Fallout From Apple's Exclusion of Flash-to-iPhone Export Continues

[bcotten]

...
If you are Steve Jobs, and you want customer to have a very stable experience with your devices, would you put Flash on your devices? Almost three years and 85 million devices are a pretty compelling argument that an Internet device does not need Flash to be a success.

i didn't realize the issue at hand was flash support for iPhone OS.

 

[Eidorian]

I guess that says it all. You're opposed to free enterprise and people investing their money in profit-making ventures.

What proof do you have for such baseless accusations?

 

[compuguy1088]

This is ****ing stupid. I know flash and I was actually really excited about this. Being a student of graphic design in college, I don't have time to learn objective-C but I've always wanted to build apps. This would've allowed me to do it, but Apple comes in here all high and mighty and gives a big "**** you" to Adobe (as usual). Why can't Apple do something right for the user for once, as opposed to always ensuring they have full control over their device?

I love their products but god dammit, I ****ing hate the company.

You may want to get to know someone who is in your college's engineering department, most likely a programmer or software engineer. In program development most of the time, there are the ones who code, and there are the ones who design/make graphics. Just because I know how to code doesn't make me knowledgeable in graphics.

Haha. There isn't one. The GIMP? Painter? Good luck.

Nothing comes close to Photoshop. The people saying Adobe's apps are garbage a) Probably know little about their apps. b) Don't use their apps much if they do.

A world without Adobe's support is a horrible one in the current market, it's like the difference between BeOS and osX level of bad news. We do NEED Adobe, but not just for Flash, for their productivity apps. Imagine if we'd always had 3DS Max then Autodesk pulled the plug.. Losing Adobe would be MUCH bigger than that. It would obliterate Apple in big chunks of the education market. If Anyone as big as Adobe can pull out of the platform then the platform is pretty much a worthless toy from the perspective of many who have to invest big sums of money.

A lot of people, myself included will stop recommending Apple to creatives if there was no Adobe support. This isn't Adobe abusing any power - they just have good market leading products that at least partially define the Macintosh platform.

Indesign! Dreamweaver! If people were seriously suggesting such a crazy thing a couple of years ago the community would be completely shattered. We need these apps, I'd argue they're much more important than official MS/Office support, even!

Back to the issue at hand though, I'm still not bothered about Apple denying flash iPhone apps.

Adobe's apps aren't garbage, the issue is that they don't put as much attention to the mac versions of their programs. Photoshop CS4 seems to work and run better than the mac version, for instance.

Yes, and now HTML5 doesn't mandate support of *any* video format, because Apple refused to support OGG because its performance is poor and Mozilla refused to support H.264 because of religious reasons.

I prefer performance over idealism anytime.

In the end, this conflict of opinion is going to kill HTML5 video adoption, if all browsers don't use the same codec.

 

[TennisandMusic]

Theora is just the old VP3 codec, it was decent in 2001, but it isn't today. And because of the way it is licensed, there is no chance that it will ever improve except for tuning the encoder a little bit. h.264 incorporates many years worth of new ideas. Theora _cannot_ ever come close to h.264 in quality.

The problem that companies like Apple have with Theora is patents. There are hundreds of patents on h.264, but you can get a license to all these patents in an easy package for not very much money, which is what Apple is paying. With Theora, nobody knows which patent troll is holding which patents. Right now they are all quiet, because as long as the big ones like Microsoft, Apple, Google are not using Theora, there is no money to be made. But if Apple put a Theora codec on every Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (say 110 million devices), or Microsoft put it into Windows 7.1, then you would see the patent trolls coming out. And Microsoft just paid about $400 million for infringing on an i4i patent (not commenting on the value of the patent, just the cost of being convicted for infringement), which is several times more than they pay for h.264 licensing.

Theora is free to use, period. It won't ever cost money, look at the license for it. I am not sure where you are getting your info from. I've used it in games where theora videos blended perfectly with PNG based backgrounds. Not too shabby now is that.

This link actually claims measured results show that differences between theora and h.264 are "negligible".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP3#History

 

[kernkraft]

It's often all they can afford. Or they don't care in the first place.

