It's been awhile since Apple has been a "little guy", especially with small electronic devices (iPod, anyone?) -- and Apple has certainly shown themselves willing to abuse what power they have.
This is the exact right thing to do if you plan to use JQuery. Yeah, sure, you could be an idiot and host it yourself (it's an OSS project, after all), but then you're wasting people's bandwidth
All 24k of it.
websites being run by people who actually know what they're doing.
That, or people who value the privacy of their users, and who would like to not have their website depend on Google being reachable, alive, and trustworthy. Sure, it probably will be, but can you say, "Single Point of Failure"?
Furthermore, it reduces load on your own server
Well, again, by 24k. Is that really worth it?
Now, I can see the appeal. I'm not saying you're automatically a moron for using this. But at the same time, don't assume that the only reason someone wouldn't use Google's APIs is because they don't know what they're doing.
I took out the jquery script tag, and replaced $(...) with document.onload
Not equivalent. $(...) tries to use the onDOMReady event -- you don't want to wait for all resources (images, etc) to be loaded before JavaScript works, do you?
Thing is, it's a lot of fuss and bother for something that just isn't very good.
I agree, but again, I think that should be my decision, not Apple's. As a potential use case, imagine a next-gen iPad (maybe when they finally get smooth 1080p playback), plug it into a TV, watch Hulu on that.
I like that I never even have to consider what is good and what isn't. It is a weight off my shoulders.
What you're missing is that you can have both. Again, what Apple has done here is replicate one of the core advantages of the Linux concept of a distro or repository.
95% of the time, I don't have to think about it. An additional 4% of the time, I do think about it, and I go with the app that's in the Ubuntu repositories already. Of the remaining 1% of the time, I'm still as likely as not to just not bother. That leaves 0.5% of the time when I'll actually research an app enough to decide whether it's worth downloading outside the main distro channels.
every time I did so I'd be terrified it'd screw up my phone
So you wouldn't do it. So what? Why is it so terrifying that the option would be there?
Let me put it this way: Does the fact that you could theoretically jailbreak an iPhone rob you of that peace of mind, that "weight off your shoulders"? Is the fact that it's illegal, or voiding the warranty, really enough to stop you? How about the availability of the Cydia App Store?
Now here's the crucial point: Suppose Cydia was legal, and available without any jailbreaking. Would that destroy the iPhone for you? Wouldn't you still be every bit as free to just relax with the App Store instead?
I can understand not wanting to be forced to make a choice. I can't understand wishing for the choice to be taken away from you. It's possible to avoid making a choice without having the choice removed from you.
And on my phone, I don't care enough. If it was my main computer, sure, I'd be clamouring for freedom with the best of 'em, but even then, that is because I am a geeky type.
I find it odd that you care for your main computer more than your phone, a device you likely have available far more often.
Or, conversely, some of your comments seem to suggest that you're that much more paranoid about losing the use of your phone than your computer, to which I'd be equally bewildered -- I have far more data that I care about on my computer than my phone. The only thing my phone has that my computer doesn't is an extensive list of phone numbers for people I know, and that's only because I have a cheap (free) "non-smartphone" -- if I had a phone I could program, I'd have it syncing with my laptop whenever it's in wireless range.
I suspect it is only geeks with an idealistic bee in their bonnet that are making such loud noises about it.
Well, that and people who lack that foresight (those ideals?) and find their app rejected for some arbitrary reason. Months (years?) of work gone, because some asshat at Apple decided to change the policy.
That, and a few users who want things like tethering.
It's perfectly possible most people don't care. But then, most people didn't care about getting the Internet on their phones before the iPhone. Henry Ford is quoted as saying, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
I've never had that problem from anyone with an iPhone...and I rarely have that problem from users of a Mac...I wonder why that is?
Good point. After all, Macs are closed down too, you can only install apps from the App Store, and they don't allow Flash at all...
Oh wait. Macs aren't exactly open source, but you can download anything you want, just like on Windows.
People with iPhone's are happy, people with Mac's are happy. People with PCs and shitphones are often unhappy.
Huh. So people can be happy or unhappy, independent of whether a device is open or closed.
Looks like you just refuted your own argument. Need I say more?
How about people who want an appliance that just works simply and keeps them from shooting themselves in the foot should buy from Apple and power users should get PCs running slackware and an Android phone. Then everyone's happy, right? So why are you so miserable?
Because the more people there are using Apple, the more likely it is I'll have to deal with them.
Let's pretend I took your advice five or ten years ago:
How about people who don't want to know what a "browser" is and just want "The Internet" should just use IE and power users should get Slackware and Mozilla. Then everyone's happy, right?
Do you remember why that didn't work? Those average users wanted us to make sure our websites worked on IE, thus increasing all web development time by at least 20-25%, if not much more. It's clear why, in that environment, most of us just stopped caring about supporting anything other than IE -- we'd have to support IE anyway, so why support actual standards?
So that was actually worse for everyone.
The power users using Mozilla on Slackware (that's right, before Firefox) found that most websites sucked on anything other than IE, and plenty of websites were downright unusable. Some even blocked other browsers by user-agent!
