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> I think Apple did not want to risk letting that happen. they've already shown a shadow of their true colors when they banned flash under the guise of securit

by chii 3y ago

> I think Apple did not want to risk letting that happen. they've already shown a shadow of their true colors when they banned flash under the guise of security (which is also a problem, but for which apple conveniently uses as an excuse). This is their true intention. The app store and the easy revenue from those sales are just not something they'll willingly give up.

lesuorac 3y ago
Loosen up that tinfoil hat. Apple banned flash when web apps were the _only_ apps on the iphone (besides the preloaded apps). The App Store [1] is ~18 months after the iPhone [2] was released. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
- patrickaljord 3y ago
  This is true, but it's naive to believe that the App Store wasn't planned long before those 18 months and was written in just a couple of month before its release.
  - TheFuzzball 3y ago
    I think we can tell that the App Store wasn't planned that early because if it was the earlier Apple apps would have been using the APIs that needed to be implemented and documented for the first App Store, and they didn't. Apple today is very different from the Apple that launched the iPhone and the original App Store - they started off thinking all apps could be PWAs, but the Web Platform wasn't mature enough at the time and they pivoted to native, that's the actual truth. Now they're addicted to in-app-purchase money from casino games and don't want that money moving out of their 30% taxable grasp. It's a sad story, truly.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Really? You think the casino style games are going to move to PWAs without direct access to users wallets via in app purchases? If that’s the case, why aren’t all of the same games moving to the web for Android?
      - a13o 3y ago
        The social casino space on mobile is interesting, because everyone basically accepts that their apps are a commodity. Therefore the winners are the ones with the best operations. SciPlay in particular comes to mind because they have built out their own payment processing on platforms that support it. They explicitly want to avoid headwinds from Walled Gardens making decrees. They would already have momentum if/when mobile platforms allow third-party transactions. That's not to say they would also abandon the distribution benefits the mobile storefronts offer over PWAs. But payment processing wouldn't be the sole thing that keeps them. This is why Apple fights so vigorously to defend their wall. The benefit isn't innate for players or for developers. Once developers reach a certain level of maturity, the wall benefits Apple at everyone else's expense. With the recent cracks in the wall caused by Epic, I would expect social casino space to be an early adopter in any alternative payment flows that emerge. But honestly I would expect games in general to react quickly, since Apple is walking in Facebook's footsteps and actively detoxing their games revenue habit in favor of advertising revenue. There's more incentive than ever to build a direct relationship with your customers instead of having to proxy them through Apple.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        And instead of suing Google and Apple, if the PWA experience was so good on Android, then why didn’t Epic just make FortNite a PWA?
        a13o 3y ago
        Probably because Unreal Engine doesn't support HTML5 games? They did the next best thing, which is to sideload the app that UE can build.
mobilemidget 3y ago
Which was about same time or just after adobe, the author of flash recommended everybody to stop using it.
- TheFuzzball 3y ago
  Bear in mind that Apple and Adobe have a very long and close history - Apple did not kill Flash to spite Adobe, they did it because 1. Flash was plagued with security problems, and 2. Flash was plagued with performance problems and the iPhone was a very low performance device.
- marcus0x62 3y ago
  I think the two decisions were somewhat related.
marcus0x62 3y ago
Flash was a security dumpster fire and wasn't designed for touch interfaces. That said, I don't think Apple - or any other vendor - should be able to prohibit users from running software on devices the user putatively owns. Offer an (optional) walled-garden experience, ok, but locking down users from installing their own software is predatory.
- philistine 3y ago
  Apple never banned Adobe from making a Flash player app on iPhone. They decided against shipping it as a plug-in for Safari on iOS. The fact that Adobe could not have made a Flash player app (imagine an app which you point an URL at to load its Flash content) helps explains the problem.
  - marcus0x62 3y ago
    Why would Adobe want to make such an app? The UX — because of apple’s third-party browser engine restrictions — would have been comically bad.
caskstrength 3y ago
> they've already shown a shadow of their true colors when they banned flash under the guise of security For which I'm eternally grateful to them even though I don't have any Apple devices.
scarface_74 3y ago
This is also not true. Adobe claimed that they could have gotten flash running on the first iPhone in 2007. The first iPhone had 128MB of RAM and a 400Mhz processor. Safari barely ran on the first iPhone. It had to draw a checker box on the screen when you scrolled fast and then slowly render the image. When flash finally did come to Android. It required a 1Ghz CPU and 1 GB of RAM in 2011. It still ran slow and ate up users batteries. That’s about the time the first iPhone came out with those specs
alsetmusic 3y ago
Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash," was written when I was a tech at an Apple Store. I remember pulling up crash logs on a customer's computer and showing her over and over that Flash was related to Safari crashing. Flash was garbage on the Mac. Blocking (or not implementing) it on the phone wasn't a grand conspiracy. It was smart business. I'm not denying that they're predatory with the App Store. I'm saying that not supporting Flash can be explained quite easily without ulterior motives.
- philistine 3y ago
  People honestly believed that Apple could have flipped a switch and make Flash work on iPhone. It was garbage, which couldn’t run on such a puny processor without butchering your battery. Most people were using it for video anyway, and H.264 playback on the browser was well on its way.
  - acdha 3y ago
    It’s really weird because Flash existed on Android, and it sucked. Even the hardcore anti-Apple fanboys were unwilling to defend it much at the time because everyone knew how much battery and RAM it used, and how poorly Flash content designed for desktop screens and controls worked on phones. I don’t love how other things were locked down, but losing Flash for the open web was an unabashed win.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      It sucked but a lot of things on early android sucked. Browsers were a moving target in general for the first few years. I don't miss it (well, outside of my childhood web games. But much of that has been preserved or ported), but I sure don't hail Apple as a hero for accelerating the downfall. I think the biggest issue here is that even a decade out there haven't been true flash replacements in some sectors of tech. e.g. we still call it "Flash animation", but I feel the early death of Flash stalled American animation for a good 5 years since there was simply no good artist tool for such stuff in the early 2010's

