-Josh

In a nutshell what Jobs says is that Adobe has been caught asleep like the music industry was when .mp3's and the internet came about. Apple was not fast asleep, so you have iPods and iTunes.

I would hate to be an executive at Adobe, because this basically says "we gave them time to innovate, they were late (we did not hold our breath), now they want a piece of our hard earned cake for free to promote their company". I have to say I agree with Steve, because they [adobe] have not produced anything innovative since adobe reader a decade or so ago. Ever since they have trundled along just thinking people would automatically use flash.

I would say that post is the sound of nails being hammered ostentatiously into flash's coffin.

If Apple and Adobe were in good relations and this lead to Flash being ported and fully supported on the iPhone, Steve would have gone on about the brilliancy and the unprecedented potential of flash apps on the "worlds most advanced smartphone platform"... In short - I hate PR stunts, Steve is just talking out of his * again and has no real opinion of his own.

JoshRoss said:

I think the bigger issue is Section 3.3.1.  I can live without flash and yes *eek* silverlight. I think Steve is just beating a dead horse here.

 

-Josh

I know you can say section 3.3.1 is straight from the horses mouth, and some may say that it's horses for courses, but the abobe executive appear to still think that people are looking a gift horse in the mouth

vesuvius said:

So, even CEO's are not immune from starting flame-wars.

 

In a nutshell what Jobs says is that Adobe has been caught asleep like the music industry was when .mp3's and the internet came about. Apple was not fast asleep, so you have iPods and iTunes.

 

I would hate to be an executive at Adobe, because this basically says "we gave them time to innovate, they were late (we did not hold our breath), now they want a piece of our hard earned cake for free to promote their company". I have to say I agree with Steve, because they [adobe] have not produced anything innovative since adobe reader a decade or so ago. Ever since they have trundled along just thinking people would automatically use flash.

 

I would say that post is the sound of nails being hammered ostentatiously into flash's coffin.

Flash was not always Adobe's property, they certainly didn't invent it, not that it was ever very novel in any way - but it's been a very fun toy, albeit deeply deprived of computationally power.

Adobe has always produced high quality products in my oppinion but when it comes to Flash they've played protectionist and not been sufficiently innovative, aggressive or both - not to say open. And that's not good for a closed platform when things like Silverlight, HTML 5 and orders of magnitude faster browsers happen to you.

This may be good news for Microsoft and Silverlight or it may be bad news (people being more wary of adopting proprietary technologies, especially when The Prophet has spoken and acted) but at least there is Moonlight as secondary and open "implementation of" Silverlight. And Microsoft is also betting on both horses now (Silverlight + HTML and friends)...

There will come a time when the Web stack will have to be refactored and depending on how advanced Silverlight et al are at the time and whether Microsoft has committed itself to open-sourcing it or move to standardization, it might be a strong contender, unless technological evolution has moved us to more radical paradigms at that time.

"Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open."

But doesn't he still want proprietary standards for video and audio formats, and wants the HTML5 video and audio tag to use Apple supported formats instead of something like OGG?

brian.shapiro said:

Steve Jobs says:

 

"Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open."

 

But doesn't he still want proprietary standards for video and audio formats, and wants the HTML5 video and audio tag to use Apple supported formats instead of something like OGG?

 

 

Good luck finding an efficient hardware decoder for OGG...  or an efficient software decoder, for that matter.

ManipUni said:

Apart from the Apple is open part (ha ha, Steve, sure, ok...) I actually agree with everything else he said. Frankly I don't even want Flash Player on my PC let alone eating tons of battery time to force feed me adverts on my mobile device.

Really? Everything? Cause I actually laughed out loud at this little bit:

"There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world."

Uh huh. Yeah... I'm buying that.

CannotResolveSymbol said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

Good luck finding an efficient hardware decoder for OGG...  or an efficient software decoder, for that matter.

That's not the point. If Apple/Steve wants an "open web", he should not be pushing for closed video formats, regardless of who owns them. In this case, though, since they do own them OGG isn't the only solution... but of course they're not about to open these codecs up.

exoteric said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

Flash was not always Adobe's property, they certainly didn't invent it, not that it was ever very novel in any way - but it's been a very fun toy, albeit deeply deprived of computationally power.

 

Adobe has always produced high quality products in my oppinion but when it comes to Flash they've played protectionist and not been sufficiently innovative, aggressive or both - not to say open. And that's not good for a closed platform when things like Silverlight, HTML 5 and orders of magnitude faster browsers happen to you.

 

This may be good news for Microsoft and Silverlight or it may be bad news (people being more wary of adopting proprietary technologies, especially when The Prophet has spoken and acted) but at least there is Moonlight as secondary and open "implementation of" Silverlight. And Microsoft is also betting on both horses now (Silverlight + HTML and friends)...

 

There will come a time when the Web stack will have to be refactored and depending on how advanced Silverlight et al are at the time and whether Microsoft has committed itself to open-sourcing it or move to standardization, it might be a strong contender, unless technological evolution has moved us to more radical paradigms at that time.

I disagree with your assessment that Flash wasn't very very novel:

Flash brought professional-level animation to the masses. It democratised vector animation and significantly flattened the learning (and effort) curves.

