Jobsian Vendetta - Flash stabbed by Mac the Knife

Amidst all the wonderfully amusing half-truths and haughty hypocrisies dripping from his open letter on Adobe Flash, Steve Jobs has at least made one thing quite clear: his biggest beef with Flash is that it lets you create applications that run on all sorts of devices that weren't built by him. And his biggest beef is also …

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't we decide ourselves?

As a developer (Java, not Flash but same principle) it should be up to me to decide if I want to use the latest features on a platform or a cross-platform tool not Apple - you give me the option to use these features, you can't *make* me use them.

Having bought a Windows 7 laptop I wanted to use some of the Windows 7 UI bits and pieces so I learned C#. Same for iPhone: if, as a developer, I want to produce something "standard" (and lets be honest, I'm not aware of anything the iPhone has which other platforms don't) then I should be able to to use a generic toolkit/language, be that Flash or whatever. If I want specific features then I can learn the specific language.

Also, if all these "substandard" apps are created which don't use the latest whizz-bang features that his Steveness has blessed us with then people will simply not buy them - someone who does use the native tools will have produced an app doing the same thing but with these features. Hell, even mark apps as "iPhone only" or "cross platform" to show people.

I guess he doesn't think his customers are capable of making that decision though. Says a lot really...

[Tim Cook]

"you can't *make* me use them"?

How is Steve "making" you do anything?

At the end of the day, nobody - and I mean nobody - is making you develop for the iPhone, or even expecting you to develop for the iPhone. There are a wide array of other devices out there for which you can develop, using Flash or Java or whatever else.

Apple have created a line of products that don't use Flash, and for which they don't allow cross-platform development tools. If you *want* to develop for those products, you have to use the freely available tools provided - and that's something that's entirely in Apple and Steve Jobs' power. It's their right to allow or dissallow whatever coding they like on their platform, just as it's your right not to have anything to do with that.

But don't whine on about what bad old Steve is "making" you do. If you don't like iPhone app development, don't develop iPhone apps - go to Android, or Windows Mobile, or Symbian, and prove what a great success they can be without the restrictions Apple chooses to impose.

[guybles]

No relation?

I assume that "Tim Cook" is not the same "Timothy D Cook" who is the COO of Apple Inc?

Unless, of course, El Reg is being read by the most influential people these days...

[Tim Cook]

You know

I've often wondered that myself.

[F1reman]

Agreed

I have to say I agree with 'Tim Cook' on this point. A lot of people come on these comments and make silly points simply cos they don't like one manufacturer or the other. Like the guys says nobody is making you do anything.

Fact is a I really like my iphone because it is easy to use, a pleasure to use and is reliable. I can't say the same when I use flash based websites on either my W7 PC or my Macbook. Nor can I say the same for the various Nokia and SE phones I owned before.

I used to dislike Apple (or more precisely the people who owned Apple products) but now that I've actually gone out, bought and used a couple of their products I can see where people are coming from. They are just much nicer to use and frankly life's too short to bother with 'one OS, multiple hardware platforms'....I mean have google learnt nothing from Mircosoft?

Anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Can't we decide ourselves?

"as a developer, I want to produce something "standard" then I should be able to to use a generic toolkit/language, be that Flash or whatever."

Flash is a proprietary language. Java and C++ are not. Makes more sense to develop in those, doesn't it?

[rfc959]

this is why..

I come to El Reg. Most other sites/comments on this letter are in agreement with Mr. Jobs. You provide much deeper and reasoned analysis.

[jackharrer]

Re:this is why..

Because if they don't agree with His Steveness, they will finish in the same naughty corner as El Reg. No invitations to product launches, no direct news, etc.

Jobs has quite a big part of tech journalism by the balls. Another reason to hate him? Like if there are not enough of them already...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for reasoned analysis!

Like the opening line that refers to "all the wonderfully amusing half-truths and haughty hypocrisies" in Steve's letter, but omits all the tedious exploration of those points that other commentators go into. After all, they must be half-true and hypocritical because they came Steve Jobs, right? That's the kind of deep and reasoned analysis we love.

The closing line is in the same vein; "In so many ways, the letter is nonsense." Bravo Reg, sweep away all proofs or discussion, because anything coming from Apple just must be nonsense. These other journalists that bother to consider that Steve might have raised valid points just don't understand the way we do.

But seriously, this article is one of the most one-eyed I've come across. The author is fixated with a single issue: that Apple will not allow developers to use any tool they like on the iPhone. In itself, there is no problem with that. It's Apple's product - they can do as they please. The point of contention is that it is hypocritical for Apple to be so restrictive and then reject Flash on the basis that it is closed. Again, this is a one-eyed view that completely ignores context.

The Web is the place where all platforms meet, and therefore it is the place where openness and standards are crucial. If significant parts of the web experience are in the hands of a single company, the performance of every platform is dependent on the implementation of their technology on that platform. In short, they can make the Internet a lousy experience on one platform and a great experience on the other - and there is nothing the platform owners can do to change it. Therefore, Steve is calling for open standards on the Internet. The power to succeed or fail on the Internet is then in the hands of the platform owner.

The iPhone/iPad/Mac, however, is the *only* place where Apple has an opportunity to really shine, and they need to stand out to survive. In this context, Steve is calling for developers to use the very best that Apple has to offer. And it's a fact that cross-platform development kits (for the user interface at least) have a very poor record. Take Java - I've given up on the idea of Java apps in the Mac (at least where they provide a UI) because they are so poorly implemented. You can see their lineage from a mile off. I've also worked in many cross-platform development environments, and it is a constant source of vexation that you cannot access ground-breaking API's because they can't be reconciled with the framework.

I submit that Steve's approach makes sense - adhere to standards on the Web where all the platforms meet, but stand out in the place you call home. Flash is diametrically opposed to both these ideas, providing bland homogeneity everywhere and remaining a closed technology.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Adhere to standards"

That's a tad strong, when it supports a company that has brought us the atrocities of QuickTime, Safari, iTunes, and Bonjour.

Anon to escape the rabid task force from the Church of St. Jobs.

[Ivan Headache]

All of the things that work fantastically well

on my macs

[F1reman]

as opposed to:

DCE_RPC, NBT, IE6/7/8, WMV, Windows Media Player, Windows Vista, er....the list goes on and on....

As opposed to:

Buzz (which they pushed out without privacy on purpose BTW), wave, paid for results, and a whole load of other crap designed to provide private user data for their ads business....

