010ish: Apple Releases the iPhone/Pad with a closed platform. HTC, Samsung, and everyone else, even Nokia operate on open platforms. Open platform gains momentum and eclipses the Apple platform.
30 years taught Jobs nothing.
But the difference is that the BSD OS/tools is actually cross-platform, and Apple can open the iPhone/Pad platform with a stroke of the pen, which would steal Android's thunder. But if Apple waits too long, they will make their platform irrelevant [again] and Apple will have to come up with something else revolutionary in 10 years instead of 30.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Can it be that there is nothing remotely adequate for getting from Flash to MPEG-4 or H.264 or whatever?
Flash isn't (just) a video format: its a programming language and graphics/animation engine that is actually quite good for developing casual games, educational apps and rich internet applications. It does also include a streaming video player, but that understands H.264 anyway.
Because if there are such, why is there such a fuss?
Because that is exactly what Apple have banned: App Store apps must now have been "originally written" in C/C++/Objective C or Javascript.
...which also rules out cross-compiling from Java (the preferred language for Android apps) or C# (preferred language for WinMobile apps) as well as desktop browsers.
What this does is throws a major spoke in any effort to support multiple platforms with a single codebase - except maybe by using Javascript/HTML5 (might not work on WinMobile - but every cloud has a silver lining!)
...but, honestly, who owns this problem? If Apple piss off their own developers or invoke the wrath of the DOJ or (more likely) the EU then Jobs gets to explain it to the shareholders. Nobody has to buy an iProduct unless they want to, nobody has to develop for them (unlike a certain large software house who's OS and office products are so dominant that its a major labour of love to avoid them).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The iPad IS a computer. What the fuck do you think it is? A TV???
The i* are not having ANYTHING that wasn't developed by THEIR tools on the i*. Including flash compiled to XCode (native).
Why?
It can't be that the app requires more libraries: the compiled code is XCode.
It can't be that the app is going to break the i*.
It's because Apple want you to buy a Mac and a 100$ annual license which also lets them decide whether they can let your app on "their" device.
By the way, if it's still so much "their" device, where did they pony up some dosh for it???
yawn ... zzzzZZZZzz
To own a cell phone is a priviledge, not a right. Therefore, you've purchase the priviledge to use that technology. To code for it is also a priviledge, not a right. No one is stopping developers from coding Flash, just where it may be run.
I'm not a fan of Apple, and I don't support them in the way they treat customers. But Apple is a business and this is how they choose to do business.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Well, except that 30 years later IBM isn't in the PC (or phone, or consumer electronics) business, and Apple is...
Best Slashdot Co
What is missed in this article is that programmers do their best work in a language they are familier with, and with tools they are familier with. The programmers who want to be able to develop using FLASH probably want to because they feel this is the best language and tools for them to develop what they want.
I know a dozen or so programming and scripting languages but I'm most comfortable coding in PERL and PHP. If I'm trying to develop a product I know I'd want to use my strongest coding skills... and I certainly wouldn't want to learn another programming language.
There is no technical reason why FLASH isn't allowed on the IPhone. Instead it is a marketting decision.. one in a long trend of marketting decisions for companies to keep control of hardware even after they have sold it. I rank Apples decision to actively block FLASH right up their with Sony's decision to remove the Other OS functionality from existing Playstation 3's.
Boojum the brown bunny
Apple sucks. They will continue to suck as long as it keeps making them money.
Adobe/Flash sucks. They will continue to suck as long as it keeps making them money.
GET OVER YOURSELVES.
I wanna write Linux apps in VB.NET! Why can't I do that?!
Make sense?
if you buy my TV you're not allowed to watch pr0n on it. ...
if you buy my car, you are not allowed to drive on this road.
if you buy my pan, you're not allowed to make scrambled eggs with it.
if you buy my house, you aren't allowed to sleep in it.
Oh, so there's a real Apple somewhere which lets me actually own my own hardware?
Yes, it's called Nokia.
Then why can't I find any Nokia phones in electronics stores where I live?
There is a misconception on the meaning of the term "right." A right is something that you have intrinsically, and no one must grant to you. For example, I have the right to jump up and down. I have the right to breathe. I have the right to type naughty words into my computer. No software is necessary for me to have that right, it is just automatic. Rights cannot be granted, but they can be taken away.
For example, if the computer gave me electrical shocks when I typed in naughty words, it would be taking away my right to type in naughty words. But in order to grant me the right to type naughty words, the computer had to do.... nothing at all. Now, suppose some of those naughty words happen to form ActionScript 3.0 code. And a certain combination of typing produces an executable that compiles that code to run on the Apple iPhone. Did the iPhone have to do anything to grant me that right? Nope. What if I typed in some words that produced C++ code that I compiled into an iPhone executable. What does the iPhone have to do to grant me the right to run that? Nothing. In fact -- the phone has no idea how I generated that executable. It could have been 1000 monkeys on 1000 keyboards.
But Apple does have the ability to take away a right. They can refuse to allow my application into the app store on the basis of having used an ActionScript 3.0 compiler. Now, they can only guess that I used one. Or ask me. There's nothing intrinsically different about code generated from that particular tool that makes it somehow less desirable or less compatible. Apple is denying me the right on principal.
[A] large number of developers seem to think that they have the right to make software for the iPhone (or for anything else) in Flash, or in another high-level environment of their choosing. Literally, the right, not just the convenience or the opportunity.
The author says "the right, not just the convenience or opportunity" but that is what a right is. It is the convenience of using Flash. The opportunity to use it. Adobe did all the work. Apple doesn't have to do anything to allow Flash on the iPhone. They just have to not stop it from happening. And that, is why Apple is so hated here. Because Apple can make everything better for end-users and developers, and all they have to do is get out of the way. What Apple is doing, is what we call a "wrong."
Every day here it's another hatefest for Apple's dev policy - the same thing as every day for the last half of forever. You people, you're just being intentionally dense.
The vast majority of iPad purchasers have no, zero, interest in programming flash. People WANT a walled garden. It's a feature, it's THE defining feature that makes the device dependable, fast, trustworthy, secure. If you want something else, you go get something else. No one's putting a gun to your head and forcing you to write Objective C. You can't, so far as I know, write Lisp or Forth and run it on your XBox 360 or your Blackberry either, but I swear I've never seen a byte's worth of ascii text spent complaining about those situations. I think that's a fair indication that slashdotters feel like culturally the iPad is some kind of an affront, rather than that some real injustice is being done to them. Here, I'll try it out for you "Lisp on a Blackberry! Lisp on a Blackberry! Oh, the humanity!" Meh.
