Please Don't Shoot The Messenger

Apple's a very simple company to understand:

Wozniak = Engineer
Jobs = Artist

Wozniak doesn't work there anymore.

 

There has been endless speculation about why Apple chose to go this way with iPhone apps. In addition to the above, I've read that it boils down to concerns about security/viruses, and phone performance. A badly written or malicious app could compromise security, and/or make the phone so slow as to be unusable. But of course, this can happen with any piece of computer software and Apple doesn't approve all apps developed for their notebook or desktop computers. In fact, over the years, they have become more open (Mac OS X is a variant of Unix, after all, and Apple has open-sourced much of it) and standards-compliant.

In the end, it's probably about money. It's likely that Apple wants to approve apps for the iPhone so they can protect their (and their partners') revenue stream by excluding things that they otherwise want to sell you.

Also, while this is interesting to people who follow the technology industry, it seems to be very uninteresting to the general public. There are almost 200,000 apps, billions of downloads and the iPhone just keeps getting more popular.


SW

 

Funny that Apple was compared to Disneyland. This is a bit off topic, but it gives another description of Steve Jobs compared to great visionaries. I hope my post does not cause controversy or is not out of place. If it does I will sin now and beg for forgiveness later.

When I first read this I thought about an article in Wired magazine that came out back in 2001. It was called "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" It was about Singapore and how they have made some great advancement over the years with the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew. In short the article said how with Lee's leadership the country went from nothing to great, however the culture is..... well............the author of the article describes it in six pages but I'll put it in one word .......... mindless. I think Mr. Gibson describes it better than me. Wired 1.04: Disneyland with the Death Penalty Read it if you have several minutes to kill. It is probably my favroite article ever.

How does this relate. Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and Lee Kuan Yew are all brilliant visionaries who can dream great dreams and make the world look upon their creations with awe. But in the end, even though these are experiences that I enjoy, I'll take the chaos that accompanies freedom over the bland perfect design that gets boring quickly.

That is why I will never have an annual pass to Disney, even though I love that place; never want to live in Singapore, even though I want to experience the culture and society; and never own an iPhone, even though I keep "borrowing" my wifes.

 

Apparently, this has something to do with Apple's war against Adobe and Flash. I'm not sure why Flash is so bad, exactly, except that it lets people make websites with more "flash" than substance.



SW

 

It's a stretch to compare a product company, an entertainment company and a government. It's really just an analogy and the people mentioned probably have nothing in common, other than their ability to motivate and lead others. That's the management aspect of what they do, not the creative vision itself.

But these articles point out that there is always a tradeoff, if one wants to create a consistent and stable user experience in a device or a theme park. In technology, some control is necessary, but not so much as to strangle the marketplace. In Disney-land, the marketplace and the experience are the same thing. The movie inspires the ride, the ride gets people to come stay in the hotel, people staying in the hotel buy the food and the t-shirt, the profits can be invested in more movies. Total control for a total experience.

The analogy with Singapore is that the government only allows enough freedom in the particular areas that enable a strong business environment (marketplace) and not more. There of course, it's potentially a lot more sinister, because we are talking about people's entire lives, not their vacations or gadgets.

Personally, I'd rather go to Singapore than Disneyland any day (I've been to both). The food is much better, for one.


SW

 

Not to take it too far OT...

Steve, I've been wondering the same thing a little while ago and from my understanding you have to experience Flash on platforms other than Windows to get on it's bad side. Apparently Flash on Mac OS is really, really buggy, resource/memory hog and commits a few other cardinal sins of s/w engineering.

 

Maybe so, but I don't see why Apple can't work with Adobe to address those issues, rather than fighting Adobe by trying to dictate what development tools people can use. That strategy is sure to elicit the kind of anti-Apple backlash that the article Charlyee posted expresses.



