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Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

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Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#111

Post by pohl »

cageface wrote: post #102
pohl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Apple get to define the boundaries in this debate? The simple fact that the present article accuses them of hypocrisy. For the accusation to stick, one must compare their actions to what they actually say - not to what we erroneously infer from it, or to some semantic-changing paraphrase, or to outright straw men - but to what they actually profess. Yes, there is a larger debate about software freedom, but t…

The logical contortions Apple apologists are willing to perform in their defense at this point are truly impressive.

If the logic is truly contorted, you should be able to do better than ad hominem.

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#112

Post by pohl »

Nwallins wrote: post #97
pohl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's clear that a norm of using the Cocoa API is implied here: I don't think it's that clear. I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason for the last sentence of he preceding paragraph: Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms. They are establishing Adobe's track record of…

> I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason > They are establishing Adobe's track record of keeping current on underlying platform enhancements. None of that refutes whether or not Apple considers using the Cocoa API exclusively as a norm. I think it's quite clear that they do. Are you really suggesting otherwise?

While the carbon APIs still ship, they are deprecated in favor of Cocoa. Yes, this is true. This fact does not give the author any traction, however, because neither the Finder nor iTunes is a platform that any significant apps depend on. This makes updating them an entirely different engineering decision compared to allowing middleware to introduce dependencies beyond Apple's control.

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#113

Post by robryan »

astrange wrote: post #107
binspace wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the lawyers have promised to basically sue open source developers who do not pay royalties.

Mozilla and Opera have promised everyone that they would be sued for royalties (and there's no reason not to believe them), but I've never seen evidence of this. Nobody is ever going to sue Perian/ffdshow/VLC for royalties.

Still, even if they probably won't get sued they would always have it hanging over their heads. Making an investment in technologies which even have a small chance of causing legal trouble at some point in the future could be a bad bet for them.

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#114

Post by [deleted] »

pohl wrote: post #112
Nwallins wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason > They are establishing Adobe's track record of keeping current on underlying platform enhancements. None of that refutes whether or not Apple considers using the Cocoa API exclusively as a norm. I think it's quite clear that they do. Are you really suggesting otherwise?

While the carbon APIs still ship, they are deprecated in favor of Cocoa. Yes, this is true. This fact does not give the author any traction, however, because neither the Finder nor iTunes is a platform that any significant apps depend on. This makes updating them an entirely different engineering decision compared to allowing middleware to introduce dependencies beyond Apple's control.

[deleted]

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#115

Post by chc »

boucher wrote: post #104
chc wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't hypocrisy. Jobs isn't saying he believes that people must never create cross-platform apps — he's just saying that they suck (as this author acknowledges Apple's cross-platform apps do) and thus he doesn't want them on his system. It's like the owner of McDonalds not wanting to take his wife to a McDonalds for their anniversary — he's not saying nobody should eat there, just acknowledging that it's rather…

This is a terrible analogy. In the real situation, Apple has forced developers not to use third party technologies, ever. In your hypothetical, the owner chooses not to go to McDonalds on occasion. An apt analogy: The owner of a four star restaurant says that McDonalds is shit food, and refuses to let patrons who eat at McDonalds into his restaurant. Then, when not at work, this owner goes and eats at McDonalds. That…

I imagine it looks terrible because you missed the whole point. Apple doesn't care if you make cross-platform apps (eat McDonalds) — they just don't want them on their high-end mobile platform (their anniversary). They are perfectly happy to have them on Windows (their lunch break) or to have patrons who eat at McDonalds occasionally (have non-iPhone cross-platform apps).

Jobs' position is that cross-platform apps suck. Apple is mainly concerned that iPhone apps don't suck. If Windows apps suck, Jobs isn't going to cry too much.

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#116

Post by demallien »

Nwallins wrote: post #29
pohl wrote: post #2

I wish I knew why the concept of hypocrisy is so difficult to grasp that people are prone to apply it incorrectly. Maybe people just don't understand when someone is making a moral statement, and when someone isn't. The claim here appears to be that since Apple ships Windows apps that don't use that platform to its fullest, Jobs cannot claim that least-common-denominator middleware is unhealthy for a platform. That m…

Is it not hypocritical to hold others to higher standards than one demonstrates? I see a normative claim: Software systems should do X, Y, and Z Software systems that do not meet the norm are penalized or disallowed by Apple's platform(s). However, Apple's own software does not meet this norm either, even on Apple's own platform. It sure seems like hypocrisy to me, even if it is defensible.

You're talking about the adoption of Cocoa and the fact that iTunes still uses Carbon? It's not really a fair accusation. I think Apple would very much like to be able to rewrite iTunes in Cocoa, but they have a problem - it's a cross-platform application. As a result they have chosen to use an API on the Mac that most closely resembles an API available on Windows. They know that iTunes is not exploiting the features available on both platforms to their fullest - perhaps painfully so. It is precisely this type of experience which makes them wish to avoid cross-platform development on their new platform.

I mean Apple really does care about the user experience, more so than any other company that I can think of. And yet even they have not managed to put together a good user experience for their cross-platform app. On the Mac it isn't hooked up to all of the Cocoa hotness, and on the PC, well, the less said, the better.

It is Apple's firsthand experience with the problems you can have during cross-platform development that is informing their decision to strongly discourage such development on the iPhone platform.

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#118

Post by jaimzob »

schammy wrote: post #84
jaimzob wrote: post #39

What happened to OSNews? I remember it being a pretty good tech news site a while back but now it seems that every day there's another over-written, hyper-ventilating, peanut-gallery-baiting "opinion piece" like this. Good for selling ad impressions I guess.

You didn't actually read the article, did you? It makes a lot of very good and perfectly valid points. Let me also guess - you own a Mac and an iPhone, and are mad because someone is saying bad things about your precious Apple. Correct?

My point is that, as you’ve ably demonstrated, there are innumerable sites I can go to to indulge in juvenile tech tribalism. OSNews used to be a cut above these sites but it doesn’t seem to be any more. I think that’s a shame.

With regard to the author’s points, they may be sincere but I don’t find them convincing. For example, no matter what you think of the quality of Windows iTunes, the idea was never to commodotise the underlying operating system. A calmer and more convincing argument against Job’s statement would simply be to ask what if Microsoft decided to “preserve their UX” by banning any agent that rendered HTML5?

Re: Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

#119

Post by [deleted] »

zmmmmm wrote: post #94
glhaynes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very fact that those are some of the things that have been criticized the most (the list would have had to have included Finder until a few months ago!) and with many cries to have them converted to Cocoa may reveal hypocrisy but it also proves Jobs' point: cross-platform, least-common-denominator stuff almost never provides the level of enjoyment that native, non-legacy stuff does. Many think the web has proven…

> it also proves Jobs' point: cross-platform, least-common-denominator stuff almost never provides the level of enjoyment that native, non-legacy stuff does Not really. If the difference was that big, he would have devoted resources to porting his own software. Being the perfectionist he is, and not porting his own software, one has to conclude the differences just aren't that big.

[deleted]
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