FTC believed to be investigating Apple's anti-Flash stance - Page 7

it means flash won't work well on Apple devices unless apple works with Adobe to develop the API hooks needed. This is why, by the way, it won't work that well with Linux. There are so many distributions of linux that it would be impossible to properly hook the plugin into each OS/Browser.

They've done studies of HTML5vFlash on mac computers. The only browser where HTML5 was the clear winner was Safari (because Safari has a built in h.264 encoder for their HTML5 content) These numbers were even closer when you tested the new version of flash 10.1 on them using the h.264 api's that apple finally opened up.

With Windows, MS is working closely with them to try and make the best experience possible. With Apple, they've had a hand or two tied behind their back, and you really expect it to work as smoothly?

Mozilla, the #2 browser worldwide doesn't support h.264 codec, and they have no plans to because of how expensive it would be for them. Their HTML5 codec of choice is WebM.

And while flash is no longer in the running for the future (to you) it's still a major player in the present.

The future of mobile platforms, leaving a bitter past behind.

Formats were not his question, his question was how many browsers support VIDEO, Mozilla will either start supporting H.264, or they will become irrelevant. WebM isn't going anywhere, will be shown to be patent encumbered, and Google knows that. They are just running Mozilla around in circles so they can pick up their user base with Chrome.

you mean like microsim's that no one else uses? or their DVI ports on their computers that require special adapters to work with ANYTHING. or how about their 18pin connection on the iOS line.. works great with the microUSB charging standard that the rest of the world is using.

or h.264, a codec that is insanely expensive, so much so that Mozilla doesn't support it because it would bankrupt them.

Yep, all completely new standards that everyone else is doing.

Well, not when Adobe has made it clear for many years that Macs are not a priority to them. They only got their new religion recently when it became clear they were not going to be a player in mobile. Too little, too late. And, whatever they do, Flash will never be an appropriate technology for mobile, and it isn't the appropriate technology for the rest of the web moving forward, if it ever was.

I'll do you a favor. SendMe is an old troll here on AI, banned several times, keeps returning under different aliases. He's best known as tekstud.

So, you don't really score any points by rebutting his current persona's ridiculous posts, so you're really just wasting your time on them

Restraint of trade is anti-trust by definition in 1886 and is generally referred to as anti-competitive now. The Sherman act was passed using restraint of trade terminology and modern courts have been referring to it using the anti-competiitive terminology. For all intents and purposes they are the same thing, may even be formally defined as the same thing someplace in US law written since 1886.

Once again, you're quicker to reply to posts than to read the article they relate to.

Can you show us where in the article where it states that the complaint was filed by an AppleInsider poster known as RationalTroll?

In fact, in the very post you're replying to I've already made it clear why I don't believe an antitrust case would have much merit with a platform that has less than 17% of the market.

Dude, really, learn when to quit.


Another sweeping straw man. Did you find a sale on hay?

Some of the things I like about Apple, many of which I've posted here before:

- Jonathan Ive is one of the most talented designers of our time
- Mac OS X is a great OS
- Their advertising is among the best in the world, recognizing the importance of emotions over gigahertz
- The responsiveness of their QuickTime developer relations staff is truly excellent (I've had replies from them in under two hours; good team)
- Their stock performance rocks (proceeds from which I'll be using to buy and Android-powered device, just as I did to buy my last Linux system)

Unlike some of the Apple customers here, I can enjoy some things about them without getting all gushy about absolutely everything they do. They're just a company; a reasonably good one in many respects, but not without fault and not without risk of repeating past mistakes.

Taking bets on that?

Define "future" and I may take you up on that.

h.264 would cost mozilla over 5 million dollars to license a year. They're not going to become irrelevant because those sites continue to support Flash content, and thanks to flash wrappers, mozilla can play h.264 content. On top of that mozilla has a larger marketshare than Safari, Chrome, and Opera combined (the big HTML5 browsers). Yes, IE is finally supporting HTML5, but most people running IE are running old versions of it, which won't support HTML5 so websites that wish to reach 82% of the web will either have to support Flash, or webM/flash wrappers.

Youtube is planning to convert a lot of their content to WebM, and Google's making a big push for it. WebM isn't patent encumbered, the issue are patent holders of mpeg trying to scare providers away from another platform. This is what we call "actions taken by a monopoly that's afraid of competition." If apple truly cared about an open web they would denounce the Mpeg group.

And, at one time, Netscape had a huge market share, only to lose it. It's ridiculous to think that browser market shares are going to remain fixed. Chrome is out there to put Mozilla's user base directly under Google's control, and it will succeed in that at the expense of Mozilla. WebM will not be the future of video on the web, and Google knows that too.

EDIT: And, I'll add to this that the only reason Mozilla exists today is because Google has been propping them up. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but to prevent themselves from being shut out of Windows or Mac OS by Microsoft or Apple. With Chrome's increasing adoption as a browser, Google doesn't need Mozilla any longer, and they aren't going to continue to subsidize them forever. They'll chip away at their market share for a few years, declare them irrelevant, and pull the plug.

2-5 years, Flash will have become a niche product.