Come off it, of all of them Apple is probably the least worst. At least they make a decent phone and decent music players. Oh, and my macbook air is great too (and cheaper than the Sony x series).

[alex dekker 1]

re: this is why..

I come hear because I like to read posts from sarcastic piss-takers like you :-S

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously

Are you playing with words or don't you see your obvious contradiction?

"...In so many ways, the letter is nonsense. But on this point, it's completely clear..."

it seems though that the only nonsense in here is your "essay"

nonsense cannot be completely clear. that's common sense sir.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha!

I love the fact you felt the need to tell the world about your inability to understand plain English.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

He wrote "in so many ways the letter is nonsense" but "on this point it's completely clear"

He did not say "nonsense is completely clear". These are entirely different statements.

I'm amazed at your how poorly you read and comprehend.

[awesomemuppetry]

clearly not obviously

i believe the statement refers to the previous line which makes comment on his vendetta towards flash.

and it also says 'in so many ways, the letter is nonsense' and indeed the ramblings of men are sometimes nonsense to some and not to others, get some perspective here please.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: obviously

Of course nonsense can be completely clear.

The meaning of this is quite clear - it's also nonsense, "If I have 5p then I am rich"

[rcorrect]

No Thanks!

Steve Jobs is getting out of control. Isn't crap like this why he was ousted from Apple back in the mid 80's? I am grateful for everything he has done for Apple however this is a bit ridiculous.

[Chris Thomas Alpha]

yeah but

in those days, he didnt earn billions of dollars for putting out devices of limited capacity but everyone can't stop buying them.

in those days, it was hard for them to even sell mac's, nevermind the idea of selling mp3 players

[Anonymous Coward]

devices of limited capacity - oh ffs

Another, "my fridge won't toast bread" types of comments, and "I should be able to tinker with the embedded windows system in my automobile" and "because all this bitching makes me seem intelligent and of course makes my p***s bigger!"

Task orientation in a lovely form factor makes for a perfect product that people go out and buy. But, trolls are the ones who are right here - millions and millions of people are wrong. I guess they just haven't realised the happiness and joy they receive from Apple products is false. Once trolls enlighten them, then they'll be as angry about Apple's success as all the trolls currently are?

[Matthew Barker]

Ahhh, there it is!

The old Register is back, still smarting from being excluded.

Stiletto Cade meets Stiletto Steve.

[Anonymous Coward]

mmmk

Why use free crappy little flash games and apps when you could be paying for crappy little games and apps from the app store?

[nation of stupid]

developers...

Why develop online flash games that cost you bandwidth to run in the hope you can make money selling adspace when you can make money selling them in the app store or android marketplace?

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: mmmk

You'll find PLENTY free crappy little games on the app store.

[Trevor Pott o_O]

Now we have TWO Steves saying

"Developers, developers, developers." Both while runnign a business model that goes: "Open Standards: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish." (HTML 5.0 specifies what video codec? Because who was being stubborn?)

Yet, apparently one is significantly "better" than the other.

Let me just pre-empt the entire thread here with the new motto for Apple, Inc:

“Mac. It's not that big of a deal.”

[Player_16]

Fence.

Well... I see the author personally stands on the side of the fence.

[The MODO]

The real scoop ...

This is a classic case of misdirection. It's about the money peoples. It has nothing to do with battery life, cross platform, or anything else beside the money. We seem to all forget that Uncle Steve gets 30% of all apps sold in the App Store. If they where to support Flash, Flash could easily bypass he App Store and download Flash Apps directly to the iPhone/iPad and Uncle Steve would get NOTHING for the newly installed "app". This is what is unacceptable to Uncle Steve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct

Yes sir, that is correct. It's time for Steve and his legion of board-crawling shills to return from whence they came I think.

[Fartin Fantastic]

Money

But even if I were to compile my app from Flash, I would still have to buy my dev licence and submit my app for inspection by the iStore. Jobs still gets his 30%.

There are two issues here which people sometimes get mixed up

1. Apple doesn't like you running Flash files on the iPhone. ie .swf's.... Like you would on your desktop/laptop browser. Fair enough, he might lose out on some cash.

2. Apple doesn't like you writing a Flash app, and compiling it to run on the iPhone. For which he gives a couple of lame excuses.

Two similar but different issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Money

"But even if I were to compile my app from Flash, I would still have to buy my dev licence and submit my app for inspection by the iStore. Jobs still gets his 30%."

Unless, of course it was a free app... well, yes, he'd still get 30% but it would be 30% of nothing...

[Dan 10]

Umm, no...

...that's not correct, given that you could do the same with html5.

[Anonymous Coward]

tardis?

In the year 2020 maybe, but while HTML5 still has precisely zero penetration, Steve can wax about how great it is all he likes, safe in the knowledge he'll never actually have to deal with it as a revenue leak.

[Rod MacLean]

RE: The real scoop ...

That'll be why you can already get so many pieces of free software on the app store already then, won't it?

[Gilbo]

Completely Wrong

Apps for the (unjailbroken) iPhone have to be signed by Apple or they will not install so, no, Flash would not allow you to magically download and install apps bypassing the App Store.

[F1reman]

you mean like webapps?

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

[darkpill]

tsk tsk tsk

"Yes, Flash has its security and performance problems. And, yes, we'd much prefer a webworld that relies open standards. "

You took awhile to get there, but eventually, you put the notion into a nutshell.

It's funny reading all these articles that are dissecting allllllllllll of Apple's reasons not to support flash, when it should really be banned for the above reasons. Have have yet to see any half descent article in defence of the Flash player - other than it's popularity for ads. This is no different than getting rid of the floppy drive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I suggest you read this

http://jessewarden.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-on-flash-correcting-the-lies.html

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Then I suggest you read this

Yep, they use a lot of weasel words to try to save Adobe, things like mentioning all the items which are not proprietary and then saying "Using a blanket statement saying Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary is a lie."

Except no-one else is allowed to make any Flash creation software, are they?

Or

"Lie #3: “…75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads…”

Incorrect. If a video is H264, that doesn’t mean it can play on the iPhone."

True, but since MOST of the video hits through Flash are Youtube, there's not a lot left over. Youtube vids can be watched on the iPhone btw.

Lie #4: “users aren’t missing much video.”