Lots of us will remember how Java applets were used from the mid-1990s onwards for things like in-browser games and scientific demonstrations, often crudely made because Java Applets are for programmers, not designers. Flash flipped the tables around and made it easy to make a polished impression: hundreds of thousands of Flash games, videos, and animations undoubtably changed the web for the better.

Then in 2002 Flash 6 came out with support for video, thus marking the beginning of the end for plugin-video handlers: we all remember horrid experiences with the WMP control and QuickTime.

Flash has been innovating, but remember it's a product for designers, not developers. You won't hear them innovating on parallelisation or lambda expressions.

wkempf said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

Really? Everything? Cause I actually laughed out loud at this little bit:

 

"There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world."

 

Uh huh. Yeah... I'm buying that.

I assume Jobs was referring to things like games consoles and portables, because it's otherwise true: for games to be published on the Xbox, PS3, or Wii they need to go through full approval of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo respectively, tack on high production values necessary to justify the code of the SDK license and it's easy to see why the substantially lower barrier for entry on the Cocoa Touch platform has brought us tens of thousands of entertainment programs.

Less compared to Flash, but that's not a hardware platform. Big difference in Steve's eyes.

oh, and don't forget his RDF.

W3bbo said:

exoteric said:

*snip*

I disagree with your assessment that Flash wasn't very very novel:

 

Flash brought professional-level animation to the masses. It democratised vector animation and significantly flattened the learning (and effort) curves.

 

Lots of us will remember how Java applets were used from the mid-1990s onwards for things like in-browser games and scientific demonstrations, often crudely made because Java Applets are for programmers, not designers. Flash flipped the tables around and made it easy to make a polished impression: hundreds of thousands of Flash games, videos, and animations undoubtably changed the web for the better.

 

Then in 2002 Flash 6 came out with support for video, thus marking the beginning of the end for plugin-video handlers: we all remember horrid experiences with the WMP control and QuickTime.

 

Flash has been innovating, but remember it's a product for designers, not developers. You won't hear them innovating on parallelisation or lambda expressions.

While I agree with everything you said, I want to know what you think Flash's future is? This, I believe, is what the Apple press release was about. I think we can all agree that Flash has been useful.

bureX said:

"New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

If Apple and Adobe were in good relations and this lead to Flash being ported and fully supported on the iPhone, Steve would have gone on about the brilliancy and the unprecedented potential of flash apps on the "worlds most advanced smartphone platform"... In short - I hate PR stunts, Steve is just talking out of his * again and has no real opinion of his own.

Surely that should be Steve Jobs' Arse?

JoshRoss said:

I think the bigger issue is Section 3.3.1.  I can live without flash and yes *eek* silverlight. I think Steve is just beating a dead horse here.

 

-Josh

Yeh, as I've commented elsewhere, it's ironic that Jobs opens with a section on open standards when trying to defend a rule that forces native app developers to code to Apple's proprietary APIs.  It's a great example of doublethink.

Also, I'm amazed how many people are buying this crap about quality and consistent UI experience - not just Apple shills like John Gruber, but most of the media are taking it at face value also. And yet it doesn't stand up to scrutiny from any angle:-

• Qualtiy - example the app store and you can find lots of low-quality apps that would embarass any competent Flash developer.
• Quality - if Apple decided to care about quality of native apps they already have the App Store approval process to deal with it.
• Quality - the idea that making developers use worse tools will impove the quality of apps is laughable. Everyone has had approved apps crash on their iPhone and 99.9% of the time it was because of a memory leak or a memory access error. Forcing developers, usually ones with no experience in unmanaged languages,  to use C/C++/Objective-C is the cause of the problem, not a solution.
• UI Consistency - has anyone ever played a game on the iPhone? Guess what - they're like games on every other platform, i.e. they don't use standard GUI look components. Never have and never will. If people were going to make non-game apps with Flash and use the Flex libraries to code the UI, that would be a problem, but again it could be dealt with in the App Store approval process easily enough.

rhm said:

JoshRoss said:

*snip*

Yeh, as I've commented elsewhere, it's ironic that Jobs opens with a section on open standards when trying to defend a rule that forces native app developers to code to Apple's proprietary APIs.  It's a great example of doublethink.

 

Also, I'm amazed how many people are buying this crap about quality and consistent UI experience - not just Apple shills like John Gruber, but most of the media are taking it at face value also. And yet it doesn't stand up to scrutiny from any angle:-

• Qualtiy - example the app store and you can find lots of low-quality apps that would embarass any competent Flash developer.
• Quality - if Apple decided to care about quality of native apps they already have the App Store approval process to deal with it.
• Quality - the idea that making developers use worse tools will impove the quality of apps is laughable. Everyone has had approved apps crash on their iPhone and 99.9% of the time it was because of a memory leak or a memory access error. Forcing developers, usually ones with no experience in unmanaged languages,  to use C/C++/Objective-C is the cause of the problem, not a solution.
• UI Consistency - has anyone ever played a game on the iPhone? Guess what - they're like games on every other platform, i.e. they don't use standard GUI look components. Never have and never will. If people were going to make non-game apps with Flash and use the Flex libraries to code the UI, that would be a problem, but again it could be dealt with in the App Store approval process easily enough.

 

When Apple thumps their HIG on UI design and point their fingers at Flash, it's because of non-game applications that would use Flash to become crossplatform. Imagine if someone wrote a Flash-based office suite that worked on Android, WinMo, and iPhone: the consistency with the Cocoa Touch widget library would be lost, and Apple lose their platform's exclusivity.