If you really want something worthwhile to gripe about, I encourage you to go visit websites of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the EFF. Get involved in something of consequence. There is plenty of real injustice in the world, but the Apple/Flash thing is not it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUWo19BcC7s&feature=player_embedded
Author Iam Bogus responds to the furor that arose over Moleskine's recent announcements that the end user agreement for their notebooks prohibits writing in them with anything other than approved Cross pens:
"[A] large number of writers seem to think that they have the right to compose essays in their Moleskine notebooks (or for anything else) in using Bic pens, or another writing instrument of their choosing. Literally, the right, not just the convenience or the opportunity. And many of them are quite churlish about the matter. This strikes me as a very strange sort of attitude to adopt. There's no question that Bic pens are useful and popular, and they have a large and committed user base. There's also no question that it's often convenient to be able to compose on different kinds of paper using writing instruments one already has. And likewise, there's a long history of cutting out items written on paper alien to a notebook and pasting it in in a fashion that makes it feel like it belongs there. But what does it say about the state of written composition at large when so many writers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write in a particular notebook with a particular pen? Or that their 'freedom' as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
?
SWF format is a (mostly) open specification: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
Flash _Player_ is closed, but nobody forces you to use it. See? You have a choice.
The Symbian point is an important one.
Not in North America it isn't. Nokia doesn't have a lot of presence in the United States and Canada, and North America is over two-thirds of the developed anglophone market.
Ever try publishing something for, say, Verizon branded phones?
I seem to remember that Verizon turned around close to the "Droid does" campaign. People who want to develop apps usually aren't talking about "feature phones" that run BREW.
Apple may have such right in USA. But in France, for example, you can't have such restriction. If you buy a device, you have the rights to do whatever you like with it: open it, modify it, reverse-engineer its code, load it with anything you like, etc.
While it might be more restrictive in USA, I can't believe that Apple has the legal rights to forbid you to install an app of your choice. The only thing it can do is refuse your app in their app store. That's a big difference! You can't blame a company for not distributing something if it doesn't want to.
And frankly, everyone, admit it: Flash is an horror-ware. Buggy as hell, slow except on Windows, full of security issues...
But that's the problem, they DIDN'T tell me first. They snuck this clause into the EULA of the most recent update. It's a little late in the game to be changing the rules, especially when Adobe invested a lot of time and money into creating an iPhone development tool which followed all of Apple's rules up to that point.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I don't really think you guys know what you mean by a "Closed Platform". Flash is just as closed as anything Apple or Microsoft puts out there.
Not really. If nothing else, Adobe doesn't insert themselves into distribution between developers and users. Apple does.
But there is something else: the Flash runtime has a published spec. It's arguably incomplete (I believe there are some missing bits relating to a Sorenson Codec and I'm not sure if they've got all of RTMP in there), but it's at least theoretically possible to re-implement the runtime. In practice, this has proven difficult, but there are projects like Gnash that are working on it.
Furthermore -- you don't need Adobe's tools to make something that targets the Flash runtime. At all. MTASC and Ming and a handful of others have successfully targeted it for a long time. Or, you can use Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK if you want.
By contrast, Apple controls distribution, doesn't have comparable documentation for their mobile runtime, would probably look poorly on reimplementation, and does look poorly on having a non-Apple toolchain target their platform.
Flash isn't as open as Linux, but there's a solid case to be made that it's more open than Apple's Mobile platform.
Tweet, tweet.
That's a fancy way of saying you have to pay Apple $99 just to run your own applications
Per year, as I understand it. Plus the cost of a sufficiently recent Macintosh computer, as the compiler doesn't run on the Windows PC, Linux PC, or PowerPC-based Mac that you may already own.
a closer match might be using an unsupported tuner.
And guess what the United States government gave out scads of $40 coupons for last year: tuners that aren't necessarily officially supported by the TV makers.
As a developer, I can't afford to stay a mile wide and an inch deep. Being exposed to lots of programming languages and becoming familiar with a variety of development environments is all well and good when you're studying for your bachelor's degree, but it doesn't exactly translate into reality. In the real world, I want to expand on the variety I gained in college and truly master one language--perhaps the one that was most interesting to me when I was in college--and become an expert in developing software using that language. This often requires a significant time investment and lots of experience focusing on one specific area. If ActionScript/Flash is your passion, and it's what you've chosen to master, then Apple's decision feels like a real slap in the face. I won't say anyone has the "right" to use Flash on every platform under the sun, but developers can't spend the rest of their lives learning a new language or development environment every time some big corporation wants to exclude a perfectly good language they've already mastered.
They are anti-competitive. They are in restraint of trade. They are wrong. End of story, really.
I piss off bigots.
I decidedly don't hear the sounds of these same developers chucking their {PS3,Wii,XBox}'es into the dumpster over their "ev1l closed platformedness."
Then you haven't read my posting history.
Nor do I hear the feds knocking down Sony's or Nintendo's or Microsoft's doors over the antitrust ramifications of their respective consoles.
Google nintendo antitrust, and State of New York vs. Nintendo disagrees with you.
There's something that everyone seems to miss in this issue. It's the fact that having an interpreter is a danger. Apple has always put some strong security policies, which I believe helped to keep iPhone safe, because applications are in a sandbox when they run. Have you even noticed that the only exploits that have been around are impacting ONLY iPhones that have been jail-broken? That's not pure luck here.
Now, Apple insist that it doesn't want an interpreter to be in. Why? Because that interpreter would allow untested and potentially dangerous apps to get in, which would lift one of the most important security layer of the operating system. It's not ONLY because Flash is a dog, with a disastrous security record. It's mainly because having an interpreter to decide what is right/wrong in the apps that are running is a security issue by definition.
I suppose that mostly everyone hate the fact that iPhones aren't multitasking. Like it or not, this is a very nice FEATURE that makes it possible for a developer to know that his app will be the only one running at a single point: you can consider you have all the CPU and power of the phone for yourself. Jail-break your phone, install the multi-tasking hack, and this is gone. Now an application that was written to take all the RAM of the phone is at risk, because another application that was doing the same assumption might be started already. Result? BOTH application might crash. Don't blame the developer, don't blame Apple, it's the fault of the user that is running them at once, when the system was not designed for it. And guess who will be blamed here? Yes, the OS maker, even if he is the least responsible here: the one that is at fault is the user.
Now, ENOUGH of this on slashdot. Let's move on to another topic. Apple doesn't like Flash, and it HAS VALID REASONS for it, end of the story.
...schadenfreude. Sweet, sweet schadenfreude.
There's no internet in your village?
We have Internet access; it's just not holographic like the rest of the world appears to be. I can't try the keypad, screen, and user interface of a device by just looking at it on store.nokia.com.
Rights derive from agreements between individuals to respect and defend certain conditions. There are no natural or God given rights. Without society, it is meaningless to talk about rights: there is only power. If we agree that 'developing on any platform, in any language you choose' is a right, then it is a right. As with all rights, we will have to give up something to gain something, in this case, we give up the right to make a closed platform.
You can try to make this an emotional issue. You can try to appeal to a higher authority such as nature, god, your ideal of morality, or common sense, but appeal to authority does not make for a logical argument. Apple is not wrong for making a closed platform. Developers aren't wrong for demanding an open platform. But your appeal to Apple's supposed 'right' to create a closed platform is the exact same argument as the developers appeal for the 'right' to an open environment. It is meaningless rhetoric meant to appeal to emotions.