"Every time a user see’s a blue lego instead of the video they wanted to see, they are missing a video. There were so many people seeing the blue lego, including Steve Jobs himself on stage demoing the iPad, that they removed the blue lego as a PR effort to make it seem like there was something wrong with the website itself vs. the iPhone/iPad."

Umm, I don't see blue lego on my Mac notebook and I'm not missing any video. Probably because I've got Click-To-Flash. It's made me realise how much pointless Flash there is sitting out there. Ads mostly, it seems. One in particular with a buzzing fly did my head in!! I'm glad they're not there on the iPhone. Lucky iPhone users!

And the biggest lie of all:

"Lie #8: “…Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers…”

Incorrect. The whole reason Flash Player has continued to stay ahead of the curve is because Macromedia/Adobe innovates it. There are gesture & touch API’s in the Flash Player; I and many others have used them for the iPhone resulting in a 100+ apps on the App Store."

They've used "touch API's in the Flash Player" and used them "in a 100+ apps on the App Store".

Really? This seems like a claim that people have written apps in Flash and got them on to the iPhone App Store? I don't think so!

"Lie #9: “For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot.”

Incorrect. This was already discounted 2 months ago by Mike Chambers."

Incorrect, he showed that the rollover event was there BUT in order to see it, you have to know it's there, know it's a rollover item, press in a blank area of the screen (which unless you know better might be a roll over button too and you've just clicked it) and then drag your finger over.

Not exactly like mouse rollover in any way. They're two completely different things!

"Lie #13: “The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content.”

Incorrect. See #3. Media companies will have to create players like Netflix did to support those devices; these aren’t HTML5, they’re Cocoa."

Come off it. I can already watch video and consume web content without relying on Flash. I'm doing it right now ffs!

I could have picked more FUD out of the morass they presented there. To be fair, there were a few truths, presented straight. There did seem to be many more "truths" that were at best half-truths or outright lies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow..check a few facts...

>Except no-one else is allowed to make any Flash creation software, are they?

Lots of 3rd party companies make Flash creation software, the specification is open even though the standard is proprietary.

>Really? This seems like a claim that people have written apps in Flash and got them on to the iPhone App Store? I don't think so!

Well over 100 have already been approved under old T&C using pre-release CS5. You can still buy them on iTunes and many people have.

[Random_Walk]

err, wait -

" Have have yet to see any half descent article in defence of the Flash player - other than it's popularity for ads. "

I've seen other reasons for defending it as well. They usually boil down to Farmville, pr0n, and some variation of a thinly-disguised "...but I don' wanna learn ANOTHER skillset!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Much prefer open standards?

Yes, I would much prefer open standards. To the point that flash not merely isn't available on my platform of choice, shutting me from many a dancing rodent site[1] and saving me countless hours otherwise wasted: It's also a threat to information dissemination and archival. The same way proprietary document formats are the bane of archives. Try and save a local copy of something dynamically created on-the-fly from a big fat renderfarm somewhere a continent away. Once what you see has become intimately dependent on the state held in your browser, or worse, in some browser plugin, you're SOL.

And it gets worse: Can you index word perfect or word star files? Can you even read the floppy formats associated with cp/m machines? In a sense that's actually easier than dealing with certain old micros~1 formats. But all that is still relatively simple. Now add proprietary video and audio to the mix as with flash, and the fun starts. And then, of course, for the real connaiseur, there's always DRMed files that require a now-long-shutdown activation server. Imagine trying to read or ``experience'' a flash/silverlight/what-have-you thing a decade or two down the road.

Even java isn't guaranteed. Would java 1.0 ``applets'' still work in todays java virtual machines? I haven't tried and don't know, but all you need is one incompatible change by sunacle, and the lights go out again. Or rather, don't come back on like they did a decade ago.

``Online'' is great and all, but not really suitable for scholarly work. ``Proprietary'' neither, and then there's ``Online And Proprietary''. Have we become that dumb, dull, and dense?

[1] I don't mind too much since most such sites violently violate the first principle of what I look for in a ``web browsing experience''(yuck): Information. Most ``lamp stack'' sites have the same problem in that they require all sorts of more than usually fallible dynamicism to serve up essentially static data but that's merely bad design and limps along quite nicely most of the time. AJAX is almost as bad as flash in that it eats *my* cycles like there's no tomorrow again most of the time without adding something in return and shutting out browsers without javascript (like all the text-only ones, one of which I'm using right now). But the bottom line is that if you don't know what your core business is, then you're basically wasting my time, so I might as well skip you and look elsewhere. Businesses have lost my custom because of ``flash upgrades'' to their webshops. Even partial ones. This is where ``graceful degradation'' is a custom-saver.

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously

all your developers are belong to Steve Jobs

[deadlockvictim]

Only a problem for iPhone & iPad users

And if you bought into the hardware, then you are Steve Jobs' bitch, my friend.

Personally, I prefer Macs when they still could boot from a floppy, but to each person his own poison...

[Alan Denman]

Forget the bullshit please.

It would be fairly boring if the media just published the plain fact that it is simply about ownership of the platform, games and adverts.

'Its mine, all mine' is the cry.

Or maybe as LOTR style 'It's my precious'.

[Danny 14]

aye

Although I dont agree with the methodology, flash *is* still shit.

[JMD]

you *is* ignant?..

Flash is a platform for engaging consumers. It shines where open *standards* fail to deliver. But mostly it bypasses the issues of browsers, because they fail to follow or agree on using the said open standards, thus making them open suggestions for browser vendors.

[Paul E]

er...

So what exactly is Mr Jobs going to do if people start being able to build 'crappy little games' and other apps using HTML5? He has championed these 'open' standards so it will be interesting to see what happens if developers find that they can provide a significant number of the apps they want via the web without having to go through the itunes store?

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: er...

So...

Releasing an app free on the web

or

releasing an app free on the iTunes store.

Let me see... he get's no money in either scenario, so your point is?

[Gareth 14]

iPhone Dev

I'm an experienced developer, coding in java, php, .c# vb .net forms and web.

A few months ago I bought my first mac, a mac mini (£600ish) so I could write iPhone apps.

Then found out I had to pay £90 to actually test things on my iPod Touch and publish to the app store.

I wanted to use my current skills and happily started to learn unity and titanium. 2 months and just under a grands worth of investment later and Steve F*%king Jobs has got his $$$ and I've got 0 ROI because I'm not going to start developing my apps just to find out they'll be ousted when we get to OS4.

