And thank the maker for that! If it were up to Apple the whole internet would be Disneyfied. Can you imagine a world where "culture" would be what Jobs and his friends dictate? I'm not a big fan of prawn but I'm even less of a fan of censorship. It seems that Steve has a case of the Bono's; he feels he is so great that only he can decide what is good for the world.
I think you are projecting a little onto SJ's motivation.
I don't know if there is any evidence that he is a prude or that he is trying to control the world's content. I DO think that there is evidence that he is very concerned with managing the general public perception of his own company, however.
I believe he doesn't want porn on the App Store because there are plenty of well organized prudes in the USA who would LOVE to use Apple's high profile to make a point. I can already see the campaign now: "Do your kids have an iPod? Did you know Apple is allowing them to download porn??!?" Apple is not creating the USA's culture, but it does have to be aware of it and avoid antagonizing vocal parts of it if it wants to keep it's market as large as possible!
Apple has never (AFAIK) made a move to restrict what people can access on the web* which is open to everybody on every platform--only what people can access on their store which is tied directly to them. I don't know why this is surprising to people who think about it...
* Excepting the whole Flash issue...
Quote:
Apple users are a lot like Singaporeans. Most are so happy with the things they have that they won't criticise anything the great leader decides for fear of losing what they have, no matter what restrictions are posed upon them.
Are you really saying that Apple users are afraid of Apple Inc.?
You do have a point and for the real pornography I can agree with you. However, e.g. in Germany regular newspaper have to make changes so that they get their app approved by Apple.
What are the laws, in Germany, about a store's right to carry or not carry a particular item. Cause in the US, Apple as a store can pick and choose what they carry and is not required to give any reason at all. And that's in their actual stores, the itunes store, app store etc.
I would be curious to know the state of the sitch in other countries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FormerARSgm
And AT&T thinks data usage is up now? If millions of iPad and iPhone users can get porn on their devices via HTML5, well... let's just say I'm glad I'm grandfathered into the unlimited data plan.
I would think that you would be more worried about liquid damage
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iphtashu Fitz
Apple shouldn't be playing censor, especially since there's no clear direction from them as to how they make their decisions. They should simply implement parental controls in the App Store and leave it up to parents to police their kids.
They have parental controls and now require all apps to have an age rating. The trouble is that they allow the developers to set the ratings and that has blown up on them. You mentioned the Ulysses comic. Well there was another one that was banned at the same time. It was a homoerotic soft core porn comic loosely based on The Importance of Being Earnest, complete with 'correct' drawings of bare male buttocks and penises. The publisher of this app went on record saying that originally it was rated 12+ not 17+ because he felt that children need to be educated about homosexuality. He's welcome to that opinion and perhaps it is in line with his European standards. However parents that have turned on parental controls to let the 13 year old buy apps with his online allowance might feel different when Little Johnny downloads said comic unawares, even without being a family that believes that homosexuality is filthy, a sin and those that practice it are damned to hell. THAT fervor is just as bad as Big Bad Apple censoring their store.
So in the end, the only way to deal with the issue is for Apple to set the ratings. Which is again a PR nightmare when someone doesn't like that his/her app is deemed 'adult' and only available in some 'behind the curtain' store visible only to those who have filed some kind of age verification that is more than clicking yes/no. So Apple is doomed no matter what they do.
Apple is using a very Christian, and very American yardstick to measure for what they think is "objectionable." No one wants to see kiddy porn, but most of the rest of the world left behind America's Disney-esque concepts of what's "moral" many years ago.
Again, I don't think that it is trivial to point out that Apple is not using that "Christian/American yardstick" to distance themselves from what they find objectionable--they are using it to distance themselves from what those same Christian/Americans might find objectionable.
Apple is seen as responsible for what is on the App Store--they are not seen as responsible for what is on the Internet. Therefore, they filter their own App Store but not the Internet.
The US is their largest market. Why do people want them to prove some bogus 1st amendment point for little financial gain, but large financial risk?
I agree for the most part if we are talking about "porn." The trouble is Apple has banned and removed a lot of apps that couldn't remotely be described as "porn" at all.
Apple has removed all the apps it considers "too sexy" including bikini apps and all kinds of apps from other countries where what they portray is as normal and common as any other material.
Apple removed an "upskirt" app for instance when all it contained were pictures of women in skirts that you could "blow up" by touching the screen. It's hard to defend such a trivial app, but it's clearly *not* pornography at all and completely harmless. Apple also won't allow any kind of nudity even in apps that have no sexual content or purpose, (medical apps, art apps etc.), and that is just ridiculous.
