European Union joins FTC investigation into Apple's opposition of Flash

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  • Reply 121 of 238
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gotApple View Post


    Yes, it runs pretty well on my Nexus One. Your iPhone doesn't have the CPU to run it? That sucks... I'm here playing some sweet, free, flash games.



    I'm running the android version on my jailbroke iPhone. Version flash 10.1. It's a hack of the adobes source code compiled as a .deb file installed by Cydia. Not sure if or how close that is to full desktop version. But other than turning my iPhone into a heater and battery drainer it does seem to run without a glitch. Although than sites that report browser agent not allowing mobile devices it does indeed work on the processor just fine.
  • Reply 122 of 238
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,855member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by silverpraxis View Post


    I agree with Dr Millmoss. Apple has to demonstrate cross compiler apps in general are not to it's level of quality, and Apple mist set a standard for said quality. Otherwise it is abritrary and gives them an unfair power in the form of app prejudice.



    Yeah, well, you'll agree with anything that allows you to be lazy. Real programmers don't use cross-compilers/meta-platforms. Lazy, in it for the money, screw everyone and everything but me, crapware developers do.
  • Reply 123 of 238
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by silverpraxis View Post


    And if the commentor I quoted had attached his blanket statement to the discussion at hand, I might have responded with a more pointed response. But it was a blanket statement baselessly accusing the EU of wasting others' money, when they are in the business of limiting power and protecting those with less resources.



    NOPE. The EU is in place to oversee the common interests of the European Union - they are not a white knight out defending the poor and defenseless from the rich and powerful. If you look closely - they are the rich and the powerful and their policies will ensure they remain so. There is no limiting of power nor protecting those with less resources - except in the rarified and sun-soaked air of SoCal.



    It has been stated before, and needs to be stated again, Apple does not now nor has it ever had a monopoly in the smartphone space - in fact depending on where you look it is pretty much an also ran, behind RIM, with Google-Android coming up fast from behind. It does not now nor has it ever had a monopoly in the app space. It currently has the largest and most successful mobile app store in the mobile space, but according to Android apologists that will be changing any day now.



    There is no requirement that Apple provide the easiest most universal way to write apps to developers. They do have the right to specify how apps are written for their devices and to decline or deny any that they feel do not meet that spec. It is the responsibility for the developers to assess the monetization available for a given platform (anyone - Mac vs. PC? sound familiar??) and choose to develop for that platform if it makes sense to so do. If not then the developer can choose to develop for other platforms. The MARKET will drive the results - if Apple is unfair arbitrary and capricious, developers will leave the platform and go elsewhere, resulting in lower app availability, less choice and a poorer "quality" user experience in the app space. This is business 101 folks. There are no "poor, under-privileged" devs out there being ground under the jack-boot heel of Apple's draconian policies. There are however two teenage entrepeneurs in my neighborhood who are actively developing for the iOS app store and loving it.



    Developers have to make the right decisions - is Apple's app store the right fit for what I want to do? Would I be better served in the Android marketplace, or even as a bonafide sideloader? What do I want my app to accomplish? Do I want volume monetization, do I want reputational monetiziation, do I want notoriety and fame? Find the fit, then do the math - what will it take to get what I want? Will it work in the Apple model, or will I be best served by the Android, WinPhone7 or Symbian models? But then quite a few devs of my acquaintance don't have the necessary business chops to manage a successful business and are too willing to blame anyone else for their issues. But the marketplace is cool that way. If you have the right combination of skills you are successful. If you don't you whine about it over your cheap beer to anyone at the bar or online that is willing to listen. There is no corporation from Apple to United Way that doesn't act in it's own best interests, which is why we have government to ensure that those "best interests" don't damage the marketplace and consumer interests in the process. But you still have to compete in the marketplace and earn your success - not get it handed to you by an overweening regulatory agency.
  • Reply 124 of 238
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gotApple View Post


    Yes, it runs pretty well on my Nexus One. Your iPhone doesn't have the CPU to run it? That sucks... I'm here playing some sweet, free, flash games.



    Well they finally got that out the door...



    Personally, you couldn't pay me to use a cellphone where Google controls the so-called "privacy".
  • Reply 125 of 238
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    So, you are arguing that it was a false momentum, that it only appeared to be fantastic growth because it was growing from nothing? I can agree with that.