I can't get a refund on my Developer fees either, so no thanks Mr Job's I'll be posting my apps to Cydia and Android until I've got my money back for your great looking but ultimately overpriced box of trickery.

Where's the pic of Steve Jobs with horns! Sort it out REG!

[Eponymous Howard]

"wanted to use my current skills "

Devs - or anyone else, in any line of work - who aren't will to learn new skills will get what is coming to them.

[JMD]

Did you even read the comment?

He knows "java, php, .c# vb .net forms and web" and "started to learn unity and titanium."

The issue is there are no clear rule that using Unity or Titanium will be allowed after the release of 4.0. Apple makes up the rule as they go along or use such general language that they can pull your app at will. That is a major concern for investing in the platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

>"Think of the children!!!" Bollocks. You, perhaps, should have researched more. Get yourself a license of Windows 7, and install it on your Mac mini, develop for Android and the soon-to-be released Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever it's called this week). I'm pretty sure that Microsoft will be offering good incentives for new developers to that platform. In fact, you could just download Eclipse and the Android SDK and carry on developing for Android on your shiny new Mac mini. Or not! Just stick with Unity and/or Appcelerator and just develop games for Android, Christ knows the platform needs 'em! What better way to 'stick it to da man'? Instead of blubbing and whining about it, do something, or do Apple et al. owe you a living? There, solved your problem of being out of pocket for you! Welcome to the harsh business world, kid! Although, I don't hold out much hope, since you lack the ability to think your way out of a problem--an essential skill for a developer. Oh, learning new skills and languages helps you better your existing knowledge. Fuck me, you really do have to spoon feed 'em these days...

>"Where's the pic of Steve Jobs with horns! Sort it out REG!" It's next to the "iFan" logo, you know, the one on the last line, bottom right...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Gareth 14

"I wanted to use my current skills and happily started to learn unity and titanium"

So, you didn't just get the Apple development environment and use Java (a skill you listed)?

Instead you bought someone else's development environment and started learning something new to go with it...

Why?!?

[It wasnt me]

Oh really !

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps."

Now Im not great fan of flash, in fact lets not forget that by and large, it sucks. But if Stevie-J is worried about sub standard apps on his precious Iphone then he could spend his time a lot more productively than writing open letters to the geekier part of the internet.

Might I suggest purging 3/4 of the app-store. Make that 9/10ths. You can start with the fart apps, then move on to the wobbling boobs.

[JMD]

Funny...

Now Im not great fan of *your comment*, in fact lets not forget that by and large, it sucks.

Maybe content delivered on the Flash platform sucks. But the platform itself is not that bad. I would know, I have been earning a leaving on it for over 10 years now.

I would argue that most content on Twitter is crap, but you can't blame Twitter for that. Same goes for Facebook or youTube. Most corporate presentation makes my eyes bleed but it's not PowerPoint's fault. These are all just tools and platforms.

[Anonymous Coward]

@JMD

Flash has had it's day - I'd start learning some other skills and fast!

[Dantes Opinion]

Missing the point

Fundamentally it is about money. Steve can't charge for apps written in Flash and distributed via the web.

All the words in the world won't change that.

[Eponymous Howard]

Where is the jackass icon?

Web apps in html5/css/java can already be distributed via ...er... the web to the iPhone. Permitted from day one.

[Dantes Opinion]

Seriously?

Deliver Farmville via HTML5/CSS/Java on the iPhone and then we can talk seriously about browser based applications. This is a money driven decision, justified (with some merit, but also some bluster) using technology reasons.

I'm not a big Flash app user but my biggest beef with the Flash / iPhone debate is video. Regardless of H.264, a large number of web video is unavailable to the iPhone / iPad.

It's a shame.

[Eponymous Howard]

PUT THOSE GOAL POSTS BACK!

CLAIM: The claim was that Jobs would not permit web apps (in Flash) because he could not monetise them.

FACT: web apps are already permitted (and have been since before the App Store, back when everyone bitched about what a crappy way WebApps were to do Apps...).

I imagine the makers of Farmville could port it to html5 etc if they wanted, so perhaps it is them you should be beefing at. (Whether they ever do or not is of no interest to me).

[Anonymous Coward]

Farmville

- I kind of hate Farmville, but sadly my wife and kids disagree...

>I imagine the makers of Farmville could port it to html5 etc if they wanted, so perhaps it is them you should be beefing at.

You can imagine it all you like, it isn't going to happen. More importantly it doesn't need to happen. Porting would consume massive time and resources and still produce an inferior app - the Flash IDEs were born to do this kind of 'application' quickly and efficiently - in workflow terms.

Consumers aren't going to blame Farmville when it doesn't work on iPad - they just see a supposedly state of the art device which can't handle something the 10 year old PC they've recycled to the five year old runs dandily.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Missing the point

"Steve can't charge for apps written in Flash and distributed via the web."

No, if an application is free on the web then he'll make exactly the same amount as if it was free on the app store, ie nothing.

All the words in the world won't change that!

[Chad H.]

Err

Okay, so it costs what, $99 to join the app store, but after that, if you want, you can put 0 as the price for all your apps. So that's web retail space and storage forever for as many apps you like...

Yeah, real money spinner.

It's been said a billion times already but iTunes store isn't designed to be a profit spinner in it's own right, it's there to push hardware sales. Having free flash web pages doesn't effect that in any way, unless they cause a performance hit, which they seemingly do.

[Dan 10]

Hmmm

Sounds like some of the commenters here seem to have only read the Reg's take on this - have all of you actually read the open letter? It makes far more sense than I had expected.

Here's one of the most salient points - flash objects use mouseover/rollover a lot, but that entire concept doesn't exist on a touchscreen, so necessitating a port or conversion to be idevice compatible anyway - so if you need to rewrite it, why not in html5? No-one's saying it has to be an app, that it has to be through the app store, or that it has to make money for Apple.

The first commenter says that it should be his choice whether to implement a particular feature or not - that's precisely correct, it should be. Job's point is that if Apple has to wait for Adobe to implement support for Apple features (which, let's be fair, Adobe doesn't have a good track record on), it isn't your choice, it's Adobes.

Apple's point about Adobe being interested in cross-platform apps, not Apple apps, leaves Apple in a no-win predicament for the trolls on the reg - his point was that any innovative features unique to one platform (Apple or otherwise) won't be taken up until ALL (or at least the majority) of the supported platforms have that feature. So, if Apple enforces this rule in the interests of innovation, you lot cry out at evil Apple, but if Apple don't enforce this rule, a lot of the device-level innovation never sees the light of day, and you lot will cry out that Apple make crap with no innovation. Which is it people?

