No, because in this scenario Adobe would then be shafting developers, and those developers would jump ship to other tools that allowed them to develop software for the platforms they wanted to target. Also, there is no danger of people not using Apple's development tools, so I don't see things ever playing themselves out quite that way. Apple's tools are free, and they give you a good result, so they are a good choice for many shops. However they are not the best choice for ALL shops.
In fact, I'd come to the opposite conclusion. It is in Apple's best interest to have a thriving developer community, where everyone gets to use the tools that are best suited for the app they are writing. A clamp-down like this is the sort of thing that's going to drive people to other platforms.
Really? You sure? Are you really confident that would happen and are willing to risk your company for that ?? So explain to me Flash for OS X ? As a consumer with an iPad, iPhone and Touch. I don't give a damn what company made what app and from what devkit, but if something goes wrong with my device, the first company I will be blaming is not you. It's Apple for having a crappy device and that translate to negative word of mouth. Hell, developers can jump ship all they want to other tools, but when people gave up on one device because the perception of that device is crappy and apps are unstable as hell. No amount of tool switching will make those customers come back especially when they perceived that the competition and the apps they have are better than what Apple offered and guess what, developers follow customers and their money. Developers can easily forgive and forget when profit is mentioned.
Including those who weren't really interested in developing for the iGadgets, but are using Apple to develop the same products but with better implementation for the competition.
HhavinGaving an IDE app for Python or Ruby would be excellent. The Jacascript solution just doesn't work for everybody. It would make the platforms very useful in the corporate world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
If they ever decide to allow GC in the iPhone platform, we would be able to look forward to MacRuby as a first-class Cocoa language. I would be extremely pleased.
I'm literially a newbie to MacRuby but can already see where it could be huge.
Part of the problem at Apple is that they really don't seem to have a handle on the market for iPad. I suspect that Apple sees it very much as a bigger iPod while many here see far greater possibilities. Certainly shipping iPad without enough RAM to do a decent job with iWork demonstrates some confusion to me. Maybe this is a case where they get their bearngs set with Rev 2 and realize iPad is far more than a iPod Touch.
intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
Parroting ignorance doesn't make it more factual.
Cocoa is an intermediate layer between the platform (the hardware) and the developer. So is Carbon, QuickTime, all libraries, programs. It's the fundamental concept of OOD (abstraction and polymorphism is about creating intermediate layers for the purposes of encapsulation and reuse).
Really? You sure? Are you really confident that would happen and are willing to risk your company for that ??
I'll tell you what I'm not willing to risk: spending a year or more of my life working on a app for the iPhone only to have Apple tell me I can't deploy it when I'm all done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wil
So explain to me Flash for OS X ? As a consumer with an iPad, iPhone and Touch. I don't give a damn what company made what app and from what devkit, but if something goes wrong with my device, the first company I will be blaming is not you. It's Apple for having a crappy device.
I'm actually OK with Apple not wanting the Flash plug-in in Safari, because then what you are saying would be true. But, for an individual app, if the app sucks its clear who the consumer is going to blame. There are lots of less-than-wonderful apps in the app store as it stands. I've bought a few of them myself. I don't see anyone blaming Apple for them. If an app sucks, it sucks. If its great its great. Who cares what technology was used to create it?
There is the potential for some really really cool stuff for the iPad platform being built with Adobe technologies. If I had an iPad, I'd be demanding that Apple give me access to this content.
To say "Flash Sucks" shows ignorant of software development. Flash is a tool. Do we argue "a screwdriver sucks? It does at pounding nails or cutting wood -- for driving screws, it isn't that bad. There are many Flash apps that are better than iFart, shaking babies, or jiggling booby apps that they approved. Apple can't manage the quality of the apps they choose, but they want to dictate the tools as that somehow matters more? No rational person should buy the illogic of that.
I'd rather them not accepting crappy apps based on the quality of the app, than denying good app because they don't like the platform it was made on (but no one would know).
I notice in another post you say that you have never programmed in ActionScript. I actually have, and I fancy myself a relatively decent programmer. My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this. If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
Maybe instead of crying foul to anyone who will listen the developers of Flash should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they neglected Apple's OS for so long now that they have essentially had one of their flagship features shot down. How much of a reason is there for devs to upgrade to Flash CS5 now?
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the overarching implications here. There are going to be some good tools that are going to get the shaft. But as has been said over and over, developers don't have to follow the rules. They don't have to play the game. I'll bet they will because there's still a lot of money to be made from iPhone/iPad.
