I refer you to post #48, which will perhaps bring additional clarity to your thought on this subject.
"They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." "
The comments about competition are never thoughtless and there is a reason for the repetition because its a true statement.
Now what everyone needs to start adding to their statement is competition is always good because it always benefits the end user or consumer.
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
Apple?s App approval process has never been up to the standards we?ve come to expect, even given that the whole platform has grown fast in unpredictable ways. BUT at least they have time and again shown flexibility on their biggest missteps.
At one point it looked like Apple would ban game engines! And before today, the language still sounded that way. I wonder if the Epic Citadel demo and Unreal Engine were a factor motivating them to re-think all this? Clearly middleware can help make better games. (That?s not to say Flash necessarily!)
Umm, yes it IS a terrible thing to say. Not eveyone wants to live in a walled garden. Some of us want to do what we wish and what is easily possible with our devices.
I can give examples if you want to discuss it further. Or you can tell me I'm a Google paid troll and tell me to flip off like most of the mature posters here do every day.
Not everyone wants to live in a walled garden. That's why Android is there or whatever. But it is best for iOS, I would say. Just look at the new Mac users... Most of them have zero clue how to "install" or remove apps. And giving them access to the file system, for new users, is actually a bad idea. I think iOS simplicity is just nice. The apps take care of the rest.
Typing this on Atomic browser, it's pretty awesome. You all should try it. My preferred mode when hitting up AppleInsider and the forums.
By the way, why isn't there an app that will playback FLV files from a particular URL? Flash playing need not be limited to Adobe products, right? Like I said before, there have been Flash decompilers for almost a decade now. Someone could make a web browser that plays back Flash elements.
""We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers," Jobs wrote."
As a long time Mac user I personally know what it is like to be at the mercy of a third party developer. Cases in point... Office, Quicken, Flash, Photoshop. The list is long and painful. This annoucement just enables third party technology to do exactly what Jobs was worried about. Flash is the poster boy. Imagine what the difference might be between the Android and iPhone versions of Flash. New version of iOS comes out with some innovative UI feature and all we get from Adobe is "we're investigating this feature for a future version of Flash". Meanwhile a new version of Flash is released for Android that sports all sorts of things the iPhone now "can't do." And if you think for one minute that an asshole like Eric Schmidt wouldn't be willing to pump all sorts of money into ensuring the Android version of Flash is always one generation ahead of the iOS version you can kiss my hind end. It continues to happen to this day on the OS X side of the hill. This all but ensures we will eventually see Flash on iOS and it will just as much of a dog as it is on OS X. You can take that to the bank.
This decision may or may not be related to political pressure but it porbably is because Apple has now lost control of iOS and must rely on the likes of Adobe to move the platform forward. This sucks, period.
this makes the assumption, that developers are going to start primarily using flash to develop apps since it's such a great platform to develop on. It's almost admitting the flash CS5 is so good that developers will begin relying on adobe. Otherwise, what would the worry really be about? I would think it would be the other way round, adobe would need to keep up with apple and other dev tools to stay a relevant dev tool?
If you build a great development platform, then people will use it. All apple (or someone) has to do, is make something better than flash.
Apple’s App approval process has never been up to the standards we’ve come to expect, even given that the whole platform has grown fast in unpredictable ways. BUT at least they have time and again shown flexibility on their biggest missteps.
At one point it looked like Apple would ban game engines! And before today, the language still sounded that way. I wonder if the Epic Citadel demo and Unreal Engine were a factor motivating them to re-think all this? Clearly middleware can help make better games. (That’s not to say Flash necessarily!)
I think for game engines and so on it made sense to open up the dev rules. Because imagine if you were Epic, how are you going to deliver your game engine to other developers? At some stage in the game engine there's going to be game engine custom code that then is converted at some point, etc. This move probably makes more sense for apps in the long term... Especially if iOS is moving into console-gaming quality in the next few years or less.
I think Apple looked at the game development process whereby you take an engine and just script it without having to touch Xcode, Epic or iD would assist in optimising the game. Apple must have seen some nice games coming out of that and thought, well, in the long run...
My comments on competition are not specific to this announcement. They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." Competition may be a necessary condition for positive outcomes (although, it is not strictly so), but it is by no means a sufficient condition. And, no, my "logic" in this instance does not in any way support an argument that free societies are not good things; there is absolutely no commonality in the two concepts that would lead to any sort of analogous argument.
While in theory, I would agree that competition doesn't necessarily need to exist to have good outcomes happen. Companies can always develop new features and drop prices on their own to keep consumers buying their products.