[Anonymous Coward]

I repeat

'flash objects use mouseover/rollover a lot, but that entire concept doesn't exist on a touchscreen'

http://jessewarden.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-on-flash-correcting-the-lies.html

So most of the arguments from the Jobs cultists are based on what Jobs says instead of being properly informed. Especially interesting is the part about Cocoa, which Itunes still hasn't been ported to along with the quote from Gruber when asked why:

'What really matters are features and user experience, not the developer technologies used to make them.'

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: I repeat

It's not a mouse over. You need to:

1, click on a piece of screen that you think is blank.

(warning you might have juck clicked on a hidden rollover!)

2, drag your finger over the item

3, struggle to se what's happened - your finger is in the way!

So... VERY different from what you see on your home computer!

[Thomas 18]

Fail

Flash rollover works just fine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1hiLnIp_g&feature=player_embedded

- did read the entire letter too btw ;)

HTML5 has mouse over too.

[blackworx]

Yes

I have read the letter.

I was secretly hoping jobs did in fact say "namaste" so I could slag him off for using a nauseating crypto-hippie gap yah just-back-from-indyaaaah-ism. But sadly he didn't, so I was denied that cheap shot.

Anyway, why does it matter whether or not he "makes some salient points"? It's just yet more evidence of Jobsian twattitude. If he doesn't like Flash (and, let's face it, who does?) he should get on with beating it in the marketplace rather than hypocritically mouthing off about it in public.

Jobs said all he needed to say when he changed the SDK license agreement. From that point on he would have done better to keep his mouth shut and let history prove him right or wrong. With whining hypocritical missives like that he just looks more and more like a spoiled child and the internet (myself included) more and more like the overindulgent parents who would do well to ignore him the next time he opens his mouth to scream about the latest blight on his perfect little world.

[Anonymous Coward]

@blackworx

"Anyway, why does it matter whether or not he "makes some salient points"?"

Right there, that's when I realised you were only writing to throw dirt at Apple. There's enough idiots doing that already, so I stopped reading. Sorry Blackworx, it doesn't matter whether or not you made some salient points.

[blackworx]

Thanks for letting me know :o)

I will correct my idiotic ways immediately!

I'm glad there are people like you around to pull us idiots up when we overstep the mark and write comments for the sole purpose of throwing dirt at Apple.

Mine's the one with humble pie in the pocket.

[MinionZero]

I give up!

Sadly this is showing a blatant need to control, because he knows Flash can bypass his control over what applications developers create and put on Apple devices and he doesn't want that. He shows he wants absolute control over all applications and all developers.

So once again we have to suffer the wishes of another control freak. :(

Yet like all control freaks, what he fails to see is that every attempt to control, creates a pressure for change away from that control. They are actively forcing developers (and so customers as well) to move to more open devices, in doing so, forcing developers to support Apples competitor companies! ... its madness! ... I give up!

Its ironic, because if they were more open to developers, then many thousands of developers would be only to happy to help support and grow the user base of Apple products. Its hard enough to create applications without a company so blatantly actually working against developers, instead of trying to encourage them to support their products!

[EarthToBase]

Quicktime?, quick who?!

This is just a theory, see if it works...

On Yahoo there was a webpage that had a sophisticated Quicktime application for graphing which I used occasionally and admired for it's complexity and design. This application was subsequently replaced by a Flash application, which duplicated precisely the sophistication, complexity and design.

Now imagine similar replacements occurring throughout the internet, as the ubiquitous Flash supersedes Quicktime.

Adobe has succeeded at the expense of Apple, and not necessarily in a monetary sense, to proliferate their programming environment, which may or may not be consider superior to Apple Quicktime, thus establishing Flash and dis-establishing Quicktime across the internet.

Adobe's business model had the focus and direction which Apple's did lack, allowing for this technology replacement. This is the source of Steve Jobs' ire, and he is most disgusted with himself.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: I give up!

"Flash can bypass his control over what applications developers create and put on Apple devices"

Except that it can't because they'd still need to be approved in the app store...

[Anonymous Coward]

@MinionZero

"They are actively forcing developers (and so customers as well) to move to more open devices, in doing so, forcing developers to support Apples competitor companies!"

You mean developing using the proprietary Flash development stuff? I'd say that C or Java was far more open than that...

[Asgard]

@"proprietary Flash development"

You are playing a straw man argument. So either you are a deluded Apple fanboy or a professional Apple PR troll, either way, whatever you say, it doesn't change the fact someone can create a Flash application that runs in even just a web page, and then get that to run on an Apple product via a browser running Flash. Apple are trying to control every way any application can run on their products. Apple prove through their actions they are trying outright control over applications and over developers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you're no developer

With OS4, Apple introduces 1500 new API's, on top of all the other API's that they've already included. NO other company in the mobile space offers the kind of tools that Apple offers. In addition, many of their technologies are geared towards making developers money: the App Store, a convenient way of getting paid, in-app purchases, and now iAds which will allow developers to introduce classy ads in their apps.

You seem to forget that it because of Jobs' control freakery that developers can program against a single model. Some say that splitting your development efforts into several product categories will mean too much work, but having a 100 millions device strong market would seem to me to be big enough. Furthermore, as a lot of the other OSes are going to offer Flash support, we'll see soon enough whether they';; have a competitive advantage, or a boat anchor tied to their neck.

[MattW]

Interesting

Same story, different perspective?:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/29/jobs_on_flash/

[Thomas 18]

Spaceship Apple, set destination ground, maximum velocity

This guy is a complete loon, I think I preferred the wall of silence to this school yard diatribe

Allow Flash. Not that big of a deal.

Thomas

Not Sent from my iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Diatribe?

that's all

[Ignorance...]

...is Bliss

Lord Clamp-Down has spoken, again; long gone are the days of Mac, the lovable underdog.

So, more and more these days, you have to consider two-stop shopping if you want to get the job done - Apple for style, and something more prole for the censored stuff. (satire, porn, your-own-mucking-about-with-your-kit, flash, and counting)

And all this from a company that seems to be becoming ever more hateful, seeming more draconian than your odd SciFi cult, complete with corporate goons (in addition to the police on whose community board you sit) knocking on the doors of feckless protype-finders, and overbearing underlings hounding hapless Chinese developers to suicide over - another lost prototype.