SW

 

I'll stay out of the whole discussion about the OP , but regarding Flash, I know as little as anyone can learn from browsing the web. So I may be wrong, but the problem isn't simply that Apple won't work with Adobe...they have tried to worked with them, and finally being frustrated Jobs called Adobe 'lazy' for not fixing or updating Flash. Flash is an old, rarely updated, CPU memory hog program and a battery drain. Apple has the "bxlls" to challenge Adobe and push for HTML5, which is expected to be out within a year, and a much better desktop and mobile platform.

From what I read, no mobile phone truly runs Flash, including Android; Adobe has delayed its mobile flash player 10.1 from last summer to Oct 2010 for only the 'beta' version. I think they are having problems. Why place the blame on Apple?

From AppleInsider | Adobe slips mobile Flash Player 10.1 to second half of 2010

"There is no mobile version of Flash

After mounting an intense attack on Apple for not supporting Flash on its iPhone OS mobile devices, Adobe has admitted that it will not be able to ship its promised Flash Player 10.1 for mobile platforms until the second half of the year. (2010)

Existing mobiles that say they run Flash really only support old versions of the runtime (such as Sony's PlayStation Portable, which runs Flash 6 from 2002, or the legacy Palm OS, which runs a very old version of Flash 5 from a decade ago) or Adobe's "Flash Lite," a version that does not even aspire to playback the same content as desktop versions (it is based on Flash 8 from 2005). Symbian and Windows Mobile are limited to Flash Lite playback.

Adobe's problems in delivering a real version of Flash for mobile platforms is complicated by the fact that most Flash content is not well suited to play on a small screen, and particularly not in a multitouch environment where desktop browser conventions of a mouse pointer and mouseover events are simply not present.

Flash is also hampered by the memory and processor limitations inherent in mobile devices. The upcoming 10.1 version of Flash for mobile devices will demand a fast Cortex A8 processor, which means it won't run on anything but the highest-end Android, Palm, Blackberry, and Symbian phones sold over the last several months. Even if Apple wanted to bundle Flash 10.1, it would only minimally work on the iPhone 3GS and newer products.

In February, Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs reportedly told executives from the Wall Street Journal that Flash was a CPU hog riddled with security holes and dismissed his interest in working with Adobe to fix Flash playback in saying, "we don't spend a lot of energy on old technology."


Apple has some very good reasons, technically, not to run/use flash. It also has some $$ incentive not to run it, fearing Flash could bypass it's iTunes movie business model. But it is a weak argument since it's desktop Flash player is not causing $$ damage now.

I think that any argument that if a desktop platform can be open , so too could/should a mobile platform is weak too. A mobile OS is much more tightly written, and needs to be very polished.

Here is another pointer to Apple's argument and concerns, and for the industry in general. One can critique Apple or praise them for forcing or ignoring Adode for not keeping their flash player up with the times.

Behind the Adobe-Apple cold war - Fortune Brainstorm Tech

"For Adobe (ADBE), here are the hurdles the company faces in getting its all-important technology onto the most talked about devices:


Flash hasn't kept up with the times
The technology was developed originally as a so-called "runtime environment" in the PC world, and that means it grew up running on Intel's X86 chip architecture. Why that is important in today's mobile world is that most mobile gadgets, including the iPhone and presumably the iPad, use a different chip architecture: ARM. And current versions of Flash have problems running on ARM. "It's a question of balancing power management, performance and memory allocation," says a mobile developer very familiar with the issue.

Flash is a drain
Flash looks pretty, but, largely because it's not native to ARM, the technology demands an outsized chunk of the semiconductor's cycles. That means that running Flash on a mobile device can affect how long the battery lasts, whether the video is more like a slide show than a movie, and whether anything else can be happening in the background while you play a game. Jobs isn't about to let some other company's technology take the iPad's claimed 10-hour battery life down to five. And if the device sputters every time it shows a moving image, Apple's user experience — for which Apple can charge more than its competitors — gets put at risk. Adobe's Ludwig denies these are insurmountable technical problems, and he may have something there.