However, in practice, I personally see competition as a necessary condition to drive this good to happen. If Company X is the only one selling a product everyone wants at $500 and everyone's buying it at $500, what incentive is there for Company X to lower the price to $400? They're the only ones selling the product so why would they want to deliberately earn less money per unit?
If Company Y comes in with a product offering similar features but at only $300, Company X will have no choice but to either lower their price or come up with new features to justify their $500 price or face going out of business. And the cycle repeats.
The iPhone itself is a perfect example. The original was released with no MMS, no copy/paste, no real apps, and no 3G. All this at a price point much higher than its competition was selling products that had those features for. How long do you think the iPhone would have survived had Apple not lowered the price and added features to match and exceed the competition?
Competition may not always be good for the consumer, I'll agree, but I do see it as a necessary condition to bring good to them.
"They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." "
The comments about competition are never thoughtless and there is a reason for the repetition because its a true statement.
Now what everyone needs to start adding to their statement is competition is always good because it always benefits the end user or consumer.
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
Sorry, I should have been more explicit that you needed to read past the first sentence. Here's the relevant point for you:
Quote:
Competition may be a necessary condition for positive outcomes (although, it is not strictly so), but it is by no means a sufficient condition.
As for your comments above, where to start... Let's just pick a couple:
Quote:
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
This seems patently mistaken. If they are successful in competing, then, they will, by definition, make more money at some point in the future from their investment. If competition simply caused all companies to simply lose money on investments, the outcome would obviously always be negative, for everyone, and all companies with competition would eventually go out of business.
Quote:
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
This is also not true. If competition results in decreased product quality, it may, for example, cost the consumer more in the long run because they have to replace products more often. Also, if competition drives jobs overseas and drives down wages, is that good for the consumer. Almost every consumer is also a worker, after all. Will competition always result in benefit for all consumers, or sometimes only for some? If the latter is the case, and I believe it is, then, competition is at the same time both good and bad.
Yours is exactly the sort of superficial understanding and thought on this topic that is problematic.
Yes, "Competition is always good" -- look how the competition to Netscape from Internet Explorer benefited the Industry, the consumer...
Oh... you must mean fair, legal, non-monopolistic competition...
If true, isn't the converse also true: "Unfair, illegal, monopolistic competition is always bad"...
This, "competition", is really a loaded topic. Don't governments sometimes grant monopolies and usurp competition for the good of the consumers and general public?
Consider things like utility companies, police, armies, fire departments, road building, prisons, unions, health care...
Would the consumer be better served, if he had to "shop around" the competition for a service when his home is on fire?
As with most "rules", it must be evaluated/applied with common sense!
I like the change but some of the reasons for blocking 3rd party APIs were valid. If they simply declare on an application which APIs from a shortlist were used, it will help people decide if the software is worth using. For example, if they note that it was ported from an Adobe app, they can simply say this on the iTunes Store and then I make a conscious decision about whether or not to choose an app that can break more easily after an OS update.
By the way, why isn't there an app that will playback FLV files from a particular URL? Flash playing need not be limited to Adobe products, right? Like I said before, there have been Flash decompilers for almost a decade now. Someone could make a web browser that plays back Flash elements.
An .flv file is a movie file similar to a .mpg, it doesn't contain any Actionscript programming just audio and video. Flash decompilers to my knowledge only disassemble the binary .swf file back to an editable Flash .fla file but do not result in a playable file as in a deliverable application, with the notable exception of Gordon.js. The CS5 converter is a totally different animal. It produces a fully executable iPhone app which may behave like a Flash swf application but has nothing in common from a digital standpoint since it does not depend on a runtime player.
Sorry but there is a general rule and that is competition is always good for the end user or consumer. If it wasn't there wouldn't be a system setup to protect the consumer against a company creating a monopoly.
It is only "always good" because you aren't considering lots of areas where competition is considered bad.
For instance, police and fire departments, food inspection, etc. A non-trivial percentage of the human labor is devoted to sectors in which competition is considered bad. We just sometimes forget.
The same is true about monopolies as well. There are some sectors in which monopolies are beneficial to consumers, such as natural gas infrastructure, road systems, etc.
With that said, I don't think competition is what caused Apple to relax their development tool policy.
While in theory, I would agree that competition doesn't necessarily need to exist to have good outcomes happen. Companies can always develop new features and drop prices on their own to keep consumers buying their products.