When you add to that, the absolute hypocrisy of Apple letting in the Playboy app as well as hundreds of movies, songs, and TV shows with absolutely horrific content ... well it just makes no sense at all.
Apple is using a very Christian, and very American yardstick to measure for what they think is "objectionable." No one wants to see kiddy porn, but most of the rest of the world left behind America's Disney-esque concepts of what's "moral" many years ago.
Then go build your own phone and application store. No one's stopping you.
Every company has a brand and it is important for companies to strengthen the brand so it means something. Apple's brand image includes wholesomeness and, yes, American value. Why should they abandon their core values simply because of a few whiners on AI?
Quote:
Originally Posted by polar315
Here to hoping this puts an end to Flash. The Flash streaming just about killed our network with the World Cup. Each user getting their own flash stream. Not able to split it or cache it. Just a nightmare waiting to happen for the next big event (9/11, MJ, World Cup 2014)...Be glad to see it out the door just as I was when the html blink tags faded into the forgotten html tag junk pile in the backyard.
Yep. Flash is dead - it just doesn't know it yet.
At the time that the iPad came out, the following were all given as reasons why Flash was such a critical part of the Internet:
Disney
Farmville
Hulu
YouTube
Porn
Car dealers' web sites
Today, all of them are accessible via the iPhone WITHOUT FLASH. So much for the "you need Flash to access the Intenret" trolls.
I work in the porn industry and we always backed BluRay. We knew HD-DVD would lose because Microsoft was backing it (HD-DVD). I am fairly certain. At least the 20+ companies I was in regular contact with were behind BR. I am a DVD author and was told to get ready to start BR authoring which has now begun. It is possible that in the very beginning before BR (that is if timeline allows it) that they were behind HD-DVD where BR had yet arrived. But I was told to get ready at the moment SONY released the first batch of PS3's
-David.
I contend that MS' relectance to fully back HD-DVD by including it in every XBOX 360 is what sealed its fate, by allowing Blu-ray player and subsequent content adoption to outgrow HD-DVD at a rapid pace with the inclusion of every PS3. Of course, MS didn't seem to take a direct interest in either platform so perhaps, in retrospect, Toshiba should have fronted the bill for HD-DVD upgrades as standard in every 360.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
The Flash SDK is a brilliant development environment, if Adobe can export to native iPhone apps, why can't they export to compliant HTML5, this would be the best of both worlds. You probably don't know this, but Flash is in all of the cool animated onscreen menus for Sony, Visio, Samsung, SlingMedia, Dell projectors and Crestron has just embraced Flash for all their Touchpanels, they are the biggest automation company in the world. So, don't believe that Flash is going away, its actually growing in other markets. Adobe has talented programmers (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, Premiere, After Effects, etc...) I wouldn't count them out of the game just yet.
The Flash SDK is a brilliant development environment, if Adobe can export to native iPhone apps, why can't they export to compliant HTML5, this would be the best of both worlds. You probably don't know this, but Flash is in all of the cool animated onscreen menus for Sony, Visio, Samsung, SlingMedia, Dell projectors and Crestron has just embraced Flash for all their Touchpanels, they are the biggest automation company in the world. So, don't believe that Flash is going away, its actually growing in other markets. Adobe has talented programmers (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, Premiere, After Effects, etc...) I wouldn't count them out of the game just yet.
That's exactly what they need to do and what I've been proposing for a couple years now. Adobe makes money from selling Flash Profession CSx, if they make it the best way to create multi-platform HTML5 content that will auto-fallback to Flash for the plethora of PCs that won't be supporting modern browsers for many years then they profit.
And AT&T thinks data usage is up now? If millions of iPad and iPhone users can get porn on their devices via HTML5, well... let's just say I'm glad I'm grandfathered into the unlimited data plan.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
Not by a long shot.
A. There are still parts of HTML 5 that have not been completed
B. There is still certain things that flash does much better, like hardware acceleration
C. Flash is still used EVERYWHERE
D. HTML 5 hasnt achieved candidate stage for recommendation before W3C
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
HTML 5 wont really see mass adoption for many years. Thats a fact!
Actually, the porn industry was very supportive of HDDVD.
For this reason many people thought that HDDVD would win the format war especially since the porn industry tipped the balance in the format war between DVD and DIVX (not to be confused with 'DivX').
in the end it wasn't porn but the obscene amount of money one player offered the hold-outs that tipped the balance.