All this in the pursuit of blingware with eroding content.

So if, as a consumer, you have stuff to do, but desperately need your bling, you might consider stopping at a jeweler's on your way back from the computer shop.

And if you are a developer dependent on the work you do for Apple OSs, well you have got to be a gambler - enjoy the rush.

You never know who grumpy Steve wil cut out next.

Learn to ignore him.

[Tim Almond]

@Anonymous Coward

"As a developer (Java, not Flash but same principle) it should be up to me to decide if I want to use the latest features on a platform or a cross-platform tool not Apple - you give me the option to use these features, you can't *make* me use them."

Exactly. And someone using a tool isn't being "blocked". They have the option to rewrite their code into XCode at any time, which is a less bad situation than being forced to make that choice. I've written lots of stuff for clients that doesn't take advantage of the latest features in an API. There was no benefit to the client of adding some features in, so we didn't.

What he doesn't get is that a lot of developers or development companies factor all this stuff from Apple into their decision making. Most apps in the app store don't make very much money, so learning Obj-C and the iPhone environment to rewrite your Flash game, hope it doesn't get rejected, is often just not going to add up. They just won't bother.

[Random_Walk]

One serious question:

re: "... Most apps in the app store don't make very much money..."

So, if one doesn't make much money in the Apple App store, how much can one reasonably expect to make in other, far less unified mobile app stores? Do you just hope to make up in individual sales what you'll obviously lose in margin, or...?

[Ivan Headache]

..Most apps in the app store don't make very much money...

That's probably true. But some apps make huge amounts of money.

Stand on a normal London Tube train and look at the market place. Just do a casual count of how many iPhones (or iPod Touches) you can see in a 10 minute period.

I spent a day at the BETT in January. Which phone did I see being used by visitors more than any other? - the iPhone. Which phone was actively being promoted by exhibitors as a learning tool for the classroom? - the iPhone.

Developers who can't see past flash are developing themselves out of a huge and ever-growing marketplace. Remember, the iPad has barely started.

[Jonathan White]

Wait, what?

"A few months ago I bought my first mac, a mac mini (£600ish) so I could write iPhone apps.

Then found out I had to pay £90 to actually test things on my iPod Touch and publish to the app store.

I wanted to use my current skills and happily started to learn unity and titanium. 2 months and just under a grands worth of investment later.."

You didn't want to buy a 90 quid Apple developer licence, so you went out and bought just under a grand's worth of dev framework instead to essentially allow you to do the same job? Wow.

[nsld]

The point Mr Jobs clearly misses is

that for many developers putting all your eggs in one basket is risky.

Additionally for corporates its a real pain in the butt as we have to run two separate developments for one item, one for the iPhone, and one for the rest of world usage. This ends up costing twice as much as going to one dev house for one item which works across platforms and it delays the project as we have to roll out one at a time and have two different support structures from two different dev houses.

What it also means is that the skill range of iPhone only developers is diminished and the danger of being a one trick pony comes to light when Mr Jobs pops by with the bolt gun and decides your offering to the jobsian masses gets pulled and your one trick pony takes one between the eyes.

Paris, at least she understands!

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: The point Mr Jobs clearly misses is

"Additionally for corporates its a real pain in the butt as we have to run two separate developments for one item, one for the iPhone, and one for the rest of world usage."

You mean it's not possible to develop in C++ or Java on other phones?

[Graham Bartlett]

Hmm

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps."

Try telling that to the teams involved in GTK, KDE, wxWindows, Qt, Mono, etc.. For that matter, try telling it to any *nix team - after all, the whole point of Posix is that stuff runs anywhere. The common experience is that not only can a third-party layer let you port to other platforms seamlessly, it can also often fill in the gaping holes or stupid jumping-through-hoops caused by bad areas of platform design. And every platform, without exception, has icky places, because it was designed by humans and we're not perfect.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Hmm

"GTK, KDE, wxWindows, Qt, Mono, etc.. For that matter, try telling it to any *nix team - after all, the whole point of Posix"

Erm, these are OS/Windowing systems, not special development environments...

[Robert Carnegie]

Jobs can make you dance for him, monkey boy.

At least if you want to publish on his bloody portable devices.

Say that from June 2010, every iPod/iPad/iPhone app must include a square button coloured chartreuse which, when tapped, plays a video of the app developer, wearing pyjamas, dancing in front of a giant "Dance For Me" poster of Steve Jobs (let's say $20 at the Apple Store; $35 for iPyjamas, other pyjamas are acceptable... for now) to the music of "1984" by The Eurhythmics. Apps which are not DFM-compliant are withdrawn from the store and disabled on users' devices.

He can do that.

[Anonymous Coward]

abandon crApple

the fanbois will move on to something else soon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Reads like ...

... like product spec for CS5 Mobile or failing that CS6?

[Paul RND*1000]

Just wow.

This nonsense has got to be giving Microsoft a sort of warm, fuzzy feeling. Their competition is looking worse by the day, and they're not even having to lift a finger to make it that way.

[Sunny Guy]

cold water for those warm fuzzies

Unfortunately, that warm fuzzy feeling quickly vanishes when Microsoft looks at the sales figures for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming locomotive called OS X.

Sunny Guy

[John Sanders]

The lesser of all evils...

EVIL is Mono, so is .NET, so is JAVA, so is Flash... and any other modern programming abortion that can do not produce native executables.

So the point is to decide which one of these monsters is the bigger evil of them all.

In my case I would be happy with native compilers of all those technologies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Upset at not using our API, solution, ban you from using our API !!???

WOW, Apple really is loosing it here!!!

Apple are upset that Adobe took 10 years to adopt their API, and their reaction is to, ermm, ban Adobe from interfacing to their APIs.

Hmm, talk about spoiled brat syndrome !!!

[h 6]

Don't care/

I really don't give a shit about how apps are made. I only pay for apps that really work well on my iphone. All you techies can go on writhing about this, but most people in the couldn't care less.

[Martin Owens]

Thanks...

...for your vote of support, remind me to give you a swift kick up the backside next time I see your naivety in person.

[h 6]

You don't get it, do you?

Any company wanting to make money focuses on the consumer. And when a company's product is out there for third parties to make money on as well, those third parties will do their best to profit from it. The consumers of the product who buy third party add-ons are only concerned with the quality of said add-on. Thus, the consumer does not give a flying flip except for if it works well.