I notice in another post you say that you have never programmed in ActionScript. I actually have, and I fancy myself a relatively decent programmer. My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this. If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
Maybe instead of crying foul to anyone who will listen the developers of Flash should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they neglected Apple's OS for so long now that they have essentially had one of their flagship features shot down. How much of a reason is there for devs to upgrade to Flash CS5 now?
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the overarching implications here. There are going to be some good tools that are going to get the shaft. But as has been said over and over, developers don't have to follow the rules. They don't have to play the game. I'll bet they will because there's still a lot of money to be made from iPhone/iPad.
a) Sorry, this doesn't have anything to do with communism, socialism or fascism.
It does -- you just didn't understand it. (What you said and/or what I said).
You're arguing that centralized authority will work better than the marketplace at offering choice/efficiency. It never does. If Keynesianism worked the great depression would have ended in 2 years, as would have other recessions, 1970's couldn't have had stagflation (which broke their models), Japan wouldn't have had the lost decades, and Europe and Russia would have outgrown us for the last century. The problem is the free markets work better because of knowledge problem. (Command economies don't know what they don't know -- markets don't need to know it, because that knowledge is dispersed through many individuals. The market as a whole knows more than the individual dictators.
You're arguing that Apple should protect us from ourselves for our own good. That we aren't smart enough to make the correct choices for ourselves, nor are the developers. You really don't get the correlation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
b) What does that even mean, "if the free market wins"? The free market doesn't win or lose, individual businesses win or lose, in a free market. And, sorry, the idea that Adobe is the consumer's friend is pretty laughable.
Compared to Apple? Adobe is far more open and FAR more the consumers friend.
Apple is telling us that we shouldn't have the apps we want for the price we want to pay. They want to delay those apps, drive up the cost, or eliminate that choice. That's what taking away Flash as a choice does.
Now you can ignorantly say that because some bad Apps are Flash, that all of them are. But that ignores ObjectiveC based iFart, or iTunes which comply with Apple's terms. It also ignores many good apps that are Flash. So what happens? Apple is driving up the costs, time to market, and thus reducing the markets choice. (The choice of individuals in the market). You lose, whether you're smart enough to get it or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
c) Apple's mobile platform will only ever be inferior if they take your advice and allow Adobe, Google, et al. to undermine it for their own commercial ends.
Before Apple's choice, I would be able to get Wired Magazine written in Air, which was rocking app and a BETTER experience than the website.
Now what? It'll cost Wired more time and money to bring it to market. They'll be rushed so it'll have LESS features, and it'll probably have more bugs (based on new codebase).
Now your theory is that because it's objectiveC it is magically better -- that this is pixie dust that eliminates all bugs. However, informed programmers know the truth: high level tools usually produce FEWER bugs for less development costs, which is why most are smart enough to use the highest level tools that they can get away with.
Again, you're losing, you just may be too much of a fanboy to get the bigger implications. Yes you lost some bad choice, but you lost some good ones. That may be OK for you, but you're advocating for everyone else too -- and many of them (like me), may not see this as a net win, because I can see the loss.
That argument sounds like communists/socialist stating why a command-economy must work better, while ignoring the dispersed knowledge problem.
Yes, if the consumer and free market wins -- and Flash is so superior to develop solutions than Apple's native platform that the majority of products are developed with it -- then the consumer and Adobe wins and Apple loses. Consumers would even be able to move to the best hardware/software because they wouldn't be as locked in to Apple's proprietary solution.
You're arguing that to avoid that, the consumer should lose now and never have that choice, so that we can have an inferior product with inferior choices to protect Apple's market by increasing the cost and barrier to entry of any competitors. Because gosh, poor Apple needs that protection.
Apple is a private company in case you haven't notice and is responsible to it's share holders to make a profit and grow as a company. You see your argument does not compute, Apple as a private company cannot forced people to buy their products, they cannot force people to develop for their products and they cannot forced anybody to sell their products. Whereas , a command economy or what we call centralized economy, You are forced to buy what the government offer, you are forced to develop products for the government and you are forced to sell those products for the government. Apple cannot do that, only government.
Wrong again, the consumer and the free market truly wins when we let those companies battle it out for our money not with some ideology of free, close and open.
Tell you what, customers/consumers even the dumb ones will know what will work for them and they don't need somebody who obviously have an interest to this fracas to tell them what to use.
It's amazing how much whining is done over Apple. I keep thinking "why not shut the hell up, change your diaper and buy a competitor's product?" It's especially annoying to see forum twits whine about Apple stopping 'innovation' when they've never done anything of consequence. That should be an automatic 5 across the eyes, probably should cost them a few teeth.