The web developers had a choice: Either work with IE, which is a pain to work with and essentially forces you to do all your development on Windows, or work with IE and real browsers, thus forcing you to boot Windows often and spend a huge chunk of development time dealing with IE quirks versus the way the rest of the world does things.
The ordinary people you keep appealing to weren't happy either -- they had to buy all sorts of antivirus software, and they got viruses anyway, and spyware. And while they didn't care (yet), they were missing out on tabbed browsing, good popup blocking, adblocking, and many other things.
The only people who really benefited from that arrangement were Microsoft, because everyone was that much more firmly locked into Windows. How fucked up is that, when a website is a reason you can't switch from a particular OS?
But I certainly have a personal stake in it -- every user who continues to use IE is a reason for me to be forced into supporting IE, which makes my job that much harder and less fun. I tell that to everyone I see using IE. Most of them switch. If I'd just quietly used Firefox (or Konqueror, or Chrome, or Opera), IE would still be well over 90% of users.
The same thing is playing out today. While I can bury my head in the sand or plug my ears and sing "lalalala", that does nothing to stop the fact that Apple is grabbing a huge chunk of market share, meaning several things are happening: First, a lot of jobs are going to iPhone/iPad development, meaning I may at some point have to write software for the thing, and deal with Apple's ludicrous restrictions. If I stubbornly refuse to, it means opportunities for other things will shrink. It also means that, as a user, there will be applications I won't be able to use, because people develop them for the iPhone and nothing else, and Apple's outright ban of cross-platform frameworks makes this even more likely.
If you actually read my entire post and not just that snippet it's painfully obvious that I'm comparing cellphone operating systems and console operating systems to those running on desktop computers and as part of this comparison I point out that cellphone operating systems tend to be more restricted than those found on general purpose computing devices...
And I was pointing out that they don't seem to be, and certainly seem to be less restricted than the iPhone.
This combined with the fact that the Xbox which the parent poster claimed he was more comfortable with being a closed platform than a cellphone in fact has a lot more in common with said general purpose computing devices than the average cellphone when it comes to hardware made me question the parent poster's reasoning.
I didn't particularly feel that needed to be addressed. Why does it matter what hardware is being used internally? The issue is what it's being used for. I don't know about Blu-Ray players, but when I was working on HD-DVD, I noticed that these tended to have a Linux OS and a full x86-compatible CPU. It bothered me a bit that I couldn't do whatever I wanted on these systems, but really, how much does it matter? They were sold as a dumb movie player, not as an application platform.
Similarly, the Xbox is not sold as a general-purpose application platform, but something specifically for games. Does it even have a web browser?
I'm not saying I agree with either of those. I would much rather they be open.
But the iPhone is very much sold as a general-purpose computing platform, and the iPad even more so. Given that, can you see why someone might be more comfortable with a game console being locked down? It's got nothing to do with hardware.
Also, have you ever developed apps for Symbian phones (which were extremely popular not that long ago)?
Nope, but I also don't recall those being sold even as "smartphones." That title belonged to Windows Mobile and a few scattered Linux offerings, ever since Palm died.
I apologize if you feel I misrepresented you, but I do disagree with what you actually said.
Most users don't know what's good for them; they are not qualified to make this kind of choice.
In the same vein, I could say that you're not qualified to buy an iPhone -- it's bad for you and bad for the developers, and really, bad for everyone except Apple and web developers.
Aren't you glad you have a choice? Because if I made your choices for you, you'd be running Android, Maemo, Moblin, or maybe a netbook with Chrome OS.
Around these 'average' users, the message would be passed "just install Flash to get Youtube/Hulu/random shitty game working on your iPhone", and they would.
Then a similar rumor could be passed: "Just disable Flash when you don't need it, saves battery."
Also, funny you should mention those three: YouTube doesn't need Flash. I seem to remember something about Hulu going HTML5 at some point, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a native iPhone app. And there are tons of random shitty games in the App Store.
But the question is, again, is it better for sites like Hulu to drain battery, or is it better for sites like Hulu to not fucking work?
I would call myself a geek, and I like that Apple is relieving me of decisions regarding my iPhone.
You're confusing two things. Freedom doesn't require you to make a certain choice, it allows you to make that choice. So, for example:
I like that it is reliable, and I don't have to wonder whether installing an app will make things slow down, or erase my data, or drain my battery or whatever.
And there's nothing stopping you from picking an app store and just using that.
Take Android. I can install random crap from the Internet, or I can just use a few app stores I trust.
Linux distros have had this figured out for decades -- pick a distro and use the repositories, and you can install anything you want without worrying about screwing things up. But you have the option of cautiously going beyond that garden.
Let me see if I can get this through your head. I agree with freedom of speech. I agree that you should be allowed to say pretty much whatever you want. However, if you make lewd comments about my mother (using your right to freedom of speech), you're a dick.
Now, you have a right to be a dick. I'll still fight to the death to defend your right to say what you want, but that doesn't make you less of a dick.
I'm not saying Apple should be restricted here. I'm saying I don't like how Apple is behaving -- and believe it or not, whether or not I personally own an Apple device, this does affect me.
