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And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple’s control. Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular.

by mclin 17y ago

And, obviously, such a meta-platform would be out of Apple’s control. Consider a world where some other company’s cross-platform toolkit proved wildly popular. Then Apple releases major new features to iPhone OS, and that other company’s toolkit is slow to adopt them. At that point, it’s the other company that controls when third-party apps can make use of these features. This has happened before. It's called the web, and it's beautiful. Slow to adopt? Hells yes. But I love it because it runs everywhere.

raganwald 17y ago
If I may: The salient difference between the web and a meta-platform like Flash is that while Adobe controls flash, nobody controls the web. If Apple wants to build hardware acceleration for CSS animations on iPhone, it does so. If Apple wants to fix a bug in Javascript, it does so. If Apple wants to close a security hole in Safari, it does so. Whereas if Adobe feels like making Flash slow as shit on OS X, it does so. If Adobe doesn't feel like fixing a bug on OS X, it doesn't fix a bug on OS X. If Adobe can't be bothered to fix a security bug on OS X, Adobe leaves a huge security hole open on OS X. The web is a "worse is better" alternative to native iPhone apps, but at least it's open and offers opportunities as well as dangers for Apple.
- wvenable 17y ago
  If Apple wants to write 200,000 applications and post them to it's app store it does so... no wait.
commieneko 17y ago
The web is many things, but it is _not_ beautiful. It is a mess. It happened by accident, evolved beyond anyone's control and is now a beast loose upon the world. Unlovely in the extreme. And it does _not_ run everywhere. With lots of work, you can make it run a lot of places; enough to be worth the effort. It is certainly useful, but not _nearly_ as useful as it could be. Ted Nelson, who created the term hypertext, famously said, "HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management." While politically I myself am very much in favor of open standards, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain _here_, I'm also vastly disappointed in the quality of most of the results, if from no other viewpoint than a human factors one. Like the talking dog, proponents seem happy that it talks (works) at all, and don't seem nearly concerned enough about what it's saying...

by mclin 17y ago

raganwald 17y ago

If I may: The salient difference between the web and a meta-platform like Flash is that while Adobe controls flash, nobody controls the web. If Apple wants to build hardware acceleration for CSS animations on iPhone, it does so. If Apple wants to fix a bug in Javascript, it does so. If Apple wants to close a security hole in Safari, it does so. Whereas if Adobe feels like making Flash slow as shit on OS X, it does so. If Adobe doesn't feel like fixing a bug on OS X, it doesn't fix a bug on OS X. If Adobe can't be bothered to fix a security bug on OS X, Adobe leaves a huge security hole open on OS X. The web is a "worse is better" alternative to native iPhone apps, but at least it's open and offers opportunities as well as dangers for Apple.

wvenable 17y ago
If Apple wants to write 200,000 applications and post them to it's app store it does so... no wait.

commieneko 17y ago

The web is many things, but it is _not_ beautiful. It is a mess. It happened by accident, evolved beyond anyone's control and is now a beast loose upon the world. Unlovely in the extreme. And it does _not_ run everywhere. With lots of work, you can make it run a lot of places; enough to be worth the effort. It is certainly useful, but not _nearly_ as useful as it could be. Ted Nelson, who created the term hypertext, famously said, "HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT-- ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management." While politically I myself am very much in favor of open standards, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain _here_, I'm also vastly disappointed in the quality of most of the results, if from no other viewpoint than a human factors one. Like the talking dog, proponents seem happy that it talks (works) at all, and don't seem nearly concerned enough about what it's saying...