This entitlement mentality is weak intellectually and ultimately a cowardly dodge of personal responsibility. I think it's a way talentless people bolster their own lack of motivation and hide their deep insecurities. Apple isn't your problem folks, you need to get on the Cialis forums and complain about your issues there.
I'll tell you what I'm not willing to risk: spending a year or more of my life working on a app for the iPhone only to have Apple tell me I can't deploy it when I'm all done.
I'm actually OK with Apple not wanting the Flash plug-in in Safari, because then what you are saying would be true. But, for an individual app, if the app sucks its clear who the consumer is going to blame. There are lots of less-than-wonderful apps in the app store as it stands. I've bought a few of them myself. I don't see anyone blaming Apple for them. If an app sucks, it sucks. If its great its great. Who cares what technology was used to create it?
There is the potential for some really really cool stuff for the iPad platform being built with Adobe technologies. If I had an iPad, I'd be demanding that Apple give me access to this content.
That's the problem, Adobe is willing to work for Apple now, but Adobe wasn't too keen to work with Apple for the last decade or so. Why would Apple risk it's product line and it's future for Adobe? Let Adobe proved itself first on Apple's Mac Computers with it's products and Jobs may be willing to make a compromise with the iGadgets line.
Most consumers don't read most Macintosh blogs and news sites much less Apple Insider. Many people blame the problems of their applications to the manufacturer not the developer of that product. Many judge the platform on what they hear or read or seen. So yes, an App screws up, Apple gets the blame . Unfortunate but true.
Before Apple's choice, I would be able to get Wired Magazine written in Air, which was rocking app and a BETTER experience than the website.
Now what? It'll cost Wired more time and money to bring it to market. They'll be rushed so it'll have LESS features, and it'll probably have more bugs (based on new codebase).
Why does it have to be rushed and have less features? Nobody is going to release Wired magazine as an application before them, so they don't have to worry about being first to market.
Furthermore, of course the application looked great... it was built with direct collaboration from Adobe. I don't expect the majority of apps to exude the same quality.
Finally, wouldn't it be better if a company developed an application ala iBooks that was instead like a magazine rack with the ability to read all magazines in the same way (yet still having the interactivity illustrated in the Wired app)? Having separate applications for each magazine not only leads to icon clutter (I guess folders help here), but the likelihood that many would require different interfaces for reading would be incredibly annoying. At least it would be for me.
My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
There's a few problems.
1) Just because you can't write good flash, doesn't mean others can't.
2) Programmers seem to do worse with Flash than non-programmers. And there's many tools to deliver Flash -- including functionality built into CS5 that will now only work for every other platform except iPhones and iPad's (consumers lose).
3) If Flash is buggy on the Mac, might that have something to do with Apple being more closed, documenting less, having inferior tools and support than Microsoft? (If Adobe's at fault for every bad app written in Flash, then isn't Apple equally responsible for things they have more control of?)
4) We aren't talking about Flash in the browser, we're talking about AIR; which while ActionScript is a bit of a different animal.
5) It matters what type of App you're creating. I certainly wouldn't try to write the next spreadsheet in Flash. Nor if I had interactive information system like a virtual magazine would I jump to InterfaceBuilder and ObjectiveC. Right tool for the job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this.
Exactly.
You think all bad Flash Apps are Adobe's fault (and ignore all good ones because they don't fit your model) -- Adobe made the platform it rides on, it is all their fault. Then you blame Adobe for all problems with Flash which rides on Mac OS X, why? Because Apple doesn't make mistakes, so it must be Adobe's fault. Apps that work well on Flash, should be rewritten, even if that wastes months or years and produces and inferior product, because Apple told you so. Are we seeing a pattern?
I on the other hand, care about the solution. I want the best Apps. Given the choice between one that has more features or less, I might go for the one that has more (if they're features I need). Since that's usually the one written in a higher level language, it might be flash. If it's buggy, I'll throw it away, trash it on the forums, and settle for the less full featured one. The market will decide better than you or Steve can for it. That's why capitalist societies outperform command economies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
I get your point. If Apple developers are as much coolaid drinkers as the fanboys and they refuse to accept that they have any shared responsibility in their platform, then yes -- it would look like it was all Adobe's fault. But if they're at all informed as realize that as Adobe said, they didn't have access to GPU API's, so that's why Adobe never implemented it, and so on, then maybe things could get better.