This is what we learned from the Laptop Hunter commercials, which were laced with more overt Mac envy than you find in an Apple forum on a Saturday afternoon. In April.

You reached a new low in degrading people who think differently from your poor perspective.

Why, when it's much more fun to troll Apple forums and pretend the sky is falling?...


...They don't even have to know what it means, they just instinctively type it and hit "submit post", in the hopes that others can scream the same thing because they think Apple shouldn't be allowed their success and Apple users should be as miserable as the rest of the PC crowd.

As if Apple's "tightening grip" on the App Store will affect my health or something. LOL

1. YOU naming people trolls?! How come? You would be an ideal subject for similarly simplistic practices.

2. Again, I sense loads of hypocrisy. You NEVER constrained yourself from posting unreasonable MS hate, Adobe hate or just hate against people, who disagree with you.

3. PC crowd as miserable? Are you real? What kind of a life do you lead? Have you got social intercourse and family? Do you actually meet people?

4. Stop writing LOL. There is nothing funny here. Not for you.

 

[compuguy1088]

You must be in Med School then, or a single parent

I'm in grad school and I work 9 hours a day and I can still squeeze out time on the weekend to do something else

If you wanted to learn objective-c, you could learn it. But I think you're really just trying to use the platform to make a quick buck.

Question then, what is your background? IT, CS? You must have some coding background. If you know C currently, it shouldn't be as hard to understand Objective C, which in basic terms adds Object orientation to C (inheritance, extending, etc).

 

[reel2reel]

The sooner Flash is off my system, the better! I support Flash as an app for Animators, but loathe it as a delivery format. I hate Flash websites, hate Flash ad's and hate hate HATE watching any kind of video in Flash.

Go Steve! Next, why not put a stake through the heart of the bloated corpse known as Adobe Reader.

 

[compuguy1088]

Ever launch Photoshop? Do you enjoy the length of time it takes for that mess of spaghetti code to get its bloated ass in gear?

Just opened it up on my computer (the 64-bit build of CS4). Took about 12 seconds to start up. That's far better than adobe acrobat has been.........

 

[kernkraft]

I don't think personal attack means what you think it means. I don't recall saying anything about your face, your IQ, or your mamma...

Unless you take any anti-Ballmer comment personally, which I imagine you might.

Wow, you accuse him for not knowing what personal attack means, deny that you did it AND do it again... That takes some face.

I'd much rather see these companies work together than see hostile shutouts like this. It's ugly and although Jobs may get his way, it's negative for Apple's image in the industry. I certainly have no respect for this sort of gameplay because in the meantime, we have gimped devices that are unable to view Flash, a major part of the web's operability. This doesn't look like Jobs has our best interests at heart, it looks like Jobs just wants to dominate, and is arrogantly telling the consumer, put up with it, if you don't like it pi*s off and buy something else. Ugly.

I just didn't want this idea to get lost. I completely agree.

Apple changed the face of the entire tech industry. Several times.

I think it's time to stop now.

 

[Darkroom]

What a disgusting position you sit on, classifying everyone who disagrees with you as jew killers. What a cheap ploy.

fascism fits, williamlondon. killing people does not.

 

[kernkraft]

Apple's not hurt. In fact, they're selling Macs in record numbers. In a recession. Macs represent the cream of the computing crop, thanks to Apple focusing on what's most important: The User Experience. The $1000 entry fee is a natural barrier. But that's the Premium market being what it is. Meanwhile MS and the box-assemblers are busy selling junk to the low end of the market.


If you're going to troll, please don't post 998 words of it.

1. We are out of recession, so you can stop using this template.

2. You might stop using this 'user experience' template too as it's just not true. Jailbreaking and all sorts of file management software for OS X beg to differ. The most useful area of OS X could be Automator and Terminal, but they are pretty distant from any association with pleasure.

3. How do you define premium? Have you got premium clothing? Premium cars, furniture and audio products? Have you been in a premium house?

I've never had a BMW or Mercedes Benz with a Ford engine or interior. There was not much premium about my unibody MacBooks after they launched. They had the worst screen I have used, they were not more capable than a mid-range laptop with Linux or Windows at the time. My upgrade on these is the same 13" with a 'Pro' tag is slightly better, but for this kind of money, I would expect less heat and noise.