Remember, it's about two things: not just consistency, but ensuring lock-in to theit platform. UI consistency just happens to be an easy sell to make to the media.

Ian2 said:

bureX said:

*snip*

Surely that should be Steve Jobs' Arse?

In Britain, the nether region of ones posterior in the region commonly known as the buttocks is referred to as arse, across the pond however there are sayings like "your * is grass".

One could never image one saying "your arse is grass" in Received Pronounciation, but rather the Phonetic and more common version.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftv.gawker.com%2F5526868%2Fjon-stewart-slams-apple-over-its-handling-of-gizmodo-case&h=0e2e3

rhm said:

JoshRoss said:

*snip*

Yeh, as I've commented elsewhere, it's ironic that Jobs opens with a section on open standards when trying to defend a rule that forces native app developers to code to Apple's proprietary APIs.  It's a great example of doublethink.

 

Also, I'm amazed how many people are buying this crap about quality and consistent UI experience - not just Apple shills like John Gruber, but most of the media are taking it at face value also. And yet it doesn't stand up to scrutiny from any angle:-

• Qualtiy - example the app store and you can find lots of low-quality apps that would embarass any competent Flash developer.
• Quality - if Apple decided to care about quality of native apps they already have the App Store approval process to deal with it.
• Quality - the idea that making developers use worse tools will impove the quality of apps is laughable. Everyone has had approved apps crash on their iPhone and 99.9% of the time it was because of a memory leak or a memory access error. Forcing developers, usually ones with no experience in unmanaged languages,  to use C/C++/Objective-C is the cause of the problem, not a solution.
• UI Consistency - has anyone ever played a game on the iPhone? Guess what - they're like games on every other platform, i.e. they don't use standard GUI look components. Never have and never will. If people were going to make non-game apps with Flash and use the Flex libraries to code the UI, that would be a problem, but again it could be dealt with in the App Store approval process easily enough.

 

+1

As soon as he started on about 'Flash not being open', I stopped reading.  He's the last man on earth who should preach about open standards.

Flash is cross-platform, that's why he doesn't want it.  The fact that Adobe has been lazy enough to give him an excuse is just good luck on his part.

vesuvius said:

Ian2 said:

*snip*

In Britain, the nether region of ones posterior in the region commonly known as the buttocks is referred to as arse, across the pond however there are sayings like "your * is grass".

 

One could never image one saying "your arse is grass" in Received Pronounciation, but rather the Phonetic and more common version.

I think its a Potato Putarto thing  (interestingly 'Your Arse is Grarse' works phoeneticaly over here - though I've never heard anyone use that expression). 

Over here an * is a cross between a horse and a donkey.

Ian2 said:

vesuvius said:

*snip*

I think its a Potato Putarto thing  (interestingly 'Your Arse is Grarse' works phoeneticaly over here - though I've never heard anyone use that expression). 

 

Over here an * is a cross between a horse and a donkey.

Interesting. In the US an * is a donkey. A cross between a female horse and a male donkey is a mule, the reverse being a hinny.

rhm said:

JoshRoss said:

*snip*

Yeh, as I've commented elsewhere, it's ironic that Jobs opens with a section on open standards when trying to defend a rule that forces native app developers to code to Apple's proprietary APIs.  It's a great example of doublethink.

 

Also, I'm amazed how many people are buying this crap about quality and consistent UI experience - not just Apple shills like John Gruber, but most of the media are taking it at face value also. And yet it doesn't stand up to scrutiny from any angle:-

• Qualtiy - example the app store and you can find lots of low-quality apps that would embarass any competent Flash developer.
• Quality - if Apple decided to care about quality of native apps they already have the App Store approval process to deal with it.
• Quality - the idea that making developers use worse tools will impove the quality of apps is laughable. Everyone has had approved apps crash on their iPhone and 99.9% of the time it was because of a memory leak or a memory access error. Forcing developers, usually ones with no experience in unmanaged languages,  to use C/C++/Objective-C is the cause of the problem, not a solution.
• UI Consistency - has anyone ever played a game on the iPhone? Guess what - they're like games on every other platform, i.e. they don't use standard GUI look components. Never have and never will. If people were going to make non-game apps with Flash and use the Flex libraries to code the UI, that would be a problem, but again it could be dealt with in the App Store approval process easily enough.

 

Games are still reasonably portable between Android, WebOS and iPhone. They all use the same graphics API (OpenGL ES). As long as you code to OpenGL directly and don't use any of the Cocoa widgets it should be fine.

Potentially you could also also have some portability on the mobile platforms for more traditional apps. You just code your business logic in C or C++, and your iPhone specific UI logic in Objective-C. Most smartphone OSes both support C and C++, and could share the business logic.

Of course they could close this loophole by saying "all code written for the iPhone must only be used on the iPhone, no sharing!". Of course, that will be probably be added just before they also add the "all your softwares are belong to us" clause.

bureX said:

"New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

If Apple and Adobe were in good relations and this lead to Flash being ported and fully supported on the iPhone, Steve would have gone on about the brilliancy and the unprecedented potential of flash apps on the "worlds most advanced smartphone platform"... In short - I hate PR stunts, Steve is just talking out of his * again and has no real opinion of his own.