But it still boils down to Adobe isn't "letting" Adobe. They're letting all developers develop for their platform, and putting in special rules to intentionally EXCLUDE Adobe. Which is the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Frankly, I want Apple to refund the rest of the money for the remainder of my iPhone contract. I bought a 2 year contract under the old terms (that I could run any Apps I wanted -- not just ones that were written in ObjectiveC). If I leased you a car, then changed the interest, or limited the roads/distance you could drive, after the fact, you'd scream bloody murder. Unless Apple said it was OK, then you'd make excuses why you're coming out ahead with a much more limited terms of usage.
There are now 185,000 apps in the app store. With that many apps and proportionately that many developers, I think Apple is just thinking it's really time now to focus on quality (of apps & developers) not quantity. I suspect that the number of apps & developers are starting to reach unwieldy proportions and Apple might actually welcome it if the crappier developers and apps drop out. Are all developers upset about this new requirement? Probably not. The developers using Apple's tools should be quite happy that Apple is putting the squeeze on those who aren't. That would mean less competition for them.
It's just a fact of mobile computing life that Apple now has the clout and leverage to do a little more picking and choosing of developers. Unhappy? Android is waiting for you. Probably less revenues there but if you are unwilling to live by Apple's rules then Eric Schmidt awaits you with open arms (and his own set of rules).
Developers would probably wring their hands less if they just accept the (seemingly elusive) fact that they are not Apple's customer. It's the people who buy Apple devices. Apple can bend to the developers' every whim but if that leads to a horrible iPhone experience and loss of customers then developer revenues will fall and developers will still be unhappy. Apple's overarching goal must be to keep their customers happy, and when customers are happy then developers will be happy.
In the end, you just have to have faith that Apple is doing all these things to come up with the best product. There might be collateral goals (yes, like settling scores) but you've got to believe that Apple is keeping its eyes on the prize and you as a component supplier will ultimately benefit. If you don't believe that, and you think Apple is not committed to the long term quality of their products, then why the hell are you developing for such a short sighted, misguided company?
Why does it have to be rushed and have less features?
Software Development 101. Higher level languages or solutions take fewer lines to get more work done. ObjectiveC and Cocoa are much lower level than Flash (especially for creating information systems, and especially if you're a publishing house that already has the content in something like InDesign and using Adobe's tools to output exactly this kind of functionality).
Thus if I already have a solution developed or partly developed (as the Demo implies), and I have to throw that out, and start over, in a lower level language and worse tools for the job -- what happens? It will take far more time to get it out. Nature is to rush and drop features to get it to market as fast as possible (which is still much slower than the alternative). But because it is newer, more rushes, lower level code, more lines to do the same thing, it'll have more bugs to make up for it. This is lose-lose-lose for the developer. But it's OK, because the fanboys are willing to give up a lot because "The Steve" told them it was better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
Nobody is going to release Wired magazine as an application before them, so they don't have to worry about being first to market.
They could lose circulation to competing products that now beat them. They are losing money over the new revenue stream they would have had. They are increasing costs by instead of taking designers that new they tools and workflows and solutions they had, and moving into something they know less. I'm sensing lose-lose and cost-cost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
Furthermore, of course the application looked great... it was built with direct collaboration from Adobe. I don't expect the majority of apps to exude the same quality.
Even if that was the only Flash app you would use, you still lost choice, time, quality, etc.
But let's say Adobe did that, and made a fantastic user experience -- who's to say they wouldn't have then made a small "Adobe Magazine App" and helped lots of other magazines use that exceptional solution as well? You lost. You just may not realize how much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sexualintellectual
Finally, wouldn't it be better if a company developed an application ala iBooks that was instead like a magazine rack with the ability to read all magazines in the same way (yet still having the interactivity illustrated in the Wired app)
How do you know they weren't migrating to that? It cost them less to develop it than ObjectiveC app would -- so by its nature, it could get there first.
Second of all, I think the magazine should focus on being the best magazine possible -- let Apple deal with the magazine rack. if the app is good and proven useful it would be a market model anyways.
Comments
No, because in this scenario Adobe would then be shafting developers, and those developers would jump ship to other tools that allowed them to develop software for the platforms they wanted to target. Also, there is no danger of people not using Apple's development tools, so I don't see things ever playing themselves out quite that way. Apple's tools are free, and they give you a good result, so they are a good choice for many shops. However they are not the best choice for ALL shops.
In fact, I'd come to the opposite conclusion. It is in Apple's best interest to have a thriving developer community, where everyone gets to use the tools that are best suited for the app they are writing. A clamp-down like this is the sort of thing that's going to drive people to other platforms.
