The fees are only waived until 2016, where after sites serving H.264 internet video will have to pay MPEG LA $5 million. It is not "open" in any respect whatsoever. It is closed and proprietary, just like Flash. You're going from one closed standard in Flash to another in H.264. It's meaningless. And Steve Jobs is a liar. I am not an advocate of Flash or any other proprietary standard. Apple is Adobe is Microsoft, etc.
You don't need adobe to exist to keep flash rolling, they're just the main company behind the momentum of flash and for obvious reasons. They have the best creative suites and they sell like crazy because they are the best. AIR runs with webkit and HTML5 included. Flash is far less closed than Objective C. Flex is open source. AMF is open source. Eclipse is open source. I'd say Adobe is taking a seriously unjust pounding by a bunch of people who don't know crap about crap.
Wow, dude, way to carry the standard for Flash! I'm sure Lee Brimelow is brimming with pride.
You forgot about all the tools to autogenerate Flash banner ads.
For the record, we all think Flash still sucks. And nobody cares that you are Flash's biggest fan. Just sayin'...
It's going too far for a U turn. I'd really hoped this would get sorted... As the spec of handsets gets better and better they're far more able to run flash easily. There was an argument for what Steve is saying but every day that passes makes it less relevant.
I have an iphone and Macbook along with many other apple products, so please don't think I'm just stirring.
My business partner has an HTC desire (ugly handset) but the browsing on it includes flash, and it's absolutely great.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
I'm still waiting for the new iphone before I choose though... Obviously
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
As a professional designer who has used and relied upon to earn my living, a version of every computer Apple has made since 1985 (except the home oriented "performa" line) and almost every Adobe product for the same amount of time, I REALLY wish Jobs would stop taking such an antagonistic stance against Adobe. Without Adobe, there would have been no Mac as we know it. Without Apple, there would have been no Adobe as we know it.
We get it, Jobs doesn't like Flash. Push Adobe to improve it. Push them to improve their design products. But for Pete's sake, I wish he'd stop poking them in the eye so publicly every chance he gets. All that will do is put their professional design customers in the middle of an unnecessary beef.
And he admits as much. That was the point of his sixth point. It would be very dangerous for Apple to leave control of items like dev tools in the hands of third parties. They could be inferior to Apples, but their convenience might cause a good number of devs to use them. If that happened, whenever Apple rolled out new features and APIs, they could not count on developers taking advantage of them thereby hobbling the massive expenditures of R&D that the put into these new features. If Apple want the iPhone experience for all users to improve as they improve the platform, a dependancy on third party dev tools is extraneous at best. It would massively counter productive in general, for devs and for Apple.
I disagree with this.
Apple doesn't need to tell developers how to write apps. Let the USERS decide the winners and losers as far as apps on the iPhone goes. If developers use inferior tools and produce inferior apps, compared to apps written with proper tools leveraging all the APIs, they will be rejected by users. This is how it ought to be IMO.
Photoshop is unique in that it has no competitors and has been allowed by Adobe to languish on the Mac platform. I don't think that'll happen with the iPhone because the app environment is too competitive. How many iPhone apps have no competitor?
Telling developers how to write their apps just pisses them off. It may have the undesired effect of driving them to other platforms.
The biggest crowd to move away from Flash is the hyped people at communication and PR companies. People fully focused on design and publishing has gone down Adobe full throttle and has become heroes. Often also after the companies has paid dearly for education, software and time to get into the Flash game.
My company uses one of them. They are very clever, great designers and outstanding writers. However some of the rather hyped people there has introduced Flash without thinking. It's cool. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and Flash. When I now ban them from flash they need to rethink totally. The flash guy is suddenly the anti-hero.
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
As if we needed more proof of trolling. Creating a new account just to stir things up in a thread and spreading misinformation. Apple owns no H.264 patents, those are all owned by MPEG LA. How is Apple making money in 2016 (if it doesn't get extended or made completely free) on H.264? You haven't provided any evidence of this yet.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
You believe Flash is open? Really?
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes-99
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
You think any of the Flash phones are going to have anything approaching acceptable battery life for a phone? Really?