So I'm not trying to use the force of law to effect the change I want. I'm trying to use the force of rhetoric -- you know, speaking up about why I disagree with it.
take it a bit further... Jane Public enables flash to watch the 'OMG ponies' video-of-the-day. Are you confident that every single user would then think "Oh, now I have to turn Flash back off, otherwise my phone will now suck".
Nope, but I'm confident enough would that one of her friends would tell her. Or maybe she calls Apple support, or take it into a "genius", and the first thing they suggest is turning Flash off.
Or maybe have something pop up when Flash is being particularly battery-sucking and remind the user that they've got it on, and would they like to turn it off and save battery.
As it is, Jane Public can't watch OMG ponies at all -- and WTF is with that stereotype, after all? As soon as it's a "stupid user", she's female and wants to watch ponies? It's not John Public and porn? Anyway...
Tell me again how this benefits Apple ?
I never claimed it did. I claim it benefits pretty much everyone except Apple.
Translating Flash to ObjC and then compiling it doesn't remove any of the bad algorithmic design in Flash unless they rewrite Flash itself.
That would be effectively rewriting Flash itself. Actual Objective-C output from a Flash script means a significant chunk of the Flash runtime is just gone.
Apple either had to capitulate at that point, and accept all of the problems with Flash on their devices...
No, not really -- again, they could've left it disabled in the browser. As it is, they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater -- it is now not legal to distribute any app for the iPhone which is written using any third-party frameworks or tools, not just the ones that suck.
Again, this is something which benefits Apple and hurts both developers and users.
I'd say that if Adobe had done the right thing, and made Flash better (efficient, stable), and ported *that* to Android...
I think that's the plan.
I share your skepticism that Adobe can pull it off. I agree that Flash sucks, and I'm glad it's dying. I just don't agree with Apple's methods, and I think the casualties are unacceptable.
most cellphone operating systems have tended to force apps into some kind of limited "sandbox"
Which operating systems would those be? Neither handheld Linux nor Windows Mobile seems to be restricting anything anywhere near a game console or the App Store.
There are already Flash apps in the App Store, published before the updated agreement. Perhaps Apple determined that they did, in fact, suck?
Well, according to you, they're still in the app store, so apparently not.
The one thing that nobody ever talks about is, we know that Apple has been doing a lot of automated processing on the binaries to ensure they are in compliance with other areas of the SDK upon submission. What if they determined that output from other compilers were breaking their system...
Then that's really their problem. How hard would it be to make the automated system capable of testing compliance on this "output from other compilers"?
Remember, Adobe was offering to compile to Objective-C. I really don't see how that would cause this kind of problem anyway.
Developers have been pushing for faster approval times since the App Store opened. Automated compliance testing is the way to make that happen.
No, relaxing douchey rules like how much clothing your aerobics instructor has to wear is the way to make that happen. Allowing third-party app stores is a way to make it happen rather quickly.
Is it better to use any tool you want, but wait months for approval? Or use Apple's own tools and have it approved almost instantaneously?
Is it better for Apple to make that decision for you? Or to be able to decide yourself whether it's worth the wait to use your own tool?
But if you want continued support and certain functionality that is subject to change; you need to patch your PS3 occasionally.
Even that isn't the issue. The issue is that the patch is effectively non-optional. Sony doesn't have to lift a finger -- your PS3 is going to break eventually, and you will need to either repair it or purchase a new one. What's more, if you're working in supercomputing, presumably you'd want to add nodes to your cluster at some point.
I thought this was par for the course? If you buy World of Warcraft and then, six months later, put out a patch that makes your Hunter less fun to play...that's kinda what happens, right?
Well, except that WoW never was "yours" to begin with, while there's a reasonable expectation that a PS3 is. Also, this is more akin to removing the hunter class entirely, after an extensive ad campaign promoting hunters. Even that would be more tolerable, as WoW is more a rental -- Sony already has your money, so they have very little monetary incentive to keep these people happy.
Was installing Linux on the PS3 ever officially supported by Sony? Did they market that as a feature you get with a PS3?
Yes and yes. And not just Linux -- remember, "Other OS."
If you've only ever used a single language, you don't "understand programming" enough to instantly pick up any language.
If you've worked in at least a few, particularly a few from different areas -- asm, C, Java, Python, Lisp, Erlang, and Haskell would be my current list -- then you'll be able to pick up other languages, like JavaScript, C#, Ruby, etc.
But if you've only ever worked in Java, C will be hard, because you'll not only be learning a new syntax, you'll also be learning the concept of pointers, pointer arithmetic, and manual memory management. The reverse is also true -- if you've only ever worked in C, picking up Java will be hard, because you've probably never done any object-oriented programming. The same is true going higher-level -- if you've only ever worked in Java, it'll be hard to adjust to actual object-oriented programming in Ruby and JavaScript, as opposed to the class- and type-oriented programming of Java. Then again, if you've only worked in JavaScript, it'll be hard (and annoying!) to go to a language like Java, where types and interfaces matter.