A. There are still parts of HTML 5 that have not been completed
B. There is still certain things that flash does much better, like hardware acceleration
C. Flash is still used EVERYWHERE
D. HTML 5 hasnt achieved candidate stage for recommendation before W3C
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
HTML 5 wont really see mass adoption for many years. Thats a fact!
I guess you didn't get the memo but all modern mobile OSes, all modern desktop web browsers any website that wants to support a modern desktop web browser or a modern smartphone has adopted HTML5 elements awhile ago.
A. Having parts of HTML5 not being completed is irrelevant to other parts being adopted and well used. This fallacy you pose that it's an all-or-nothing that requires the entire thing to be completed before any of it gets used is simply BS.
B. When did Flash add HW acceleration? Wasn't that with the recent 10.1 and only for Windows? And yet, hasn't the HTML5 video tag has been offering direct HW acceleration for H.264 since it was included with the original(?) version of Safari for iPhone v1.0? Maybe not that long, but they certainly added it to WebKit back in 2007 which beats Flash. Even MS Silverlight beat Flash.
C. Everywhere Flash is used in a browser, HTML is used first.
D. And yet, it's already widely adopted so it doesn't really matter. You act like they are going to scrape everything and say start over.
E. The prediction of Flash falling away for more efficient options was detailed long before Jobs said anything and even before Apple's browser engine was dominating the net. Flash has its uses, but none of them deal with efficiency so this trend toward more smartphones and less dumbphones has made it much harder for Adobe to compete. Frankly, it's too little too late for Flash. Even when they have it available for more than ONE mobile OS on more than ONE phone it'll still run like crap compared to native webcode so it won't be used much, if at all, by most consumers.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
Flash isn't expensive for the end users, only those who develop software with it.
Comments
And thank the maker for that! If it were up to Apple the whole internet would be Disneyfied. Can you imagine a world where "culture" would be what Jobs and his friends dictate? I'm not a big fan of prawn but I'm even less of a fan of censorship. It seems that Steve has a case of the Bono's; he feels he is so great that only he can decide what is good for the world.
I think you are projecting a little onto SJ's motivation.
I don't know if there is any evidence that he is a prude or that he is trying to control the world's content. I DO think that there is evidence that he is very concerned with managing the general public perception of his own company, however.
I believe he doesn't want porn on the App Store because there are plenty of well organized prudes in the USA who would LOVE to use Apple's high profile to make a point. I can already see the campaign now: "Do your kids have an iPod? Did you know Apple is allowing them to download porn??!?" Apple is not creating the USA's culture, but it does have to be aware of it and avoid antagonizing vocal parts of it if it wants to keep it's market as large as possible!
Apple has never (AFAIK) made a move to restrict what people can access on the web* which is open to everybody on every platform--only what people can access on their store which is tied directly to them. I don't know why this is surprising to people who think about it...
* Excepting the whole Flash issue...
Apple users are a lot like Singaporeans. Most are so happy with the things they have that they won't criticise anything the great leader decides for fear of losing what they have, no matter what restrictions are posed upon them.
Are you really saying that Apple users are afraid of Apple Inc.?
They did made the VHS win over Beta back in the 80's
That's actually a myth.
You do have a point and for the real pornography I can agree with you. However, e.g. in Germany regular newspaper have to make changes so that they get their app approved by Apple.
What are the laws, in Germany, about a store's right to carry or not carry a particular item. Cause in the US, Apple as a store can pick and choose what they carry and is not required to give any reason at all. And that's in their actual stores, the itunes store, app store etc.
I would be curious to know the state of the sitch in other countries.
And AT&T thinks data usage is up now? If millions of iPad and iPhone users can get porn on their devices via HTML5, well... let's just say I'm glad I'm grandfathered into the unlimited data plan.
I would think that you would be more worried about liquid damage
Apple shouldn't be playing censor, especially since there's no clear direction from them as to how they make their decisions. They should simply implement parental controls in the App Store and leave it up to parents to police their kids.
They have parental controls and now require all apps to have an age rating. The trouble is that they allow the developers to set the ratings and that has blown up on them. You mentioned the Ulysses comic. Well there was another one that was banned at the same time. It was a homoerotic soft core porn comic loosely based on The Importance of Being Earnest, complete with 'correct' drawings of bare male buttocks and penises. The publisher of this app went on record saying that originally it was rated 12+ not 17+ because he felt that children need to be educated about homosexuality. He's welcome to that opinion and perhaps it is in line with his European standards. However parents that have turned on parental controls to let the 13 year old buy apps with his online allowance might feel different when Little Johnny downloads said comic unawares, even without being a family that believes that homosexuality is filthy, a sin and those that practice it are damned to hell. THAT fervor is just as bad as Big Bad Apple censoring their store.
