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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

#71

Post by binspace »

andreyf wrote: post #15
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…

I strongly disagree with the author, but I grasp his point of view. Let me try to explain it. There exists an ideology of "open is always better than closed": open source is better than closed source, open formats are better than proprietary formats, etc. When Jobs talks about WebKit/SquirrelFish being open source implementations of open standards, he is, intentionally or not, appealing to that audience. But obviousl…

The problem with H.264 is there is a conflict of interest involved. Microsoft and Apple have lots of money riding on the adoption of H.264. If it is the standard, they directly profit.

In the medium to long term, end-user quality is negatively affected by adopting close standards.

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

#72

Post by binspace »

binspace wrote: post #71
andreyf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree with the author, but I grasp his point of view. Let me try to explain it. There exists an ideology of "open is always better than closed": open source is better than closed source, open formats are better than proprietary formats, etc. When Jobs talks about WebKit/SquirrelFish being open source implementations of open standards, he is, intentionally or not, appealing to that audience. But obviousl…

The problem with H.264 is there is a conflict of interest involved. Microsoft and Apple have lots of money riding on the adoption of H.264. If it is the standard, they directly profit. In the medium to long term, end-user quality is negatively affected by adopting close standards.

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

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

#73

Post by binspace »

rimantas wrote: post #26
nkassis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 We cannot. I strongly disagree. At least in the web space there is a lot of innovation comming from or strongly supported by Apple.

They are open just like Microsoft :-)

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

#74

Post by zzleeper »

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…

Isn't it hypocrisy to criticize someone for doing the very same thing you are doing? (ie, taking ages to adopt cocoa fully).

It's even worst if you are supposed to be leading by example, as cocoa is apple's own design.

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

#75

Post by tlrobinson »

boucher wrote: post #66
tlrobinson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Replace "iTunes sucks on Windows" with "Flash suck on iPhone" and "Windows" with "iPhone SDK" and you're making his argument for him. Not that I agree with their policies, but this article's arguments aren't very good.

It's an incredibly simple claim. Apple is engaging in hypocritical policies. Apple forbids actions on its own platform that Apple uses to make money and gain market share on other platforms. I don't see how you can interpret this any other way.

See the top comment in this thread by pohl: "it would be hypocrisy if Microsoft forbade middleware and Apple complained about whether or not it was right for Microsoft to do so."

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

#76

Post by telemachos »

pohl wrote: post #40
telemachos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll concede that the claim does not need to be moral, but it should, at least, be a claim about what ought to be or what one ought to do. But the author meets this standard. For example, he points out that Jobs says, in effect, that Adobe should have moved their Carbon apps to Cocoa, even though Apple hasn't done so in some cases.

Note that you have to use the weasel-phrase "in effect" to put words in the mouth of Jobs and claim that "the author meets this standard". If you're so certain he's met the standard, provide an actual quotation rather than a straw man. Jobs made no such statement. Rather, he observed that Adobe was very slow in passing Apple's platform improvements on to its customers, and the implication here is that it would be unw…

Here is Steve Jobs verbatim: And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

What the author points out is that it's odd (hypocritical?) for Jobs to pick on Adobe as the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X when Apple itself has not finished that transition (iTunes) and was very slow to do so in some cases (Finder).

I did use "in effect" to avoid going back and getting a quotation. I was lazy. But the quotation is there. I think it's overkill to describe me as using a straw man argument.

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

#77

Post by acg »

pohl wrote: post #23
acg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypocrisy is not reserved for moral claims. Jobs could be making a virtue out of openness (I'm not sure he is) or saying one thing in public and acting differently in private. Both of which, without moral claims, could cause him to be a hypocrite. Jobs could be called a hypocrite in two different senses depending on how cynical you are.

I'll concede that the claim does not need to be moral, but it should, at least, be a claim about what ought to be or what one ought to do. It's not enough, for example, for me to wax eloquent about how much I love the color green while I'm wearing a purple shirt. It is possible, after all, to love both open models and closed models in different contexts.

To deride Adobe for not porting applications to Cocoa and for Apple not to have: that is hypocritical. Only one example in the article. I don't see the problem of usage.

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

#78

Post by telemachos »

dasil003 wrote: post #42
telemachos wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 use…

You're asking for a redefinition or sharpening of a word that is often used in a sloppy way. That's fine - and potentially very useful.

But my point was more limited: the parent poster writes as though vast numbers of people don't understand the simple concept of hypocrisy. That might be fine, too, except that it's his definition of 'hypocrisy' that is non-standard.

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

#79

Post by Qz »

cageface wrote: post #63
pohl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does Apple get to define the boundaries in this debate? What entitles them to demand that standards in the domain of competitor's products must be open whereas standards in their own business domain need not? I agree that the web should be built on open standards but for exactly the same reasons that digital audio and video and mobile computing ecologies should also be open.

Apple is attempting to define the boundaries with all these statements. If they say it enough and people don't call them on it then that will become the de facto truth.

The reality is that they want full control of products they make, and 'open standards' for products that they don't make. Nothing to do with the supposed benefits of 'open'-ness, entirely to do with that is and is not under their control.

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

#80

Post by slantyyz »

commandar wrote: post #54
tomlin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows users don't hate Flash nearly as much as OSX users. Performance plays a role, no doubt.

Mac users seem incapable of distinguishing between a bad format and a bad port. Flash on OS X is the latter; Flash runs about the same on my 2.16GHz C2D MBP as it does on my 1.6GHz Atom netbook. I don't run around foaming at the mouth about how irredeemably bad Flash is, though.

That's a pretty sweeping statement.

I hated Flash on Windows.

I happen to hate it more on Mac.

I would go so far to say it's a bad format AND a bad port. It's not an either-or situation. Just because Flash sucks less on Windows doesn't mean it's a good format.

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