Well, not really, His point with respect to open standards is that whereas the openess is realized in a closed system (like the iPhone, iPad and iPod), the freedom afforded by HTML5, CSS and JS empower developers to build experiences that are in and of themselves platform independent. So, a single HTML5 application would run conistently across all devices that support it and since it is an open standard, there is no notion of proprietary technology at the level that HTML5 operates (again, iPhone, iPad and iPod ARE closed systems that are proprietary down through the OS level).

The future will be heterogenous, with balanced forms of open and closed systems that empower both developers and users to get the best out of general purpose computing. I'm not in the HTML5 is everything camp, but I'm also not living in lead box... I think Silverlight, for example, has a very bright future and will do well in the closed-open world (it runs on all major operating systems and will soon show up in mobile devices like WP7...).

C

Charles said:

bureX said:

*snip*

Well, not really, His point with respect to open standards is that whereas the openess is realized in a closed system (like the iPhone, iPad and iPod), the freedom afforded by HTML5, CSS and JS empower developers to build experiences that are in and of themselves platform independent. So, a single HTML5 application would run conistently across all devices that support it and since it is an open standard, there is no notion of proprietary technology at the level that HTML5 operates (again, iPhone, iPad and iPod ARE closed systems that are proprietary down through the OS level).

 

The future will be heterogenous, with balanced forms of open and closed systems that empower both developers and users to get the best out of general purpose computing. I'm not in the HTML5 is everything camp, but I'm also not living in lead box... I think Silverlight, for example, has a very bright future and will do well in the closed-open world (it runs on all major operating systems and will soon show up in mobile devices like WP7...).

 

C

Do you think Flash and Silverlight are any different? I'm still yet to even see anyone deploy Silverlight in a meaningful way outside of Microsoft and a very niche Microsoft-loving sites.

I think Silverlight has as much of a right to exist as Flash but honestly we should expect better than to have browsers needing third party plugins in order to deliver animation, video, webcams, and sounds.

ManipUni said:

Charles said:

*snip*

Do you think Flash and Silverlight are any different? I'm still yet to even see anyone deploy Silverlight in a meaningful way outside of Microsoft and a very niche Microsoft-loving sites.

 

I think Silverlight has as much of a right to exist as Flash but honestly we should expect better than to have browsers needing third party plugins in order to deliver animation, video, webcams, and sounds.

Ah, but Silverlight does not require a browser to provide usefulness to users and developers... The future of OOB is quite compelling. Again, why does it have to be all or nothing? This is what I mean about a heterogeneous future.
C

wkempf said:

CannotResolveSymbol said:

*snip*

That's not the point. If Apple/Steve wants an "open web", he should not be pushing for closed video formats, regardless of who owns them. In this case, though, since they do own them OGG isn't the only solution... but of course they're not about to open these codecs up.

H.264 is proprietary in the FSF sense, but it is arguable if it is proprietary in the "industry" idea of the term. If Steve Jobs is saying H.264 is not proprietary he probably means it is an MPEG ISO standard that is licensed under reasonable and non-discriminatory (aka "RAND") terms. Proprietary in this sense tends to mean a technology owned usually by a single entity and perhaps not even licensed at all, let alone to everyone. So what I am saying is calling H.264 proprietary is debatable.

But lets ignore that. Even in the FSF sense, a dependency in the open web on H.264 is preferable to Flash or Silverlight.

- The "IP" of H.264 is entirely based on patents and nothing more. In fact the MPEG has a fairly fully functional H.264 encoder/decoder they have written and is available under a extremely permissive open source license.

- Being based on patents instead of copyrights means H.264 will become 'Free' quicker then Silverlight or Flash would. For instance, copyright lasts 95 years, while patents last (at most) 20 years. The very last relevent patent (out of nearly a thousand) that covers any part of the H.264 spec expires in 2026, 16 years from now. That means by 16 years in the latest, H.264 will be an open and free format no different from Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Theora. Even if Silverlight 4 becomes free in 2105 or whenever, there is nothing in current copyright law that addresses source code.

- MPEG LA does sue entities for patent violation on H.264. So far all these entities have been very large corporations. You couldn't even qualify them as small businesses. I highly highly doubt they'll start going after random bloggers who post H.264 videos directly on their website. Because it will bring the issue to the of H.264 license to the forefront of the debate. They don't want that.

- The MPEG LA has suspended the patent royalty for distribution of H.264 videos on the Internet till 2016, anyway. This applies to everyone, including YouTube. This at most gives them 10 years (2016-2026) to harass webmasters, should they choose to do so.

- The pigeonhole principle and strong industry standardisation. This will make it difficult for the powers that be to push people off of H.264 once it becomes free. By then they will be so many "H.264" devices that their will be a virtual lock-in on the format (hint: virtually all Blu-ray players and PMPs). Any H.265 that might pop up will really have to be a lot better then H.264 to overtake it.  This will be difficult just by the fact that with any kind of compression, the limits of discrete mathematics come down hard (eg: the completely undefeatable yet simplistic pigeonhole principle). So there is serious diminishing returns involved every time you try to rev up a compression algorithm. So if they come up with such a better format, they deserve the money anyway

I personally rather Ogg Theora become the standard video format of the web, but I can understand the technical arguments for H.264.