Or more battery life from my 15" unibody MBP with the faulty graphics.



It's easy to create something reasonably good and sell it for a lot of money. The real challenge is to create good quality on a budget. Apple should try it sometimes. The last time they attempted, they ended up with 256 MB and an old Cortex A8.

Adobe abandons Apple, within two years Adobe would be absolutely buried. Look at what the Pixelmator team has done. And that's only a few guys working on a budget. Imagine Apple throwing money and developers at it.
[/B]

And that's how you kill something good.

Just saying what? That Microsoft continues to sell PCs to the low-end of the market? Bargain Bin Ballmer selling PCs loaded with Windows on the cheap.

I don't use Windows, but posts like this one makes me want to try Windows 7 and a well priced computer. Paying premium price for mediocre equipment (MB, MBP, MBA) is getting tiring.

There are all sorts of computers out there. My brother is an architect and they are using some heavy duty PCs that would survive any Steve Jobs crusade, any Apple product launches. I think they would probably last longer than any concrete bunker with a flashing Apple logo on the back.

Why the hell would Apple back something that doesn't work right?

One word - MONEY! (Ching ching!)

i lost count of the number of users on here mindlessly regurgitating the same public service announcements for steve jobs. i'd block you all but then i'd be as lame as apple.

You can still put them on your 'Ignore List'.

 

[kernkraft]

Desktops in their current form will be dead. Retail outlets can hardly move them as it is.

We'll continue to see "Macs." But they'll be quite different. Apple isn't ignoring its Mac business. Apple is evolving it. I'm a bit surprised that Gruber isn't seeing the Big Picture here.

Risky. Ballsy. And incredibly inspiring. THIS is how the industry moves forward.

I'm glad that you see what professionals don't.

Risky? That would be releasing something completely different. Like an iPod Touch with a camera. Or a large iPod Touch with a camera.

They don't even come CLOSE to their record high market share (closer to 20%) in the 1980s and early 1990s when you could find Mac software at many retailers. My point is not to compare their sales in the late '90s (when they almost went out of business) to NOW but compared to what they COULD be getting with more choices and somewhat lower prices. You can argue making the highest possible profit margin is best, but market share is what saves platforms when something changes (like when Windows95/98 almost killed the Mac period). Apple cannot count on good times to last forever. And thus YOUR ideas of "long term" is 100% FLAWED. Do you seriously think Mac users though in 1992 that Apple was soon going to almost go bankrupt in less than half a decade? No way. Your short-sightedness is obvious.



I would say it's thanks to Vista being a TOTAL FLOP. Windows7 is much better and so you simply cannot count on OSX sales being where they are at the moment forever. There is much to be said about the popularity of the iPhone carrying over to Mac sales as well. But again, you cannot count on the iPhone being the darling of the industry forever. Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Every company has flops sooner or later. Apple has had it's share in the past and there is no reason to think they will not again in the future. The question is whether they can survive it the next time it happens. Microsoft is in no danger of ever going out of business any time soon because of their massive market share. They can afford to have a "relative flop" like Vista once in awhile because of this share.



What exactly is "premium" about a Mac these days other than the price? The lack of viruses and spyware is my favorite feature over Windows. The interface is somewhat nicer overall. But you cannot say its video performance is better than Windows or its gaming support or the amount of available applications. Maybe some like the old "yuppee" sense of being "superior" (or at least "different") than the masses, but that's illusion and snobbyness, not an actual feature.



This is an ignorant statement from someone that is obviously clueless about reality when it comes to personal computers. Yes there is junk out there in the Windows world but there is also better quality and especially price to performance ratios than any Mac. You cannot base an all encompassing reality based on the lowest common denominator. Or should the last generation Mac-Mini with GMA Intel graphics and a slow hard drive with its CD-Rom standard in an era where DVD-RW drives were long since standard on all PCs and Blu-Ray one some newer ones be the standard Apple should have been judged by a couple of years ago? That thing was a laughing stock item at a price 2-3x its value. It's a little bit better now, but it's still an oddity when a small form tower could have high-performance power at the same price. Small footprints might be "cute" but they hinder performance. The iMac has the same problem. What space it saves is taken up by external expansion required just to back the thing up and limits the power of both its CPU and GPU in the process. You might "like" the look, but some people would prefer more power. The Mac Pro has power, but it's priced and set up at the workstation level, not a mid-range relatively high power PC, of which Apple offers NO solutions in this category and that is a massive turn-off to some that might actually prefer the Mac OS.