And craptastic flash apps that do not utilize the full feature set of

the iPhone-- or Android or WebOS etc -- do not live up to the expectations of the consumer.

First rule in coustomer relations management is give the customer what they want. Not half ass the with inferior product.

[Ivan Headache]

You'll be kicking an awful lot of people.

People just want apps that work as advertised, don't you understand that?

[prabhakarg]

Adobe should thank Steve Jobs

Cade, here's why Adobe should thank Steve Jobs:

http://bit.ly/bJ69vk

[Anonymous Coward]

What Can Be Done Against Control Freaks ??

Everybody seems to accept that mobile phones are controlled by some kind of Stupid Authority "because a phone must not crash". Also, no porn, no offensive content (from Master Steve's perspective, of course). Google is not much better in their policy of locking down their Android phones.

Unfortunately, OpenMoko seems to have stopped doing anything. WebOS from Palm ? But maybe HP will also adopt Control Freak Behaviour ? Whatabout the Nokia Linux Phones ? It appears they also like to control their AppStore and take a 30%revenue cut .

I can't figure why people accept these shackles in the year 2010. A PC running Windows 3.1 is the gold standard of Freedom, compared to the mobile phone "AppStores".

[Muckminded]

Ghost of TV Dinners Past

"You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Steve, take your dinner earlier before bedtime. Flash does not cause acid reflux, nor platformus interruptus. Egos and (according to Dickens) digestive tracts do. (Alternatively, there may be tiny viral doodads living in your tummy). In any event, treatment exists. Try Googling it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is a cult...

All of the signs are there - first gather the unqualified devotion of a mass of people by pretending to be a benign, egalitarian all round goody - goody.

Secondly, offer something solid on top of this that people want / need (or you can persuade them they want / need) i.e. products.

Finally, once you have them, show your true colours by leading the whole sorry bunch to hell in a handcart taking as many people down with you as possible.

Now just waiting to wake up one morining to news of global mass Apple / fanboi suicides (well, one can wish).

[Not Installed Properly]

spare the substance, spoil the style

Hazarding a guess, but if I was making millions of money's on the selling point that my products are so beautifully designed and similar in user interface, and I realized that there were only so many more tricks I could pull out of the design-it-so-it-fits-in-a-toaster-and-make-it-so-no--conscious-thought-has-to-go-into-using-it bag (which is, admittedly, very pleasant), then I would make damn sure that I broadcast the message that anything in the future requiring functionality that breaks my form factor is BAD.

[Steve J. Rapaport]

Get a life, Mr. Metz

I thought Jobs' letter was straightforward. I can't see any of the hypocrisy you gleefully point out, honest.

Jobs has demonstrated for decades now that he has two chief concerns in life: Providing an excellent user experience, and making lots of money. All of his reasons come down to one of those or the other.

If opening up his platform to lowest-common-denominator cross-platform toolkits threatens both these goals, he is well within his rights (and integrity) to put a stop to it if he can. Simple.

[TomDM]

I don't care about apple but I do care about flash.

I don't have any products from apple but I do have ,annoying and unwanted pop-up's aka flash shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

steve thinks we are too

stupid to decide for ourselves wether we want to play flash on a apple device or not.

that's all.

you still like steve ?

[Igamogam]

Biggest concern

Whilst I see the point of both Adobe and Apple on this subject, my biggest worry is that if Flash dies a death there will be no way of blocking all the crap that is on the web.

Simply not installing the flash pluging of having a flash blocker means that you can effectivley filter out a huge number of annoying adverts and you can also tell at a glance if a site is worth visiting just by how much flash there is in it - page full of flash? Look somewhere else immmediatley, you don't even have to let the page finish loading!

If everything goes to HTML 5 I'll be inundated by $itty ads again.

[Anonymous Coward]

You poor souls.

I can taste the fear Apple-haters! Haha

Flash is as good as dead. Jobs has power and he has just given Flash a slow painful death.

It will be fun watching all the sorry little Android iPhone rip-offs grinding to a halt using Flash! Can't wait for that!

Be careful what you wish for numbskulls...

Apple will be the most valuable company on the planet in 5 years, and you bunch of sorry ignorami can do NOTHING about it! Haha happy days!

[F1reman]

Apple worry Adobe would be difficult to work with

You can bet that there had been high level discussions before hand between Apple and Adobe with Apple asking Adobe nicely not to release the tool. Adobe decided to force Apple in to a choice: piss off the geeks and certain developers or let a 3rd party start to have some say in design and release schedules of iPhone OS.

i.e. If 20% of apps are built using Adobe's tools then Apple would have to wait for those tools to work with new versions of iPhone OS before release. It's called backwards compatibility and it's been a problem for everyone for years. Apple, having learnt from their and others mistakes in the past know perfectly well that in order to maintain good margins they need to stay ahead of the game. Adobe would hold them back in this respect. I mean no-one here is going to accuse Adobe of being quick at release schedules (full flash on phones anyone? I mean how long have they had!!).

Also, google coming out so vocally in favour of flash recently (considering their normal 'open everything' rhetoric) smacks of trying to be seen to be offering something the iPhone OS will not do after it's release in june....

It's all business politics of course but I really don't think that the prime motivator here is Jobs not liking apps being built for other platforms because he will realise that Adobe will just go ahead and continue to make the tools available for all other willing participants (Google, Nokia, Microsoft, whoever else) anyway regardless and as such wouldn't the iPhone be missing out on these apps? Right?

There is a long history between Adobe and Apple. Apple is the king maker now and Adobe ain't used to being told what to do by Apple. I think Adobe showed themselves to have bad business practice here and it may have backfired....flash is long in tooth and is buggy and so on (although video it can use H.264 as a codec so what's the big deal?) and this could spell beginning of end. Frankly if this is how they behave as a company you gotta worry (have you read the twitters and blogs coming from their employees? and their CEO came across as a moron in that interview he did). Just a view...

[heyrick]

My oh my...

Such discussion as this rapidly ends up as iLove vs iHate, or a long running set of FlashBash messages.

None of which is even remotely close to the point.

The point is St. Steve puts a product to market. But oh no, he's not happy with that. You must use it *his* way. You must develop for it *his* way. It is control freakery at its worst.