These may not be as hard as learning to program in the first place -- though your first functional language will certainly feel that way. I certainly don't use all the languages I know, or list on my resume. But knowing a variety of languages is important to being able to grok any one language completely, let alone being able to pick up new languages in a snap.
The choice is Apple's, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
It would be just as buggy and crash-prone [zdnet.com] as it is right now on the Mac... Because it's on every darn page on the web - for adverts - it'd be running almost constantly as the user uses Safari; so the other down-side comes into play - it's a huge battery hog.
Granted, yes, Flash sucks. As a user, I'm not sure I'd install it.
But that should be up to the user, not Apple. If Apple allowed Flash on the iPhone right tomorrow, would you be required to install it? I suppose iPhone users are used to Apple making their decisions for you, but think about that -- what if they actually made it your choice?
Forget the browser for a moment, though. They're banning it and all other third-party frameworks in an effort to prevent cross-platform applications, even if they compile to Objective-C, which is downright evil. More evil than anything Microsoft ever did. To claim that this has anything to do with battery life or crashing is moronic -- Apple already presumably checks things like this before they approve apps, right? And Adobe was offering to compile to Objective-C, so most of the bugginess and battery-draining would hopefully go away. In either case, it seems downright fascist to ban a tool because it might make the experience suck, instead of evaluating the resulting app and see if it does make the experience suck.
Now, I agree that this is good for Apple, in the short term. It's also good for the Web, in the short term, because it forces people to start using HTML5. But in the long term, I think it will come back to bite them, and in any case, don't pretend it's a good thing for either iPhone/Pad developers or users.
Buy a kindle? Have YOUR PAID FOR books removed at amazons will.
Not Amazon's will, the publisher's will. And they at least refunded your money.
Sony hasn't returned a dime.
Buy an apple product?
Again, to be fair, Apple never promised more than people are getting. Also, as far as I know, they haven't actually killed any purchased applications -- they'll remove it from the store, but not from your device. (Though, point against Apple: If I recall, the "I Am Rich" guy was never paid.)
Sony not only sold the PS3 with this feature enabled, they advertised it. "You're not just buying a game console, you're buying a powerful computer system!"
If sony's terms of service said something about taking away features at their own will, it is not a valid part of the contract. Here in america, we have laws that prevent mega-corporations from making insanely complicated contracts and inserting clauses about how they own your soul and can harvest your body parts whenever they please.
Do we really? Because it seems more like we have the opposite. Just look at the tax code -- seems almost deliberately designed to force the average person to have to hire someone to understand it. If it wasn't insanely complicated, H&R block wouldn't have to exist.
Sure, until something goes wrong and you need to repair or replace it. Then you're either going to have the repair shop install the upgrade, or the replacement come with the upgrade.
Actually, that was my point -- Chrome OS reportedly takes seven seconds to boot, and they're working on decreasing that. A full Linux system will take much longer unless you're trimming it down yourself, and if you're trimming it down, aren't you just effectively making Chrome OS anyway?
And if you are doing a strictly web browser like computer and don't want to use Windows, why not just build a netbook or computer with pre-installed Linux?
Because it will take longer than seven seconds to boot.
Out of curiosity, I ran lspci and Google'd a few of the companies that showed up. Marvell had $2.81 billion last year. Ricoh was something like 21 billion. Everything else was large brands like Intel and nVidia.
I was surprised -- I would've thought ARM would be bigger relative to those.
People probably aren't willing to pay a minimum monthly hosting fee for their own domain/site. And if they were they'd rather pay it to a company to put their crap up rather than have to do it themselves. And why pay for it when they can get it for free* at Facebook?
That's all well and good, except the "Facebook" part. Email is already just such a distributed system. I run my own mailserver, but it's far from a requirement -- GMail is there for whoever wants it. But there are alternatives to GMail, and GMail has to play nice with them.
It's not the free service that's a problem, it's the walled garden.
Re:You signed away this "right" by picking Apple.
on
Flash Is Not a Right
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There's the post where you claim that you have to rewrite an application "from the ground up" to support iPhone and other phones. The truth is that you can write your application in several languages, particularly C variants.
To be honest, I wasn't aware C was allowed on any of these. Last I knew, Android only allowed development in Java, or in something targeting their Java VM.
It's also worth mentioning that Steve Jobs does seem to be encouraging rewriting your app from the ground up -- in particular, if your app is written in Flash.
The other is where you claim that Flash isn't just as closed as other platforms.
That much is still true. Flash doesn't dictate what you may do with Flash. Apple does dictate what you may do with the iPhone.
I'm sure you've told many other lies in other stories.
So let's see... One honest mistake, the other you haven't shown to be false. Neither of these qualifies as a "lie."
You also seem to have misjudged my motives by a long shot, aside from outright calling me a liar. I am not in favor of Flash any more than I'm in favor of the iPhone.
Slashdot Mirror
It's been awhile since Apple has been a "little guy", especially with small electronic devices (iPod, anyone?) -- and Apple has certainly shown themselves willing to abuse what power they have.
It might work, but then HP will not support it.
Well, by doing this, HP's demonstrated how little their support is likely worth.
Which law would you like me to break?
Law? There's no law involved here.