However, in practice, I personally see competition as a necessary condition to drive this good to happen. If Company X is the only one selling a product everyone wants at $500 and everyone's buying it at $500, what incentive is there for Company X to lower the price to $400? They're the only ones selling the product so why would they want to deliberately earn less money per unit?
If Company Y comes in with a product offering similar features but at only $300, Company X will have no choice but to either lower their price or come up with new features to justify their $500 price or face going out of business. And the cycle repeats.
The iPhone itself is a perfect example. The original was released with no MMS, no copy/paste, no real apps, and no 3G. All this at a price point much higher than its competition was selling products that had those features for. How long do you think the iPhone would have survived had Apple not lowered the price and added features to match and exceed the competition?
Competition may not always be good for the consumer, I'll agree, but I do see it as a necessary condition to bring good to them.
You seem to have missed my point. I agreed that competition was a necessary (although, not in a strict sense, since it's possible to have good come from a situation without competition) condition of a good outcome. However, the important distinction is that it is not a sufficient condition to guarantee a good outcome. Thus, declaring, "There is competition, all is well!" is a mistake since the existence of competition in no way guarantees that all is well.
We all know which is better and which is more successful.
I think that is a little bit of a fanboy statement. I agree OSX is better, but how can it be more successful when most of the world uses PC's and are forced to use Windows?
No, the Bill Gates business strategy was a more successful one. Assuming were talking about sheer bucks in the bank.
An .flv file is a movie file similar to a .mpg, it doesn't contain any Actionscript programming just audio and video. Flash decompilers to my knowledge only disassemble the binary .swf file back to an editable Flash .fla file but do not result in a playable file as in a deliverable application, with the notable exception of Gordon.js. The CS5 converter is a totally different animal. It produces a fully executable iPhone app which may behave like a Flash swf application but has nothing in common from a digital standpoint since it does not depend on a runtime player.
I think that would still require codec support for FLV. While previously not allowed there have been recent video apps that seem to get around that limitation. Perhaps this evolution of the app store will allow for included codecs within apps.
I think that is a little bit of a fanboy statement. I agree OSX is better, but how can it be more successful when most of the world uses PC's and are forced to use Windows?
No, the Bill Gates business strategy was a more successful one. Assuming were talking about sheer bucks in the bank.
Wow I thought it was pretty obvious, not even fanboys are so delusional as to think Mac is more successful than Windows from a business perspective, which is what the post was in response to.
Comments
I refer you to post #48, which will perhaps bring additional clarity to your thought on this subject.
"They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." "
The comments about competition are never thoughtless and there is a reason for the repetition because its a true statement.
Now what everyone needs to start adding to their statement is competition is always good because it always benefits the end user or consumer.
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
At one point it looked like Apple would ban game engines! And before today, the language still sounded that way. I wonder if the Epic Citadel demo and Unreal Engine were a factor motivating them to re-think all this? Clearly middleware can help make better games. (That?s not to say Flash necessarily!)
Umm, yes it IS a terrible thing to say. Not eveyone wants to live in a walled garden. Some of us want to do what we wish and what is easily possible with our devices.
I can give examples if you want to discuss it further. Or you can tell me I'm a Google paid troll and tell me to flip off like most of the mature posters here do every day.
Not everyone wants to live in a walled garden. That's why Android is there or whatever. But it is best for iOS, I would say. Just look at the new Mac users... Most of them have zero clue how to "install" or remove apps. And giving them access to the file system, for new users, is actually a bad idea. I think iOS simplicity is just nice. The apps take care of the rest.
Typing this on Atomic browser, it's pretty awesome. You all should try it. My preferred mode when hitting up AppleInsider and the forums.
What about HTML or javascript code?
There has always been an exception for that. You can download javascript and execute it. I think all hybrid apps still get a mature rating though.
""We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers," Jobs wrote."
As a long time Mac user I personally know what it is like to be at the mercy of a third party developer. Cases in point... Office, Quicken, Flash, Photoshop. The list is long and painful. This annoucement just enables third party technology to do exactly what Jobs was worried about. Flash is the poster boy. Imagine what the difference might be between the Android and iPhone versions of Flash. New version of iOS comes out with some innovative UI feature and all we get from Adobe is "we're investigating this feature for a future version of Flash". Meanwhile a new version of Flash is released for Android that sports all sorts of things the iPhone now "can't do." And if you think for one minute that an asshole like Eric Schmidt wouldn't be willing to pump all sorts of money into ensuring the Android version of Flash is always one generation ahead of the iOS version you can kiss my hind end. It continues to happen to this day on the OS X side of the hill. This all but ensures we will eventually see Flash on iOS and it will just as much of a dog as it is on OS X. You can take that to the bank.
