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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

#41

Post by mattmaroon »

mclin wrote: post #3

iTunes for Windows is by far one of the worst pieces of (major) Windows software you can possibly think of. I used to think Apple did this on purpose to spite windows users, but then I got a mac and discovered iTunes sucks on OSX too. Damn you beach ball!

It sucks much less though. That was one of the biggest surprises I found when I first got an OSX machine, just how much better iTunes runs. It's still not what I'd consider good software, but it's a hell of a lot less bad.

I still can't believe Apple so thoroughly neglects 90% of their customers.

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

#42

Post by dasil003 »

telemachos wrote: post #31
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…

You seem to believe that 'hypocrisy' (and related words, I assume) can only apply to moral claims. That isn't true to the best of my knowledge, and a check of a handful of good dictionaries (online and paper) confirms this. Here's one link, for example: http://dictionaries.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=hypocrisy*1... Although the charge of hypocrisy often comes up in moral contexts, that isn't a requirement.

The older I get the more convinced I am that it's possible to define anyone as a hypocrite simply by repeatedly moving to a higher abstraction until you find a layer where what someone says and what they do are not in sync, and then you can righteously declare "hypocrite!", even though the actual conflict was generated by creative semantics (which all higher thought is).

Therefore in order for a hypocrisy to be a useful word I think it needs a more rigorous connotation. I'm not saying the moral angle is the correct one, but I certainly think that Jobs' letter is far from any reasonably useful definition hypocrisy.

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

#43

Post by pohl »

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.

Why bother inventing an abstract normative claim when you can quote the actual (and only) one that appears in the document:

   "...we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open."
Now, proceed from there.

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

#45

Post by Terretta »

mclin wrote: post #16
mr_justin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I leave mine running for weeks on end with no issues. I try to keep it up to date but usually let the updates stew for a month before upgrading. iTunes is indispensable software for me, and I don't own an iPhone, iPad, iPod or any of that. Nor do I use it for purchasing music. Strictly as a music organizer/player, I think it is fantastic and integrates perfectly with the operating system. That being said, the…

I don't mean it crashes. I just hate how unresponsive it is. It gives me the beachball anytime I do anything involving I/O (syncing, adding songs, retrieving album art, calculating gapless bullshit). That's bad UI programming. Do your I/O in a background thread. I know it's doing it on the GUI thread because I'll command-tab to it and it won't redraw, which of course prevents me from cancelling out of whatever task-I…

Out of curiosity, is your library on an external disk that sleeps? Mine was, and it seemed to hang while waiting for the disk to spin up. I moved it to an always on disk, and the hangs stopped.

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

#46

Post by GrandMasterBirt »

YES Thank god. The video codec is 100x worse than flash. At least SWF is open, so you can generate SWF files royalty free from adobe. H264 aint quite that. I tunes sucks, hate it, and no itunes for linux. Hey remember itunes + palm? Yea? We're open my ass. If Apple is so devoted to breaking people free of proprietary crap explain the itunes-palm pre wars.

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

#47

Post by VictorHo »

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…

From dictionary.com:

hy·poc·ri·sy   [hi-pok-ruh-see] –noun,plural-sies.

1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.

2. a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.

3. an act or instance of hypocrisy.

I don't see how the author misuses the word "hypocrisy" at all. It appears to me that his case relates to #2 above - Jobs pretends to hold an attitude promoting open standards etc. when that is not the real motivation behind his actions at all.

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

#48

Post by Terretta »

nkassis wrote: post #14
archgrove wrote: post #12

The author openly conceeds the points that consumers will actually care about - performance, security, and proprietary nature. It's hard to claim that it's a "marketing trick to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers" when you agree with large tracts of the author's argument. Their main point, that he's somehow a hypocrite because Apple haven't used the latest tech for everything, entirely misses the point he's mak…

I think he mostly argues about the fact that Jobs stated Flash not being and open standard as a reason not to support it. I hope we can all agree that Apple has never really been an open standards company and as the author points out, they've mostly stated this for marketing purposes while not fully embracing the idea.

> I hope we can all agree that Apple has never really been an open standards company

Show me this for Flash:

http://trac.webkit.org/

Or this:

http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1063/

And check out paragraph 2:

http://webkit.org/projects/goals.html

Fire up Chrome to check out how many re-implementations of WebKit are out there based on this open source and open standards base.

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

#49

Post by apphacker »

aneth wrote: post #7

The only people I know defending Adobe and Flash are Flash developers and Adobe itself. Everybody else tolerates Flash begrudgingly. I miss a few flash games here and there on my iPhone. Beyond that, good riddance. Flash is the RealPlayer of the decade.

I started using Amazon Video which uses flash. I like to be able to view movies and videos I've purchased where ever I am on whatever computer I am, and as of right now that's only possible with flash. I doubt Amazon would make this a direct video since Flash permits some form of rights management for content owners. If it were just a video I could download it and distribute it how I wanted. Which while ultimately is a nice idea but studios would just then not permit things like Amazon Video and so I like that Flash has enabled me to enjoy the content I want the way I can.

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

#50

Post by mascarenhas »

Confusion wrote: post #8
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…

It's so hard to grasp that the author even uses 'hypercritical' as an adjective to denote an instance of hypocrisy.

This was obviously a typo to me, I just skipped it and kept reading. By now several other comments here have shown that the Jobs' letter is indeed hypocritical by the accepted definitions of the term. I will even link another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy.
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