What we should do instead is weigh the pros and cons. Is the freedom to create a closed environment more valuable than the freedom to develop on any environment as we see fit? The freedom to create a closed environment is just a special case of the freedom to do as we like with our own creations. This right does not impose anything on anyone: if you don't like the closed environment don't use it. If enough people decide not to use it, it will fail. The right to develop as we see fit on any environment imposes more restrictions, it makes demands on creators to open their environment. The thing is, we do have the freedom to develop for any platform in flash. Hack the thing, write your own flash interpreter for it, and go to town. Imposing on Apple the demand that they sell such programs in their store infringes on the already agreed upon right to do most anything we like with our own possessions. Is it worth making a special case here, where we infringe on that already agreed upon right? Well, there are cases where we already do, for instance, if you cause harm to others such as pollution, if you deny service based on race, or you are a monopoly. And while Apple may have a monopoly of sorts on the iPad and iPhone, this does not constitute a real monopoly as these products do not account for 80%+ of the market for these type of electronic devices. I can't really think of a similar existing case where we limit the rights of people to do whatever they want with their own possessions.
That being said, if developers feel it is important to have the right to develop in flash on any platform, they can pressure the platform creator to enact that right. Just don't put it in moral terms. Put it in power terms: do so, or we will punish you as best we can. That takes it out of the fuzzy, fuzzy realm of rights and into the cold hard world of negotiation and consequences. It acknowledges that it is really about "me, me, me," and not some moral argument. That's fine, people have conflicts like that all the time and manage to resolve them. I would have no problem with developers banding together to do this, and I would have no problem with Apple telling them to fuck off. I don't have a horse in this race. I just consider it an interesting case study of the concept of rights.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They shouldn't care what tools are used. To me, saying "you can't submit anything that was written in flash" makes exactly as much sense as saying "You can't submit anything that wasn't written by someone with blond hair."
Unless they can show that a program made with Flash uses three times the battery power of the equivalent program made with Xcode. Given complaints by both Steve Jobs and several Slashdot users about poor performance of Flash Player on Mac OS X, I'd imagine that this is likely the case.
My problem is that the church of Jobs can decide to add new clauses to his app contract on a moment's notice. One day your app can be permitted and then the next it can be forbidden because of some new contract clause.
I don't know how some companies invest all the money/resources in creating an iPhone/iPad application only to have the possibility of having the app denied and losing all the money poured into developing a project.
My problem with his latest thing is that as a programmer I often make code generators in other languages. Python to generate Java/SQL, custom languages that are parsed by a C program. This is a very useful design technique as you raise the level of abstraction and then solve the problem on the level of the problem domain instead of dealing with machine details. I suspect that prior to this latest rule, there was no issue to using this useful programming technique. But because Steve Jobs is all petty against flash, he suddenly decided to completely ban the technique to ensure the church of Jobs' domination over the cult of flash. Now granted there is all sorts of speculation as to why he is anti flash (revenge for adobe's poor mac support, not wanting to open the floodgates of games over the web, poor performance of flash on a phone, wanting to promote HTML 5, etc...). But the bottom line is that I don't care. I do care that he is petty and invents arbitrary rules to enforce his will and doesn't give a shit about any collateral damage. His reality distortion field makes him like a maniac....
Anyway one huge business risk is when you are doing business in a country and they just arbitrarily start inventing rules/fees/taxes. Or they change existing ones. You spend the money to conform and then suddenly the rules change so you have to do it again, and again. Steve Jobs is like the evil dictator, arbitrarily changing the rules as he sees fit. No thanks.
Because people where you live do not care about a cell phone that actually lets them own their own hardware.
Carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint force the public not to care because there's no discount on service for not taking the subsidized phone. But it appears T-Mobile, which does offer such a discount, has improved its coverage in the Fort Wayne area.
Seriously, if Adobe, tomorrow said "Running Photoshop on Apple hardware is officially against the EULA". Adobe would suffer a little, but Apple as a desktop would cease to exist.
And even the fanboys must know this is true. The ONLY people who take Apple desktops/laptops seriously are the people who NEED to run photoshop (and would prefer not to have to deal with windows bugs/crashes/pornviruses).
It seems really ill-advised to go to war with your lifeline... Although now that apple is no longer a computer company and more of a handheld/mini-software clearinghouse, maybe they don't care about their "computer" lineup.
They should really change the name from "MacBook" to "iDevelopmentRig". Since their toys require that you buy one in order to develop for them.
If people would use Flash for it's main purpose, low bandwidth vector graphics and video, I'd love to see Flash spread, even to the iFone. Instead it is used to simply serve up bandwidth hogging video. Wow, what a waste of a platform to do something that could be simply accomplished using good old fashioned hyperlinks.
Me choosing not to have anything to do with Apple ever again as a result of there anti developer policies is my right. So suck it Apple and suck it Apple fan boys.
It is not a right to develop in flash, or any other particular language, and have it run on a particular platform. But it _is_ a right to develop any language (interpreter or compiler) for any platform. Apple doesn't recognize this right and actively forbids developers to develop applications that happen to be interpreters for other languages.
It is also a right to install any software you have a copyright license for on any hardware you own given that it is physically possible. Apple doesn't recognize this right, but uses special software to actively limit what you can install (cryptographically signed binaries).
Apple doesn't have an obligation to provide a flashplayer. But they shouldn't be allowed to stop Adobe from providing one, and their customers from installing that one.
Steve Jobs, what the fuck dude? Stop posting to Slashdot!
http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2010/02/24/battery-performance-with-flash-player-10-1-on-nexus-one/
Steve Jobs can "claim" battery consumption is an issue, but yet it was Apple holding back the API that Adobes and others needed to access the GPU for H.264 acceleration under OS X.
With newer portables like the Android based phones and the soon to be released Flash Player 10.1 and iPhone apps created using CS5, drawing and video decoding are offloaded to the GPU, which greatly improves the battery life and performance. I'm on a Mac and have been using them daily since the mid-nineties. For the most part Jobs is speaking out of both ends while spreading more FUD than truth.
And there are plenty of crapplications made with XCode which kill the battery in no time on my Touch. A poorly developed app will kill the battery regardless of which tool is used to create it.
"If you right crappy code full of security holes, what do they do let it run anyway even though it will negatively impact THEIR hardware owners?"
If you stopped righting (?) and started thinking you'd understand that you can also (ahem) write shitty software in C, C++ or Objective-C. It's not what you use, it's how you use it.
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
on the iPhone. This is my reply to the blog:
"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS"
Apple says that I must use a particular development tool. I cannot translate code...
Which means
1 - No lex or yacc in my application.
2 - No other "little language"
3 - No higher order programming.
4 - Some severe restrictions in what I can deliver.
Of course, the "rules" are not necessarily applied -- after all, there is an HP 41 emulator available, with user programming allowed, and a Commodore 64 emulator.
Still, I am not allowed to write my code in Scheme or any other higher order language, and then translate (automatically, or manually) into Objective C for delivery.