    I believe we are on the same page now
  • Reply 126 of 238
    A working version of Flash for iPhone simply doesn't exist. Period. If anyone wants to say it does, PROVE IT. Frash for jailbreaks is crap. So don't even bring that up. Adobe admitted to not have a working version so good luck with that govt.
  • Reply 127 of 238
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Frankly it is a strong indication that the regulators are either stupid or mentally ill. The very vastness of the app store indicates that competition isn't a problem.



    The big issue is how far does one want to extend this logic? Should somebody building and selling automation controllers be forced to allow any development environment. If so who is liable if something goes wrong? In the case of IOS you end up with significant issues with respect to memory usage both RAM and flash to support these alternative libraries. What is even worst it puts Apple in the position of having to constantly monitor the libraries for quality along with the apps made with those libs. Even with all that effort if an app breaks Apple gets blamed. Sadly i see this as a very slippery slope for regulation, i mean what is next forcing Garmin to allow us to run arbitrary code on their GPS units or forcing Microsoft to support ADA in Visual Studio.



    Frankly it is time for people to start contacting their Senators and Congressmens to extend a little oversite over these regulators. There simply is no justification for this excercise. We have seen in the past how the FTC goes wild when there is a Democrate in the Whitehouse, a lot of public pressure can keep that from happening again. So speak up folks, if you are not heard from the FTC will run wild.





    Dave
  • Reply 128 of 238
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wiggin View Post




    [And just wait until a subpeona uncovers the embarassing internal Apple emails about how to best re-write the developer agreement in order to kill Adobe's method of converting Flash to native iOS code. You know that discussion took place at Apple. And then Apple will be no better than MS in the eyes of the regulators.]



    ...talk about parties in your head!



    .
  • Reply 129 of 238
    dr millmossdr millmoss Posts: 5,403member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    Well, they bring their own prejudices, as you bring yours, but there's nothing in what I've said, or in what Apple has said, that amounts to Apple saying, "We're doing it because we can and no one can tell us differently." Clearly their are technical reasons, which everyone is conveniently ignoring, which have no analogy to Microsoft or Intel, or their respective situations. The biggest reason is that allowing apps written to meta-platforms puts Apple in the position of being controlled by others, of having to either make platform development choices based on not breaking meta platforms, not advancing in the direction they think is best, or indefinitely breaking existing apps that use these meta-platforms. clearly, the responsible action, for everyone concerned is to just say no meta-platforms. It's better for consumers, better for developers, and better for Apple. The only ones left out in the cold are meta-platform developers, and lazy app developers, none of whom are interested in whether they cause harm to consumers or Apple, or not. They're just a bunch of leeches who want to have their way whatever the cost to everyone else.



    I'm the last person in the world to say there is no place for government regulation, but this sort of thing gives regulation a bad name. As others have said, this is nothing but companies using their influence over regulators to attach themselves parasitically to successful companies -- in effect, the regulators are being played. A situation utterly different from what Microsoft did with IE, and what Intel has been doing with chips, and in both of those cases, whether there is mention of it or not, the overriding issue is that those are monopolists, even if Intel has not been convicted like Microsoft has been.



    I've noticed before that critics of these investigation come in two types, the "Apple is always right" and the "government is always wrong." With this answer, I think you have sided mainly with the first camp. It seems everything you've argued proceeds from this premise. If you don't know why it's a flawed premise, then I certainly can't explain it. The important issue is, in the course of doing so, you have completely mischaracterized what the competition laws do and how they work. Put it this way, your argument against the FTC and the EU's investigation of Apple in this matter is PRECISELY the one made against the investigation of Microsoft. Virtually to the word, only substituting Apple for Microsoft. Precisely. Does that give you pause? Any any hesitation at all?



    You have also paid no attention to my stated purpose of mentioning both Intel and Microsoft, which I've explained several times now. That should be more than enough, so I won't do it again.



    Nobody is "ignoring" the technical issues, as you so prejudicially put it. From from it. In fact, as I have also said several times, I believe that Apple's counterargument is going to have to be mainly technical, assuming they are put in the position of having to make one (which is uncertain).
  • Reply 130 of 238
    donarbdonarb Posts: 52member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wiggin View Post


    There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here. ...