Really? You sure? Are you really confident that would happen and are willing to risk your company for that ?? So explain to me Flash for OS X ? As a consumer with an iPad, iPhone and Touch. I don't give a damn what company made what app and from what devkit, but if something goes wrong with my device, the first company I will be blaming is not you. It's Apple for having a crappy device and that translate to negative word of mouth. Hell, developers can jump ship all they want to other tools, but when people gave up on one device because the perception of that device is crappy and apps are unstable as hell. No amount of tool switching will make those customers come back especially when they perceived that the competition and the apps they have are better than what Apple offered and guess what, developers follow customers and their money. Developers can easily forgive and forget when profit is mentioned.
Including those who weren't really interested in developing for the iGadgets, but are using Apple to develop the same products but with better implementation for the competition.
So, they you are arguing that Apple intentionally releases crapware for Windows?
Actually no, I am just telling you how they know it's a horrible solution.
If they ever decide to allow GC in the iPhone platform, we would be able to look forward to MacRuby as a first-class Cocoa language. I would be extremely pleased.
I'm literially a newbie to MacRuby but can already see where it could be huge.
Part of the problem at Apple is that they really don't seem to have a handle on the market for iPad. I suspect that Apple sees it very much as a bigger iPod while many here see far greater possibilities. Certainly shipping iPad without enough RAM to do a decent job with iWork demonstrates some confusion to me. Maybe this is a case where they get their bearngs set with Rev 2 and realize iPad is far more than a iPod Touch.
Dave
Actually no, I am just telling you how they know it's a horrible solution.
..and continue to use it. So either they are unaware or do so intentionally. Can't really have it both ways.
intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
Parroting ignorance doesn't make it more factual.
Cocoa is an intermediate layer between the platform (the hardware) and the developer. So is Carbon, QuickTime, all libraries, programs. It's the fundamental concept of OOD (abstraction and polymorphism is about creating intermediate layers for the purposes of encapsulation and reuse).
Really? You sure? Are you really confident that would happen and are willing to risk your company for that ??
I'll tell you what I'm not willing to risk: spending a year or more of my life working on a app for the iPhone only to have Apple tell me I can't deploy it when I'm all done.
So explain to me Flash for OS X ? As a consumer with an iPad, iPhone and Touch. I don't give a damn what company made what app and from what devkit, but if something goes wrong with my device, the first company I will be blaming is not you. It's Apple for having a crappy device.
I'm actually OK with Apple not wanting the Flash plug-in in Safari, because then what you are saying would be true. But, for an individual app, if the app sucks its clear who the consumer is going to blame. There are lots of less-than-wonderful apps in the app store as it stands. I've bought a few of them myself. I don't see anyone blaming Apple for them. If an app sucks, it sucks. If its great its great. Who cares what technology was used to create it?
And, as this video shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwFbwHaP5tE
There is the potential for some really really cool stuff for the iPad platform being built with Adobe technologies. If I had an iPad, I'd be demanding that Apple give me access to this content.
To say "Flash Sucks" shows ignorant of software development. Flash is a tool. Do we argue "a screwdriver sucks? It does at pounding nails or cutting wood -- for driving screws, it isn't that bad. There are many Flash apps that are better than iFart, shaking babies, or jiggling booby apps that they approved. Apple can't manage the quality of the apps they choose, but they want to dictate the tools as that somehow matters more? No rational person should buy the illogic of that.
I'd rather them not accepting crappy apps based on the quality of the app, than denying good app because they don't like the platform it was made on (but no one would know).
I notice in another post you say that you have never programmed in ActionScript. I actually have, and I fancy myself a relatively decent programmer. My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this. If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
Maybe instead of crying foul to anyone who will listen the developers of Flash should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they neglected Apple's OS for so long now that they have essentially had one of their flagship features shot down. How much of a reason is there for devs to upgrade to Flash CS5 now?
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the overarching implications here. There are going to be some good tools that are going to get the shaft. But as has been said over and over, developers don't have to follow the rules. They don't have to play the game. I'll bet they will because there's still a lot of money to be made from iPhone/iPad.
I notice in another post you say that you have never programmed in ActionScript. I actually have, and I fancy myself a relatively decent programmer. My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this. If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
Maybe instead of crying foul to anyone who will listen the developers of Flash should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they neglected Apple's OS for so long now that they have essentially had one of their flagship features shot down. How much of a reason is there for devs to upgrade to Flash CS5 now?
That said, I don't necessarily agree with the overarching implications here. There are going to be some good tools that are going to get the shaft. But as has been said over and over, developers don't have to follow the rules. They don't have to play the game. I'll bet they will because there's still a lot of money to be made from iPhone/iPad.