by chii 3y ago

lesuorac 3y ago

Loosen up that tinfoil hat. Apple banned flash when web apps were the _only_ apps on the iphone (besides the preloaded apps). The App Store [1] is ~18 months after the iPhone [2] was released. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(Apple) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone

patrickaljord 3y ago
This is true, but it's naive to believe that the App Store wasn't planned long before those 18 months and was written in just a couple of month before its release.
- TheFuzzball 3y ago
  I think we can tell that the App Store wasn't planned that early because if it was the earlier Apple apps would have been using the APIs that needed to be implemented and documented for the first App Store, and they didn't. Apple today is very different from the Apple that launched the iPhone and the original App Store - they started off thinking all apps could be PWAs, but the Web Platform wasn't mature enough at the time and they pivoted to native, that's the actual truth. Now they're addicted to in-app-purchase money from casino games and don't want that money moving out of their 30% taxable grasp. It's a sad story, truly.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Really? You think the casino style games are going to move to PWAs without direct access to users wallets via in app purchases? If that’s the case, why aren’t all of the same games moving to the web for Android?
    - a13o 3y ago
      The social casino space on mobile is interesting, because everyone basically accepts that their apps are a commodity. Therefore the winners are the ones with the best operations. SciPlay in particular comes to mind because they have built out their own payment processing on platforms that support it. They explicitly want to avoid headwinds from Walled Gardens making decrees. They would already have momentum if/when mobile platforms allow third-party transactions. That's not to say they would also abandon the distribution benefits the mobile storefronts offer over PWAs. But payment processing wouldn't be the sole thing that keeps them. This is why Apple fights so vigorously to defend their wall. The benefit isn't innate for players or for developers. Once developers reach a certain level of maturity, the wall benefits Apple at everyone else's expense. With the recent cracks in the wall caused by Epic, I would expect social casino space to be an early adopter in any alternative payment flows that emerge. But honestly I would expect games in general to react quickly, since Apple is walking in Facebook's footsteps and actively detoxing their games revenue habit in favor of advertising revenue. There's more incentive than ever to build a direct relationship with your customers instead of having to proxy them through Apple.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        And instead of suing Google and Apple, if the PWA experience was so good on Android, then why didn’t Epic just make FortNite a PWA?
        a13o 3y ago
        Probably because Unreal Engine doesn't support HTML5 games? They did the next best thing, which is to sideload the app that UE can build.

