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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!
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 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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
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.
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.
Yea, Microsoft's closed practices have literally made their products obsolete...
Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your point, but a "right" is not a "well-established social norm". A right is a thing you can do that compels no one else to do anything, nor prevents them from exercising their own rights of the same kind. Your right to use your property any way you like doesn't prevent me from doing the same with my property. In other words, a right is something for which you cannot justly be punished. It is one of the four controls of societal interaction, along with a privilege (which you are granted immunity from punishment for, even if it creates an obligation on someone else or in some way infringes another's rights), a duty (which you can be justly punished for not doing) and a prohibition (which you may not do without facing at least the risk of punishment).
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
That one day, little iPhones, and little Android phones, may one day access the same content.
That was, essentially, Steve Jobs argument in his letter slamming Flash. His view is that the Web should be based on standards.
The truth is Flash is not a standard, it's a convention. A huge amount of Web content may be in Flash, but it's a closed system. Only one company, Adobe, decides how it works. Ten years ago you could say the same thing about RealPlayer. Shouldn't the iPhone support Real video? What about ActiveX?
The iPhone platform is closed, sure. But it's not delivering content to others, it happens to include a way to access web content. If it does a poor job of that the market will reject it, but the only ones who seem up in arms are Flash developers who are mad about their favorite tools not working on some shiny, popular platform.
A right absolutely isn't a well established social norm. At least, it's not supposed to be. A right is supposed to be something that is illegal for the government to take away from you because all humans deserve it. Consider segregated schools. The well-established social norm at the time was to send the black kids to the crappy backwoods school and the white kids to the best mommy and daddy could afford. The norm of "seperate but equal" was established by the courts. Then the Supreme Court finally squashed the nonsense and said that those black kids had equal rights to educational access as the white kids because they're all human beings.
Please don't confuse rights and social norms. Otherwise the slightest majority will get to decide what the rights are for everyone. What Apple violated was an expectation, not a right.
I'm using all of my mod points to mod ancient memes down. Please join me.
it's still a strawman, because the argument isn't that developers have a right to develop iPhone apps in Flash or Java. It's that limiting how developers can use your device makes your product weaker.
Apple is well within their rights to deny 3rd party development environments and to cripple their products as much as they like. And users are certainly free to purchase as many iPhones/iPads/iGlasses as they can afford. But independent developers play an important role in the success of such products and they are equally free to voice concerns over Apple's iron-fisted approach.
So we are pointing out that Apple is handcuffing the functionality of their devices in terms of how they can be used and who can use them. And that the stated reasons for doing so -- that flash/java is buggy and promotes bad apps -- do not actually hold up to examination.
I would add that historically, platforms that are difficult to develop for or place needless restrictions on content creators struggle in the medium to long-term. (Right now the iPhone/iPad has an advantage in terms of user-base, but that is not guaranteed going forward.)
Is it whining to point out that by not supporting popular environments like Flash/Java and by forcing users to use their language and development environment, Apple is giving a huge advantage to their competitors?
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
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.
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?
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.
They are anti-competitive. They are in restraint of trade. They are wrong. End of story, really.
I piss off bigots.
I agree 100% with your concern, that this is a scummy thing to do, that there is quesitonal moral ground for them to get involved with the process. But there is a legitimate motivation buried in there. Apple doesn't want to be in a situation where developers are relying on 3rd parties to push API enhancements. Imagine if when Apple released the 3GS a significant fraction of their developers couldn't write apps that used the compass, all because Adobe didn't get around to it for a week (a month? ever?).
I don't think Apple's interested in having grounds to censor any particular app (they do that already), but making sure they can change things without worrying about 3rd party influence.
Saying "you can't use these tools" is silly.
it's not silly at all when the actual goal is to stifle innovation and competition by artificially raising the cost for developers to sell apps on other platforms like Android, WebOS, and windows mobile.
this has nothing to do with app quality, if it did they would just continue to enforce or tighten up quality requirements before approving.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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.
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.
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
This hasn't been true for a decade, which is why five years ago Apple stopped using LCD monitors on their laptops and iMacs that were easily calibrated for true colors. Photographs whined a bit, and Apple's market share continued to grow.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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.
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.