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand.
Sure, I'd be happy to:
Quote:
I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology.
That's just gibberish. I don't know if it's because you don't understand or don't care or what. But it's just gibberish. Wrong. False.
Quote:
I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash.
Wrong again, since H.264 is in fact an open standard, the particulars of which are managed by the Motion Pictures Expert Group. It's technically not free, but it is for the next five years at least. In this instance you very clearly don't understand, as in have no idea what you're talking about.
Quote:
I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
I think that's the only thing you actually have fixed in your brain, and the rest of your semi-incoherent ranting is simply in service to supporting this thesis. That doesn't make the semi-incoherent ranting true or convincing.
Quote:
Nothing you said was funny. I don't think you know what smileys are for. So that's zero for four. Thanks for playing.
... This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. ...
No, it's not history repeating in any way. First, your characterization of history as, "Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path," is patently incorrect. Secondly, it's exactly the mistakes of history (the real history) that Apple are attempting to avoid here.
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
The question still remains:
Where did SJ claim that H.264 was open-source to which you called him a liar? Even though, it is an open standard.
But that's what I have been saying all along. if the market chooses devices with Flash because they offer Flash, than Flash and Adobe are a winner. If instead no one in mass really cares, than the ENTIRE Flash debate is about Flash developers worrying they have to learn something new.
As it stands their is no overwhelming compelling reason to NEED Flash. None. Zero.
But if it is a thing the market really wants, time will tell. For me, I can't imagine basing a buying decision on if Flash is supported or not. Their are dozens, maybe, hundreds of other issues of greater import.
The biggest concern for Android is the 50 different versions, on 50 different handsets and pads and what is supported when and where. That's their worry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hobbes-99
It's going too far for a U turn. I'd really hoped this would get sorted... As the spec of handsets gets better and better they're far more able to run flash easily. There was an argument for what Steve is saying but every day that passes makes it less relevant.
I have an iphone and Macbook along with many other apple products, so please don't think I'm just stirring.
My business partner has an HTC desire (ugly handset) but the browsing on it includes flash, and it's absolutely great.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
I'm still waiting for the new iphone before I choose though... Obviously
"While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system."
Wow, that's rich! One proprietary dinosaur of a company bad-mouthing another. Apple is just as proprietary as Adobe, if not more so. Nice try, Steve!
The description given of flash fits the App Store perfectly.
The truth is Apple is going down a road of producing underpowered devices with less features with huge margins and is attempting to convert the entire web to fit their business model.
Steve Jobs published this letter (which just aired on CNBC right now) to keep the war going in the media spotlight as to generate attention for itś device and to get websites to make iPad versions.
Steve is attempting to break a potential gridlock, where customers wont buy iPads because they wont be able to access so many websites based on Flash and web site owners wont bother coding a iPad friendly version because the hit traffic from the iPad is not enough to warrant the change.
Apple fully intends to produce more low powered, high margin devices in the future (laptops) and thus in order to do this they intend to reduce the features of the web itself by leveraging their minority market share and raising media attention.
The fact that over the last year Apple has removed all but one MacBook and introduced a line of flimsy under featured and overpriced 1Ghz iPads is proof of their intentions.
So for Apple the web needs to get less and less capable, I wouldnt be surprised that next year this time Steve would get a hair ball about some other web standard that is ¨A CPU hog¨ and vows to kill it as well.
By the way, the HP Slate, which looks like a iPad, just a tiny bit thicker, happens to run Flash just fine.
So Steve decided to make his hardware thinner, with longer battery life, at the expense of Adobe.
Apple doesnt disclose it´s business plans, and changes up all the time, I´m not surprised it took Adobe 10 years to switch to Cocoa.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Seriously - I couldn't have.
In my opinion, this is a great PR move on Apple/Steve's part. He shifts attention away from iPhone 4.0 disaster, attempts to silent all of the "it doesn't have Flash" critics, and explains the "WHY" to non-technical folks. Bravo.
Nobody but geeks will even know the letter exists. This is hardly national news.