Flash challenges Apple's business model
Apple makes devices that consumers drool over — but they also have figured out how to get into people's pocketbooks in a way that businesses drool over. Apple's iPhone App store, and the iTunes store have been incredible successes (and Apple is counting on the same riches to come with the planned iBook store). If Flash were allowed on the iPhone or the iPad, software developers would have free rein to sell apps directly to consumers, bypassing Apple's shops and Apple's cut of the sale. If Flash were on the iPhone, you could watch Hulu and play games on Mini-Clip rather than buying movies from iTunes or buying games from the App store. (Adobe is also getting ready to launch a workaround that lets the 2 million or so Flash developers out there easily convert their applications for the iPhone, iPod and now iPad — but they will still be approved by and sold through Apple.) Flash breaks down the control Apple has over what gets on its devices and who gets paid for it. Which brings us to the porn theory.

Flash opens up a market that Apple and its wireless partners don't want to enter
The vast majority of porn is streamed using — you guessed it — Flash. Apple is keeping Flash out, this segment of theorists contend, because it doesn't want its devices to be the best porn products on the planet. Not to mention the network problems it might cause. It's bad enough with simple web-surfing to get your iPhone to work in San Francisco and New York, if everyone were watching streaming skin flicks in HD, you can imagine that AT&T (T) would simply be unusable.

Apple is developing its own competitor to Flash
This one hasn't progressed past pure conjecture. But considering how much control it would give Apple in content, across the devices and across the Web, it seems possible. And control, to Apple, is always a good thing"

 

The thing I've never understood is why some people love Apple so much. Everyone on the web used to lambast Microsoft for its controlling tactics. Apple goes even farther and there's a segment that believes they can do know wrong and we should all just follow along. Yes, MS has/had its apologists, but nothing like Apple's.

 

A person likes Apple products when they work well for the person. Since Apple has less than 10% of the desktop market and less than 20% of the cell market, it rarely matters how Apple behaves. If you do not like their products or business practices than you can buy something else. Microsoft is held to a different standard because there is often no other alternative.

If you're looking for lunatic MS apologists, those are easy to find, just walk into your your IT department and announce you're switching the company to Linux.

 

I'm a little tried of the love/hate fest that Apple squeezes out of people, especially the complaint that other phones do the same for less money and less control.

Maserati Cars are too expensive for me, but they are great cars. No one buys one to 'soup' it up in their garage with third party Sears parts or complains about the control Maserati places in their design/part selections. I drive Toyota's. they get me where I'm going just fine.

Apple products are a bit expensive and controlled too. But I am lucky that I can afford them. I don't care to 'soup' it up or control it too much. It just works as a phone and works as a little computer for me. I get my techo fun in large quantities with my career.

So it's my little sin, let me enjoy it. If I could afford a Maserati, I'd buy one of those too, and wouldn't complain that I had to take it back to a dealer for an oil change.

P.S. Just a vent, not directed at anyone here. Phones I can afford to always get the latest (even if it is not an apple). I can't afford to do that with many other neat things (cars, homes, huge TV's, wifes....). Phone geeking and switching is what makes this a great forum to be part of. We all love our little 'buddies'

 

Re my post above:

A Maserati Fan Boy Wannabe - $117,500


But I have to settle as an iPhone admirer (aka - fanperson) - $299


It is what it is

 

There are a lot of things in this world to love and hate.

I happen to like Apple products, as I love my iPod and really like iTunes. It works for me. I've been thinking about upgrading to a MacBook soon, with one of the fringe benefits of being able to have Windows on a Mac (I'm not ready to give up all things Windows-compatible yet). Hey, if they had a Windows PC running Mac, I'd probably go for that, but that's never going to happen.

I will say one thing, Apple sure knows how to get and command attention. Love them or hate them, they're doing something right...Look at all the hoopla around the so-called "lost iPhone 4" drama.