And yet ironically much, if not a majority, of Flash content on the web was made by Mac users.

Cool. Define "niche" and put an amount and you may have a bet.

That is, unless you're not all that confident in your prognostication.

A totally irrelevant point to the discussion, even if we were to stipulate it to be true.

It's hard to see what it will end up being used for, if anything. It'll still exist in sites not update, but that's hardly relevant. Maybe there will be some specifc cases where it might be useful, situations with a highly targeted audience. It won't however be a significant player.

That's one of the other Oops moments in Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash". Immediately after he espouses the benefits of "free and open", he jumps right into a discussion of h.264, without noting the most relevant details of that pitch:

- It is a proprietary technology.
- Just because the fees are called by a name other than "royalty fees" doesn't mean there aren't any fees at all.
- Those fees are big now, and royalties will be added on top of them in 2016 once the bait-and-switch gambit takes hold.
- The patent those license fees cover is owned by MPEG-LA
- Apple is one of the prominent members of MPEG-LA, and as such profits from fees paid for h.264.

Oops.

Should be a sucker bet then, eh? Go on, take my money: define measurable terms and let's do it.

This terminology gets all balled up frequently, and while you are partially correct in your explanation, I think you may have introduced a new level of confusion to anyone who wishes to understand this issue better. First, a "trust" is another term for what we often call a "monopoly." The Sherman Antitrust Act was therefore created to combat the formation of trusts. Preventing the restraint of trade is the broader purpose of both the Sherman and Clayton acts. Also, the Sherman Act was passed in 1890, so I'm not sure where you get the 1886 date.

So "restraint of trade is antitrust by definition" is not an accurate statement. Restraint of trade was made unlawful by antitrust laws, is the meaning I think you wanted.

If we're both still around here in 2-5 years, one of us will just admit that he was wrong.

That's yet another Oops moment from Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash".

The facts tell a very different story:

Back in the late '90s Apple was a sinking ship, with 2.2% of the global market and two consecutive years of net losses.

During that time, Adobe did indeed release some of their products for Windows first, but still continued to invest substantially in their Mac line.

If memory serves (I don't have the specific numbers handy, but perhaps you can find some to refute this if you feel necessary), Adobe has never spent less than 25% of operating capital on the Mac platform, and most years much more than that.

So when we look at their investment relative to potential return based on market share, Adobe's investment in the Mac was an order of magnitude disproportionately favoring Apple's customers.

And in return, Apple's customers were loyal to Adobe, bringing in a disproportionately high percentage of the company's revenue.

This was happily the case between Adobe and Mac users- and pretty much remains so - until Steve Jobs launched his attack on Adobe.

Now, even though Mac customers still buy LOTS of Adobe products and Adobe continues to invest in Mac completely beyond its market share, there are a handful of zealous parrots here running about yelling "Adobe must die! Adobe must die!" without recognizing that nearly all of them never had such a battle cry until Steve Jobs told them to.

Fair enough, but without defining "niche" we may never agree on what "wrong" means.

Just the same, if it's clear Flash has gone by the wayside I'll do one better: I'll buy you a beer at the next MacWorld.

If memory serves (I don't have the specific numbers handy, but perhaps you can find some to refute this if you feel necessary), the market share of Adobe's Mac CS products has always been well in excess of 25%. Mac vs. Windows market share is entirely irrelevant.

All of this is a delusional, revisionist, fictional rant by you. People on this forum, and elsewhere, have been waiting eagerly for the day that Flash is a non-entity long before Steve Jobs ever made in public statements regarding it. Many of us have disliked Flash from day 0, for exactly the same reasons we dislike it now, long before Steve Jobs ever voiced an opinion.

Precisely. Outside of Steve's office and this forum, Mac user love Adobe, and likewise Adobe has been investing heavily in the Mac platform, in spite of false claims to the contrary.

As for your claim that the folks here demanding "Death to Flash!" have been saying so for years, what percentage of them can point to any such posts prior to January 2010?

Doesn't H.264 come with five year licenses, capped at $5 million so $1 million a year would be closer.

What was that video editing software again, I think it started with P, it was a bit like Final Cut.

When will Click-to-Flash be ready for Android? Inquiring minds want to know.

There are several video solutions right now as well as a tutorial on the Apple developer site.

I am mostly using Video Js by zencoder http://videojs.com/
It works on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, with flash fall back support for IE and works with H.264, Ogg and MebM. I don't have to code the flash support it has a link to embed a flashplayer that will play the H.264 file. Yes, I have to encode the video three times, but it is quick. So all of my videos are using the html5 tag right now. Within the tag is the fallback code for any browser not supporting html5 video tag directly. Yes, I still need to provide Flash support or rather it is the html5 that is providing access to the Flash alternative. Eventually that will not be needed once older versions of IE fade from use (please God make it sooner than later for a ton of reasons, not just Flash)


I agree with this statement!! I have been designing websites for such a long time that Claris Homepage was my first html editor! I remember when people started using Flash and they had to create two sites, one for Flash and another non-Flash site as many people did not have the plugin or had a browser that would support the plugin. Eventually most people had the plugin but which version??? It was always a nightmare when the Flash plugin got updated and people didn't update or their browser was incapable of running the latest Flash player plugin. Got tons of complaints that people couldn't see the content. So I had to use a Flash detector to redirect people to older versions. Sometimes the new techniques couldn't run on older Flash players so two versions of the swf file had to be made. It was (and still is) its own nightmare of difficulty. So in a way just coding a video file three ways is much simpler. I have never ever used Flash for any interactivity or navigation on any of my websites for the reasons stated above.