This is the exact right thing to do if you plan to use JQuery. Yeah, sure, you could be an idiot and host it yourself (it's an OSS project, after all), but then you're wasting people's bandwidth
All 24k of it.
websites being run by people who actually know what they're doing.
That, or people who value the privacy of their users, and who would like to not have their website depend on Google being reachable, alive, and trustworthy. Sure, it probably will be, but can you say, "Single Point of Failure"?
Furthermore, it reduces load on your own server
Well, again, by 24k. Is that really worth it?
Now, I can see the appeal. I'm not saying you're automatically a moron for using this. But at the same time, don't assume that the only reason someone wouldn't use Google's APIs is because they don't know what they're doing.
I took out the jquery script tag, and replaced $(...) with document.onload
Not equivalent. $(...) tries to use the onDOMReady event -- you don't want to wait for all resources (images, etc) to be loaded before JavaScript works, do you?
But only major label games.
Xbox Live Arcade, though I guess that's on the 360...
The Xbox does not, but the comparably powerful Wii has Internet Channel powered by Opera.
Comparably powerful to the original Xbox. I would be curious how much use that sees -- it seems about as useful as WebTV.
Thing is, it's a lot of fuss and bother for something that just isn't very good.
I agree, but again, I think that should be my decision, not Apple's. As a potential use case, imagine a next-gen iPad (maybe when they finally get smooth 1080p playback), plug it into a TV, watch Hulu on that.
I like that I never even have to consider what is good and what isn't. It is a weight off my shoulders.
What you're missing is that you can have both. Again, what Apple has done here is replicate one of the core advantages of the Linux concept of a distro or repository.
95% of the time, I don't have to think about it. An additional 4% of the time, I do think about it, and I go with the app that's in the Ubuntu repositories already. Of the remaining 1% of the time, I'm still as likely as not to just not bother. That leaves 0.5% of the time when I'll actually research an app enough to decide whether it's worth downloading outside the main distro channels.
every time I did so I'd be terrified it'd screw up my phone
So you wouldn't do it. So what? Why is it so terrifying that the option would be there?
Let me put it this way: Does the fact that you could theoretically jailbreak an iPhone rob you of that peace of mind, that "weight off your shoulders"? Is the fact that it's illegal, or voiding the warranty, really enough to stop you? How about the availability of the Cydia App Store?
Now here's the crucial point: Suppose Cydia was legal, and available without any jailbreaking. Would that destroy the iPhone for you? Wouldn't you still be every bit as free to just relax with the App Store instead?
I can understand not wanting to be forced to make a choice. I can't understand wishing for the choice to be taken away from you. It's possible to avoid making a choice without having the choice removed from you.
And on my phone, I don't care enough. If it was my main computer, sure, I'd be clamouring for freedom with the best of 'em, but even then, that is because I am a geeky type.
I find it odd that you care for your main computer more than your phone, a device you likely have available far more often.
Or, conversely, some of your comments seem to suggest that you're that much more paranoid about losing the use of your phone than your computer, to which I'd be equally bewildered -- I have far more data that I care about on my computer than my phone. The only thing my phone has that my computer doesn't is an extensive list of phone numbers for people I know, and that's only because I have a cheap (free) "non-smartphone" -- if I had a phone I could program, I'd have it syncing with my laptop whenever it's in wireless range.
I suspect it is only geeks with an idealistic bee in their bonnet that are making such loud noises about it.
Well, that and people who lack that foresight (those ideals?) and find their app rejected for some arbitrary reason. Months (years?) of work gone, because some asshat at Apple decided to change the policy.
That, and a few users who want things like tethering.
It's perfectly possible most people don't care. But then, most people didn't care about getting the Internet on their phones before the iPhone. Henry Ford is quoted as saying, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
I've never had that problem from anyone with an iPhone...and I rarely have that problem from users of a Mac...I wonder why that is?
Good point. After all, Macs are closed down too, you can only install apps from the App Store, and they don't allow Flash at all...
Oh wait. Macs aren't exactly open source, but you can download anything you want, just like on Windows.
People with iPhone's are happy, people with Mac's are happy. People with PCs and shitphones are often unhappy.
Huh. So people can be happy or unhappy, independent of whether a device is open or closed.
Looks like you just refuted your own argument. Need I say more?
How about people who want an appliance that just works simply and keeps them from shooting themselves in the foot should buy from Apple and power users should get PCs running slackware and an Android phone. Then everyone's happy, right? So why are you so miserable?
Because the more people there are using Apple, the more likely it is I'll have to deal with them.
Let's pretend I took your advice five or ten years ago:
How about people who don't want to know what a "browser" is and just want "The Internet" should just use IE and power users should get Slackware and Mozilla. Then everyone's happy, right?
Do you remember why that didn't work? Those average users wanted us to make sure our websites worked on IE, thus increasing all web development time by at least 20-25%, if not much more. It's clear why, in that environment, most of us just stopped caring about supporting anything other than IE -- we'd have to support IE anyway, so why support actual standards?
So that was actually worse for everyone.
The power users using Mozilla on Slackware (that's right, before Firefox) found that most websites sucked on anything other than IE, and plenty of websites were downright unusable. Some even blocked other browsers by user-agent!
