The Wide, Wide World of Apple

[Barrister]

Steve Jobs write a long open letter about why Flash is the devil's tool.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

[Grey Fox]

Short version : I don't own it therefore I hate it.

[derspiess]

And boy, does he go on about it.  It would be nice if he could be up front & honest and say they don't want to allow flash because it would mean less $$ they skim from app sales.

All Jobsie would need to do is set an option deep within the settings (so deep that casual, non-tech savvy customers would not find it) to enable or disable flash, with the default set to 'disable'.  Then he would still get to effectively control the experience for a majority of the users, but give other users the <gasp> choice to use flash and incur whatever hit there would be to battery life & whatnot.

His remark about Flash being outdated & belonging to the "PC era" is complete horseshit. 

[Barrister]

And boy, does he go on about it.  It would be nice if he could be up front & honest and say they don't want to allow flash because it would mean less $$ they skim from app sales.

All Jobsie would need to do is set an option deep within the settings (so deep that casual, non-tech savvy customers would not find it) to enable or disable flash, with the default set to 'disable'.  Then he would still get to effectively control the experience for a majority of the users, but give other users the <gasp> choice to use flash and incur whatever hit there would be to battery life & whatnot.

His remark about Flash being outdated & belonging to the "PC era" is complete horseshit.

I dunno - I thought he was pretty open that they didn't allow Flash because it wasn't in Apple's interests.

I don't think the choice option is really viable though - you just know that as soon as it is enabled Apple will start getting complaints about poor battery life, and "why is my iPhone crashing"?  Either something is a good idea or it is not.

There are a few disingenuous bits though - it goes on about H.264, but as I understand it it is also proprietary.

[derspiess]

I dunno - I thought he was pretty open that they didn't allow Flash because it wasn't in Apple's interests.

He's never open about it being mostly a revenue decision.  He might vaguely or cryptically state that flash is not in Apple's interests, but that is always overshadowed by how horrible he thinks Flash is for performance, etc.

I don't think the choice option is really viable though - you just know that as soon as it is enabled Apple will start getting complaints about poor battery life, and "why is my iPhone crashing"?  Either something is a good idea or it is not.

And support for those complaints can be to simply tell the user to go back & disable Flash.  But make the option hard to find in the first place & generally only your advanced users (i.e., a small percentage) are going to use it in the first place. 

That's assuming Flash would cause all the issues Jobsie claims, which is especially doubtful on the iPad & new iPhone (assuming it uses the same or some variation of the excellent A4 processor the iPad uses). 

Between these "thoughts", the decision to screw over developers who want to use non-proprietary Apple tools, and bizarre comments like "If you want porn, get an Android phone", I do wonder if Steve Jobs has finally jumped the shark.

[DisturbedPervert]

He's never open about it being mostly a revenue decision.  He might vaguely or cryptically state that flash is not in Apple's interests, but that is always overshadowed by how horrible he thinks Flash is for performance, etc.

From an article I read the other day flash will soon be as fast, or almost as so, on Apple as on the PC.  The problem before was they didn't have proper access to make it so.

[Ed Anger]

In news that Beeb will like, I'll likely get an iPad 2 as I'm going to try to move somewhat away from using traditional computers.

Dammit.

[Barrister]

In news that Beeb will like, I'll likely get an iPad 2 as I'm going to try to move somewhat away from using traditional computers.

Dammit.

You'd think I'd like that news, but Apple specifically told me I don't get a commission on any languish sales.

They also told me to stay 10km from Cupertino, California at all times, but that's a different matter.

[Ed Anger]

In news that Beeb will like, I'll likely get an iPad 2 as I'm going to try to move somewhat away from using traditional computers.

Dammit.

You'd think I'd like that news, but Apple specifically told me I don't get a commission on any languish sales.

They also told me to stay 10km from Cupertino, California at all times, but that's a different matter.

Steve does need the cash for a new liver.

[DontSayBanana]

Steve does need the cash for a new liver.

Dammit, the way this thread has gone, there's only one thing I can possibly contribute:

ELIAN!!!

[Liep]

iTunes died on me today, claiming my computer lacks memory and therefor is unable to save the library. A message about this pops up every 2 seconds.

Winamp is the future!

[Barrister]

Maybe you're just out of memory?

Wife had a similar warning - turns out harddrive was completely full.

[Liep]

Maybe you're just out of memory?

Wife had a similar warning - turns out harddrive was completely full.

About 300gb left, so can't be that. But I found out how to transfer files to the iphone without itunes so Apple software is dead to me now.

[ulmont]

Hungary's new constitution is being drafted on Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iPad, Jozsef Szajer, a ruling party lawmaker in the European Parliament, said in a blog post.

Steve Jobs will surely be happy when he gets word that Hungary's new constitution is being written on an iPad, actually my iPad," Szajer said in a post, adding that it was the first constitution in the world to be written on the device. "The best is I don't have to wait for minutes to turn it on, like with a normal laptop. I can open it anywhere and can take advantage of every minute. It's a miracle!"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-04/hungary-first-to-write-a-constitution-on-ipad-lawmaker-says.html

[Barrister]

I did see an iPad used in court the other day.  It did seem like it would be a much slicker way to bring electronic notes with you - rather than carry 100s of pages, and rather than have a big laptop with a screen blocking you, a nice inobtrusive iPad holds all of your notes.