Obviously it takes profit from AT&T, harming their relationship with Apple. Which is why they removed it for 'duplicating core functionality', otherwise you would just let the consumer decide what's best for them. If they were worried about the idea of an user-installed app making their platform less appealing they would get rid of all the ifart rubbish.
Indeed, there's not a great way to share data between apps on iOS; the 'file sharing' in iOS 3.2/4 seems pretty dreadful and awkward to use. You can push some data around via URLs, but I've not been able to find a system for discovering URL handlers, or having a way to declare support for particular types of data instead of manually listing some application-specific URL schemes.
I think the main reason is because the initially designed an 'appliance' type of system where the device's capability is based on the running app alone. However the more general-purpose these devices become and the more people expect of them the less applicable that model is. I see the clumsy data sharing and multi-tasking implementations being a result of this.
I know many people think MS dominates computing, but iOS is not a derivative of Microsoft Windows. It is much more akin to unix-like platforms, that don't suffer from 'DLL Hell' issues, in fact even MS has solved that issue going forward on their platform. So no, your comment is bullshit.
So I know that your apps are popular. I also know your app has access to some valuable data, so I design a game app that has a hidden payload of replacing one of your shared libraries and grabs the user's valuable data.
Why is the OS allowing this? How is the app loading the shared library code able to modify that loaded code and persist it back to the shared library?
If you let tho OS support user built shared libraries then how are you going to *safely* share them between applications?
Do you know what a shared library is and how they work on a unix-like system?
If I develop a poorly written application that allows the shared library to be modified, what happens to the safety and security of the system?
wtf are you on about? So your 'poorly written application' is loading shared library code, modifying it, then persisting it back to the filesystem and your OS is allowing such a thing to happen? I think not.
It would be nice if you would think about why these decisions would-be made, from a technical point, before you make these kinds of statements.
Sounds to me like you have no idea how the system even works yet you're making these ridiculous assertions.
Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
That's all well and good until you realize the only people benefiting from such moves is apple. Google Voice was great for the consumer, not so great for apple. So fair enough, apple don't have to sell it, but they also lock down the platform so no-one else can sell it either. Meaning the end user is simply stuck with their inferior 'core functionality'.
That's a lot of money Apple has been throwing into making the public familiar with the "pod" brand, even if we only assume a small portion of it was going specifically into the iPod range. Apple has spent over a billion dollars over that three year period selling people an idea about what Apple products are, and more importantly, linking the idea of Apple products to a specific naming convention - the "i" and the "pod".
And that's different from Phone, Tunes, Photo, etc... how? They are all generic words and - by your logic - should not be available for use by other companies in their branding.
It bears noting that various flavors of OpenGL are used on other hardware, such as Sony's various consoles
If you'd actually looked at those results, or even the summaries, you'd see the PSP doesn't use OpenGL, in fact PSPGL is a 3rd party OpenGL-like library for it. The PS3 doesn't use OpenGL, it uses PSGL, which is based on the first version of OpenGL released nearly 12 years ago so it's not relevant to OpenGL at all. So those devices have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the life of OpenGL.
That leads us to the key point which I feel you haven't really acknowledged here, which is that because Flash is proprietary everyone is at the mercy of Adobe to provide the platform plug-in development and design (which as I have stated in my posts above I firmly believe they are failing to do).
Yes that's absolutely correct, in fact i view that as one of the major reasons for flash's possible decline. The end user doesn't really care about whether they are at the mercy of adobe so long as adobe delivers, which, as you pointed out, they have failed to do far too often.
One other point I would also pose to you, is that I know you also claim in your previous post that annoying, buggy and resource-hog arguments against Flash aren't going to go away with HTML 5, but as I said in a post earlier all the issues I experienced HAVE magically gone away whenever I navigate so to the (albeit few but growing) websites that have started implementing HTML 5 so that's really not a rhetorical point for me, that's actually been my experience...;)
Yes the navigation issues are gone, that's definitely a good point. But i don't see HTML5 being any different from flash in terms of the ability of developers to write bad, buggy and under-performing code. The resource-hog arguments really won't stand up - or at least they won't on platforms outside of OSX - and i haven't seen any examples showing HTML5 performing better than Flash in the same scenario. HTML5 has a lot of positives and overall im confident it will be better, but i think there are people out there that see it as solving problems that it really can't.