So now you're Nostradamus too??? Give me a break. Desktops might decrease in market share, but they're not going away ANY time soon because notebooks will always be less powerful and there's always a market for power users. You might not need more than an iPad, but some people have greater needs for power than others.



If you're going to accuse someone of trolling, then maybe you better learn to recognize one instead of trying to flame/label someone instead of using actual logic or discussion to make your case. Otherwise, you sound like nothing more than another fanboy. I own two Apple Macs, two Apple TVs, an iPod Touch and have OSX on a Dell Netbook (and only one dedicated PC) and I'm somehow a "troll" because I don't blindly worship Apple like you do? You are completely out of touch with reality.

Perhaps Apple could give them the proper APIs for hardware acceleration while they're at it instead of playing freaking games with everyone that WANTS to support OSX but never gets ANY support from Apple (e.g. Look at game developers and all the requests they made over the years to Apple and Apple just more or less IGNORED them since "Steve" doesn't have much of an interest in gaming (like that should have ANYTHING to do with it when it comes to a professional company). The worst part of it is the MULTITUDES of Apple "fans" (more like rabid illogical unthinking fanatics) are 100% for that decision because "Macs aren't for gaming" or "serious computer users don't game" or some other line of TOTAL *BS* to make excuses for why Apple cannot be bothered to act like a professional company when it comes to supporting developers instead of dictating TO them what they can and cannot do on their platform. Apple cannot even be bothered to keep Java and OpenGL to up-to-date most of the time, let alone help to make substantial improvements (Apple does the work on their own video drivers instead of supporting Nvidia and ATI to keep up-to-date high performance drivers because Stevie is afraid of letting anyone know too much about his top secret operating system. Perhaps that is why Mac video performance is almost always 20-40% SLOWER than the same hardware under Windows within a year of a chipset appearing on both platforms (and that in and of itself takes a miracle since Apple's GPU hardware is almost always 2-4 years behind an average Windows machine, usually because Stevie wants MOBILE chips in his "home" computers so he can keep the systems gaunt and thin like his own body instead of sleek and POWERFUL as they SHOULD be. Even the Mac Pro is usually WAY behind on GPU power despite normal expansion slots and then the hardware costs 50-100% more than the SAME hardware for the PC since Apple has to get their cut and write the drivers (again because OSX is so darn top secret).

Basically, I'm sick of FANATICS (as in unthinking illogical worshipers of Apple) painting this one-sided biased picture like Apple is the perfect company and everyone else are morons (especially when it comes to patent disputes, etc.; it's always ONE-SIDED despite the unreasonable GREED and profit margins of Apple that are night and day higher than everyone else in the industry and control freakish nature of Apple/Steve that seeks to demand unreasonable things from developers and do everything they can to AVOID competition instead of simply vying for the customer's support because they have the absolute BEST computers out there. That might be true if they'd keep up on video and offer a mid-range power machine instead of this mobile sub-$2000 crap and overpriced $3000+ Mac Pro stuff that has equivalent PC uses in 90% of the same areas in the $1200 range). I don't mind paying more for Apple brand, but not 250% more. It's absurd.

When I go to buy my next desktop there is NO WAY I'm buying a low-powered iMac and I'm not paying over $3000 to get the power of a $1200 PC when I can easily assemble my own and hack it to run OSX and have 90% of the power of the 4-CPU version of the Mac Pro (and more in some areas for almost 1/3 the price). And don't tell me I don't support Apple. I own 2 Apple TVs, 1 iPod Touch, a 1.5 year old MBP and one of their older PowerMacs souped up to be a power server for my whole house audio/video system, let alone various software packages. If Apple offers reasonable competition, I'd RATHER buy their hardware, but if they're going to continue to gouge and not offer the hardware I actually WANT to buy, I'll go elsewhere and hack if I have to (already skipped on the overpriced/underpowered iPad and got a nice Hackintosh Netbook that can do SO much more for nearly half the price and it couldn't hardly have been easier to install OSX on it either).