This decision may or may not be related to political pressure but it porbably is because Apple has now lost control of iOS and must rely on the likes of Adobe to move the platform forward. This sucks, period.
this makes the assumption, that developers are going to start primarily using flash to develop apps since it's such a great platform to develop on. It's almost admitting the flash CS5 is so good that developers will begin relying on adobe. Otherwise, what would the worry really be about? I would think it would be the other way round, adobe would need to keep up with apple and other dev tools to stay a relevant dev tool?
If you build a great development platform, then people will use it. All apple (or someone) has to do, is make something better than flash.
Apple’s App approval process has never been up to the standards we’ve come to expect, even given that the whole platform has grown fast in unpredictable ways. BUT at least they have time and again shown flexibility on their biggest missteps.
At one point it looked like Apple would ban game engines! And before today, the language still sounded that way. I wonder if the Epic Citadel demo and Unreal Engine were a factor motivating them to re-think all this? Clearly middleware can help make better games. (That’s not to say Flash necessarily!)
I think for game engines and so on it made sense to open up the dev rules. Because imagine if you were Epic, how are you going to deliver your game engine to other developers? At some stage in the game engine there's going to be game engine custom code that then is converted at some point, etc. This move probably makes more sense for apps in the long term... Especially if iOS is moving into console-gaming quality in the next few years or less.
I think Apple looked at the game development process whereby you take an engine and just script it without having to touch Xcode, Epic or iD would assist in optimising the game. Apple must have seen some nice games coming out of that and thought, well, in the long run...
My comments on competition are not specific to this announcement. They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." Competition may be a necessary condition for positive outcomes (although, it is not strictly so), but it is by no means a sufficient condition. And, no, my "logic" in this instance does not in any way support an argument that free societies are not good things; there is absolutely no commonality in the two concepts that would lead to any sort of analogous argument.
While in theory, I would agree that competition doesn't necessarily need to exist to have good outcomes happen. Companies can always develop new features and drop prices on their own to keep consumers buying their products.
However, in practice, I personally see competition as a necessary condition to drive this good to happen. If Company X is the only one selling a product everyone wants at $500 and everyone's buying it at $500, what incentive is there for Company X to lower the price to $400? They're the only ones selling the product so why would they want to deliberately earn less money per unit?
If Company Y comes in with a product offering similar features but at only $300, Company X will have no choice but to either lower their price or come up with new features to justify their $500 price or face going out of business. And the cycle repeats.
The iPhone itself is a perfect example. The original was released with no MMS, no copy/paste, no real apps, and no 3G. All this at a price point much higher than its competition was selling products that had those features for. How long do you think the iPhone would have survived had Apple not lowered the price and added features to match and exceed the competition?
Competition may not always be good for the consumer, I'll agree, but I do see it as a necessary condition to bring good to them.
"They are, exactly as I have said, in response to the thoughtless repetition of the idea that, "competition is [always] good." "
The comments about competition are never thoughtless and there is a reason for the repetition because its a true statement.
Now what everyone needs to start adding to their statement is competition is always good because it always benefits the end user or consumer.
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
Sorry, I should have been more explicit that you needed to read past the first sentence. Here's the relevant point for you:
Competition may be a necessary condition for positive outcomes (although, it is not strictly so), but it is by no means a sufficient condition.
As for your comments above, where to start... Let's just pick a couple:
Competition is never good for the company because it requires them to invest more money that they wouldn't have to invest with competition lacking. It always requires them them continue to innovate to keep up with the competition.
This seems patently mistaken. If they are successful in competing, then, they will, by definition, make more money at some point in the future from their investment. If competition simply caused all companies to simply lose money on investments, the outcome would obviously always be negative, for everyone, and all companies with competition would eventually go out of business.
So while competition isn't good for everyone its good for the only group the matters which is the consumer.
This is also not true. If competition results in decreased product quality, it may, for example, cost the consumer more in the long run because they have to replace products more often. Also, if competition drives jobs overseas and drives down wages, is that good for the consumer. Almost every consumer is also a worker, after all. Will competition always result in benefit for all consumers, or sometimes only for some? If the latter is the case, and I believe it is, then, competition is at the same time both good and bad.
Yours is exactly the sort of superficial understanding and thought on this topic that is problematic.
Oh... you must mean fair, legal, non-monopolistic competition...