I know open source users tend to automatically discount anything Apple says but for all the points I've stated above, while I can't speak for Steve Job's reasons, personally I'd much rather see even a (I'm not familiar with the exact terms of use for HTML so I'll call it semi-open) standard take the place of Adobe's rapidly degrading closed platform, wouldn't you?
Yes, i certainly would. It looks like we're 2 sides going for the same conclusion. I think people need to consider HTML5 as an 'open' Flash.
So for example, security issues don't go away, they simply move from a single runtime to each browser's implementation. Is this beneficial? Probably, you can choose the most secure implementation.
Performance and stability is a different matter, instead of one runtime for each platform (windows, linux, osx, android, etc...) each browser has its own implementation. So certain parts of the standard may perform better or worse and be more or less stable in certain browsers on certain platforms. While this does complicate things but it also means browsers will have to be more competitive.
The annoying, buggy and resource-hog arguments against flash aren't magically going away with HTML5, that's my main point. HTML5 is just as likely to be no better in this regard, however the potential to be better is there though it comes at the cost of possible fragmentation. With such a large standard and such broad functionality it's hard to imagine all the implementors are going to be able to produce viable and conforming implementations. That's really the only benefit i see in flash, it's consistent ( don't read as far as performance;) ) in its implementation of the features across platforms.
The security issues aside (which is really the main reason I would argue for cross platform HTML 5 implementation), let me say that clearly you've never tried to use a Mac browser on several flash sites.
Despite the fact that Apple has provided support for developers for several years now to utilize the GPU via Core frameworks Adobe has never updated Flash and as a result it continues to literally bring Macs to a freezing halt due to excessive CPU use, which quite frankly makes it entirely understandable that Apple really doesn't want it on the iPhone as well.
You are right, i can't recall ever using flash on my mac. However on Windows, Linux, Android and Maemo (the latter 2 both on my N900) I haven't really had any issues with it. Of course every now and then you come across a badly coded site, just as you come across badly coded applications and HTML5 won't solve that. I know access to GPU-accelerated functionality was not made available by Apple for quite some time - it was only quite recently - and with the rift between Adobe and Apple I guess that may have played some part in the delay but I thought the new version of flash introduced hardware acceleration for the mac?
oh absolutely, and i understand the benefits of HTML5 over flash, it's just that many HTML5 proponents are touting flash's issues as reasons that it should die and be replaced by HTML5 even though HTML5 doesn't necessarily solve those particular issues, like the one I quoted.
You are absolutely correct that flash doesn't have to die but i think it not being available on some popular devices will push it to significant decline.
Not to mention it's annoying having a solid cable connection and yet the site takes 30 seconds to load because the creators wanted to have a 1920x1600 screen full of 24 different flash animations comprising the page.
But how HTML5 change this? To me Flash is annoying because of it's closed nature, HTML5 will solve this, but it won't solve the problems that most people have with Flash, in fact if Flash was released as a totally open spec so anyone could implement it I don't see how it would be much different to HTML5.
The problem with your argument is that you are making the assumption that whatever replaces Flash, be it HTML 5, or some other new standard is going to be worse immediately.
I think he's making the assumption that HTML5 isn't necessarily going to be better, not that it's going to be worse. It would be nice if re-writing a flash website in html5 made it perform better, but there's nothing that i've seen to support such a thing.
There is no need to use 100% of CPU to animate a couple of little squares on a screen. Yes, maybe the flash content author sucks. But he is using Adobe stuff.
Interestingly, the last reported number of iOS users was 100 million; that's the number announced at WWDC, just back in July -- but Facebook lists more than that amount of active monthly users, so we're not sure how these numbers are being calculated.
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Do explain how so.
Obviously it takes profit from AT&T, harming their relationship with Apple. Which is why they removed it for 'duplicating core functionality', otherwise you would just let the consumer decide what's best for them. If they were worried about the idea of an user-installed app making their platform less appealing they would get rid of all the ifart rubbish.
Indeed, there's not a great way to share data between apps on iOS; the 'file sharing' in iOS 3.2/4 seems pretty dreadful and awkward to use. You can push some data around via URLs, but I've not been able to find a system for discovering URL handlers, or having a way to declare support for particular types of data instead of manually listing some application-specific URL schemes.
I think the main reason is because the initially designed an 'appliance' type of system where the device's capability is based on the running app alone. However the more general-purpose these devices become and the more people expect of them the less applicable that model is. I see the clumsy data sharing and multi-tasking implementations being a result of this.
