4 ms·

Bullshit: "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary." Well, except for the SWF format, the mxmlc SWF compiler, the Tamarind interpreter, most of the popular

by 9999 15y ago

Bullshit: "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary." Well, except for the SWF format, the mxmlc SWF compiler, the Tamarind interpreter, most of the popular video codecs, the FLV container format, AMF, RTMP... And I could go on. Huh. Okay, I guess the only things that are "proprietary" are the authoring tool (although you're welcome to make your own) and some very important parts of the actual Flash Player (if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation). "The full web." Flash is still an important part of the full web. There's a lot of stuff that you will just never be able to do with the browser alone (capture video, do p2p networking, etc.) or that will be so difficult to implement amongst the many competing browsers that it's only economically feasible for giant companies to develop web applications. But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store. "Touch" Adobe's APIs for Touch work pretty well, but they require developers to update their applications. Not particularly hard (compared to porting a flash game to Obj-C anyway). True: "reliability, security, and performance" Enough said. "Battery life." Software based rendering of graphics and decoding of video is obviously going to be way harder on battery life. Middleman lock-in Apple was burned in the past by this, but it doesn't seem like that much of a threat now.

YooLi 15y ago
Hmm... Where can I download a full Flash plugin made by another company? Not the partial open-source implementations that only do a small part of everything that is 'Flash'. It's like saying Mac OS X isn't proprietary because it uses a lot of open-source pieces. "(if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation)" But they didn't, that's the whole point. Did you read 'the full web' part? Jobs says that most of the videos Adobe argues one won't be able to see are also available without the Flash container and other things like games just won't be available, but there are nice games in the app store to make up for it. He's admitting not 100% will be available, but it's not as bad as Adobe is making it sound. As someone who removed Flash from my desktop browser about a year ago, I agree. "But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store." Why do people keep repeating this? Do they think if they repeat it enough, it will actually be true? How much does apple make if the app is free? Why is iOS Safari consistently the most standards compliant mobile browser? What percentage of Apple's profit was contributed by the App Store? So allowing Flash would have killed the app store? No way because Flash performs so badly on mobile devices, which is why it isn't on iOS devices. ""Touch" Adobe's APIs for Touch work pretty well, but they require developers to update their applications." Well, then that does nothing to help the 'full web' argument now, does it. That's great if the APIs work pretty well, but what about the thousands (millions?) of flash apps that probably won't be upgraded to those pretty nice APIs. Not much of a 'full web' experience then.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  > How much does apple make if the app is free? $99/year from iOS Developer Program. Even free native apps reinforce Apple's platform lock-in. Cross-platform web apps lessen users' dependence on iOS.
  - Steko 15y ago
    Doubt that would even cover the bandwidth.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- 9999 15y ago
  "But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store." I don't actually hear that many people repeating this, but to expand a little bit on this, it's not just apps, it's also media content. The Flash ecosystem provides one of the few forms of DRM that the big movie studios have deemed acceptable. With Flash off of the iOS web platform it makes it just a little bit harder for users to buy content from someone other than Apple. Do you truly believe that there aren't motives beyond providing a better user experience behind what Jobs laid out in that article? The "break even" story about what the app store makes is a bunch of bullshit too. If Apple's operating expenses are truly 33% of every sale, then they are the least efficient company on the planet. "Not much of a 'full web' experience then." Compatibility is actually not all that bad. For your standard restaurant web site or photo portfolio, they're still usable even without being updated, the experience is simply not optimal. Still, having it at all is better than having nothing. The full web is about those millions upon millions of flash animations, restaurant web sites, e-brochures, photo galleries, and digital artworks, some of which date back to the late 90s now. A big part of why I'm disappointed by Adobe's decision is that that stuff is going to become inaccessible to a lot of people going forward. It's like the decision not to bring Hypercard over to OS X. Other technologies had already succeeded it, but there was a lot of useful and interesting stuff done in that format that is more or less lost now.

by 9999 15y ago

YooLi 15y ago

Hmm... Where can I download a full Flash plugin made by another company? Not the partial open-source implementations that only do a small part of everything that is 'Flash'. It's like saying Mac OS X isn't proprietary because it uses a lot of open-source pieces. "(if Adobe had open sourced the player 5 years ago, we wouldn't even be having this conversation)" But they didn't, that's the whole point. Did you read 'the full web' part? Jobs says that most of the videos Adobe argues one won't be able to see are also available without the Flash container and other things like games just won't be available, but there are nice games in the app store to make up for it. He's admitting not 100% will be available, but it's not as bad as Adobe is making it sound. As someone who removed Flash from my desktop browser about a year ago, I agree. "But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store." Why do people keep repeating this? Do they think if they repeat it enough, it will actually be true? How much does apple make if the app is free? Why is iOS Safari consistently the most standards compliant mobile browser? What percentage of Apple's profit was contributed by the App Store? So allowing Flash would have killed the app store? No way because Flash performs so badly on mobile devices, which is why it isn't on iOS devices. ""Touch" Adobe's APIs for Touch work pretty well, but they require developers to update their applications." Well, then that does nothing to help the 'full web' argument now, does it. That's great if the APIs work pretty well, but what about the thousands (millions?) of flash apps that probably won't be upgraded to those pretty nice APIs. Not much of a 'full web' experience then.

cpeterso 15y ago
> How much does apple make if the app is free? $99/year from iOS Developer Program. Even free native apps reinforce Apple's platform lock-in. Cross-platform web apps lessen users' dependence on iOS.
- Steko 15y ago
  Doubt that would even cover the bandwidth.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
9999 15y ago
"But Apple doesn't want web applications to be able to compete with the capabilities of native apps that they make a profit on in their app store." I don't actually hear that many people repeating this, but to expand a little bit on this, it's not just apps, it's also media content. The Flash ecosystem provides one of the few forms of DRM that the big movie studios have deemed acceptable. With Flash off of the iOS web platform it makes it just a little bit harder for users to buy content from someone other than Apple. Do you truly believe that there aren't motives beyond providing a better user experience behind what Jobs laid out in that article? The "break even" story about what the app store makes is a bunch of bullshit too. If Apple's operating expenses are truly 33% of every sale, then they are the least efficient company on the planet. "Not much of a 'full web' experience then." Compatibility is actually not all that bad. For your standard restaurant web site or photo portfolio, they're still usable even without being updated, the experience is simply not optimal. Still, having it at all is better than having nothing. The full web is about those millions upon millions of flash animations, restaurant web sites, e-brochures, photo galleries, and digital artworks, some of which date back to the late 90s now. A big part of why I'm disappointed by Adobe's decision is that that stuff is going to become inaccessible to a lot of people going forward. It's like the decision not to bring Hypercard over to OS X. Other technologies had already succeeded it, but there was a lot of useful and interesting stuff done in that format that is more or less lost now.