How would Apple KNOW if that is the route I took? Maybe they will look at my code, and comment, "Gee, that looks too functional and recursive, I guess we have to reject it...".
Now, I will give Apple the "right" to disallow any app from the app store, for any reason. But this reason?
What if I prototype in Flash, and then send the source results to India to have it converted to a native app? Will that be disallowed?
I guess it will...
What if I don't bother to COMPILE the prototype, I simply code it, and send the detailed specs (including the code) to India instead: a "human compiler" will then do the necessary conversion. Assume the process works. It will STILL be disallowed.
In point of fact, the TECHNICAL reading of the restriction forbids a detailed specification... if that specification COULD be automatically processed. I guess that eliminates most formal design tools.
On a positive note, Apple HAS increased the value of Objective C skills.
Anyway, they have lost me as a developer -- I pretty much only use Scheme or Python for new code. Especially small games and utilities.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
And, if Adobe ever releases a version that runs on the iPhone, Apple won't try to stop you.
They just might.
Most game designers don't ever program a thing, (according to my pal taking game design in college) so I'd honestly expect this guy to not have a valid opinion.
If I can write a piece of software for the damned thing, I should be able to, no restrictions.
The fact he fails to understand this means he's no programmer and is just flapping off at the mouth without a clue.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Don't act like they did this because it was in the consumers' best interest. Their reasons were purely technical^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hmarketing. If they weren't, they wouldn't feel compelled to add personal information to every single file you download from itunes.
I agree - my rights are also being violated for not being able to write part of the Linux kernel in Flash!
...flashism!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Fanbois, Fanbois
Watcha gonna do whatcha gonna do
When we come for you (repeat)
When you were great
And you had cool traits
You were old school and you were the golden rule
So why are you acting like a bloody fool
If you get hot you must get cool
Nobody naw give you no break
Slashdot naw give you no break
Developers naw give you no break
Not even you idren naw give you no break
It says nothing more or less than that programmers are people growing up with the same entitlement mentality that let's peole think they have a 'right' to a job or a 'right' to broadband.
Why is anyone surprised at this? Feed a kid twinkies all day and he's fat. This is the exact equivalent.
-Styopa
There is nothing stopping Adobe from creating an HTML5 export for Flash so that Flash developers can create apps that run on iPhone. Why did they put a proprietary Cocoa export on their Web app tool instead of open HTML5 export? Because Adobe is currently run by people with their heads up their asses.
Flash apps are made with ECMAScript, HTML, CSS, and MPEG-4. All of that runs in the iPhone browser without a proprietary Adobe runtime.
Either make Flash export HTML5, or make an HTML5 runtime for Flash, like Gordon, which one guy made and it runs Flash on iPhone.
> You may not like those reasons, and you may think those reasons are stupid, but I don't really see a lot in the way of grounds to disbelieve that those are the main reasons. To boil it down to what's probably the biggest reason: Apple *wants* developers to develop apps specifically for the iPhone/iPad because they believe they'll get better apps that way.
Well, I see plenty of reasons to believe that those aren't the real reasons, and that the real reasons start and end with $$$.
It's a walled garden and they don't want anyone making a way to climb over the wall (so no Flash, emulators, etc.). I don't give a crap about Adobe. "Astroturf"? Leave me out of that. I wouldn't care if Adobe curled up and died and you can find plenty of folks here saying the same thing. Apple fanboys are legendary, though. I don't care which company wins. I only care about making sure that I don't lose. I haven't seen anyone saying how great Flash is, so you're arguing against an opponent you invented. If not, please at least give us some quotes that demonstrate these motivations you made up on the spot. There are tons of comments here, it shouldn't be hard to show that more than one person is actually claiming that Flash is perfect and wonderful, right?
As for complaining about Apple's lock-down, we DID complain about all of those things! And I still am! Finally, they're also saying that you can't use any tool but those in a small set. That stops you from using a lot more than Flash. It also prevents you from making anything new. No, I won't buy their damn phone. Ever. But the iPad is eating into the netbook market and that worries me. Yeah, yeah, they're not a monopoly... yet. But Apple is big enough that I see no point in waiting to worry about that when they're pulling off a bunch of total dick moves that would make Microsoft proud. And yes, I've read the Comes v. Microsoft documents, so I know what kind of crap Microsoft pulled to get their monopoly. In short, I have every confidence that they could become one and I don't want to let it happen.
But being anti-Apple because of the restrictions they put on what you can do with their iPhones (and thanks to the EULA, they really are *their* phones, not yours), does NOT make me pro-Adobe.
It's clear that Apple is viewing 3rd party tools as an encumberment. They want to invent the future, not negotiate at a giant round table, where most of the participants couldn't innovate their way out of a paper bag. They want to create new interface idioms, invent new form factors, etc. They want to do what they do best--not be stuck in a legacy tar-pit.
Of course, all the Flash people are upset their skill sets are locked out of the iPhone. Who wouldn't be. The iPhone is the only mobile platform you can make $$$ on. Without iPhone or iPad, you are up shit creek. Good luck making money on Android, Blackberry or Symbian.
The whoe "anti-competitive" complaint is funny, if you think about it. Apple ranks 3rd in smartphone marketshare. But the iPhone is where all the app sales happen. That is because the 2 market leaders give consumers an extremely poor app experience.
Anti-trust law says: When a market participant achieves strong market power, and uses it to harm other market participants, it is unlawful. But to define "market power" and "market participants", we must define what market we're talking about.
If we're talking about the smartphone market, then clearly Apple does not have much market power. They are number 3.
If we're talking about the mobile app market, it's another story. Apple pretty much created that market, by opening up the iPhone, and the iPhone continues to be the dominant "channel", if you will. But Apple doesn't really participate in the mobile app market. As provider of the iPhone platform, it brought the market into being, and continues to be the reason it has significant volume.
So it's pretty hard to make the "anti-competitive" argument against Apple.
> Why does this strike me that this is more about a bunch of so-called, "developers," who are getting all huffy about not being able to easily whack out Whack-A-Mole and Fart apps for the i(Pad|Touch|Phone), than about a true fight for a "right" to develop as you please?
Huh? Those are the one kind of app that Apple isn't restricting. There are plenty of them. Most people are miffed that Apple allows these apps, but won't let you show political cartoons (unless you win a Pulitzer). And they didn't just restrict Flash, they restricted everything but Objective C and a few other languages. A bit of overkill, no?
Feel free to argue against what imaginary idiots are arguing for, though. It's a lot easier than actually addressing the real reasons why people don't like this. I don't like it because it's the latest in a long line of dick moves by Apple. I don't care if they're going after Adobe. I care that they're being dicks. That's why I don't do business with them.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When things don't behave like nails, some people get flustered and irritated with the "nail" rather than reassess their choice of tool.
I hate Microsoft, go on, you can check that if you want.
But their level of anal retentiveness and malfeasance is beginning to look like child's play when compared to the IMperial attitudes of His Highness Lord Jobs.