While iOS isn't the zenith of smartphone computing worldwide (Nokia is), it has a lion's share of the market
That doesn't make sense.
In (a), you're basically asking for DLL hell.
I know many people think MS dominates computing, but iOS is not a derivative of Microsoft Windows. It is much more akin to unix-like platforms, that don't suffer from 'DLL Hell' issues, in fact even MS has solved that issue going forward on their platform. So no, your comment is bullshit.
So I know that your apps are popular. I also know your app has access to some valuable data, so I design a game app that has a hidden payload of replacing one of your shared libraries and grabs the user's valuable data.
Why is the OS allowing this? How is the app loading the shared library code able to modify that loaded code and persist it back to the shared library?
If you let tho OS support user built shared libraries then how are you going to *safely* share them between applications?
Do you know what a shared library is and how they work on a unix-like system?
If I develop a poorly written application that allows the shared library to be modified, what happens to the safety and security of the system?
wtf are you on about? So your 'poorly written application' is loading shared library code, modifying it, then persisting it back to the filesystem and your OS is allowing such a thing to happen? I think not.
It would be nice if you would think about why these decisions would-be made, from a technical point, before you make these kinds of statements.
Sounds to me like you have no idea how the system even works yet you're making these ridiculous assertions.
Google Voice was a good example. At the time it was developed, it offered unlimited texting, which duplicated core functionality, which of course is listed in black in white the agreement.
That's all well and good until you realize the only people benefiting from such moves is apple. Google Voice was great for the consumer, not so great for apple. So fair enough, apple don't have to sell it, but they also lock down the platform so no-one else can sell it either. Meaning the end user is simply stuck with their inferior 'core functionality'.
So Linux is just the kernel, eh?
Yes, of course it is. What else is there?
Cisco Systems owned the iPhone trademark. Apple bought it from them after Cisco sued them. http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/update_on_ciscos_iphone_trademark/
And that's relevant how?
The difference of course being that they don't make a product called a 'pod'.
That's a lot of money Apple has been throwing into making the public familiar with the "pod" brand, even if we only assume a small portion of it was going specifically into the iPod range. Apple has spent over a billion dollars over that three year period selling people an idea about what Apple products are, and more importantly, linking the idea of Apple products to a specific naming convention - the "i" and the "pod".
And that's different from Phone, Tunes, Photo, etc... how? They are all generic words and - by your logic - should not be available for use by other companies in their branding.
...Apple going after people using the word 'Phone', because it might be confused with their iPhone products?
So you have a N900.
(Android is not Linux).
Well it pretty much is, it runs a linux kernel with some extra bits that google added themselves.
It bears noting that various flavors of OpenGL are used on other hardware, such as Sony's various consoles
If you'd actually looked at those results, or even the summaries, you'd see the PSP doesn't use OpenGL, in fact PSPGL is a 3rd party OpenGL-like library for it. The PS3 doesn't use OpenGL, it uses PSGL, which is based on the first version of OpenGL released nearly 12 years ago so it's not relevant to OpenGL at all. So those devices have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the life of OpenGL.
If you're smart you still precalc your display lists, otherwise you end up rebuilding them each frame. Kind of fatal on a DS.
That's more 'common sense' than being smart.
That leads us to the key point which I feel you haven't really acknowledged here, which is that because Flash is proprietary everyone is at the mercy of Adobe to provide the platform plug-in development and design (which as I have stated in my posts above I firmly believe they are failing to do).
Yes that's absolutely correct, in fact i view that as one of the major reasons for flash's possible decline. The end user doesn't really care about whether they are at the mercy of adobe so long as adobe delivers, which, as you pointed out, they have failed to do far too often.
One other point I would also pose to you, is that I know you also claim in your previous post that annoying, buggy and resource-hog arguments against Flash aren't going to go away with HTML 5, but as I said in a post earlier all the issues I experienced HAVE magically gone away whenever I navigate so to the (albeit few but growing) websites that have started implementing HTML 5 so that's really not a rhetorical point for me, that's actually been my experience...;)
Yes the navigation issues are gone, that's definitely a good point. But i don't see HTML5 being any different from flash in terms of the ability of developers to write bad, buggy and under-performing code. The resource-hog arguments really won't stand up - or at least they won't on platforms outside of OSX - and i haven't seen any examples showing HTML5 performing better than Flash in the same scenario. HTML5 has a lot of positives and overall im confident it will be better, but i think there are people out there that see it as solving problems that it really can't.