    From my understanding, Adobe was working on a way to allow Flash apps get ported to native iOS code.



    Then you are the one misunderstanding. Adobe required a compatibility layer that the Flash application sat upon, it was still a Flash app. The only "native" code was in the compatibility layer.
  • Reply 131 of 238
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by silverpraxis View Post


    If the app code is written in Apple's accepted languages, it should be allowed regardless of being ported from another language. If the app is buggy or harmful, reject it as any other natively written app.



    That's missing the point. Apple isn't allowing code to be written in another language and then converted to Objective-C for the following reason:



    It puts another platform in between Apple's APIs and the user. If Apple adds 200 more great APIs in iOS 5, and Adobe's "code generator" doesn't support these new APIs, then Apple is at Adobe's mercy as to what will and will not run on the phone.



    Since developers will write the usual crappy games in Flash to save time, then the App Store will fill up with apps that don't call into Apple's native APIs unless the "Flash developer kit" is updated by Adobe to translate Flash code into the new Apple APIs.



    The worst thing for Apple would be to have to depend on Adobe to update its "converter" tool to generate code for new Apple APIs.



    So the smart thing to do is say, "no code unless originally written by a human in Objective-C." That way, all apps can be modified to use new Apple features as soon as the new features are released.



    Apple already went through this - having to depend on Microsoft to implement new features of Mac OS. It was a nightmare. MS had their own intermediate code that they used, to save time of course, and Word and Excel, instead of being actually written for the Mac (after Word 5.1a), were compiled into an intermediate p-code, which may or may not contain the latest Apple Mac OS APIs.
  • Reply 132 of 238
    So the EU is getting into product development? They'd better force Windows Phone 7 series to use Flash. And if they are really in favor of competition, they'd force W3C to include Flash in HTML5. In fact, they should force everyone to use Flash on everything. OMG, StarCraft II doesn't use Flash? Let's investigate Blizzard!



    But to prevent the appearance of just forcing companies to adopt Flash, the EU should force everything into every product! Silverlight into PlayStations, Blu-Ray drives into Xboxes! Because companies can't be allowed to make product decisions for their own products!
  • Reply 133 of 238
    orlandoorlando Posts: 601member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    Yeah, well, you'll agree with anything that allows you to be lazy. Real programmers don't use cross-compilers/meta-platforms. Lazy, in it for the money, screw everyone and everything but me, crapware developers do.



    Real programmers use a variety of tools picking the most suitable ones for each particular job. It is why we have high level and low level programming languages. Sometimes fast iteration is important. Other times performance is key. Sometimes the best tools for the job are cross-compilers/meta-platforms.



    Apple changing the developer agreement to block anything except the own tools was wrong. We will have to see if it is also illegal. It should be left up to the free market to decide. If Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone convertor does create crap apps then people will not buy these apps and developers will stop using them. Adobe's tool would have naturally disappear. It really did not require Apple to kill it. Then again maybe Adobe would have fixed any issues and created a useful tool for developers.
  • Reply 134 of 238
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,855member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    I've noticed before that critics of these investigation come in two types, the "Apple is always right" and the "government is always wrong." With this answer, I think you have sided mainly with the first camp. It seems everything you've argued proceeds from this premise. If you don't know why it's a flawed premise, then I certainly can't explain it. The important issue is, in the course of doing so, you have completely mischaracterized what the competition laws do and how they work. Put it this way, your argument against the FTC and the EU's investigation of Apple in this matter is PRECISELY the one made against the investigation of Microsoft. Virtually to the word, only substituting Apple for Microsoft. Precisely. Does that give you pause? Any any hesitation at all?



    You have also paid no attention to my stated purpose of mentioning both Intel and Microsoft, which I've explained several times now. That should be more than enough, so I won't do it again.



    Nobody is "ignoring" the technical issues, as you so prejudicially put it. From from it. In fact, as I have also said several times, I believe that Apple's counterargument is going to have to be mainly technical, assuming they are put in the position of having to make one (which is uncertain).



