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Go back through the history of Apple's (and its many, many sycophantic fans) proclamations - such as apps on the phone, push notifications, multitasking - and

Go back through the history of Apple's (and its many, many sycophantic fans) proclamations - such as apps on the phone, push notifications, multitasking - and there is a disturbing trend of Apple (and its followeres) making moral pontifications, stamping their feet, and then quietly and shamelessly backtracking when proven wrong. Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice.

spot 16y ago
true -- but this time he seems to have gone too far to turn back. then again, remember when PowerPC was better than Intel? Jobs is a master of the Big Lie.
- rbranson 16y ago
  What was he supposed to say? Get up on stage and tell everyone PowerPC chips were crap? During the PPC days, there were many times where PPC had a significant lead on Intel, especially early on, but towards the end, most notably the G5 days, Intel's lead just widened so far and PPC's got so expensive, that it made the best business sense to switch.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    The Power architecture is still pretty awesome for raw power. But it's not designed for low energy consumption (ie: laptops). So while a desktop with some P6/P7 chips* would be an awesome beast - a laptop might be a toaster. The G5 was a Power4 chip of some sort from memory. Jobs read the market well. The move is definately to Laptops / portable devices - and Intels chips were much better at that.
- tjogin 16y ago
  At the time, they arguably were better. Things change, and Apple changes too. Don't see anything wrong with that.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Or merely look at some of Apple's other technology bets: Apple Desktop Bus over PS/2 and serial (ADB lost, native ps/2 and serial connectors are still around and USB can easily talk to ps/2 or serial devices with the aid of a simple adapter). SCSI over IDE (IDE won). PowerPC over x86 (x86 won). Firewire over USB (USB won). AppleTalk over TCP/IP (TCP/IP won). I don't think Flash is the right choice, and I'm ok with the idea that some mobile devices won't support Flash, but this anti-Flash jihad seems to be going too far.
- alanh 16y ago
  Were they "bets" or technology choices? For the first time, Apple choosing "not-Flash" actually has enough weight to force content publishers to choose "not-Flash" more often. This will eventually influence more of the tech industry. Personally, I'm thrilled.
- andrewf 16y ago
  To be fair, all the other pre-90s microcomputer networking standards (NetBIOS, IPX, token ring..) are also dead, Apple Desktop Bus was introduced before the PS/2 port, and IDE was introduced (as a one-vendor proprietary implementation) in the same year that Apple started putting SCSI hard drives into Macs.
tjogin 16y ago
There were no objections to either push notifications nor multitasking. At one point they weren't offered simply because you can't do all things at once, but Apple never made any objections to the technologies, moral or otherwise.
thought_alarm 16y ago
> Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice. You think so? Smart-phones have been around a long time. The iPhone was announced over three years ago, yet here we are in the middle of 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found on any mobile device. How is that not Adobe's fault? Is Adobe just not very interested in mobile Flash, or are there very serious technical challenges that Adobe has been unable to overcome? Instead of waiting around for Adobe to get their act together, Apple delivered HTML video and interactive web content for their mobile devices, they delivered it years ago, and they did it using open standards and open source development that their competitors are not only taking advantage of, but are utterly embracing. It is the tale of one company that's able to get things done, and another company that isn't. And it shows how foolish it is for companies like Apple, Google, Palm, and RIM to depend on a company like Adobe to deliver the "full web". There was no choice to be made. Mobile Flash didn't exist in 2007, it still doesn't exist today, and any dependence on Adobe is foolish.
- jarek 16y ago
  Others have already pointed out the N900. On a more historical note, mobile Flash did exist in 2007. I was using it to watch Youtube on my Nokia N800. It was slow -- the device didn't have enough CPU power to simultaneously download and playback, so you had to pause the video and let it cache completely first. But it most definitely did exist, and I am convinced that implementation would have worked well on 2009 hardware. The N800 wasn't exactly a breakthrough device, nor was it super popular. Yet Adobe somehow managed to deliver for Nokia. The N800 was introduced in early 2007. Its predecessor, the 770, was introduced in late 2005, with Flash out of the box. I never owned one so I cannot comment on the performance. I would also challenge your statements regarding Apple delivering HTML video for mobile devices -- mostly the HTML years ago part. Also, H.264, which Apple is pushing, is by no means an open standard, which some of their competitors have issues with.
  - tjogin 16y ago
    Simply existing is not good enough for Apple, their bar is higher than that. See copy/paste on iPhone for an example: They could have implemented the menu-driven kind of copy/paste found on Palm Pre and Android, but they wouldn't because it sucks. Apple prefers nothing at all over a solution that sucks. So we got nothing in place of cut/paste, until they figured out to do it in a way that didn't suck. Simply existing is not good enough. Not even Adobe is claiming that Flash on mobiles works today, let alone three years ago.
rauljara 16y ago
I've noticed that it is very hard to accuse others of being morally pontificating without sounding at least a little hypocritical about it. Even the previous sentence applies to itself.