ManipUni said:

Charles said:

*snip*

Do you think Flash and Silverlight are any different? I'm still yet to even see anyone deploy Silverlight in a meaningful way outside of Microsoft and a very niche Microsoft-loving sites.

 

I think Silverlight has as much of a right to exist as Flash but honestly we should expect better than to have browsers needing third party plugins in order to deliver animation, video, webcams, and sounds.

For every function you add to the browser, there'll be one more left out. Speech recognition. Touch sensitivity. Full 3D acceleration. Natal like controls.

I guess we'll prepare for the future where all of these are in the HTML5 specs, and we'll all have to manage it through JAVASCRIPT!

Bass said:

wkempf said:

*snip*

H.264 is proprietary in the FSF sense, but it is arguable if it is proprietary in the "industry" idea of the term. If Steve Jobs is saying H.264 is not proprietary he probably means it is an MPEG ISO standard that is licensed under reasonable and non-discriminatory (aka "RAND") terms. Proprietary in this sense tends to mean a technology owned usually by a single entity and perhaps not even licensed at all, let alone to everyone. So what I am saying is calling H.264 proprietary is debatable.

 

But lets ignore that. Even in the FSF sense, a dependency in the open web on H.264 is preferable to Flash or Silverlight.

 

- The "IP" of H.264 is entirely based on patents and nothing more. In fact the MPEG has a fairly fully functional H.264 encoder/decoder they have written and is available under a extremely permissive open source license.

 

- Being based on patents instead of copyrights means H.264 will become 'Free' quicker then Silverlight or Flash would. For instance, copyright lasts 95 years, while patents last (at most) 20 years. The very last relevent patent (out of nearly a thousand) that covers any part of the H.264 spec expires in 2026, 16 years from now. That means by 16 years in the latest, H.264 will be an open and free format no different from Ogg Vorbis or Ogg Theora. Even if Silverlight 4 becomes free in 2105 or whenever, there is nothing in current copyright law that addresses source code.

 

- MPEG LA does sue entities for patent violation on H.264. So far all these entities have been very large corporations. You couldn't even qualify them as small businesses. I highly highly doubt they'll start going after random bloggers who post H.264 videos directly on their website. Because it will bring the issue to the of H.264 license to the forefront of the debate. They don't want that.

 

- The MPEG LA has suspended the patent royalty for distribution of H.264 videos on the Internet till 2016, anyway. This applies to everyone, including YouTube. This at most gives them 10 years (2016-2026) to harass webmasters, should they choose to do so.

 

- The pigeonhole principle and strong industry standardisation. This will make it difficult for the powers that be to push people off of H.264 once it becomes free. By then they will be so many "H.264" devices that their will be a virtual lock-in on the format (hint: virtually all Blu-ray players and PMPs). Any H.265 that might pop up will really have to be a lot better then H.264 to overtake it.  This will be difficult just by the fact that with any kind of compression, the limits of discrete mathematics come down hard (eg: the completely undefeatable yet simplistic pigeonhole principle). So there is serious diminishing returns involved every time you try to rev up a compression algorithm. So if they come up with such a better format, they deserve the money anyway

 

I personally rather Ogg Theora become the standard video format of the web, but I can understand the technical arguments for H.264.

And Microsoft doesn't sue over re-implementations of .NET, so all of that is just technical details. The real issue is whether Steve Jobs is really being honest in supporting an 'open web' or whether its just political cover because they want to control the iPod platform.

brian.shapiro said:

Bass said:

*snip*

And Microsoft doesn't sue over re-implementations of .NET, so all of that is just technical details. The real issue is whether Steve Jobs is really being honest in supporting an 'open web' or whether its just political cover because they want to control the iPod platform.

I think Apple has a bigger interest in an open web then Microsoft does. Actually, I don't see how Microsoft's business model fits in any shape or form into the idea of an open web. Microsoft wants control over the ways people develop software and ensure that software runs best on Windows only, if it even runs anywhere else. That way they can keep racking in the Windows royalties they bill to OEMs.

brian.shapiro said:

Bass said:

*snip*

And Microsoft doesn't sue over re-implementations of .NET, so all of that is just technical details. The real issue is whether Steve Jobs is really being honest in supporting an 'open web' or whether its just political cover because they want to control the iPod platform.

Interesting article on Anantech

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3682/adobe-enables-gpu-flash-acceleration-in-os-x-we-test-it

As the story goes, until a week ago, Apple would not provide the required OS/X APIs to allow Flash to use efficient GPU acceleration.

Last week Apple released some APIs, and a week later Adobe (that supposed foot-dragger) released it’s preview of GPU accelerated Flash for OS/X.

Bass said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

I think Apple has a bigger interest in an open web then Microsoft does. Actually, I don't see how Microsoft's business model fits in any shape or form into the idea of an open web. Microsoft wants control over the ways people develop software and ensure that software runs best on Windows only, if it even runs anywhere else. That way they can keep racking in the Windows royalties they bill to OEMs.

I think Microsoft has a bigger interest in an open web then Apple does. Actually, I don't see how Apple's business model fits in any shape or form into the idea of an open web. Apple wants control over the ways people develop software (hi 3.1.1!) and ensure that software runs best on iPhone OS only, if it even runs anywhere else. That way they can keep racking in the iPhone OS devices' and subscriptions' money.