So in the end, the only way to deal with the issue is for Apple to set the ratings. Which is again a PR nightmare when someone doesn't like that his/her app is deemed 'adult' and only available in some 'behind the curtain' store visible only to those who have filed some kind of age verification that is more than clicking yes/no. So Apple is doomed no matter what they do.
"Lose the ability to show cheerleaders banging the football team, lose the platform war."
- And you can quote me on this one!
-JetLaw
Apple is using a very Christian, and very American yardstick to measure for what they think is "objectionable." No one wants to see kiddy porn, but most of the rest of the world left behind America's Disney-esque concepts of what's "moral" many years ago.
Again, I don't think that it is trivial to point out that Apple is not using that "Christian/American yardstick" to distance themselves from what they find objectionable--they are using it to distance themselves from what those same Christian/Americans might find objectionable.
Apple is seen as responsible for what is on the App Store--they are not seen as responsible for what is on the Internet. Therefore, they filter their own App Store but not the Internet.
The US is their largest market. Why do people want them to prove some bogus 1st amendment point for little financial gain, but large financial risk?
I agree for the most part if we are talking about "porn." The trouble is Apple has banned and removed a lot of apps that couldn't remotely be described as "porn" at all.
Apple has removed all the apps it considers "too sexy" including bikini apps and all kinds of apps from other countries where what they portray is as normal and common as any other material.
Apple removed an "upskirt" app for instance when all it contained were pictures of women in skirts that you could "blow up" by touching the screen. It's hard to defend such a trivial app, but it's clearly *not* pornography at all and completely harmless. Apple also won't allow any kind of nudity even in apps that have no sexual content or purpose, (medical apps, art apps etc.), and that is just ridiculous.
When you add to that, the absolute hypocrisy of Apple letting in the Playboy app as well as hundreds of movies, songs, and TV shows with absolutely horrific content ... well it just makes no sense at all.
Apple is using a very Christian, and very American yardstick to measure for what they think is "objectionable." No one wants to see kiddy porn, but most of the rest of the world left behind America's Disney-esque concepts of what's "moral" many years ago.
Then go build your own phone and application store. No one's stopping you.
Every company has a brand and it is important for companies to strengthen the brand so it means something. Apple's brand image includes wholesomeness and, yes, American value. Why should they abandon their core values simply because of a few whiners on AI?
Here to hoping this puts an end to Flash. The Flash streaming just about killed our network with the World Cup. Each user getting their own flash stream. Not able to split it or cache it. Just a nightmare waiting to happen for the next big event (9/11, MJ, World Cup 2014)...Be glad to see it out the door just as I was when the html blink tags faded into the forgotten html tag junk pile in the backyard.
Yep. Flash is dead - it just doesn't know it yet.
At the time that the iPad came out, the following were all given as reasons why Flash was such a critical part of the Internet:
Disney
Farmville
Hulu
YouTube
Porn
Car dealers' web sites
Today, all of them are accessible via the iPhone WITHOUT FLASH. So much for the "you need Flash to access the Intenret" trolls.
I work in the porn industry and we always backed BluRay. We knew HD-DVD would lose because Microsoft was backing it (HD-DVD). I am fairly certain. At least the 20+ companies I was in regular contact with were behind BR. I am a DVD author and was told to get ready to start BR authoring which has now begun. It is possible that in the very beginning before BR (that is if timeline allows it) that they were behind HD-DVD where BR had yet arrived. But I was told to get ready at the moment SONY released the first batch of PS3's
-David.
I contend that MS' relectance to fully back HD-DVD by including it in every XBOX 360 is what sealed its fate, by allowing Blu-ray player and subsequent content adoption to outgrow HD-DVD at a rapid pace with the inclusion of every PS3. Of course, MS didn't seem to take a direct interest in either platform so perhaps, in retrospect, Toshiba should have fronted the bill for HD-DVD upgrades as standard in every 360.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
The Flash SDK is a brilliant development environment, if Adobe can export to native iPhone apps, why can't they export to compliant HTML5, this would be the best of both worlds. You probably don't know this, but Flash is in all of the cool animated onscreen menus for Sony, Visio, Samsung, SlingMedia, Dell projectors and Crestron has just embraced Flash for all their Touchpanels, they are the biggest automation company in the world. So, don't believe that Flash is going away, its actually growing in other markets. Adobe has talented programmers (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, Premiere, After Effects, etc...) I wouldn't count them out of the game just yet.