The web developers had a choice: Either work with IE, which is a pain to work with and essentially forces you to do all your development on Windows, or work with IE and real browsers, thus forcing you to boot Windows often and spend a huge chunk of development time dealing with IE quirks versus the way the rest of the world does things.
The ordinary people you keep appealing to weren't happy either -- they had to buy all sorts of antivirus software, and they got viruses anyway, and spyware. And while they didn't care (yet), they were missing out on tabbed browsing, good popup blocking, adblocking, and many other things.
The only people who really benefited from that arrangement were Microsoft, because everyone was that much more firmly locked into Windows. How fucked up is that, when a website is a reason you can't switch from a particular OS?
But I certainly have a personal stake in it -- every user who continues to use IE is a reason for me to be forced into supporting IE, which makes my job that much harder and less fun. I tell that to everyone I see using IE. Most of them switch. If I'd just quietly used Firefox (or Konqueror, or Chrome, or Opera), IE would still be well over 90% of users.
The same thing is playing out today. While I can bury my head in the sand or plug my ears and sing "lalalala", that does nothing to stop the fact that Apple is grabbing a huge chunk of market share, meaning several things are happening: First, a lot of jobs are going to iPhone/iPad development, meaning I may at some point have to write software for the thing, and deal with Apple's ludicrous restrictions. If I stubbornly refuse to, it means opportunities for other things will shrink. It also means that, as a user, there will be applications I won't be able to use, because people develop them for the iPhone and nothing else, and Apple's outright ban of cross-platform frameworks makes this even more likely.
Now, I'm certainly going to vote with my do
How about not misquoting me?
How am I misquoting you?
If you actually read my entire post and not just that snippet it's painfully obvious that I'm comparing cellphone operating systems and console operating systems to those running on desktop computers and as part of this comparison I point out that cellphone operating systems tend to be more restricted than those found on general purpose computing devices...
And I was pointing out that they don't seem to be, and certainly seem to be less restricted than the iPhone.
This combined with the fact that the Xbox which the parent poster claimed he was more comfortable with being a closed platform than a cellphone in fact has a lot more in common with said general purpose computing devices than the average cellphone when it comes to hardware made me question the parent poster's reasoning.
I didn't particularly feel that needed to be addressed. Why does it matter what hardware is being used internally? The issue is what it's being used for. I don't know about Blu-Ray players, but when I was working on HD-DVD, I noticed that these tended to have a Linux OS and a full x86-compatible CPU. It bothered me a bit that I couldn't do whatever I wanted on these systems, but really, how much does it matter? They were sold as a dumb movie player, not as an application platform.
Similarly, the Xbox is not sold as a general-purpose application platform, but something specifically for games. Does it even have a web browser?
I'm not saying I agree with either of those. I would much rather they be open.
But the iPhone is very much sold as a general-purpose computing platform, and the iPad even more so. Given that, can you see why someone might be more comfortable with a game console being locked down? It's got nothing to do with hardware.
Also, have you ever developed apps for Symbian phones (which were extremely popular not that long ago)?
Nope, but I also don't recall those being sold even as "smartphones." That title belonged to Windows Mobile and a few scattered Linux offerings, ever since Palm died.
I apologize if you feel I misrepresented you, but I do disagree with what you actually said.
Most users don't know what's good for them; they are not qualified to make this kind of choice.
In the same vein, I could say that you're not qualified to buy an iPhone -- it's bad for you and bad for the developers, and really, bad for everyone except Apple and web developers.
Aren't you glad you have a choice? Because if I made your choices for you, you'd be running Android, Maemo, Moblin, or maybe a netbook with Chrome OS.
Around these 'average' users, the message would be passed "just install Flash to get Youtube/Hulu/random shitty game working on your iPhone", and they would.
Then a similar rumor could be passed: "Just disable Flash when you don't need it, saves battery."
Also, funny you should mention those three: YouTube doesn't need Flash. I seem to remember something about Hulu going HTML5 at some point, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a native iPhone app. And there are tons of random shitty games in the App Store.
But the question is, again, is it better for sites like Hulu to drain battery, or is it better for sites like Hulu to not fucking work?
I would call myself a geek, and I like that Apple is relieving me of decisions regarding my iPhone.
You're confusing two things. Freedom doesn't require you to make a certain choice, it allows you to make that choice. So, for example:
I like that it is reliable, and I don't have to wonder whether installing an app will make things slow down, or erase my data, or drain my battery or whatever.
And there's nothing stopping you from picking an app store and just using that.
Take Android. I can install random crap from the Internet, or I can just use a few app stores I trust.
Linux distros have had this figured out for decades -- pick a distro and use the repositories, and you can install anything you want without worrying about screwing things up. But you have the option of cautiously going beyond that garden.
"People" or "Users" shouldn't be able to dictate by force (law)
And when did I say or imply that there should be a law?
If you don't like it don't buy Apple, geez is that so f'ing hard?
I don't. Now what?
Let me see if I can get this through your head. I agree with freedom of speech. I agree that you should be allowed to say pretty much whatever you want. However, if you make lewd comments about my mother (using your right to freedom of speech), you're a dick.