PaoloM said:

Bass said:

*snip*

I think Microsoft has a bigger interest in an open web then Apple does. Actually, I don't see how Apple's business model fits in any shape or form into the idea of an open web. Apple wants control over the ways people develop software (hi 3.1.1!) and ensure that software runs best on iPhone OS only, if it even runs anywhere else. That way they can keep racking in the iPhone OS devices' and subscriptions' money.

Obviously Apple is also a platform vendor and would rather have their platform have the best web experience by introducing proprietary Apple OS X / iPhone only tech on the web if possible. The thing is they are in no position to make this happen.

Microsoft has a better shot at this. When people view the web it is usually through a Microsoft product (~90% on a Microsoft OS). Silverlight supports Mac OS X, but I think this is more to entice developers to the platform then anything else. There is no business case for it other then appeasing the demand for cross-platform development. Microsoft is a platform vendor, and as a platform vendor, a business case for cross-platform development (which means improving your competitor's platforms) is almost nonsensical.

If Silverlight ever gets popular I'm sure the Mac OS X version will go the way of the dodo, probably with Microsoft citing "lack of demand" as typical. This will lead to a greatly degraded web experience for everyone not using Windows. Which will make Windows more appealing. Which arguably was the whole point of the experiment.

Bass said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

Obviously Apple is also a platform vendor and would rather have their platform have the best web experience by introducing proprietary Apple OS X / iPhone only tech on the web if possible. The thing is they are in no position to make this happen.

 

Microsoft has a better shot at this. When people view the web it is usually through a Microsoft product (~90% on a Microsoft OS). Silverlight supports Mac OS X, but I think this is more to entice developers to the platform then anything else. There is no business case for it other then appeasing the demand for cross-platform development. Microsoft is a platform vendor, and as a platform vendor, a business case for cross-platform development (which means improving your competitor's platforms) is almost nonsensical.

 

If Silverlight ever gets popular I'm sure the Mac OS X version will go the way of the dodo, probably with Microsoft citing "lack of demand" as typical. This will lead to a greatly degraded web experience for everyone not using Windows. Which will make Windows more appealing. Which arguably was the whole point of the experiment.

Microsoft makes more Mac software than anyone else, besides Apple and has an entire business unit for Macs.  So no, they will continue to support Silverlight.

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/moving_forward.html

These are like those scapegoat religious people using, oh, I am afraid of death. And someone says, don't worry, you will go to heaven. Yeah, I am still afraid of death and I am still going to die. Going to heaven is completely out of topic. Those statements are off-topic and just trying to divert the real topic. And Jobs is using the same tatics. Or I should say, the same Mac vs PC bs over again. In order to make them look good, they just downplay Adobe to make people think Adobe is uncool and not needed.

Let's just be realistic, Apple is always an a-- and they always dictate everything. And they are lazy because they know allowing flash would takes more efforts in cooperation and maintaining their unstable OS. Instead of taking on the challange, they just block it off, so they can claim stuff like no virus and so-on. I respect their business model, but, I hate liars. If they can be honest about it, I will totally support their cause. Closed system has a lot of its benifits, both technical and business aspects. But, this trash talk BS is something I don't agree on. I have always respected Apple until their attacks on PC, freaking BS.

Just to make it clear. I am fine with Apple closed system model. I respect that. It is those BS claim to downplay Adobe that gets me mad. Just the same I hate those Mac vs PC BS. I respected Apple until they started those BS statements to downplay competition instead respecting competitors.

magicalclick said:

Nah, all flashy boggust claims. All these claim has nothing, I repeat, has nothing to do with whether Apple should let iPhone to run Flash or not. I mean seriously, no touch, so what? lower bettery life? so what? performance? so what? That has nothing, I repeat, nothing related to those closed development agreement.

 

These are like those scapegoat religious people using, oh, I am afraid of death. And someone says, don't worry, you will go to heaven. Yeah, I am still afraid of death and I am still going to die. Going to heaven is completely out of topic. Those statements are off-topic and just trying to divert the real topic. And Jobs is using the same tatics. Or I should say, the same Mac vs PC bs over again. In order to make them look good, they just downplay Adobe to make people think Adobe is uncool and not needed.

 

Let's just be realistic, Apple is always an a-- and they always dictate everything. And they are lazy because they know allowing flash would takes more efforts in cooperation and maintaining their unstable OS. Instead of taking on the challange, they just block it off, so they can claim stuff like no virus and so-on. I respect their business model, but, I hate liars. If they can be honest about it, I will totally support their cause. Closed system has a lot of its benifits, both technical and business aspects. But, this trash talk BS is something I don't agree on. I have always respected Apple until their attacks on PC, freaking BS.

 

Just to make it clear. I am fine with Apple closed system model. I respect that. It is those BS claim to downplay Adobe that gets me mad. Just the same I hate those Mac vs PC BS. I respected Apple until they started those BS statements to downplay competition instead respecting competitors.

 

 

That's another thing. The stuff about Flash not working on touch screens seems to be a bit of a lie.

Bass said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

Obviously Apple is also a platform vendor and would rather have their platform have the best web experience by introducing proprietary Apple OS X / iPhone only tech on the web if possible. The thing is they are in no position to make this happen.