Sorry, I couldn't resist!
The Flash SDK is a brilliant development environment, if Adobe can export to native iPhone apps, why can't they export to compliant HTML5, this would be the best of both worlds. You probably don't know this, but Flash is in all of the cool animated onscreen menus for Sony, Visio, Samsung, SlingMedia, Dell projectors and Crestron has just embraced Flash for all their Touchpanels, they are the biggest automation company in the world. So, don't believe that Flash is going away, its actually growing in other markets. Adobe has talented programmers (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, Premiere, After Effects, etc...) I wouldn't count them out of the game just yet.
That's exactly what they need to do and what I've been proposing for a couple years now. Adobe makes money from selling Flash Profession CSx, if they make it the best way to create multi-platform HTML5 content that will auto-fallback to Flash for the plethora of PCs that won't be supporting modern browsers for many years then they profit.
And AT&T thinks data usage is up now? If millions of iPad and iPhone users can get porn on their devices via HTML5, well... let's just say I'm glad I'm grandfathered into the unlimited data plan.
I usually watch porn at home, where I have wifi.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
Not by a long shot.
A. There are still parts of HTML 5 that have not been completed
B. There is still certain things that flash does much better, like hardware acceleration
C. Flash is still used EVERYWHERE
D. HTML 5 hasnt achieved candidate stage for recommendation before W3C
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
HTML 5 wont really see mass adoption for many years. Thats a fact!
Actually, the porn industry was very supportive of HDDVD.
For this reason many people thought that HDDVD would win the format war especially since the porn industry tipped the balance in the format war between DVD and DIVX (not to be confused with 'DivX').
in the end it wasn't porn but the obscene amount of money one player offered the hold-outs that tipped the balance.
Not by a long shot.
A. There are still parts of HTML 5 that have not been completed
B. There is still certain things that flash does much better, like hardware acceleration
C. Flash is still used EVERYWHERE
D. HTML 5 hasnt achieved candidate stage for recommendation before W3C
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
HTML 5 wont really see mass adoption for many years. Thats a fact!
I guess you didn't get the memo but all modern mobile OSes, all modern desktop web browsers any website that wants to support a modern desktop web browser or a modern smartphone has adopted HTML5 elements awhile ago.
A. Having parts of HTML5 not being completed is irrelevant to other parts being adopted and well used. This fallacy you pose that it's an all-or-nothing that requires the entire thing to be completed before any of it gets used is simply BS.
B. When did Flash add HW acceleration? Wasn't that with the recent 10.1 and only for Windows? And yet, hasn't the HTML5 video tag has been offering direct HW acceleration for H.264 since it was included with the original(?) version of Safari for iPhone v1.0? Maybe not that long, but they certainly added it to WebKit back in 2007 which beats Flash. Even MS Silverlight beat Flash.
C. Everywhere Flash is used in a browser, HTML is used first.
D. And yet, it's already widely adopted so it doesn't really matter. You act like they are going to scrape everything and say start over.
E. The prediction of Flash falling away for more efficient options was detailed long before Jobs said anything and even before Apple's browser engine was dominating the net. Flash has its uses, but none of them deal with efficiency so this trend toward more smartphones and less dumbphones has made it much harder for Adobe to compete. Frankly, it's too little too late for Flash. Even when they have it available for more than ONE mobile OS on more than ONE phone it'll still run like crap compared to native webcode so it won't be used much, if at all, by most consumers.
Good. Flash is reaching the end of it's useful life. Adobe will do everything possible to keep Flash on life support for years to come, but, I think we are finally seeing the beginning of the end of Flash. And I say good riddance to the buggy, bloated, expensive software.
Flash isn't expensive for the end users, only those who develop software with it.
I don't even find it bloated, personally.
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
I was taking your post seriously until I got to the above point. Now I know you are just a Flash fanboy who has no clue what you're talking about.
Oh, how ironic.
not ironic at all, it was inevitable.
E. The only people preaching up the end of Flash are fanboys who weren't even making said predictions until Steve Jobs adopted HTML 5.
you forgot about all of the people who didn't like their web browser crashing because it was displaying an ad.