All good points.
a) Sorry, this doesn't have anything to do with communism, socialism or fascism.
It does -- you just didn't understand it. (What you said and/or what I said).
You're arguing that centralized authority will work better than the marketplace at offering choice/efficiency. It never does. If Keynesianism worked the great depression would have ended in 2 years, as would have other recessions, 1970's couldn't have had stagflation (which broke their models), Japan wouldn't have had the lost decades, and Europe and Russia would have outgrown us for the last century. The problem is the free markets work better because of knowledge problem. (Command economies don't know what they don't know -- markets don't need to know it, because that knowledge is dispersed through many individuals. The market as a whole knows more than the individual dictators.
You're arguing that Apple should protect us from ourselves for our own good. That we aren't smart enough to make the correct choices for ourselves, nor are the developers. You really don't get the correlation?
b) What does that even mean, "if the free market wins"? The free market doesn't win or lose, individual businesses win or lose, in a free market. And, sorry, the idea that Adobe is the consumer's friend is pretty laughable.
Compared to Apple? Adobe is far more open and FAR more the consumers friend.
Apple is telling us that we shouldn't have the apps we want for the price we want to pay. They want to delay those apps, drive up the cost, or eliminate that choice. That's what taking away Flash as a choice does.
Now you can ignorantly say that because some bad Apps are Flash, that all of them are. But that ignores ObjectiveC based iFart, or iTunes which comply with Apple's terms. It also ignores many good apps that are Flash. So what happens? Apple is driving up the costs, time to market, and thus reducing the markets choice. (The choice of individuals in the market). You lose, whether you're smart enough to get it or not.
c) Apple's mobile platform will only ever be inferior if they take your advice and allow Adobe, Google, et al. to undermine it for their own commercial ends.
Before Apple's choice, I would be able to get Wired Magazine written in Air, which was rocking app and a BETTER experience than the website.
Now what? It'll cost Wired more time and money to bring it to market. They'll be rushed so it'll have LESS features, and it'll probably have more bugs (based on new codebase).
Now your theory is that because it's objectiveC it is magically better -- that this is pixie dust that eliminates all bugs. However, informed programmers know the truth: high level tools usually produce FEWER bugs for less development costs, which is why most are smart enough to use the highest level tools that they can get away with.
Again, you're losing, you just may be too much of a fanboy to get the bigger implications. Yes you lost some bad choice, but you lost some good ones. That may be OK for you, but you're advocating for everyone else too -- and many of them (like me), may not see this as a net win, because I can see the loss.
That argument sounds like communists/socialist stating why a command-economy must work better, while ignoring the dispersed knowledge problem.
Yes, if the consumer and free market wins -- and Flash is so superior to develop solutions than Apple's native platform that the majority of products are developed with it -- then the consumer and Adobe wins and Apple loses. Consumers would even be able to move to the best hardware/software because they wouldn't be as locked in to Apple's proprietary solution.
You're arguing that to avoid that, the consumer should lose now and never have that choice, so that we can have an inferior product with inferior choices to protect Apple's market by increasing the cost and barrier to entry of any competitors. Because gosh, poor Apple needs that protection.
Apple is a private company in case you haven't notice and is responsible to it's share holders to make a profit and grow as a company. You see your argument does not compute, Apple as a private company cannot forced people to buy their products, they cannot force people to develop for their products and they cannot forced anybody to sell their products. Whereas , a command economy or what we call centralized economy, You are forced to buy what the government offer, you are forced to develop products for the government and you are forced to sell those products for the government. Apple cannot do that, only government.
Wrong again, the consumer and the free market truly wins when we let those companies battle it out for our money not with some ideology of free, close and open.
Tell you what, customers/consumers even the dumb ones will know what will work for them and they don't need somebody who obviously have an interest to this fracas to tell them what to use.
It's amazing how much whining is done over Apple. I keep thinking "why not shut the hell up, change your diaper and buy a competitor's product?" It's especially annoying to see forum twits whine about Apple stopping 'innovation' when they've never done anything of consequence. That should be an automatic 5 across the eyes, probably should cost them a few teeth.
This entitlement mentality is weak intellectually and ultimately a cowardly dodge of personal responsibility. I think it's a way talentless people bolster their own lack of motivation and hide their deep insecurities. Apple isn't your problem folks, you need to get on the Cialis forums and complain about your issues there.
oxygenhose is my new hero.
oxygenhose is my new hero.
Why, because his argument against anyone with the gall to question Apple is to revert to childish insults?