 

Microsoft has a better shot at this. When people view the web it is usually through a Microsoft product (~90% on a Microsoft OS). Silverlight supports Mac OS X, but I think this is more to entice developers to the platform then anything else. There is no business case for it other then appeasing the demand for cross-platform development. Microsoft is a platform vendor, and as a platform vendor, a business case for cross-platform development (which means improving your competitor's platforms) is almost nonsensical.

 

If Silverlight ever gets popular I'm sure the Mac OS X version will go the way of the dodo, probably with Microsoft citing "lack of demand" as typical. This will lead to a greatly degraded web experience for everyone not using Windows. Which will make Windows more appealing. Which arguably was the whole point of the experiment.

As CreamFilling has already pointed out, MS makes more money on Mac software than just about anyone else in the industry.  In fact, outside of Windows and WinOffice, it's one of the few MS divisions that actually makes a profit. If what you're saying is true, then why haven't they canned Office for the Mac? If not for Microsoft's efforts in this regard, the platform may shrunk to nothing years ago.

From the looks of it, MS is putting more effort into Macs on the desktop than Apple. It's great to watch Jobs bleat about Adobe not spending millions to convert all their software to Cocoa when so much of Apple's stuff is still running on Carbon.

Is there no end to Jobs' hypocrisy?

Ray7 said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

That's another thing. The stuff about Flash not working on touch screens seems to be a bit of a lie.

 

 

It isn't a "lie."

Can you build Flash applications to work on touch screens? Yes.

Do existing applications inherently work on touch screens? No.

Even the article suggested reasons why existing applications would fail when you throw them very fast MOUSE.UP and MOUSE.DOWN events (menus opening and closing within a split second).

Let me also remind you what the quote was:
"Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware."

JoshRoss said:

I think the bigger issue is Section 3.3.1.  I can live without flash and yes *eek* silverlight. I think Steve is just beating a dead horse here.

 

-Josh

I think even putting Flash and...

Silverlight in the same line of text is wrong.

Flash = utter crap

Silverlight = Almost full Windows power in that little plugin.

Besides, I'm "moving" fully into Silverlight soon so it better not disappear.

Just my $0.02.

turrican said:

JoshRoss said:

*snip*

I think even putting Flash and...

Silverlight in the same line of text is wrong.

 

Flash = utter crap

Silverlight = Almost full Windows power in that little plugin.

 

Besides, I'm "moving" fully into Silverlight soon so it better not disappear.

 

Just my $0.02.

They're exactly the same. I don't know what Silverlight's long term future is but since it isn't an open standard and since the IE team thought so good of it they failed to integrated it into IE9 I am not holding out much hope.

brian.shapiro said:

Bass said:

*snip*

And Microsoft doesn't sue over re-implementations of .NET, so all of that is just technical details. The real issue is whether Steve Jobs is really being honest in supporting an 'open web' or whether its just political cover because they want to control the iPod platform.

What he said. I'm not against closed systems. It's just a different model, with it's own set of pros and cons. Better for some things, worse for others, and equal for the rest (barring crazy "religous" arguments that I tend not to get into). However, it's extremely dishonest to make claims about the HTML5 stack being open, when Apple/Steve is pushing hard to include their own non-open aspects in the standard. I agree with you that there's some debate about what open means in this specific case, and we did just fine with GIF on the web for many years, so I'm not claiming doom and gloom here. I'm simply pointing out the dishonesty.

Bass said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

I think Apple has a bigger interest in an open web then Microsoft does. Actually, I don't see how Microsoft's business model fits in any shape or form into the idea of an open web. Microsoft wants control over the ways people develop software and ensure that software runs best on Windows only, if it even runs anywhere else. That way they can keep racking in the Windows royalties they bill to OEMs.

That claim isn't wholly accurate, but let's say you're right. How is Apple's businness strategy here any different, exactly? It seems more draconian than anything Microsoft has ever been accused of when it comes to "lock-in" business strategies.

ManipUni said:

turrican said:

*snip*

They're exactly the same. I don't know what Silverlight's long term future is but since it isn't an open standard and since the IE team thought so good of it they failed to integrated it into IE9 I am not holding out much hope.

What utter nonesense. I somewhat understand the "open" sentiment... though the tech industry in general, and the web in particular, has done just fine with "closed/proprietary" systems so far. But the claim about SL not being supported in IE9, which isn't even in beta form yet, is complete and utter whackery. Further, questioning Silverlight's future is a foolish thing to do. It's backed by the most powerful company in the industry, no matter what you think of them. They're pushing it hard, and not just on the web. It's being pushed on the web, on the PC, on the phone, on cable boxes, on embedded devices... hell, if it runs software, Microsoft thinks Silverlight should run on it, as far as I can tell. No, Silverlight is going to be pervasive, and is going to be around for quite some time.

wkempf said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

What utter nonesense. I somewhat understand the "open" sentiment... though the tech industry in general, and the web in particular, has done just fine with "closed/proprietary" systems so far. But the claim about SL not being supported in IE9, which isn't even in beta form yet, is complete and utter whackery. Further, questioning Silverlight's future is a foolish thing to do. It's backed by the most powerful company in the industry, no matter what you think of them. They're pushing it hard, and not just on the web. It's being pushed on the web, on the PC, on the phone, on cable boxes, on embedded devices... hell, if it runs software, Microsoft thinks Silverlight should run on it, as far as I can tell. No, Silverlight is going to be pervasive, and is going to be around for quite some time.