Now, you have a right to be a dick. I'll still fight to the death to defend your right to say what you want, but that doesn't make you less of a dick.
I'm not saying Apple should be restricted here. I'm saying I don't like how Apple is behaving -- and believe it or not, whether or not I personally own an Apple device, this does affect me.
So I'm not trying to use the force of law to effect the change I want. I'm trying to use the force of rhetoric -- you know, speaking up about why I disagree with it.
take it a bit further... Jane Public enables flash to watch the 'OMG ponies' video-of-the-day. Are you confident that every single user would then think "Oh, now I have to turn Flash back off, otherwise my phone will now suck".
Nope, but I'm confident enough would that one of her friends would tell her. Or maybe she calls Apple support, or take it into a "genius", and the first thing they suggest is turning Flash off.
Or maybe have something pop up when Flash is being particularly battery-sucking and remind the user that they've got it on, and would they like to turn it off and save battery.
As it is, Jane Public can't watch OMG ponies at all -- and WTF is with that stereotype, after all? As soon as it's a "stupid user", she's female and wants to watch ponies? It's not John Public and porn? Anyway...
Tell me again how this benefits Apple ?
I never claimed it did. I claim it benefits pretty much everyone except Apple.
Translating Flash to ObjC and then compiling it doesn't remove any of the bad algorithmic design in Flash unless they rewrite Flash itself.
That would be effectively rewriting Flash itself. Actual Objective-C output from a Flash script means a significant chunk of the Flash runtime is just gone.
Apple either had to capitulate at that point, and accept all of the problems with Flash on their devices...
No, not really -- again, they could've left it disabled in the browser. As it is, they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater -- it is now not legal to distribute any app for the iPhone which is written using any third-party frameworks or tools, not just the ones that suck.
Again, this is something which benefits Apple and hurts both developers and users.
I'd say that if Adobe had done the right thing, and made Flash better (efficient, stable), and ported *that* to Android...
I think that's the plan.
I share your skepticism that Adobe can pull it off. I agree that Flash sucks, and I'm glad it's dying. I just don't agree with Apple's methods, and I think the casualties are unacceptable.
most cellphone operating systems have tended to force apps into some kind of limited "sandbox"
Which operating systems would those be? Neither handheld Linux nor Windows Mobile seems to be restricting anything anywhere near a game console or the App Store.
There are already Flash apps in the App Store, published before the updated agreement. Perhaps Apple determined that they did, in fact, suck?
Well, according to you, they're still in the app store, so apparently not.
The one thing that nobody ever talks about is, we know that Apple has been doing a lot of automated processing on the binaries to ensure they are in compliance with other areas of the SDK upon submission. What if they determined that output from other compilers were breaking their system...
Then that's really their problem. How hard would it be to make the automated system capable of testing compliance on this "output from other compilers"?
Remember, Adobe was offering to compile to Objective-C. I really don't see how that would cause this kind of problem anyway.
Developers have been pushing for faster approval times since the App Store opened. Automated compliance testing is the way to make that happen.
No, relaxing douchey rules like how much clothing your aerobics instructor has to wear is the way to make that happen. Allowing third-party app stores is a way to make it happen rather quickly.
Is it better to use any tool you want, but wait months for approval? Or use Apple's own tools and have it approved almost instantaneously?
Is it better for Apple to make that decision for you? Or to be able to decide yourself whether it's worth the wait to use your own tool?
But if you want continued support and certain functionality that is subject to change; you need to patch your PS3 occasionally.
Even that isn't the issue. The issue is that the patch is effectively non-optional. Sony doesn't have to lift a finger -- your PS3 is going to break eventually, and you will need to either repair it or purchase a new one. What's more, if you're working in supercomputing, presumably you'd want to add nodes to your cluster at some point.
I thought this was par for the course? If you buy World of Warcraft and then, six months later, put out a patch that makes your Hunter less fun to play...that's kinda what happens, right?
Well, except that WoW never was "yours" to begin with, while there's a reasonable expectation that a PS3 is. Also, this is more akin to removing the hunter class entirely, after an extensive ad campaign promoting hunters. Even that would be more tolerable, as WoW is more a rental -- Sony already has your money, so they have very little monetary incentive to keep these people happy.
Was installing Linux on the PS3 ever officially supported by Sony? Did they market that as a feature you get with a PS3?
Yes and yes. And not just Linux -- remember, "Other OS."
What's wrong with SP3?
If you've only ever used a single language, you don't "understand programming" enough to instantly pick up any language.
If you've worked in at least a few, particularly a few from different areas -- asm, C, Java, Python, Lisp, Erlang, and Haskell would be my current list -- then you'll be able to pick up other languages, like JavaScript, C#, Ruby, etc.
But if you've only ever worked in Java, C will be hard, because you'll not only be learning a new syntax, you'll also be learning the concept of pointers, pointer arithmetic, and manual memory management. The reverse is also true -- if you've only ever worked in C, picking up Java will be hard, because you've probably never done any object-oriented programming. The same is true going higher-level -- if you've only ever worked in Java, it'll be hard to adjust to actual object-oriented programming in Ruby and JavaScript, as opposed to the class- and type-oriented programming of Java. Then again, if you've only worked in JavaScript, it'll be hard (and annoying!) to go to a language like Java, where types and interfaces matter.