As a professional designer who has used and relied upon to earn my living, a version of every computer Apple has made since 1985 (except the home oriented "performa" line) and almost every Adobe product for the same amount of time, I REALLY wish Jobs would stop taking such an antagonistic stance against Adobe. Without Adobe, there would have been no Mac as we know it. Without Apple, there would have been no Adobe as we know it.
We get it, Jobs doesn't like Flash. Push Adobe to improve it. Push them to improve their design products. But for Pete's sake, I wish he'd stop poking them in the eye so publicly every chance he gets. All that will do is put their professional design customers in the middle of an unnecessary beef.
I agree with your thoughts here. But, I think Jobs was pretty clear in acknowledging the shared history of the two companies. Also, while I would also like to see this stuff happen in private between the two companies, Adobe is not exactly keeping their thoughts on the matter behind a veil of secrecy. They are publicly shifting all blame on this to Apple. And while it is entirely Apple's decision, it isn't as though Adobe doesn't share some of the responsibility for the decision. They aren't exactly trumpeting that when they make public statements about Flash on the iPhone.
Apple doesn't need to tell developers how to write apps. Let the USERS decide the winners and losers as far as apps on the iPhone goes. If developers use inferior tools and produce inferior apps, compared to apps written with proper tools leveraging all the APIs, they will be rejected by users. This is how it ought to be IMO.
Photoshop is unique in that it has no competitors and has been allowed by Adobe to languish on the Mac platform. I don't think that'll happen with the iPhone because the app environment is too competitive. How many iPhone apps have no competitor?
Telling developers how to write their apps just pisses them off. It may have the undesired effect of driving them to other platforms.
Well, disagree if you like, but, letting just anyone decide what your platform will be isn't exactly a recipe for success. Just look at how successful Linux is on the desktop (or how crappy it is, although, it's a great server platform, mostly because the kernel is solid, a part of Linux that is tightly controlled) to see what design by committee produces.
Comments
The fees are only waived until 2016, where after sites serving H.264 internet video will have to pay MPEG LA $5 million. It is not "open" in any respect whatsoever. It is closed and proprietary, just like Flash. You're going from one closed standard in Flash to another in H.264. It's meaningless. And Steve Jobs is a liar. I am not an advocate of Flash or any other proprietary standard. Apple is Adobe is Microsoft, etc.
Oh and, Quadra 610...cute chart.
This one goes out to jobs:
Keep buying into the lies. SHEEPLE!
Third party IDE's NOT from adobe include:
FlashDevelop
Eclipse with AIR / Flex SDK (Flex is open source and free)
swfmill
swish
SWFTool
haxe
etc...
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_F...rd-party_tools
And if you're talking about alternatives to flash player:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#Playback
You don't need adobe to exist to keep flash rolling, they're just the main company behind the momentum of flash and for obvious reasons. They have the best creative suites and they sell like crazy because they are the best. AIR runs with webkit and HTML5 included. Flash is far less closed than Objective C. Flex is open source. AMF is open source. Eclipse is open source. I'd say Adobe is taking a seriously unjust pounding by a bunch of people who don't know crap about crap.
Wow, dude, way to carry the standard for Flash! I'm sure Lee Brimelow is brimming with pride.
You forgot about all the tools to autogenerate Flash banner ads.
For the record, we all think Flash still sucks. And nobody cares that you are Flash's biggest fan. Just sayin'...
I have an iphone and Macbook along with many other apple products, so please don't think I'm just stirring.
My business partner has an HTC desire (ugly handset) but the browsing on it includes flash, and it's absolutely great.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
I'm still waiting for the new iphone before I choose though... Obviously
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
False.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
We get it, Jobs doesn't like Flash. Push Adobe to improve it. Push them to improve their design products. But for Pete's sake, I wish he'd stop poking them in the eye so publicly every chance he gets. All that will do is put their professional design customers in the middle of an unnecessary beef.