mobilemidget 3y ago

Which was about same time or just after adobe, the author of flash recommended everybody to stop using it.

TheFuzzball 3y ago
Bear in mind that Apple and Adobe have a very long and close history - Apple did not kill Flash to spite Adobe, they did it because 1. Flash was plagued with security problems, and 2. Flash was plagued with performance problems and the iPhone was a very low performance device.
marcus0x62 3y ago
I think the two decisions were somewhat related.

marcus0x62 3y ago

Flash was a security dumpster fire and wasn't designed for touch interfaces. That said, I don't think Apple - or any other vendor - should be able to prohibit users from running software on devices the user putatively owns. Offer an (optional) walled-garden experience, ok, but locking down users from installing their own software is predatory.

philistine 3y ago
Apple never banned Adobe from making a Flash player app on iPhone. They decided against shipping it as a plug-in for Safari on iOS. The fact that Adobe could not have made a Flash player app (imagine an app which you point an URL at to load its Flash content) helps explains the problem.
- marcus0x62 3y ago
  Why would Adobe want to make such an app? The UX — because of apple’s third-party browser engine restrictions — would have been comically bad.

caskstrength 3y ago

> they've already shown a shadow of their true colors when they banned flash under the guise of security For which I'm eternally grateful to them even though I don't have any Apple devices.

scarface_74 3y ago

This is also not true. Adobe claimed that they could have gotten flash running on the first iPhone in 2007. The first iPhone had 128MB of RAM and a 400Mhz processor. Safari barely ran on the first iPhone. It had to draw a checker box on the screen when you scrolled fast and then slowly render the image. When flash finally did come to Android. It required a 1Ghz CPU and 1 GB of RAM in 2011. It still ran slow and ate up users batteries. That’s about the time the first iPhone came out with those specs

alsetmusic 3y ago

Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on Flash," was written when I was a tech at an Apple Store. I remember pulling up crash logs on a customer's computer and showing her over and over that Flash was related to Safari crashing. Flash was garbage on the Mac. Blocking (or not implementing) it on the phone wasn't a grand conspiracy. It was smart business. I'm not denying that they're predatory with the App Store. I'm saying that not supporting Flash can be explained quite easily without ulterior motives.

philistine 3y ago
People honestly believed that Apple could have flipped a switch and make Flash work on iPhone. It was garbage, which couldn’t run on such a puny processor without butchering your battery. Most people were using it for video anyway, and H.264 playback on the browser was well on its way.
- acdha 3y ago
  It’s really weird because Flash existed on Android, and it sucked. Even the hardcore anti-Apple fanboys were unwilling to defend it much at the time because everyone knew how much battery and RAM it used, and how poorly Flash content designed for desktop screens and controls worked on phones. I don’t love how other things were locked down, but losing Flash for the open web was an unabashed win.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It sucked but a lot of things on early android sucked. Browsers were a moving target in general for the first few years. I don't miss it (well, outside of my childhood web games. But much of that has been preserved or ported), but I sure don't hail Apple as a hero for accelerating the downfall. I think the biggest issue here is that even a decade out there haven't been true flash replacements in some sectors of tech. e.g. we still call it "Flash animation", but I feel the early death of Flash stalled American animation for a good 5 years since there was simply no good artist tool for such stuff in the early 2010's