Microsoft provides a platform, most of it rubbish, but you can do as you best can with that in a framework of traditional computing craft.
Apple wants to deny you access to that craft in the terms that best suit you, that people that know about this are not angry is frankly incomprehensible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Adobe Flash for Apple platforms has not been very good, and in some respect makes Apple platforms look bad.
Apple finds that intolerable. Apple makes excellent development tools available; third party products, not to mention Mac OS X, have skyrocketed in quality. Yet Apple gets dinged because Adobe's Flash port to Mac OS X crashes regularly. Mac sales get hurt because someone's web site crashes the Mac-based browser, but doesn't crash the Windows-based one, and so the IT director orders everyone to replace their Macs with DELL machines. He doesn't know what actually breaks the browser, but he does know that PCs don't have a problem with the corporate web site.
Apple since '97 has had no patience for bad third party software products, particularly bad development tools, because of the major problems it causes for Apple. It was definitely the case in the late 80's and most of the 90's.
Apple doesn't want Adobe Flash on iPhone for a number of reasons that it believes are extremely significant. If Flash were really important to the company, I believe Apple would have written its own Flash.
if you buy a computer, pay money for it, and now it's yours, you have a right to run whatever code you want on it. did I miss something?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
So we have to compare Apple to Microsoft and feel "equal" ?
Nokia released SDK/Dev tools of Symbian Qt framework for Windows and Linux, Mac support is being investigated (ask Apple why). So there, 3 platforms supported on a very complex operating system's very complex framework. That isn't some toy to play with either, we talk about tens of millions devices here in production and sale. I mean it isn't "free runner" or whatever.
Of course, it must be having some "coolness issue" like relying on multi platform Eclipse so iPhone devs can still apologize for Apple and feel lucky.
Well, Nokia's status in USA is a bit pathetic. Otherwise, Nokia is rather known and respected for bringing Internet and some kind of "programmable device" (count J2ME please) to unheard places and poor people.
For example, I was particularly impressed by their devotion and sparing time to tools such as free "life tools" for India/Africa/Asia http://europe.nokia.com/ovi-services-and-apps/nokia-life-tools/main
I'm in Australia and can only look at what is in my local laws. I know that when I get my car serviced I can go to any certified mechanic. The Manufacture of my car cannot restrict my choice and say you can only use a mechanic approved by us.
They cannot legally say, you must use replacement parts that where not made by us. In a similar vain a lot of computers have warranty void if removed stickers on the back. The thing is that in Australia at least, these stickers are illegal. The reality is that there are replaceable parts inside, there ram, and expansion cards hard drives etc. And the manufacture of the PC has not legally restrict what compatible parts I put inside.
Why should software be any different? why should a vendor have the right to restrict where I buy my software or what legally obtained software I put on my device? And If I want to use a particular tool to develop software then I should have that right. The alternative is the building of a monopoly, and there are laws against that.
If our current after sale parts and anti monopoly laws are not adequate to make what Apple is doing with the Ipad and the iphone illegal then the laws much be changed to make it illegal.
It is absolutely ILLEGAL to hack your iPhone from a big company legal point so that is why Adobe can't release Flash and Opera like companies won't even bother submitting their "real thing" to Apple app store. I am absolutely sure they maintain their iPhone versions locally although there is no way to prove it, just in case something happens to stop this device fascism.
Basically, legitimate companies can't tell you to hack your device and break eula/warranty to install their application.
I don't know what you're talking about with the ITouch.
I have an iPhone, and hooking it up to any computer exposes the pictures...and only the pictures. You can't get to the MP3s or anything, but you can get to the pictures.
I mean, that's just bad as what you said, but the pictures are essentially the one thing you can get off Apple devices via the standard USB flash-drive interface.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What happens if Adobe with a new management does something aggressive as backing up openstep with their huge programming power/money so they can release Pro Apps under Linux?
I mean this issue won't be fixed with FSF ranting, some Apple ass kissers apologizing or we are arguing on Slashdot. Apple really needs to get a slap on their face to see what kind of trap they are heading to.
Just in months, they made World's largest Internet power (Google) mad, largest professional design software developer mad, publicly denounced their key end user product etc. I don't believe these kinds of childish actions won't have a cost to them.
iPhone users and Developers are really making me tired. Buy device or even buy an iPhone developer account, close your eyes to other platforms which perfectly work in their own ways and start bitching about Apple not approving your app or not allowing whatever you need to do.
Bought iPhone or only developing for iPhone? Shut up and enjoy it... If you don't? Well, there are other platforms, perhaps not "cool" as iPhone but... Just stop whining...
It really kills me when I see a developer whining about their app not approved while there are at least 4-5 other platforms to choose from. Lets see Apple not approving your application while you got 5-6 million downloads on other platforms. You can say "well, it is your loss".
Adobe could easily do the exact same thing with the new tools, e.g. why not "export to Symbian app/widget" instead of .app hack? Or J2ME 2 container (I just spoke about billion devices). They spent months/years and millions to a thing which people like me having no credentials have easily guessed that it won't be allowed by Apple, right when it was announced.
There's something that everyone seems to miss in this issue. It's the fact that having an interpreter is a danger.
I'm sorry to say, but it's you who're missing something in this issue. Namely, Flash for iPhone is not an interpreter. It's a compiler from Flash to native ARM binary code.
It's precisely why Apple added the new restriction to iPhone 4 SDK licensing terms. Under the old ones (which prohibited interpreters) Flash for iPhone was legal - so now they've added the clause that says that iPhone apps can only be written in C, C++, or Objective-C, and writing them in any other language is illegal. That's what killed Flash.
The rest of your points are, consequently, irrelevant.
I suppose that mostly everyone hate the fact that iPhones aren't multitasking. Like it or not, this is a very nice FEATURE that makes it possible for a developer to know that his app will be the only one running at a single point
Except for those stock Apple applications, that can and do multitask (and you don't know how many new such ones will be added in a new iPhone release).
What happened to "do one thing and do it good" rule? Plugin architecture allows it. If Real and Apple quicktime department (ms is already hopeless) weren't complete idiots, we would be talking about 3 plugins competing each in performance, stability and support here.
I find it hard to believe that browser developers are advanced multimedia developers and current benchmarks between Flash and HTML5 sadly proves it. What happens to portable devices which we already own? Will Mozilla/Apple/Microsoft code HTML5 video decoder on a strange OS like Symbian S60? I can watch embedded flash videos on my Nokia E71 right now and actual Flash 10.1 is on its way.
It says that we have an entire culture that thinks that what they want is their right to have. I am Shocked Taco you did not see this coming with the ME generation. You only have to read /. for a few months and you see it. After all Healthcare is now a right, a house is now a right, a job is now a right, unemployment for life is now a right, a computer is now a right, high speed internet access is now a right.
After the iPhone, people started to look closely to OS X and figured it is one of the most closed operating systems ever. There are also rumors of "10.7 app store" which would be a true disaster in Apple's image and would cause some real big legal problems.