And he admits as much. That was the point of his sixth point. It would be very dangerous for Apple to leave control of items like dev tools in the hands of third parties. They could be inferior to Apples, but their convenience might cause a good number of devs to use them. If that happened, whenever Apple rolled out new features and APIs, they could not count on developers taking advantage of them thereby hobbling the massive expenditures of R&D that the put into these new features. If Apple want the iPhone experience for all users to improve as they improve the platform, a dependancy on third party dev tools is extraneous at best. It would massively counter productive in general, for devs and for Apple.
I disagree with this.
Apple doesn't need to tell developers how to write apps. Let the USERS decide the winners and losers as far as apps on the iPhone goes. If developers use inferior tools and produce inferior apps, compared to apps written with proper tools leveraging all the APIs, they will be rejected by users. This is how it ought to be IMO.
Photoshop is unique in that it has no competitors and has been allowed by Adobe to languish on the Mac platform. I don't think that'll happen with the iPhone because the app environment is too competitive. How many iPhone apps have no competitor?
Telling developers how to write their apps just pisses them off. It may have the undesired effect of driving them to other platforms.
My company uses one of them. They are very clever, great designers and outstanding writers. However some of the rather hyped people there has introduced Flash without thinking. It's cool. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and Flash. When I now ban them from flash they need to rethink totally. The flash guy is suddenly the anti-hero.
Tuff shit.
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
As if we needed more proof of trolling. Creating a new account just to stir things up in a thread and spreading misinformation. Apple owns no H.264 patents, those are all owned by MPEG LA. How is Apple making money in 2016 (if it doesn't get extended or made completely free) on H.264? You haven't provided any evidence of this yet.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
You believe Flash is open? Really?
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
You think any of the Flash phones are going to have anything approaching acceptable battery life for a phone? Really?
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand.
Sure, I'd be happy to:
I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology.
That's just gibberish. I don't know if it's because you don't understand or don't care or what. But it's just gibberish. Wrong. False.
I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash.
Wrong again, since H.264 is in fact an open standard, the particulars of which are managed by the Motion Pictures Expert Group. It's technically not free, but it is for the next five years at least. In this instance you very clearly don't understand, as in have no idea what you're talking about.
I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
I think that's the only thing you actually have fixed in your brain, and the rest of your semi-incoherent ranting is simply in service to supporting this thesis. That doesn't make the semi-incoherent ranting true or convincing.
Nothing you said was funny. I don't think you know what smileys are for. So that's zero for four. Thanks for playing.
... This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. ...
No, it's not history repeating in any way. First, your characterization of history as, "Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path," is patently incorrect. Secondly, it's exactly the mistakes of history (the real history) that Apple are attempting to avoid here.
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
The question still remains:
Where did SJ claim that H.264 was open-source to which you called him a liar? Even though, it is an open standard.
I'll be expecting an answer
Isnt iTunes still Carbon based?
The difference, of course, is that iTunes uses between 0.1 and 10% CPU time, depending on what it's doing.
Flash uses up to 120% - just opening a page with no animation and no video.
Sometimes, results DO matter.
Except those technologies can't do half of what Flash can and to develop with the canvas tag
You (and others) keep saying that - and I keep asking for examples. What can Flash do that open standards can't do?
Before you answer, look at Jobs' Toy Story iAd demo to get an idea of what html 5 is capable of.
Now, what are these great features that REQUIRE Flash?
As it stands their is no overwhelming compelling reason to NEED Flash. None. Zero.
But if it is a thing the market really wants, time will tell. For me, I can't imagine basing a buying decision on if Flash is supported or not. Their are dozens, maybe, hundreds of other issues of greater import.
The biggest concern for Android is the 50 different versions, on 50 different handsets and pads and what is supported when and where. That's their worry.
It's going too far for a U turn. I'd really hoped this would get sorted... As the spec of handsets gets better and better they're far more able to run flash easily. There was an argument for what Steve is saying but every day that passes makes it less relevant.
I have an iphone and Macbook along with many other apple products, so please don't think I'm just stirring.
My business partner has an HTC desire (ugly handset) but the browsing on it includes flash, and it's absolutely great.