spot 16y ago

true -- but this time he seems to have gone too far to turn back. then again, remember when PowerPC was better than Intel? Jobs is a master of the Big Lie.

rbranson 16y ago
What was he supposed to say? Get up on stage and tell everyone PowerPC chips were crap? During the PPC days, there were many times where PPC had a significant lead on Intel, especially early on, but towards the end, most notably the G5 days, Intel's lead just widened so far and PPC's got so expensive, that it made the best business sense to switch.
- whatusername 16y ago
  The Power architecture is still pretty awesome for raw power. But it's not designed for low energy consumption (ie: laptops). So while a desktop with some P6/P7 chips* would be an awesome beast - a laptop might be a toaster. The G5 was a Power4 chip of some sort from memory. Jobs read the market well. The move is definately to Laptops / portable devices - and Intels chips were much better at that.
tjogin 16y ago
At the time, they arguably were better. Things change, and Apple changes too. Don't see anything wrong with that.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Or merely look at some of Apple's other technology bets: Apple Desktop Bus over PS/2 and serial (ADB lost, native ps/2 and serial connectors are still around and USB can easily talk to ps/2 or serial devices with the aid of a simple adapter). SCSI over IDE (IDE won). PowerPC over x86 (x86 won). Firewire over USB (USB won). AppleTalk over TCP/IP (TCP/IP won). I don't think Flash is the right choice, and I'm ok with the idea that some mobile devices won't support Flash, but this anti-Flash jihad seems to be going too far.

alanh 16y ago
Were they "bets" or technology choices? For the first time, Apple choosing "not-Flash" actually has enough weight to force content publishers to choose "not-Flash" more often. This will eventually influence more of the tech industry. Personally, I'm thrilled.
andrewf 16y ago
To be fair, all the other pre-90s microcomputer networking standards (NetBIOS, IPX, token ring..) are also dead, Apple Desktop Bus was introduced before the PS/2 port, and IDE was introduced (as a one-vendor proprietary implementation) in the same year that Apple started putting SCSI hard drives into Macs.

tjogin 16y ago

There were no objections to either push notifications nor multitasking. At one point they weren't offered simply because you can't do all things at once, but Apple never made any objections to the technologies, moral or otherwise.

thought_alarm 16y ago

> Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice. You think so? Smart-phones have been around a long time. The iPhone was announced over three years ago, yet here we are in the middle of 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found on any mobile device. How is that not Adobe's fault? Is Adobe just not very interested in mobile Flash, or are there very serious technical challenges that Adobe has been unable to overcome? Instead of waiting around for Adobe to get their act together, Apple delivered HTML video and interactive web content for their mobile devices, they delivered it years ago, and they did it using open standards and open source development that their competitors are not only taking advantage of, but are utterly embracing. It is the tale of one company that's able to get things done, and another company that isn't. And it shows how foolish it is for companies like Apple, Google, Palm, and RIM to depend on a company like Adobe to deliver the "full web". There was no choice to be made. Mobile Flash didn't exist in 2007, it still doesn't exist today, and any dependence on Adobe is foolish.

jarek 16y ago
Others have already pointed out the N900. On a more historical note, mobile Flash did exist in 2007. I was using it to watch Youtube on my Nokia N800. It was slow -- the device didn't have enough CPU power to simultaneously download and playback, so you had to pause the video and let it cache completely first. But it most definitely did exist, and I am convinced that implementation would have worked well on 2009 hardware. The N800 wasn't exactly a breakthrough device, nor was it super popular. Yet Adobe somehow managed to deliver for Nokia. The N800 was introduced in early 2007. Its predecessor, the 770, was introduced in late 2005, with Flash out of the box. I never owned one so I cannot comment on the performance. I would also challenge your statements regarding Apple delivering HTML video for mobile devices -- mostly the HTML years ago part. Also, H.264, which Apple is pushing, is by no means an open standard, which some of their competitors have issues with.
- tjogin 16y ago
  Simply existing is not good enough for Apple, their bar is higher than that. See copy/paste on iPhone for an example: They could have implemented the menu-driven kind of copy/paste found on Palm Pre and Android, but they wouldn't because it sucks. Apple prefers nothing at all over a solution that sucks. So we got nothing in place of cut/paste, until they figured out to do it in a way that didn't suck. Simply existing is not good enough. Not even Adobe is claiming that Flash on mobiles works today, let alone three years ago.

rauljara 16y ago

I've noticed that it is very hard to accuse others of being morally pontificating without sounding at least a little hypocritical about it. Even the previous sentence applies to itself.