They have really lost focus recently to a degree of canceling almost traditional Developer awards for OS X. Eartlier times, iPhone/iPad didn't really effect the "real computer" side that much. Apple wasn't a company to drop support down to security updates, force developers abandon their own users via Developer tools tricks. Perhaps, it is time to leave Apple to Starbucks people and move on.
Flash is already on near billion devices/computers and on its way (as in real form) to hundreds of millions of smart phones. Apple and their supporters are really pushing limits of delusion. The number is "0.5 of World's mobile phones", if Adobe really goes nuts and does a crazy thing as adding Flash to S40/J2ME hidden empire, I will really have a great laugh.
The media/blogs/fans are one thing, the raw numbers are another. Currently, nobody gives a shit about what Apple supports or not. At most, they would release some HTML5 video exporter for "iphone guys" and move on. Adobe did a big mistake by sparing time and energy to iPhone "hack apps" and giving way too much credit to Apple confusing everyone. MS on the other hand, shipped Silverlight SDK for Nokia/Symbian and native Business tools recently. They are always being compared to Nokia, their actual business rivals are Nokia and Blackberry (RIM), why are they sparing time to a competitor platform which has nothing to do with their culture? They seem to look at raw numbers and projections and take decisions based on them.
I think Adobe should have spared their time and energy to Symbian/Android/Blackberry/Win Mobile pre 7 instead.
Was there a single platform in computing history (minus ENIAC era) that dictates you the languages you are supposed to use? I have read a lot of computing history and I can't remember seeing such thing.I have read a lot about mainframes both historical and current too.
To me this issue was never about Flash, or the right to use Flash, it was about the philosophy that Apple has decided to pursue in full (of which Flash is but a casualty) - a philosophy that I don't agree with and never will.
Apple I used to love you, I was a huge fan - but now, I have no idea what to think about your walled garden; your obvious pomp and arbitrary filtration of 3rd party software; your poor, misleading, slanderous arguments towards products that diminish your bottom line.
But please, count me out.
If I buy a piece of food, I have the right to eat it, dispose it, cook it, or tamper with it any way I choose. If I buy a CD, I have the right to break it in half, or play it at 4 times the speed it was intended. If I buy a piece of computer hardware, I have the right to throw it in the trash, run over it with a car, crack it open and see what it looks like, set it on fire, or really do anything I want to it. All of these things I have the right to do are not consistent with the overall intended "use" of the stuff, right? And they certainly impact the elegance of the "platform" and products, right? But hey - it's MINE. I BOUGHT it, and I can do whatever I want with it. Apple is way out of line here. They are selling ideas not things and they think this will hold up for much longer. I didn't buy a "device use methodology" or a license that exists solely in thought-stuff. If I can manipulate the hardware to run a program they didn't approve of, well fuck them, it's not their toy it's mine. THAT is why developers have a RIGHT.
I'd rather have Adobe create a 64bit browser plugin for non-Linux platforms. The x64 build of Firefox (Minefield) on MacOS 10.6 was nice and fast, but I couldn't use it for a surprisingly high number of sites just because of the lack of Flash support.
And the alpha version for Linux has been "in development" for what, 3 years now?
You have to love Apple Fanboy's revisionist histories.
OK, so lets assume Apple hates DRM, then why is there DRM on videos? You could say the movie industry but really that is Apple. One of the biggest proponents of more restrictive DRM schemes is Disney to which Apple and Jobs himself own a large part of. They are keeping your attetion on the left hand (Apple) whilst completely screwing you over with the right hand (Disney).
So, why did Apple really remove DRM. Amazon started selling DRM free MP3's before Apple did, in fact it was a requirement for any music to be sold on Itunes prior to Amazon to be encumbered with Fairplay. Apple had to do this in order to prevent Amazon from completely eating their lunch. So it wasn't the studio's pushing DRM as Amazon was easily able to get around it.
Apple is one of the biggest driving forces behind DRM.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple does not want 3rd party API's as they are a vector for malware. If a security problem is found in their (Apple's) software it will be fixed and pushed out quickly. There is no guarantee that would happen with a 3rd party product.
Also, a single app with a problem can be withdrawn from the App store (and possibly disabled pro-actively in customers iPhones)
Think of the fallout if a flaw in a widely used 3rd party API was found and Apple had to withdraw ALL of the app's that used it. A popular API (e.g. Flash) could involve thousands of app's. Leaving them available and running on customer units leaves the flaw available and Apple possibly liable for damages. Pulling the apps probably gets Apple widely abused (especially in Slashdot.)
Microsoft is taking years to get back control of Windows, introducing code signing and gradually making it required, adding in security after the fact, etc.
Apple is keeping the iPhone environment secure from the start. Easier to open it up a bit at a time than to get it closed again if they make a mistake.
This article is just flame-bait IMO. Typical 'I am a great developer, so everyone else should be able to do what I do' logic.
What if the SDK said:
"All code must be written in English. All variables names must be English. All comments must be written in English. All code must use 2 space indentation without tabs."
Imagine there is a cross-compiler that takes Chinese/Indian/Russian words and converts them into Objective C before compiling...just so, you know, the user has the freedom to code in their own language. Ixnay on athay.
Yes, it is about freedom of expression and creativity. It is about being upset that *arbitrary* barriers to that expression are being placed before us. I may not have the time or resources to make my creative expression available across platforms X, Y & Z without using some cross-platform tool. And it isn't just Flash...if Apple wanted to ban Flash, they could have just done that.
There were so many option besides banning: Segregate the 3rd party toolkit apps into a separate section of the AppStore, showing a warning, banning bad apps because they are bad.
It is about the ignorance of the majority: The majority of users don't know or don't care that their choices are being made for them. And the tyranny of the dictators: Jobs and Apple saying that Objective C is the one true GOD^h^h^hLANGUAGE. Or the vitriolic HATE of a development TOOL (seriously) because it makes coding easy enough for people who aren't great developers to express themselves in a shitty non-performing way if they want.
I am not saying it is a 'right', or a required freedom, but it is certainly a higher goal to pursue, and this is such a dramatic departure that a vocal minority of people are understandably upset. Just like the 'right to privacy' isn't an express right in the Bill of Rights, but it certainly has profound implications when those rights are trampled.
http://blog.slaingod.com
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their 'freedom' as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
It says we have fucking spines, you blind amorphous blob.
http://outcampaign.org/
Seriously, have you ever talked to anybody in the media player business? We *all* hate DRM - it's a pain in the neck to do well, there's absolutely no benefit to the end user (our customer), and you have to make ridiculous commitments to the content providers - about physical security of the keys, procedures for managing the inevitable discovery of workarounds, etc.
I worked on the iPod team, and later for a company using Windows Media DRM. You might remember that the original version of the iPod had no DRM at all - we just put a "don't steal music" sticker on it, and stored the songs in a "hidden" folder.
The record labels insisted on Apple imposing a DRM scheme for the iTunes store. They would have preferred that Apple license Windows Media, but as you might imagine, that idea really didn't fly for Apple.