If I can play a 3D game at high res full screen without issue, but flash makes the computer beg for mercy, there is a problem.
That's probably using 100% CPU too.
I know open source users tend to automatically discount anything Apple says but for all the points I've stated above, while I can't speak for Steve Job's reasons, personally I'd much rather see even a (I'm not familiar with the exact terms of use for HTML so I'll call it semi-open) standard take the place of Adobe's rapidly degrading closed platform, wouldn't you?
Yes, i certainly would. It looks like we're 2 sides going for the same conclusion. I think people need to consider HTML5 as an 'open' Flash.
So for example, security issues don't go away, they simply move from a single runtime to each browser's implementation. Is this beneficial? Probably, you can choose the most secure implementation.
Performance and stability is a different matter, instead of one runtime for each platform (windows, linux, osx, android, etc...) each browser has its own implementation. So certain parts of the standard may perform better or worse and be more or less stable in certain browsers on certain platforms. While this does complicate things but it also means browsers will have to be more competitive.
The annoying, buggy and resource-hog arguments against flash aren't magically going away with HTML5, that's my main point. HTML5 is just as likely to be no better in this regard, however the potential to be better is there though it comes at the cost of possible fragmentation. With such a large standard and such broad functionality it's hard to imagine all the implementors are going to be able to produce viable and conforming implementations. That's really the only benefit i see in flash, it's consistent ( don't read as far as performance ;) ) in its implementation of the features across platforms.
The security issues aside (which is really the main reason I would argue for cross platform HTML 5 implementation), let me say that clearly you've never tried to use a Mac browser on several flash sites.
Despite the fact that Apple has provided support for developers for several years now to utilize the GPU via Core frameworks Adobe has never updated Flash and as a result it continues to literally bring Macs to a freezing halt due to excessive CPU use, which quite frankly makes it entirely understandable that Apple really doesn't want it on the iPhone as well.
You are right, i can't recall ever using flash on my mac. However on Windows, Linux, Android and Maemo (the latter 2 both on my N900) I haven't really had any issues with it. Of course every now and then you come across a badly coded site, just as you come across badly coded applications and HTML5 won't solve that. I know access to GPU-accelerated functionality was not made available by Apple for quite some time - it was only quite recently - and with the rift between Adobe and Apple I guess that may have played some part in the delay but I thought the new version of flash introduced hardware acceleration for the mac?
oh absolutely, and i understand the benefits of HTML5 over flash, it's just that many HTML5 proponents are touting flash's issues as reasons that it should die and be replaced by HTML5 even though HTML5 doesn't necessarily solve those particular issues, like the one I quoted.
You are absolutely correct that flash doesn't have to die but i think it not being available on some popular devices will push it to significant decline.
the policy of a computer letting a user do EXACTLY what they want to do CAN NEVER BE "WRONG".
Why were these changes made? Because the spec was wrong, that's why.
Not to mention it's annoying having a solid cable connection and yet the site takes 30 seconds to load because the creators wanted to have a 1920x1600 screen full of 24 different flash animations comprising the page.
But how HTML5 change this? To me Flash is annoying because of it's closed nature, HTML5 will solve this, but it won't solve the problems that most people have with Flash, in fact if Flash was released as a totally open spec so anyone could implement it I don't see how it would be much different to HTML5.
The problem with your argument is that you are making the assumption that whatever replaces Flash, be it HTML 5, or some other new standard is going to be worse immediately.
I think he's making the assumption that HTML5 isn't necessarily going to be better, not that it's going to be worse. It would be nice if re-writing a flash website in html5 made it perform better, but there's nothing that i've seen to support such a thing.
There is no need to use 100% of CPU to animate a couple of little squares on a screen. Yes, maybe the flash content author sucks. But he is using Adobe stuff.
How is that going to be any different in HTML5?
Here is the source:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/25/facebook-mobile-app-stats-shocker-104-million-iphone-users-12/
Even they admit something's not right:
Interestingly, the last reported number of iOS users was 100 million; that's the number announced at WWDC, just back in July -- but Facebook lists more than that amount of active monthly users, so we're not sure how these numbers are being calculated.