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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
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!
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!
Heh. Would I get an achievement for that one?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
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
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.
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.
You too? I thought I was the only one who was always right about everything! Welcome to the cool club, my man.
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.
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.
Rules of Conduct:
#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.
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.
Yea, Microsoft's closed practices have literally made their products obsolete...
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
What it boils down to is this. The free market Slashdotter's love so much? It is defining the Apple turf. The App Store is fine and it doesn't need you to write applications for it. In a free market, if there really were so many issues with Apple's lockdown, Apple would be forced to open up a bit. But they aren't. Because people still work with them. And that is how the free market works. Making Apple open up isn't a free market, it's the opposite. But of course on Slashdot, "free market" is misunderstood term used whenever the poster wants to somehow rationalize why everything should go his way.
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.
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
Then install whatever the hell you want. Apple isn't *preventing* you from installing flash on your iPhone, it's merely making it difficult.
Actually, they're making it illegal.
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.
Yeah but that mean that if I don't take the pi^h^hmick I can play my stuff anywhere. If I decide to defect to some other player I can get the music to play (I might need to convert it... but that's a given). Sounds in my best interest. OK I can't give my music away across the Internet, but I'm not convinced I should have that right.
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.
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.
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.