If true, isn't the converse also true: "Unfair, illegal, monopolistic competition is always bad"...
This, "competition", is really a loaded topic. Don't governments sometimes grant monopolies and usurp competition for the good of the consumers and general public?
Consider things like utility companies, police, armies, fire departments, road building, prisons, unions, health care...
Would the consumer be better served, if he had to "shop around" the competition for a service when his home is on fire?
As with most "rules", it must be evaluated/applied with common sense!
.
ikewise, competition in business does not necessarily result in the "best" companies being successful (unless you define "best" as successful),
For example: Microsoft Windows vs. Mac OS X
We all know which is better and which is more successful.
By the way, why isn't there an app that will playback FLV files from a particular URL? Flash playing need not be limited to Adobe products, right? Like I said before, there have been Flash decompilers for almost a decade now. Someone could make a web browser that plays back Flash elements.
An .flv file is a movie file similar to a .mpg, it doesn't contain any Actionscript programming just audio and video. Flash decompilers to my knowledge only disassemble the binary .swf file back to an editable Flash .fla file but do not result in a playable file as in a deliverable application, with the notable exception of Gordon.js. The CS5 converter is a totally different animal. It produces a fully executable iPhone app which may behave like a Flash swf application but has nothing in common from a digital standpoint since it does not depend on a runtime player.
Sorry but there is a general rule and that is competition is always good for the end user or consumer. If it wasn't there wouldn't be a system setup to protect the consumer against a company creating a monopoly.
It is only "always good" because you aren't considering lots of areas where competition is considered bad.
For instance, police and fire departments, food inspection, etc. A non-trivial percentage of the human labor is devoted to sectors in which competition is considered bad. We just sometimes forget.
The same is true about monopolies as well. There are some sectors in which monopolies are beneficial to consumers, such as natural gas infrastructure, road systems, etc.
With that said, I don't think competition is what caused Apple to relax their development tool policy.
While in theory, I would agree that competition doesn't necessarily need to exist to have good outcomes happen. Companies can always develop new features and drop prices on their own to keep consumers buying their products.
However, in practice, I personally see competition as a necessary condition to drive this good to happen. If Company X is the only one selling a product everyone wants at $500 and everyone's buying it at $500, what incentive is there for Company X to lower the price to $400? They're the only ones selling the product so why would they want to deliberately earn less money per unit?
If Company Y comes in with a product offering similar features but at only $300, Company X will have no choice but to either lower their price or come up with new features to justify their $500 price or face going out of business. And the cycle repeats.
The iPhone itself is a perfect example. The original was released with no MMS, no copy/paste, no real apps, and no 3G. All this at a price point much higher than its competition was selling products that had those features for. How long do you think the iPhone would have survived had Apple not lowered the price and added features to match and exceed the competition?
Competition may not always be good for the consumer, I'll agree, but I do see it as a necessary condition to bring good to them.
You seem to have missed my point. I agreed that competition was a necessary (although, not in a strict sense, since it's possible to have good come from a situation without competition) condition of a good outcome. However, the important distinction is that it is not a sufficient condition to guarantee a good outcome. Thus, declaring, "There is competition, all is well!" is a mistake since the existence of competition in no way guarantees that all is well.
For example: Microsoft Windows vs. Mac OS X
We all know which is better and which is more successful.
I think that is a little bit of a fanboy statement. I agree OSX is better, but how can it be more successful when most of the world uses PC's and are forced to use Windows?
No, the Bill Gates business strategy was a more successful one. Assuming were talking about sheer bucks in the bank.
An .flv file is a movie file similar to a .mpg, it doesn't contain any Actionscript programming just audio and video. Flash decompilers to my knowledge only disassemble the binary .swf file back to an editable Flash .fla file but do not result in a playable file as in a deliverable application, with the notable exception of Gordon.js. The CS5 converter is a totally different animal. It produces a fully executable iPhone app which may behave like a Flash swf application but has nothing in common from a digital standpoint since it does not depend on a runtime player.
I think that would still require codec support for FLV. While previously not allowed there have been recent video apps that seem to get around that limitation. Perhaps this evolution of the app store will allow for included codecs within apps.
I think that is a little bit of a fanboy statement. I agree OSX is better, but how can it be more successful when most of the world uses PC's and are forced to use Windows?
No, the Bill Gates business strategy was a more successful one. Assuming were talking about sheer bucks in the bank.
Wow I thought it was pretty obvious, not even fanboys are so delusional as to think Mac is more successful than Windows from a business perspective, which is what the post was in response to.