Instead, Apple created Fairplay, which was enormously less restrictive and annoying to end-users, most of whom were never aware that it existed at all. At the time "unlimited play on up to 5 computers and an unlimited number of iPods" was an incredible step forward compared to the mess that was WM-DRM.
Without the success of Apple's much-less restrictive scheme, the record companies would never have considered allowing Amazon to sell DRM-free songs.
Your argument or whatever it is is absurd.
This is about Apple denying applications because they were built in a certain manner and in particular by a certain vendor tool. The Flash development tool is a programming aid that generates code which forms a genuine native app. There are other third party apps that also do the same thing. It's no different than if I created my own bunch of libraries and some macros that "generated" code for me.
This attack is solely against the Adobe tool. That's the problem. You either ban all development tools or you ban none. This is a cut and dry attack against Adobe, period.
To simplify it for you let's use an analogy. Apple initially makes no comment about how you can develop applications. Therefore 3rd parties develop based on this understanding. Apple then says you can only use a manual screwdriver to create applications. However, they aren't stopping the use of green, blue and orange power screwdrivers. They do, however, specifically say you cannot use a red power screwdriver. That's not acceptable. Just like you can use non car dealers to repair your car, non original parts to fix them, select gas from any supplier no matter how they made it as long as it runs your engine properly.
Adobe spent a significant amount of money to develop the tool which creates code which a human can replicate and it's being banned because a human didn't hand code it AND it was created by Adobe's tool. That's not acceptable.
You just helped me have a philosophical revelation.
Often times, when people who believe in natural rights start proclaiming and such-and-such is or is not within someone's rights despite whatever the law may or may not say about it, social constructivists like you start going off about "who are you to declare what is or is not a right!?", declaring the natural rights person to be egotistical or arrogant or something for thinking that their word carries more power than the collective word of the elected legislature of the society.
I've never had much of a good response to those sorts of people, other than the tu quoque "who is the state to say what someone's right are, any more than me?" But that just sounds like the kind of arrogance you're accusing.
The revelation that just hit me is WHY this happens: a natural rights theorist like me considers right to be FOUND, not MADE. In declaring that something is or it not a right, I'm stating an observation: "in my judgement, it does or does not appear that such and such or so and so is a right." I am not attempting to MAKE something a right or not by disagreeing with what the law says is or is not a right, because I don't believe rights are made at all. People like you apparently do, so you see such observations as an attempted exercise of power, and thus accuse your interlocutor of arrogance and egocentrism.
The grandparent poster to whom you replied is not (if I may speak for him) attempting to change what rights Apple has by his declarations. He is stating his observation of what Apple's rights seem to him to be. That is to say, Apple's genuine, natural, moral rights, regardless of whatever the law may say about them. For a socially or legally constructed sense of "rights", you might say that he is asserting an opinion on what Apple's rights SHOULD be. And who are YOU to tell him that that opinion is incorrect, merely because some legislature disagrees with it? The legislature could just as easily be wrong as him, and in fact I'd argue (apart from whatever question is at hand) the legislature is more probably wrong than any random individual, because stupidity multiplies in large groups.
That said, I think all this talk about rights relating to the iProducts and Flash is silly to begin with. Nobody's rights are being violated. Apple are being jerks about the way they design their software and for that reason I remain completely uninterested in them until such time (likely never) that those defective designs are corrected. But Apple is free to make and sell whatever they want. People who buy it are free to do whatever they want with what they buy, and Apple is under no obligation to make any particular things particularly easy to do, though by making things some people want to do impossible or very difficult to do they are intentionally crippling their product and turning away potential customers like me. (Loyal Mac user since 1994 here). Adobe is free to make and sell whatever they want, and Apple is under no obligation to help create a market for such things, though again, it may be intentionally crippling its own products in doing so and alienating potential customers for no good reason. Until Apple gets it made illegal for Adobe to publish software that stock iPads won't run, or they make changes to users' iPads after those users have explicitly requested them not to, then nobody's rights have been violated.
And for the record, I hate Flash and hope it dies.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What you are describing is a "Just In Time" interpreter, just like Java does. Unless I missed something. Nothing new, and it doesn't change my point.
As for the stock apps, did you notice how they had a full access to the phone? They do not live in jails. That doesn't change my point either, which is that Apple wants to keep 3rd party apps into jails, and that Adobe Flash wants to take that job over, which for good reasons (security of the device), is forbidden.
What you are describing is a "Just In Time" interpreter, just like Java does. Unless I missed something. Nothing new, and it doesn't change my point.
Yes, you miss something. It's not just-in-time, and I've no idea where in my words you saw that. It's a native ahead-of-time compiler. Go ahead and read for yourself.
As for the stock apps, did you notice how they had a full access to the phone? They do not live in jails. That doesn't change my point either
Your point that I replied to was that an application can assume that it is the only one running due to the lack of multitasking, and that it is somehow beneficial for application developer.
That doesn't change my point either, which is that Apple wants to keep 3rd party apps into jails, and that Adobe Flash wants to take that job over
Where did you get the idea that Flash wants to "jailbreak"? The applications it produces are plain iPhone apps, that don't have any permissions that more conventional apps don't have.
By the way, same applies to any interpreters. If a process has certain permissions, making it interpret code doesn't allow it to circumvent those permissions in any way.
for reality.
I'm a teacher. I try to make students look at as many different platforms as possible. I benefited from the same attitude from my teachers. It is a good thing to do. But, it has nothing at all to do with rights.
He is also confusing legal rights with actual rights. In the US we have no legal right to write code on an ipad in flash. As human beings we have an absolute right to use our property anyway we see fit so long as it does no harm to others or to future generations. In terms of real human rights Apple has no right to tell me or anyone else how we can use an ipad after we have purchased it. The fact that Apple has a legal right to tell us how to use our own property disgusts me and is a sad sad commentary on how far our society has fallen. The fact that they have that legal right *and use it* disgusts me. That is why I do not buy Apple products and never will.
We only have our true rights as humans, as intrinsic parts of the universe, to the point that we are willing to resist with the full force of "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" something the majority of US are no longer willing to do. We do not think about the implications of our actions. Many of us, like the teacher, are so misguided they no longer understand the concept of rights. I wonder if he as any idea of the responsibilities the come with our true rights? Maybe we give up on our rights so that we can pretend we do not have the associated responsibilities.
Damn this kind of crap really pisses me off. I suggest that every developer who understands just how horribly their rights are being trampled should simply boycott Apple products. There are many other platforms on which you can make a few bucks. Think about how nice it will be for people who also boycott Apple products to be able to say "There is no app for that on Apple".
The alternatives, such as picketing Apple stores, or any acts of violence against Apple property and management is not acceptable because of the chance of injury to the innocent and naive. No matter how good it would feel, it is not acceptable when dealing with something as powerless as inconsequential as Apple.
Stonewolf
I find that most "programmers" that jumped on the internet bandwagon because of hype, are only capable of cutting and pasting code from Google into ready made frameworks. Having your framework yanked out from under you must be really scary in that case.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their 'freedom' as creators is squelched for the same reason?"