Apple needs to learn not all their users area total pansies when it comes to knowledge of hardware and price/performance. Apple has a nice GUI and thus far a lovely lack of viruses and spyware compared to Windows, but the OS is hardly perfect. I can just as many freeze/crashes on my MBP and PowerMac as I do my PC running the older XP Windows OS, if not more so and that's a shame considering the Macs are running a flavor of Unix and Windows has been a hodge-podge mess for years supporting so much old code, etc. that Apple can afford to abandon (try running software from 1999 on a Mac and then try the same on a Windows machine and see which one runs more of it).

Apple could have easily have garnered another 10% of the market by now (as in closer to 20%) if they would play more friendly and offer more competitive machines in the $1000-2000 range instead of laptops dressed up like monitors. They chose profit margins over market share, though and that might hurt them in the long run. It certainly hurts their reputation to have "Pro" machines that don't have "Pro" features like matte screens (glossy is AWFUL), expansion slots (an SD card reader doesn't cut it on the 15" MBP), etc. that they USED to have just 2 years ago. Catering to the masses is fine, but don't call something professional when it isn't and if you're going to cater to the masses then SUPPORT the masses by supporting things like gaming better (at least the current like of notebooks are a step up from the Intel GMA days....)

There are so many valid points here that I just wanted to post these, rather than extend.

 

[decksnap]

ewww.... this thread has devolved. Anyway, looks like Steve has responded, and Gruber was right.

emails from steve

Gruber's analysis

Seems to make pretty good sense to me, despite this ridiculous thread.

 

[LagunaSol]

I don't use Windows, but posts like this one makes me want to try Windows 7 and a well priced computer. Paying premium price for mediocre equipment (MB, MBP, MBA) is getting tiring.

You think you know mediocrity? Wait until you try a "well-priced" PC laptop.

*pats the truly mediocre HP EliteBook sitting next to me*

Seriously, you should do it.

 

[RalfTheDog]

Does anyone thing that Apple may like the idea of doing QC on iPhone/iPad software before approval? Does anyone think that Apple might have or be working on software that reads the source code of an iPhone app and check it for things like memory leaks? Does anyone think that this software might only scan Objective-C and C++?

 

[cmaier]

You think you know mediocrity? Wait until you try a "well-priced" PC laptop.

*pats the truly mediocre HP EliteBook sitting next to me*

Seriously, you should do it.

Are those elitebooks the laptops that have the pop-out light above the screen for lighting the keyboard? The thing that looks like a cupholder? Or is that some other HP line?

Because those are worth it just for the giggles.

I always recommend Sony. Because they are my client

Does anyone thing that Apple may like the idea of doing QC on iPhone/iPad software before approval? Does anyone think that Apple might have or be working on software that reads the source code of an iPhone app and check it for things like memory leaks? Does anyone think that this software might only scan Objective-C and C++?

XCode has a leakchecker, which works quite well. But it's up to developers to run it - we don't submit source code to Apple.

 

[beeh]

There are other framworks out there from companies like Appcelerator that are effectively restricted as well given the language used. They wrap Apple API's into a higher level abstraction to provide rapid development and better cross platform support. You have a native app using native Apple APIs however it was written with an abstraction so per the SDK changes it would seem even frameworks like these, which support a wide range of popular iPhone apps will now be prohibited.

Does this mean Cocos2D is out ( or when will it be? ) and how about Openfeint, etc.? Are they going to be banned in Apps as well? I understand Apple wanting to do that for their platform. Now that all these "big" companies are writing apps for the iPhone, Apple doesn't need the "little guys" anymore. S*cks, but that's one way to do business, I guess.

 

[RalfTheDog]

XCode has a leakchecker, which works quite well. But it's up to developers to run it - we don't submit source code to Apple.

Yet.

 

[cmaier]

Yet.