I'll tell you what I'm not willing to risk: spending a year or more of my life working on a app for the iPhone only to have Apple tell me I can't deploy it when I'm all done.
I'm actually OK with Apple not wanting the Flash plug-in in Safari, because then what you are saying would be true. But, for an individual app, if the app sucks its clear who the consumer is going to blame. There are lots of less-than-wonderful apps in the app store as it stands. I've bought a few of them myself. I don't see anyone blaming Apple for them. If an app sucks, it sucks. If its great its great. Who cares what technology was used to create it?
And, as this video shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwFbwHaP5tE
There is the potential for some really really cool stuff for the iPad platform being built with Adobe technologies. If I had an iPad, I'd be demanding that Apple give me access to this content.
That's the problem, Adobe is willing to work for Apple now, but Adobe wasn't too keen to work with Apple for the last decade or so. Why would Apple risk it's product line and it's future for Adobe? Let Adobe proved itself first on Apple's Mac Computers with it's products and Jobs may be willing to make a compromise with the iGadgets line.
Most consumers don't read most Macintosh blogs and news sites much less Apple Insider. Many people blame the problems of their applications to the manufacturer not the developer of that product. Many judge the platform on what they hear or read or seen. So yes, an App screws up, Apple gets the blame . Unfortunate but true.
Before Apple's choice, I would be able to get Wired Magazine written in Air, which was rocking app and a BETTER experience than the website.
Now what? It'll cost Wired more time and money to bring it to market. They'll be rushed so it'll have LESS features, and it'll probably have more bugs (based on new codebase).
Why does it have to be rushed and have less features? Nobody is going to release Wired magazine as an application before them, so they don't have to worry about being first to market.
Furthermore, of course the application looked great... it was built with direct collaboration from Adobe. I don't expect the majority of apps to exude the same quality.
Finally, wouldn't it be better if a company developed an application ala iBooks that was instead like a magazine rack with the ability to read all magazines in the same way (yet still having the interactivity illustrated in the Wired app)? Having separate applications for each magazine not only leads to icon clutter (I guess folders help here), but the likelihood that many would require different interfaces for reading would be incredibly annoying. At least it would be for me.
All good points.
I agree as well.
My problem with the Flash platform is that it can be inefficient and buggy, especially on OS X, so that even if you write wonderful code that may work well on Windows, sometimes it just runs terribly on a Mac, and worse yet you have to try to figure out what is causing the problem (don't count on Adobe telling you what works well and what doesn't on the various "supported" platforms) and then either develop a kludge to make it work or abandon the feature.
There's a few problems.
1) Just because you can't write good flash, doesn't mean others can't.
2) Programmers seem to do worse with Flash than non-programmers. And there's many tools to deliver Flash -- including functionality built into CS5 that will now only work for every other platform except iPhones and iPad's (consumers lose).
3) If Flash is buggy on the Mac, might that have something to do with Apple being more closed, documenting less, having inferior tools and support than Microsoft? (If Adobe's at fault for every bad app written in Flash, then isn't Apple equally responsible for things they have more control of?)
4) We aren't talking about Flash in the browser, we're talking about AIR; which while ActionScript is a bit of a different animal.
5) It matters what type of App you're creating. I certainly wouldn't try to write the next spreadsheet in Flash. Nor if I had interactive information system like a virtual magazine would I jump to InterfaceBuilder and ObjectiveC. Right tool for the job.
I don't blame Apple for wanting to restrict the use of a tool from a company that has shown indifference about its products' woeful performance on Apple's operating systems. I blame Adobe for this.
Exactly.
You think all bad Flash Apps are Adobe's fault (and ignore all good ones because they don't fit your model) -- Adobe made the platform it rides on, it is all their fault. Then you blame Adobe for all problems with Flash which rides on Mac OS X, why? Because Apple doesn't make mistakes, so it must be Adobe's fault. Apps that work well on Flash, should be rewritten, even if that wastes months or years and produces and inferior product, because Apple told you so. Are we seeing a pattern?
I on the other hand, care about the solution. I want the best Apps. Given the choice between one that has more features or less, I might go for the one that has more (if they're features I need). Since that's usually the one written in a higher level language, it might be flash. If it's buggy, I'll throw it away, trash it on the forums, and settle for the less full featured one. The market will decide better than you or Steve can for it. That's why capitalist societies outperform command economies.
If they hadn't treated Apple users like second-class citizens for so long they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Why should Apple believe that Adobe's products will work well this time?