Um...how is this any different if Apple prohibited music artists using guitars if they created music to play on an ipod?
What does it say about the music industry that music artists might demand to use instruments of their own choosing...and if they can't, would they protest that their rights are "trampled"...
Who is this guy? Telling any one what tools the can use to develop content for a platform sounds like the height of arrogance and a feeling that they "own" the artists/developers.
-l
Which country are you referring to? In the US the only thing in see in your list is "unemployment for life" but not the paid kind.
It's Apple's right to not let developers use what apps, languages, etc. BUT that doesn't make it logical or smart. However, we have the right to not buy their products and complain about the way they do business.
well, maybe you'd like to have a read this article "Top 6 Things Wrong with the New Apple iPad" and "Understanding Apple's Magical iPad" http://www.ifunia.com/ipad-column/top-6-things-wrong-with-the-new-apple-ipad.html
stuff that apples
The problem with VB6 was that it made it easy to program badly.
On the other hand, you could still write useful software in it very quickly compared to C or C++. If you were disciplined, you could even write fairly good software in VB6 ; as my ability with it matured, my code ended up having error handling with full stack traces, which cut the time to debug most problems down by an order of magnitude.
In the end, it was killed off by it's lack of implementation inheritance, the use of COM as an interface model, and of course, by having it's support withdrawn by Microsoft.
Of course "killed" is a relative term ; there are still huge bodies of VB6 code out there in production use. It's still the macro language for Office. I keep a VM image with a VB6 development kit in it hanging around in the event I need to whip it out and patch some of our first-line VB6 applications. In some senses, it's the COBOL of the desktop.
I also know of at least one company that still has a flagship product written in VB3. A lot of the code I wrote for it was very much informed by improved practices I learned from VB6, and from newer languages like C#.
I thing that the flash is necessary for all mobiles... www.alisveriskeyfim.com
No rights, only privileges conceded by benevolent corporations. Zzzzzzz
I wish I could.
+1 Fsck yeah!
Carol vs. Ghost
Welcome to the seemingly exclusive club of those who got the point!
It's nice to have you here. Once our numbers grow to greater than 5, we'll probably chip in for a clubhouse.
Cheers!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
The bottom line, no matter which way you slice it, is that a transistor (in the realm of digital integrated circuits) is on (voltage high) or off (voltage low). Zero or One.
In the end, it all boils down to different ways of ensuring certain points at certain times in a certain ordered fashion are high or low, on or off.
Software is the ordered way by which one tells the circuitry when and how to be on or off.
It does not matter if you use 'Foo' or 'Bar' or 'C' or 'Perl' or Flash or what have you. It is all the same in the end.
Saying one is the 'one true way' is stupid, especially when there exist many a formally logically-equivalent way to do any of it.
Apple's devices are not special. They're digital computers troweled over with maybelline and no amount of marketing can change this concrete truth.
The fact that Jobs or apple, or whomever-the-hell is trying to state that 'Thou shalt not use @X to make our transistors change states' is just fucking stupid.
To flash or not flash, that is the question?
I think the problem we are all having in this debate, including myself, is our perception of devices like the iPhone and iPad as general computing devices. Most of us want to believe that the iPhone/iPad are much like our desktop/laptop computers and that we should be able to enjoy using them as such. Apple, and no doubt, many other companies, want us to view these devices (including Sony's PS3, which is having similar trouble removing it's ability to utilize 3rd party OS) more like we would view a Walkman, TV, or perhaps even the blender in your kitchen. Apple, Sony, et el, want full control over these devices so that they can maximize their potential to profit from them. As was mentioned last week in an article, general computing devices are getting less and less profitable as their prices decrease due to cheaper production process and increased demand.
Unfortunately for most of our tech heads, the general public doesn't care if these devices are general computing devices that let us hack them to do any job we want them to, they just want to listen to music, watch movies, read a book, or play a video game. In other words, so long as the Walkman is adequately playing the tape cassettes in their collection, the general public are going to be satisfied with their purchase.
This is such a prototypical iPhone/iPad fanboy post. The issue for those developers I know who dislike Apple's position isn't one of "the right" to X, Y or Z, it's the issue that you don't want to have you development efforts dictated to the extent that Apple does. Let me ask you this - how do you get your app onto an iPhone? The AppStore. How do you get the app into the AppStore? You have to develop the whole damn thing first, and THEN submit it for approval. So, time, effort, potential cost over-head. Does anyone else see the problem here?
Oh, and once you've submitted your app for approval, by all accounts it's pretty much random chance as to whether the app will be accepted or not. And if it's not, there's virtually no appeal process. Sound fair? I don't think so.
Here's a real-world example of another problem - company I worked for developed a very large, very complex security system (I can't go into any details). Because of the massive disparity of the people (and platforms) it would run on, it was obviously written in Java. Eventually, folks wanted it on the iPhone, too. So okay, that would mean they would have to abandon 5 years worth of R&D in order to rewrite the ENTIRE thing in C/Objective-C - let's assume all the lessons were learned, and it took only a year to port over all the components and subsystems - for a system which we couldn't even guarantee would be accepted by the AppStore.
And even then, it's not really an application you would want on the AppStore - it's not intended as a "public" application, but it was an application that users wanted on mobile devices.
So, all you nancy fanboys - explain how this EXACT REAL-WORLD scenario is addressed in the eutopia of Apple?
It isn't.
THAT'S where the unfairness of Apple's draconian controls over their platforms comes in. Those of us against Apple's position aren't a bunch of namby pamby whiners - we have REAL tangible problems with the whole mess. Stop defending an indefensible position!
lol:
"I WANT to program for a fascist computer platform"
I should be able to run whatever the hell it is I want to run on it.
We've gone from owning hardware to apparently licensing it. I, for one, call bullshit.
Bryan
I never said Apple owes us Flash. I just said I have the right to do what I want with my personal property. If you don't like it, go screw yourself. And for that matter, Jobs can go screw himself. I will never develop for Apple systems, I will never purchase Apple products, and for that matter I might even avoid hybrid kernels and Objective-C just to be safe.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Actually, yes. You can own your Apple hardware.
Clearly not since apple tried to make jailbreaking illegal and won't honour the warranty if you have jailbroken your (or rather not your) hardware.
So if you buy a car and modify the engine with nitrous and you blow it drag racing with only 5K miles on it - you expect the manufacturer to honor the warranty?
Of course not, since you've physically damaged the hardware, which is obviously - unless of course you don't know what jailbreaking is - not the case with jailbreaking the iphone.
Fort Wayne, Indiana. Today I went into Best Buy, RadioShack, and T-Mobile, and asked to try a Nokia N900 phone. None of them had one.
I [...] asked to try a Nokia N900 phone
You can buy any Nokia you want online
A recent Slashdot story claims that online isn't good enough. It appears that a lot of potential customers agree with the sentiment I expressed in this comment that I prefer to try the display, keypad/touch screen, and hand feel of a phone before I spend over $500 for one with 15 percent nonrefundable.