True. It's actually a little bit surprising. Though from a legal perspective, if I am Apple the last thing I want is developer's submitting source code. It opens them up to all sorts of copyright lawsuits (alleging that they stole stuff), plus it opens them up to enhanced damages and liability based on their knowledge of copyright and patent violations that might be committed by third party developers.

 

[RalfTheDog]

True. It's actually a little bit surprising. Though from a legal perspective, if I am Apple the last thing I want is developer's submitting source code. It opens them up to all sorts of copyright lawsuits (alleging that they stole stuff), plus it opens them up to enhanced damages and liability based on their knowledge of copyright and patent violations that might be committed by third party developers.

Good point. They would need to structure things in such a way that the validator software could look at the source code, but they could document that no human saw it. It is not like Apple does not have people who know how to run a decompiler.

 

[awmazz]

An additional claim that "Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5" has been redacted from Brimelow's blog entry

Surely if that was the purpose, they would have waited until the day after the launch of CS5 to burst their bubble instead of giving them pre-warning to change their sales pitch.

I have not had one issue with my iPhone or my iPad where I have hit something I wanted that was in Flash.

Ditto here. I haven't been missing it at all in terms of the internet. If anything, it's a bonus ad-blocker because really the only web Flash I encounter is advertising, most of which is just basic animation.

The iAds which Jobs exampled created in HTML5 are far more interactive and interesting than 99% of all Flash ads. I'm actually glad they created those examples to show how different advertising can be when you get away from 'add Flash animation to an otherwise printed ad' format we've had to endure for the past 10-15 years. I think what Jobs showed there will change advertising in more of a quantum shift than any other industry change for years. In all the hoopla of the iPad being a computing game-changer etc, the even more game-changing iAds and HTML5 advertising has slipped by virtually unnoticed.

Hey all, I think people are not getting what this means. It is not about running Flash on the iPhone. Nebula, Baron, etc. are talking about a totally different issue. This is about using the Flash IDE to build native iPhone applications. Not Flash running in a browser. It's about mandating that you use certain development tools to create a product.

The counterpoint to this is it's about developers mandating to Apple what they want to use on Apple's own platform instead of what Apple wants?

 

[dernhelm]

This is an absolute riot. Adobe hates Apple, Apple hates Adobe. Bah blah blah.

They sound like two kids on the playground.

Hey all,
I think people are not getting what this means. It is not about running Flash on the iPhone. Nebula, Baron, etc. are talking about a totally different issue. This is about using the Flash IDE to build native iPhone applications. Not Flash running in a browser. It's about mandating that you use certain development tools to create a product. Like, mandating that somebody use the Flash IDE to create .swfs or something. I can't deny that there may be some technical reason behind this that we don't know about, but with CS5 planned for a demo on Monday, it really is just pissing on Adobe. Rather than coordinating with them to help more people build applications, they are blindsiding them and deliberately derailing plans for their new CS5 suite. It really does suck.

Here's the real point. You won't be able to program in .Net (for example), and cross compile into Objective-C. This is the horror that people wanting to program for the iPhone will have to live with. You will need to use the XCode development environment to produce content.

Funny how this would only matter to a small number of developers, but a large number will get all head-up about it.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Here's the real point. You won't be able to program in .Net (for example), and cross compile into Objective-C. This is the horror that people wanting to program for the iPhone will have to live with. You will need to use the XCode development environment to produce content.

Funny how this would only matter to a small number of developers, but a large number will get all head-up about it.

Ugh, I HATE CROSS COMPILED APPS! Anything made in Mono runs like total cr@p. I'd hate to think what iPhone apps would run like made in Mono, Flash etc.

 

[LagunaSol]

Are those elitebooks the laptops that have the pop-out light above the screen for lighting the keyboard? The thing that looks like a cupholder?

Yep, that's the one.

Because those are worth it just for the giggles.

It's only funny because I didn't have to pay for it myself (it's employer-supplied).

kernkraft may find the feature impressive though...

 

[bcotten]

Ugh, I HATE CROSS COMPILED APPS! Anything made in Mono runs like total cr@p. I'd hate to think what iPhone apps would run like made in Mono, Flash etc.

For the record, there are iPhone apps, made in flash, available for download from the App Store. They work beautifully.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/