Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thoughts on Flash

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 522 posts

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#471

Post by Qz »

davidedicillo wrote: post #442
pyre wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough. And Cocoa Touch is not an 'open standard.'

Jobs never said that Cocoa is an open standard. He just state that Flash is as proprietary as Cocoa Touch. Market share =! Open. His point is that on the mobile web, HTML5 is open, not Flash.

This has nothing to do with what's open and what isn't, it's about who controls what. Apple controls iPhoneOS, Adobe controls Flash. It's a prizefight. Don't get caught in a sucker punch just because you were paying attention to the fancy footwork.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#472

Post by veemjeem »

teamonkey wrote: post #42
not_an_alien wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Flash websites will have to be rewritten because it relies on 'rollovers', which is not part of Apple's 'revolutionary' touch interface: overblown for two reasons - a) few stuff will have to be rewritten (many videos show desktop Flash content working on mobile phones without a problem); and b) this is not a problem with Flash, as any JS/HTML-based interface that relies on rollovers has the same issues. * Flash is…

"Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world." Clearly nonsense. I'm willing to bet that there are many, many more games and entertainment apps written in Flash alone than there are on the app store.

Flash has been around a bit longer than the iPhone has, so no surprise there. Flash has been around since PointCast Network, if anyone actually still remembers that.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#473

Post by sethg »

qeorge wrote: post #216
richbradshaw wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever website I've ever made has had to avoid new features due to IE incompatibilities. CSS transitions and canvas are obvious examples.

Side point: why is supporting IE6 mandatory? Its been retired since 2005. We support IE6 wherever reasonable, but if you're building something that needs , I'd just do it. What was the feature in this case?

There are very large organizations that have tied themselves to IE6-dependent code (or at least, code that their IT staff assumse is IE6-dependent) on their intranets, and they are not eager to commit the resources necessary to bring everything up to HTML5 compatibility.

And IE6 still represents about 20% of browsers on the Web (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200807...). So a business owner hiring someone to design a public-facing corporate Web site doesn’t want to hear the designer dismiss one out of every five potential customers.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#474

Post by Qz »

ericd wrote: post #446
tomlin wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I am saying is that Steve Jobs isn't putting all the facts on the table as they are. He is feeding the anti-Flash gang mob with half-truths. To say Flash is proprietary, possibly poorly executed format is a fair thing to say. To say it is completely without merit and has no place is a fallacy. HTML5 video is widely supported today . Flash might be a delivery vehicle for another unrealized idea tomorrow. And the "…

I have no issue with him shutting out something that really sucks today at the cost of potentially missing out on something awesome to do with it tomorrow. The awesome scenario just doesn't seem likely to come to pass. If tomorrow there's a completely great thing on the web that can only be done with flash, then I think Jobs is pragmatic enough to reevaluate. But the fact that the main use for Flash on the web these…

What flash ads? Just use AdBlock.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#475

Post by varaon »

grellas wrote: post #304
jerf wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gruber is really Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is really Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve Jobs is actually Bill Gates.

The latest from Fake Steve on this piece: http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/04/please-stop-thinking-about-... .

Fake Steve raises an interesting point about how close John Gruber and Apple are.

>"...we leaked the Flash essay to our Chief Apologist John Gruber and told him to start whipping up some buzz on Twitter about it, and he followed orders [http://twitter.com/gruber/status/12988151829]."

Consider too that Steve Jobs replied to an email asking about the restriction of apps to C* with a link to a Gruber post [http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/04/steve-jobs-response-on...].

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#476

Post by Qz »

rimantas wrote: post #437
Qz wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the mentality that keeps 'users' stupid. Apple is basically saying: "users are stupid, let's protect them from thinking." Imagine if we said that about our kids: "Our kids don't know how to handle the real world. Let's protect them from having to deal with it." (never mind that most parents do in fact go through this phase). The reality is that users are just kids who haven't learned how to use compute…

That's not about keeping users stupid, it's about not making them worry about stuff they should not worry about. The user may be the world's best neurosurgeon, does that mean that they have to learn about filesystems? most computer software is generally poorly designed You are right about this one. But the thing is that Apple does exactly that: offering well designed software. It's not about buying fish, it's about h…

"The user may be the world's best neurosurgeon, does that mean that they have to learn about filesystems?"

There's a bit of a divide as to what 'personal' computers are being used for. The original mainstream use was to create/edit files using programs. The modern use is to interact with other people via the internet. So no, the neurosurgeon doesn't have to learn about filesystems because filesystems are mostly becoming irrelevant.

I don't think software should be designed to educate people about the trappings of decades of computer cruft. I think software should be designed so that using the software teaches the user how to use the software. Apple's method (re: iPhone/iPad) seems to be to design software that doesn't invite learning, and at the additional cost of limiting functionality.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#477

Post by astrange »

anatoly wrote: post #236
astrange wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't care about open standards - that they would is, on the face of it, absurd. They really do care about open standards. There is no reason why WebKit and several other projects have to be run in the open, after they stopped releasing several parts of Darwin, but they are. At worst, this is because there is more than one person at Apple, and the people who want things to be proprietary don't care about this…

Webkit has to be run in the open; it's originally based on KHTML and inherits its LGPL.

It doesn't have to be run in the open; they have to release the source whenever they release a new Safari update, but they don't have to do project administration in public or let anyone else access their SVN. This is how several of the Darwin opensource projects work, notably Apple's gcc branch and the kernel.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#478

Post by prasanamishra »

gfunk911 wrote: post #6

I love this. Apple clearly laid out their reasoning, using facts and persuasive argument. The world needs more of this. Obviously, there is some spin in the post, and I don't completely agree with 100% of it, but I love the level of discourse.

hmmm I too agree with this post somehow.... since long I am also not comfortable in learning flash and creating flash based website.. though the graphics is amazing but very slow.... the current decision by apple will definitely hinder the progress of Flash... Adobe need to come up with it's own version of mobile phone :) in the post Steve Jobs mentioned not to encourage the third party layer.... so they ll be slow to adapt the platform changes.... But today got mail from Appacceletor Titanium, they are quite happy bcoz they are developing based on JavaScript.... not sure..

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#479

Post by dca »

megablast wrote: post #468
ericb wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the real Steve Jobs is Bill Gates, lately. Maybe Monopolies (essentially) do that to people.

Apple do not have a Monopoly, unless you use a diseased meaning of the word Monopoly to mean devices produced by Apple. In that case, almost every company has a monopoly.

How is it so different? Microsoft at least did not control the hardware. Apple has always been worse than Microsoft in that respect - they even wanted to control the printer at one point! The only difference now is that for some reason its working for them now and iPhone is incredibly popular. But they're much more monopolistic than Microsoft ever was, and they always have been, and I would imagine they always will be.

Re: Thoughts on Flash

#480

Post by megablast »

Sindisil wrote: post #356
zefhous wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really build flash apps for free? Honest question — I thought you needed to have Flash. If you do need Flash, you have things backwards. For one, he's talking about web apps, not iPhone OS apps. Web apps are entirely open and Apple is huge on pushing what you can do with the web. Also, building iPhone OS apps is absolutely free. The entire SDK and documentation is free of charge, you just need a Mac to develo…

Yes you can. The compiler is free and open ( http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK ). That, an editor, and Bob's your uncle. On Windows, there's also a nice open source IDE ( http://flashdevelop.org ). The one thing that's not open source is the player, and that is free.

You realise that Adobe lets you make any components you want EXCEPT FOR THE PLAYER? Why, because they want to retain control of it. I mean, they publish the spec, people have made players before, and they have been told by Adobe to stop.

Sounds familiar.

Post reply on HN