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Thoughts on Flash

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Re: Thoughts on Flash

#161
post #87
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a corporation, not a human being.

The Supreme Court would like a word with you.

What? The legal notion of "legal personhood" and actual personhood are not comparable, not even legally, and especially not in the context of the discussion at hand.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#162
post #74

If they're going to pitch HTML5 as an alternative to Flash (and, implicitly, the iPhoneOS API), then why not let them compete directly with Cocoa Touch apps? Why not offer HTML5 developers a way to take advantage of the App Store's monetization and discoverability? Apple already provides some amazing documentation and tutorials for making offline-capable mobile web apps, but they're still treated by Apple as the bast…

I get this argument, but couldn't you say Apple gives the customer the best of both worlds?

Web & HTML 5 support: developers can make or do anything they want to on the platform.

App Store: Cultivated catalog of high quality apps for customers.

At the end of the day, we don't need PhoneGaps or Titaniums-- we need MobileSafari to have the same hooks into the hardware (gps, compass, accelerometer, camera, etc) as Cocoa Touch. Then it's a level playing field.

If you're saying that that, too, ought to be in the App Store, well-- then what you're really arguing for isn't technology but that the App Store is a better distribution channel to mobile devices than the Web. It certainly is-- I have millions of competitors for the word "Congress" on Google, and about 12 in the App Store.

To solve the distribution channel problem, I don't understand why some enterprising YC person doesn't simply start making a web App Store app for the iPhone that allows people to sell web applications to iPhone users, handle fulfillment just like the App Store does, and handle curation, just like the App Store does.

There's money to be made here.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#163
post #88
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the degree to which non-technical users await, with bated breath, a pronouncement about programming languages from high officials at Apple. I love non-technical users. I was trying to explain to one of them yesterday that they can still use my website even after their school wipes their hard disk, and separately, even though the email address (login) is their home email address and not their…

Had a friend who was certain he could make a million dollars selling subscriptions to Google.

Met a guy at a party last month who said I could make lots of money on the internet! Apparently, if you're good at websites you can put ads on them and make a ton of cash. Who knew!

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#164
post #136
post #72

This is where he loses me: "Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open." Adobe can just as easily say: "Though Flash products are proprietary, we strongly believe that standards pertaining to what software is allowed to run on your computer should be open." It's doublespeak either way, and it's crazy to think th…

My head started to spin when trying to reconcile points 1 and 5. Point 1 states Adobe Flash has proprietary features and the standardized open feature sets of HTML5, CSS, and JS should be used instead. Point 5 states 3rd party layers limits development to the standardized features and leaves out the proprietary features that makes Apple unique.

Point 1 is talking about websites / web applications. Point 5 is talking about native apps. Two different domains entirely.

With point 1, if developers are going to make a website, and they ditch flash, their work would work everywhere well (iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android, WebOS, Symbian, and Blackberry OS 6, as well as on the desktop). They wouldn't be limited to the platforms Adobe decides to support (or decides to support well).

With point 2, if you're going to make a native app for the iPhone, make one for the iPhone. Don't make one with Flash, which may not get around to supporting things like GameCenter, or multitasking, or any of the other hundreds of things Apple adds in new releases.

Choosing Flash for either one makes a substandard experience compared to the other options available.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* If the compiler being open means Objective-C is open, then Flash is open as well: http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK * We're talking about mobile applications like games being good enough, not desktop applications using native components. Please don't stray the conversation. Otherwise it's as dumb as me coming and saying iTunes should not be running on Windows. * "Comparing video decompressio…

Flex is not flash

I won't blame you for the confusion, as the naming is mixed up, but "Flex SDK" is the command-line Flash (SWF) compiler. It's free and open source. It's used to create SWFs or SWCs. It's the same compiler the Flash IDE has built-in.

I create full, rich Flash content with the Flex SDK, and has been doing it for a while. I don't compile with the Flash IDE. Not because I can't or because it's paid, but because using Flex SDK is better.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute, how is comparing H.264 hardware support for decoding (I think you meant decoding, not decompression) vs. software bullshit? Shipping versions of Flash still use software for video decoding. The only versions that use hardware are unreleased beta versions of 10.1. Your post sounds like an Adobe apologist making stuff up.

Hardware decoding of video content has been available since FP version 10, released in October 2008. I'm not making stuff up. I actually have my history of gripes with Adobe, as if I've been working with their software for more than a decade. If anything, I'm just enraged that this article is making stuff up, and I don't like people taking ideology and fundamentalism into a discussion that should be tech-based only.

That isn't hardware decode, that's hardware scaling.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gp...

Also, Flash does not use any of the multiple hardware decode APIs on linux yet due to it needing readback support which apparently they don't have yet.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2010/01/solving_different...

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#168
post #143
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's stupid. But with Apple, I feel I only need to fear their intention, not their wording. The intent here, it seems to me, is to stop Adobe from making crappy commercial middleware for Apple's platforms. The wording is overly broad and stupid, but I'm no longer as afraid of it. If they were intent on getting rid of everything under the sun that isn't straight C, Obj-C or C++, there would already be an App-ocal…

The intent here, it seems to me, is to stop Adobe from making crappy commercial middleware for Apple's platforms. This is actually the biggest part of Job's argument that I don't buy. If their intent was actually to stop crap from being produced, they would just reject apps that are crap from the App Store as they do now.

It's a question of technical vs. subjective evaluation. A lot of apps on the app store are technically acceptable (i.e. they do things right), but do useless or stupid shit (i.e. they're junk). Apple's only lately started to police the actual purpose of apps, rather than their technical merit (or compliance with the HIG).

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#169

Flash is closed, Apple is open. Huh? I can build a flash app entirely for free, legally, with zero restrictions, forever, on the tools I used to write it, or where I can deploy it to. Adobe has bent over backwards to make players (also free) backwards compatible. That's pretty open. I must pay to build an iphone app, which I can only do on a computer owned by the same company, running an OS owned by the same company.…

Apple makes Bill Gates look like Richard Stallman?

Let me ask you something. How many of Microsoft's competitors are building products that compete directly with Microsoft core offerings using the source code to Internet Explorer?

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