I do not however, in the past go on the internet to bitch about Flash except for maybe some boards for specific applications of Flash such as Slide Show Pro. But believe me, I did have issues and was not happy with using Flash, but until recently it was the thing to use. Now there are alternatives and I am more than happy to use them.

Aren't h.264 licenses only necessary for content creators who are in the business of selling their content?

I thought the Mozilla problem with licensing H.264 was their fear that someday the consortium that administers H.264 may someday change the terms going from a free-to-implement-in-a-browser cost to a cost-per-view model. And that because that change of terms was not legally impossible, the H.264 standard wasn't viewed as a royaly-free Open Standard in Mozilla's eyes, even though there would be no royalties today, and therefore not a candidate for inclusion into FF.

That's a really big difference, because it becomes a political choice on Mozilla's part, not a cost budgeting issue for making a H.264 viewer native to the FF browser.

Flash "load on demand" is a NATIVE part of the Froyo (2.2) browser. You don't need a separate plugin.

I'm completely mystified as to why people are getting so exercised over Dr. Millmoss's straightforward remark that the FTC was "enforcing laws."

What are people suggesting? That if the FTC receives a complaint they reject it out of hand without any investigation? How would that work? Someone just glances at the paperwork and makes a summary judgement to tear it up, despite the enormously complex legal and economic ramifications of such decisions?

That's what the FTC's madate is. That's how they go about enforcing the law-- they investigate complaints and come to a decision as to whether any intervention is necessary. It's not an attack on Apple or an endorsement of Adobe to make such an entirely (I would have thought) uncontroversial observation, nor is it a vote for capricious government fiat or onerous, heavy-handed control of markets.

Jeesh.

Welcome back to the Land O' Mystery. I am selling tickets.

Two forces at work, as nearly as I can tell. The first is the "Apple is never wrong" crowd. Simply suggesting the possibility that Apple may have erred is too much for them to even consider. The second is the "government is always wrong" bunch. They live on private islands and are well armed. It's a Venn diagram exercise of course -- many in Set A also belong to Set B.

You are obviously missing the point - Flash is a proprietary POS and has no business being a platform on the internet. The internet should be based on open standards, not closed. That is apple's point. Further, by being a proprietary system, the whole world has to wait for Adobe to do upgrades, fix problems, make it workable, make it usable and therefore has no control over the performance or experience. Meanwhile, if this functionality were built into HTML5 it would be worked on and improved constantly by the open source community. KILL FLASH - FREE THE WEB!

Or, dimwit, there is no law being broken! Apple is free to keep buggy POS crapware off their systems, and that is the definition of flash. Apple is the one that get the complaints, bad reviews etc. for sluggish performance, crashes, etc. Flash is crap! Put that in your Venn diagram.

I'm pretty sure you're taking Dr Millmoss out of context, you've apparently missed several other posts in this very thread.

I thought Dr. Millmoss was a comic character in the 30's. It's just a handle, not a reason to pick a fight.

http://www.cartoonbank.com/1930s/wha...s/invt/117291/

In other news, Cap'n Crunch really isn't a ship's captain at all.

Do you even read or think about the meaning of posts before you reply? More users, less investment per user than Windows. Kind of contradicts your point, doesn't it? So, "precisely" is hardly the right word here. More appropriate might have been, "Shit, I was so wrong."


A very high percentage. If you don't believe it, feel free to peruse the archives, at which point an appropriate response will be, "Shit, I was so wrong."

The problem with HTML5, is that it isn't defined in stone yet; both Apple and MS use browser-specific hooks on their "HTML5" demos page, so Webkit or Direct2D specific features don't do me a lot of good if I'm not using Safari or Windows on that particular page, and not all browsers do well at displaying all current HTML5 content even the 'open' bits - example, Safari sucks with the <canvas> element, while Chrome and Opera stomp all over it, and that's without any GPU acceleration either.

At least Flash is browser agnostic. HTML5 may the future, but it's not the present.

I would have been understanding if SJ has something to the effect, that Adobe needs to step up their game with Flash, before we consider allowing it on iOS, rather than shutting the door completely.

(I've seen jailbroken iPads running hacked Android Froyo builds of Flash, so it can't be a performance issue, and I haven't heard of complains from people running Froyo and Flash, so there's something more).

jragosta, is that you?

First you prove my point by demonstrating how much Mac users outside of this tiny little forum love Adobe and then try to say it somehow means Adobe is bad for Mac?

Correct order: read first, then reply.

Have a better day.

That's why apple is supporting h.264 right? a standard proprietary encumbered pos.

If they wanted an open web, they would announce support for webM and oggvorbis (and the other open source formats)

So yes, free the web. Now someone inform apple.