He should bugger off and let people develop what they want and use it how they want. Because those things that are good will work, and those things that are bad will languish and die. To start throwing your weight around in stroppy letters and itty-bitty clauses in licences restricts innovation and pisses off potential developers. MAYBE, just maybe, developers would like to use technologies such as Flash to be able to target a broad spectrum of devices without having to code and debug for each device in turn, not to mention the grief of syncing updates across different codebases in potentially different languages. If I had to maintain an app in ObjC++, Java, and Flash, it wouldn't be long before I saw which wasn't having a good uptake in order to dump it, for I'd be writing the same thing three times over. WTF? You can throw a lot of criticism at the J2ME platform (esp. with respect to screen sizes and UI features) but it allows a good coverage across a variety of devices. Flash, to a degree, offers the same sort of concept. Not perfectly, but I'd be interested to hear of a bit of kit that allows *perfect* integration between a browser on an XP box, a generic "smartphone", and something like the iPad. There is no perfect, the APIs and screen layouts and UI are just too different for perfect. We target individual platforms, or make compromises and conditional code for cross-platform support. Or, we play the insane game of writing everything multiple times for multiple platforms. Oh, but wait, it isn't exactly the same because of the aforementioned differences, so migrating functionality updates across the board will be an even bigger headache than rewriting it in a slightly different language...

It will come down to would the gains outweigh the costs? I think the company dictating how to code (at least, this week's version...) is a pretty heavy cost. Apple should just make the damn devices and STFU and let the developers develop. Some stuff may be epic fail, but with all the farting apps, we're already there.

[Walking Turtle]

Should ever I want me a Flash App for me iPhoney PopTart...

I shall indeed gin me up a Flash app for me iPhoney PopTart 'n' put it into th' dang iThang mese'f.

Meanwhile, I shall first need t' start wanting an iPhoney-poptart i' th' first place, th' which Burning Desire I just ain't got th' pep t' muster at th' moment... Many entirely welcome irons now in-hand today be much hotter 'n' that'n, thank'ee.

Got me thinkin' o' Penguination 'n' Boffinry agin... Arrrarrr. ;)

[sysconfig]

Do iPhone users actually need Flash?

...well, apparently not. The iPhone is a huge business success for Apple, because people love it. I can't remember whether or not anyone has ever promised that there would be Flash running on it at some point. Fact is, Steve's clear No to Flash doesn't change anything. He's not taking anything away from iPhone owners and prospective buyers. He now made a very clear call, and if it's so important to you, punish him by not buying the iPhone, and go for Android. (I bet the number of people who honestly base their smartphone choice on whether or not it's running Flash is negligible).

Whether or not Flash performs well on any smart phone remains to be seen. And whether or not it adds any benefit to smart phones is arguable. Personally, I'm very happy for at least 90% of the Flash crap on the web to stay there and to not migrate to my mobile.

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking news......

Apple are control freaks, Jobs is a complete c**t, apple fanbois are gimps..........

Meh, tell me something I don't already know.

Good commentary by the reg though :)

[Doug Glass]

And The Horse He Rode In On Too

Juck Fobs

[Andrew S]

App store vetting not good enough?

I don't see why Apple needs to ban Flash - can't Apple just rely on their App store vetting?

If an app is sub-standard, it won't get past Apple's current App store QA / vetting procedure (we don't like your app, sorry), that way crap apps would be told to go away and try harder, while great flash apps could go straight in without having to rewrite from scratch.

[Jellyjazz]

Why are there so many idiots here?

I'm not a Windows user or a Mac user, but this is probably why I can see Steve Jobs point as crystal clear as some of the idiots here can't.

"If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers,"

This is ingenious, ballsy and has to be admired.

After all, the iwhatevers are his babies, wouldn't you want the best for yours?

I guess this is why the iWhatevers are rocketing, the quality and thought and care installed is unparalleled. Think about it, where is the Zune, or that Balmer Pad thing or the Google phone that was going to destroy the iPhone?

[Dr. Vesselin Bontchev]

Flash is evil

I don't care about Apple's products, but Flash is evil and should be purged from the Web. I use a plug-in for Firefox that disables Flash on the Web pages.

Do you folks *really* want to run just about any unapproved application on your phone? Including a malicious one that is a virus and/or makes phone calls without your knowledge? It's bad enough that even approved applications sometimes do that...

[hexephant]

Give us drag and drop, or give us a huge reason to dump iPhone.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are web standards, not a "third party software layer", as Jobs describes Flash. So what's his excuse for not giving us drag and drop in Safari on the iPhone? There's room for another icon on Safari's bottom toolbar, to let us switch between viewport scrolling (current functionality) and regular pointer operation (which would allow drag and drop). Without drag and drop, the browser is non-functional for many websites. It's especially frustrating when a site notices you don't have Flash and gives you an alternate DHTML interface, which would work in the real Safari, but not on the gimpy iPhone Safari.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adobe should stop making OSX Products Immediately

I am not a Flash Fan - most sites using it I close immediately but Apples position is begging for a nice Microsoft style AntiTrust lawsuit. When you couldn't run Netscape on Windows that was illegal When you cant ship Windows without IE that is illegal. But it's ok for Apple to force people not to use Flash. There's one set of rules for Apple it seems.

No flash b/c it will lower the quality of the apps? Well the last time I checked probably less than 1% were really good useful apps anyway. The majority is crap, regardless of whether or not their code is good.

Adobe should pull their CS line from Apple and develop only on PC. What will people use an Apples for then? Apeture? Final Cut? Um...File Maker? Some really awesome icon painting program?

Oh, that's right, they use Apple's to run Windows anyway.

The Macbook Pro I have now will be my last, I'm sick of their shit. For all of their fanboys Apple products really aren't that good you know.

Rant over. I'm off to sort my photos on my iPad alphabetically....oh wait, you cant? Revolutionary Products Indeed.

[Matt Bridge-Wilkinson]

Protecting his business model

Seems so blatant that this isnt about the quality of apps, its about competition for apps which would eat into Apples reveune.

Flash being uncontrolled translates to flash equivilent to an app being potentially free on the web, Apple would get no slice of the proverbial pie...

He is protecting his business model not users of apple products. Still I do like my iphone, but the lack of flash is a minor annoyance.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Jellyjazz

"I guess this is why the iWhatevers are rocketing, the quality and thought and care installed is unparalleled. Think about it, where is the Zune, or that Balmer Pad thing or the Google phone that was going to destroy the iPhone?"

What, the Google phone that rose 5% in market share last quarter while the iPhone actually went down by 0.1%? If it continues at it's current rate it will be bigger than iPhone by this time next year (I suspect it will actually take closer to 2 years).