I get your point. If Apple developers are as much coolaid drinkers as the fanboys and they refuse to accept that they have any shared responsibility in their platform, then yes -- it would look like it was all Adobe's fault. But if they're at all informed as realize that as Adobe said, they didn't have access to GPU API's, so that's why Adobe never implemented it, and so on, then maybe things could get better.
But it still boils down to Adobe isn't "letting" Adobe. They're letting all developers develop for their platform, and putting in special rules to intentionally EXCLUDE Adobe. Which is the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Frankly, I want Apple to refund the rest of the money for the remainder of my iPhone contract. I bought a 2 year contract under the old terms (that I could run any Apps I wanted -- not just ones that were written in ObjectiveC). If I leased you a car, then changed the interest, or limited the roads/distance you could drive, after the fact, you'd scream bloody murder. Unless Apple said it was OK, then you'd make excuses why you're coming out ahead with a much more limited terms of usage.
It's just a fact of mobile computing life that Apple now has the clout and leverage to do a little more picking and choosing of developers. Unhappy? Android is waiting for you. Probably less revenues there but if you are unwilling to live by Apple's rules then Eric Schmidt awaits you with open arms (and his own set of rules).
Developers would probably wring their hands less if they just accept the (seemingly elusive) fact that they are not Apple's customer. It's the people who buy Apple devices. Apple can bend to the developers' every whim but if that leads to a horrible iPhone experience and loss of customers then developer revenues will fall and developers will still be unhappy. Apple's overarching goal must be to keep their customers happy, and when customers are happy then developers will be happy.
In the end, you just have to have faith that Apple is doing all these things to come up with the best product. There might be collateral goals (yes, like settling scores) but you've got to believe that Apple is keeping its eyes on the prize and you as a component supplier will ultimately benefit. If you don't believe that, and you think Apple is not committed to the long term quality of their products, then why the hell are you developing for such a short sighted, misguided company?
If Keynesianism worked the great depression would have ended in 2 years...
This is simply ludicrous.
You're arguing that Apple should protect us from ourselves for our own good.
I haven't argued any such thing.
Compared to Apple? Adobe is far more open and FAR more the consumers friend.
This is even more laughable than your assertions about Keynesian economics.
Now your theory is that because it's objectiveC it is magically better -- that this is pixie dust that eliminates all bugs.
Again, I never argued this.
Again, you're losing, you just may be too much of a fanboy to get the bigger implications.
Ah, the fanboy card. The last gasp of a failed argument. I guess you threw that in in case the straw men didn't stick?
Why, because his argument against anyone with the gall to question Apple is to revert to childish insults?
Yes! the gall. It's the GALL!!
Now, back to the childish arguments.
Why does it have to be rushed and have less features?
Software Development 101. Higher level languages or solutions take fewer lines to get more work done. ObjectiveC and Cocoa are much lower level than Flash (especially for creating information systems, and especially if you're a publishing house that already has the content in something like InDesign and using Adobe's tools to output exactly this kind of functionality).
Thus if I already have a solution developed or partly developed (as the Demo implies), and I have to throw that out, and start over, in a lower level language and worse tools for the job -- what happens? It will take far more time to get it out. Nature is to rush and drop features to get it to market as fast as possible (which is still much slower than the alternative). But because it is newer, more rushes, lower level code, more lines to do the same thing, it'll have more bugs to make up for it. This is lose-lose-lose for the developer. But it's OK, because the fanboys are willing to give up a lot because "The Steve" told them it was better.
Nobody is going to release Wired magazine as an application before them, so they don't have to worry about being first to market.
They could lose circulation to competing products that now beat them. They are losing money over the new revenue stream they would have had. They are increasing costs by instead of taking designers that new they tools and workflows and solutions they had, and moving into something they know less. I'm sensing lose-lose and cost-cost.
Furthermore, of course the application looked great... it was built with direct collaboration from Adobe. I don't expect the majority of apps to exude the same quality.
Even if that was the only Flash app you would use, you still lost choice, time, quality, etc.
But let's say Adobe did that, and made a fantastic user experience -- who's to say they wouldn't have then made a small "Adobe Magazine App" and helped lots of other magazines use that exceptional solution as well? You lost. You just may not realize how much.
Finally, wouldn't it be better if a company developed an application ala iBooks that was instead like a magazine rack with the ability to read all magazines in the same way (yet still having the interactivity illustrated in the Wired app)
How do you know they weren't migrating to that? It cost them less to develop it than ObjectiveC app would -- so by its nature, it could get there first.
Second of all, I think the magazine should focus on being the best magazine possible -- let Apple deal with the magazine rack. if the app is good and proven useful it would be a market model anyways.