I cannot run Silverlight natively in the IE9 development preview. I think it is safe to say it won't have native support.

ManipUni said:

wkempf said:

*snip*

I cannot run Silverlight natively in the IE9 development preview. I think it is safe to say it won't have native support.

It's not safe to say ANYTHING about IE9. It's NOT EVEN IN BETA. What's available to you as a CTP today is NOT BETA. Hell, it's not even ALPHA. It's a developer snapshot, that doesn't even include the proper frame. Why you're trying to guess (and I do mean guess) anything about Silverlight based on this IE9 CTP is waaaaaay beyond me.

ManipUni said:

wkempf said:

*snip*

I cannot run Silverlight natively in the IE9 development preview. I think it is safe to say it won't have native support.

"I cannot run Silverlight natively in the IE9 development preview"

I bolded the important parts *rolls eyes*

Harlequin said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

"I cannot run Silverlight natively in the IE9 development preview"

 

I bolded the important parts *rolls eyes*

Wait what does he mean by natively

wkempf said:

ManipUni said:

*snip*

What utter nonesense. I somewhat understand the "open" sentiment... though the tech industry in general, and the web in particular, has done just fine with "closed/proprietary" systems so far. But the claim about SL not being supported in IE9, which isn't even in beta form yet, is complete and utter whackery. Further, questioning Silverlight's future is a foolish thing to do. It's backed by the most powerful company in the industry, no matter what you think of them. They're pushing it hard, and not just on the web. It's being pushed on the web, on the PC, on the phone, on cable boxes, on embedded devices... hell, if it runs software, Microsoft thinks Silverlight should run on it, as far as I can tell. No, Silverlight is going to be pervasive, and is going to be around for quite some time.

I couldn't agree more. Just like when .NET came out, I think and this is ofcourse just my own thought and opinion on it, there is something about Silverlight. Something important. I'm very confident that Silverlight has a very bright and important future... back then when .NET came out I knew a lot of people who bet against it, long story short, they no longer work in this industry.

I'm going to bet on Silverlight and I'll bet large. I'll move as many applications as I can to Silverlight ( once I learn it better ).

I do not claim in any shape or form that Windows applications will die, but I do see Silverlight becoming atleast as important if not much much more in the future.

brian.shapiro said:

Harlequin said:

*snip*

Wait what does he mean by natively

Beats me. Silverlight works fine here on IE9...

PaoloM said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

Beats me. Silverlight works fine here on IE9...

I just found this article on Reuters,

Microsoft echoes Apple view on Adobe's Flash

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T47V20100430?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/technologyNews+(News+/+US+/+Technology)">http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T47V20100430?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/technologyNews+(News+/+US+/+Technology) 

Which seems pretty biased, by suggesting that Microsoft is endorsing Apple's position when there's no evidence they are. The general manager of IE just agreed with Apple that Flash has some technical issues. Obviously, because they're developing Silverlight, they think Flash has some place in the market too.

brian.shapiro said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

I just found this article on Reuters,

 

Microsoft echoes Apple view on Adobe's Flash

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T47V20100430?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/technologyNews+(News+/+US+/+Technology)">http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T47V20100430?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/technologyNews+(News+/+US+/+Technology) 

 

Which seems pretty biased, by suggesting that Microsoft is endorsing Apple's position when there's no evidence they are. The general manager of IE just agreed with Apple that Flash has some technical issues. Obviously, because they're developing Silverlight, they think Flash has some place in the market too.

 

 

That's from IEBlog

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx

Posted by Dean Hachamovitch... for whatever that's worth.

brian.shapiro said:

Harlequin said:

*snip*

Wait what does he mean by natively

Given Silverlight's rapid release schedule, I'd have thought the worst thing you could do would be in anyway tie it to IE.

PaoloM said:

brian.shapiro said:

*snip*

Beats me. Silverlight works fine here on IE9...

I suspect he means that it is not "built into" the browser or shipped with the browser.

exoteric said:

PaoloM said:

*snip*

I suspect he means that it is not "built into" the browser or shipped with the browser.

Nor should it be. Silverlight updates much more quickly than IE, so the usefulness of shipping Silverlight with IE would be only short-lived, and Adobe would likely complain that MS is using their dominance in the browser space to push Silverlight if they bundled it.

Sven Groot said:

exoteric said:

*snip*

Nor should it be. Silverlight updates much more quickly than IE, so the usefulness of shipping Silverlight with IE would be only short-lived, and Adobe would likely complain that MS is using their dominance in the browser space to push Silverlight if they bundled it.

A pre-selected option in the installer to install Silverlight is fine. That's for separate installations. Windows should probably come with Silverlight pre-installed and auto-updated when it boots for the first time. For the EU, the browser ballot Internet Explorer choice would implicitly include Silverlight. The EU couldn't possibly defend a "plugin ballot". A browser ballot okay but a plugin ballot, that would be seriously rediculous. Also, there are security considerations: what is the security track record of Flash vs Silverlight? Then again, one could argue that Silverlight has not been properly "field tested" because it's not interesting enough of a target, ironically, due to its low market penetration.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_buvCWcJdjFoLD5vBSkguGO