    What a load of BS. It may be convenient for you to divide the world into two camps, but it's the sign of a small mind to do so. If you can't explain why you are right, maybe you aren't. And, no, my argument is not at all like the arguments made against investigating Microsoft and there isn't any similarity in the situations, as much as you are unable to distinguish them. There's also no similarity to the situation with Intel, so while you may think you have some purpose in mentioning it, it's really entirely beside the point.
  • Reply 135 of 238
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by 8CoreWhore View Post


    A working version of Flash for iPhone simply doesn't exist. Period. If anyone wants to say it does, PROVE IT. Frash for jailbreaks is crap. So don't even bring that up. Adobe admitted to not have a working version so good luck with that govt.



    I need a shoe! You are WRONG frash works. You need to research and think before you type PERIOD.

    http://translate.google.com/translat...2F&sl=fr&tl=en
  • Reply 136 of 238
    donarbdonarb Posts: 52member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by 8CoreWhore View Post


    A working version of Flash for iPhone simply doesn't exist. Period. If anyone wants to say it does, PROVE IT. Frash for jailbreaks is crap. So don't even bring that up. Adobe admitted to not have a working version so good luck with that govt.



    Exactly, a YouTube video of a hacked "Frash" player proves nothing. The iPhone has been out for 3 years. In all that time, when has Adobe called a press conference and announced that they have created a Flash player for the iPhone that works as advertised (low CPU and efficient battery usage)? Internally, you know Adobe has something in their labs. The fact that there has been no leaked news of such a beast proves that Adobe still hasn't gotten it right. If the FTC or EU ruled today that Apple must allow Flash on the iPhone, Adobe would be saying "soon, soon, we'll have it soon".
  • Reply 137 of 238
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,855member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Orlando View Post


    Real programmers use a variety of tools picking the most suitable ones for each particular job. It is why we have high level and low level programming languages. Sometimes fast iteration is important. Other times performance is key. Sometimes the best tools for the job are cross-compilers/meta-platforms.



    Apple changing the developer agreement to block anything except the own tools was wrong. We will have to see if it is also illegal. It should be left up to the free market should to decide. If Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone convertor creates crap apps then people will not buy these apps and developers will stop using them. Adobe's tool would naturally disappear. It did not require Apple to kill it. Then again maybe Adobe would have fixed any issues and created a useful tool for developers.



    More BS. cross-compilers/meta-platforms are never the best tools for the job unless your objective is to churn out crap and turn a quick buck with the least effort possible. Your assertion is like claiming vice grips are sometimes the best tool for changing a tire. Only if there are no other tools, and in this case there are.



    And no, it shouldn't be left up to the market to decide what Apple can do with it's platform in the future and be constrained by tons of crapware. That's a recipe for their being nothing in the world but crap. Maybe that would make people who have no sense of what quality is happy, but some of us would like to see less crap in the world.
  • Reply 138 of 238
    donarbdonarb Posts: 52member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by davidcarswell View Post


    I need a shoe! You are WRONG frash works. You need to research and think before you type PERIOD. ]



    Where is the OFFICIAL flash player from Adobe? You know the one that doesn't require you to jailbreak your phone? Doesn't exist. So however many videos or links you post, doesn't mean anything.
  • Reply 139 of 238
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by donarb View Post


    Exactly, a YouTube video of a hacked "Frash" player proves nothing. The iPhone has been out for 3 years. In all that time, when has Adobe called a press conference and announced that they have created a Flash player for the iPhone that works as advertised (low CPU and efficient battery usage)? Internally, you know Adobe has something in their labs. The fact that there has been no leaked news of such a beast proves that Adobe still hasn't gotten it right. If the FTC or EU ruled today that Apple must allow Flash on the iPhone, Adobe would be saying "soon, soon, we'll have it soon".





    I AM RUNNING IT RIGHT NOW. granted it is a memory hog, battery drainer, and runs rather warm - it effin works. I honestly doubted it would but it does!
  • Reply 140 of 238
    sendmesendme Posts: 567member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zoetmb View Post


    I think these investigations are happening because both the FTC and the EU don't really understand the technologies. They probably think Flash is like a browser that Apple is keeping off their machines.







    That is the moist likely explanation I have heard yet. Bravo!
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