These may not be as hard as learning to program in the first place -- though your first functional language will certainly feel that way. I certainly don't use all the languages I know, or list on my resume. But knowing a variety of languages is important to being able to grok any one language completely, let alone being able to pick up new languages in a snap.
The choice is Apple's, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
It would be just as buggy and crash-prone [zdnet.com] as it is right now on the Mac... Because it's on every darn page on the web - for adverts - it'd be running almost constantly as the user uses Safari; so the other down-side comes into play - it's a huge battery hog.
Granted, yes, Flash sucks. As a user, I'm not sure I'd install it.
But that should be up to the user, not Apple. If Apple allowed Flash on the iPhone right tomorrow, would you be required to install it? I suppose iPhone users are used to Apple making their decisions for you, but think about that -- what if they actually made it your choice?
Forget the browser for a moment, though. They're banning it and all other third-party frameworks in an effort to prevent cross-platform applications, even if they compile to Objective-C, which is downright evil. More evil than anything Microsoft ever did. To claim that this has anything to do with battery life or crashing is moronic -- Apple already presumably checks things like this before they approve apps, right? And Adobe was offering to compile to Objective-C, so most of the bugginess and battery-draining would hopefully go away. In either case, it seems downright fascist to ban a tool because it might make the experience suck, instead of evaluating the resulting app and see if it does make the experience suck.
Now, I agree that this is good for Apple, in the short term. It's also good for the Web, in the short term, because it forces people to start using HTML5. But in the long term, I think it will come back to bite them, and in any case, don't pretend it's a good thing for either iPhone/Pad developers or users.
Buy a kindle? Have YOUR PAID FOR books removed at amazons will.
Not Amazon's will, the publisher's will. And they at least refunded your money.
Sony hasn't returned a dime.
Buy an apple product?
Again, to be fair, Apple never promised more than people are getting. Also, as far as I know, they haven't actually killed any purchased applications -- they'll remove it from the store, but not from your device. (Though, point against Apple: If I recall, the "I Am Rich" guy was never paid.)
Sony not only sold the PS3 with this feature enabled, they advertised it. "You're not just buying a game console, you're buying a powerful computer system!"
If sony's terms of service said something about taking away features at their own will, it is not a valid part of the contract. Here in america, we have laws that prevent mega-corporations from making insanely complicated contracts and inserting clauses about how they own your soul and can harvest your body parts whenever they please.
Do we really? Because it seems more like we have the opposite. Just look at the tax code -- seems almost deliberately designed to force the average person to have to hire someone to understand it. If it wasn't insanely complicated, H&R block wouldn't have to exist.
Sure, until something goes wrong and you need to repair or replace it. Then you're either going to have the repair shop install the upgrade, or the replacement come with the upgrade.
Actually, that was my point -- Chrome OS reportedly takes seven seconds to boot, and they're working on decreasing that. A full Linux system will take much longer unless you're trimming it down yourself, and if you're trimming it down, aren't you just effectively making Chrome OS anyway?
And if you are doing a strictly web browser like computer and don't want to use Windows, why not just build a netbook or computer with pre-installed Linux?
Because it will take longer than seven seconds to boot.
Out of curiosity, I ran lspci and Google'd a few of the companies that showed up. Marvell had $2.81 billion last year. Ricoh was something like 21 billion. Everything else was large brands like Intel and nVidia.
I was surprised -- I would've thought ARM would be bigger relative to those.
I mean "Email is distributed the way social networking should be." Not "Email is an acceptable replacement for social networking."
People probably aren't willing to pay a minimum monthly hosting fee for their own domain/site. And if they were they'd rather pay it to a company to put their crap up rather than have to do it themselves. And why pay for it when they can get it for free* at Facebook?
That's all well and good, except the "Facebook" part. Email is already just such a distributed system. I run my own mailserver, but it's far from a requirement -- GMail is there for whoever wants it. But there are alternatives to GMail, and GMail has to play nice with them.
It's not the free service that's a problem, it's the walled garden.
There's the post where you claim that you have to rewrite an application "from the ground up" to support iPhone and other phones. The truth is that you can write your application in several languages, particularly C variants.
To be honest, I wasn't aware C was allowed on any of these. Last I knew, Android only allowed development in Java, or in something targeting their Java VM.
It's also worth mentioning that Steve Jobs does seem to be encouraging rewriting your app from the ground up -- in particular, if your app is written in Flash.
The other is where you claim that Flash isn't just as closed as other platforms.
That much is still true. Flash doesn't dictate what you may do with Flash. Apple does dictate what you may do with the iPhone.
I'm sure you've told many other lies in other stories.
So let's see... One honest mistake, the other you haven't shown to be false. Neither of these qualifies as a "lie."
You also seem to have misjudged my motives by a long shot, aside from outright calling me a liar. I am not in favor of Flash any more than I'm in favor of the iPhone.