This is history repeating. Apple are going to go down a closed path while someone else develops a parallel open path and they will overtake eventually. Apple innovate, but the control that leads to that innovation will eventually lead to them being surpassed.
It's only going to take one really nice Android handset with drag and drop and flash integration and huge swathes will move over because they are copying all of the strengths but leaving out the draw backs. I've seen it and used it and Android in itself is actually really good and getting better.
I'm still waiting for the new iphone before I choose though... Obviously
"While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system."
Wow, that's rich! One proprietary dinosaur of a company bad-mouthing another. Apple is just as proprietary as Adobe, if not more so. Nice try, Steve!
The description given of flash fits the App Store perfectly.
Steve Jobs published this letter (which just aired on CNBC right now) to keep the war going in the media spotlight as to generate attention for itś device and to get websites to make iPad versions.
Steve is attempting to break a potential gridlock, where customers wont buy iPads because they wont be able to access so many websites based on Flash and web site owners wont bother coding a iPad friendly version because the hit traffic from the iPad is not enough to warrant the change.
Apple fully intends to produce more low powered, high margin devices in the future (laptops) and thus in order to do this they intend to reduce the features of the web itself by leveraging their minority market share and raising media attention.
The fact that over the last year Apple has removed all but one MacBook and introduced a line of flimsy under featured and overpriced 1Ghz iPads is proof of their intentions.
So for Apple the web needs to get less and less capable, I wouldnt be surprised that next year this time Steve would get a hair ball about some other web standard that is ¨A CPU hog¨ and vows to kill it as well.
By the way, the HP Slate, which looks like a iPad, just a tiny bit thicker, happens to run Flash just fine.
So Steve decided to make his hardware thinner, with longer battery life, at the expense of Adobe.
Apple doesnt disclose it´s business plans, and changes up all the time, I´m not surprised it took Adobe 10 years to switch to Cocoa.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Seriously - I couldn't have.
In my opinion, this is a great PR move on Apple/Steve's part. He shifts attention away from iPhone 4.0 disaster, attempts to silent all of the "it doesn't have Flash" critics, and explains the "WHY" to non-technical folks. Bravo.
Nobody but geeks will even know the letter exists. This is hardly national news.
As a professional designer who has used and relied upon to earn my living, a version of every computer Apple has made since 1985 (except the home oriented "performa" line) and almost every Adobe product for the same amount of time, I REALLY wish Jobs would stop taking such an antagonistic stance against Adobe. Without Adobe, there would have been no Mac as we know it. Without Apple, there would have been no Adobe as we know it.
We get it, Jobs doesn't like Flash. Push Adobe to improve it. Push them to improve their design products. But for Pete's sake, I wish he'd stop poking them in the eye so publicly every chance he gets. All that will do is put their professional design customers in the middle of an unnecessary beef.
I agree with your thoughts here. But, I think Jobs was pretty clear in acknowledging the shared history of the two companies. Also, while I would also like to see this stuff happen in private between the two companies, Adobe is not exactly keeping their thoughts on the matter behind a veil of secrecy. They are publicly shifting all blame on this to Apple. And while it is entirely Apple's decision, it isn't as though Adobe doesn't share some of the responsibility for the decision. They aren't exactly trumpeting that when they make public statements about Flash on the iPhone.
I disagree with this.
Apple doesn't need to tell developers how to write apps. Let the USERS decide the winners and losers as far as apps on the iPhone goes. If developers use inferior tools and produce inferior apps, compared to apps written with proper tools leveraging all the APIs, they will be rejected by users. This is how it ought to be IMO.
Photoshop is unique in that it has no competitors and has been allowed by Adobe to languish on the Mac platform. I don't think that'll happen with the iPhone because the app environment is too competitive. How many iPhone apps have no competitor?
Telling developers how to write their apps just pisses them off. It may have the undesired effect of driving them to other platforms.
Well, disagree if you like, but, letting just anyone decide what your platform will be isn't exactly a recipe for success. Just look at how successful Linux is on the desktop (or how crappy it is, although, it's a great server platform, mostly because the kernel is solid, a part of Linux that is tightly controlled) to see what design by committee produces.