

What ? Adobe Flash for iPhone OS is an open platform ? - jp
http://labs.teppefall.com/2010/04/what_adobe_flash_for_iphone_os.html

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archgrove
Direct quote from Mike Chambers: "Because this is Flash, it is rather trivial
to port games created with Flash that target the iPhone to target other
operating systems, such as Android."

Which pretty much sums up the entire reason for 3.3.1. Did they serious expect
that, going in with this offering, they'd get no pushback from Apple? It's
been abundantly clear from day one that the iPhone store is a closed platform,
subject to the business ideals of Apple (i.e. make Apple more money). Any sane
iPhone developer knew this going in, and really doesn't care (or they'd never
have started).

I suspect the correct way to view the iPhone store is not "A horribly closed
environment compared to e.g. Windows/the Web", but "A largely open market
compared to the PS3/Wii etc". Closed platforms have existed for eons without
the world ending, and they'll continue to exist in the future. The real
novelty with the iPhone is it sits in the middle - neither open nor closed.
People are freaking out trying to shoehorn it into one camp or the other, when
it's just not possible.

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tvon
> _Which pretty much sums up the entire reason for 3.3.1._

Apple isn't so much concerned with people porting iPhone apps to other
platforms as they are apps targeting a lowest common denominator feature set,
or targeting a meta-platform feature set instead of the iPhone SDK feature
set.

I just semi-ranted about this on reddit, but my best example at the moment
relates to the "XBOX Live" features coming for games in iPhone OS 4. What
motivation would Adobe have to Adopt these features in CS5? How long would it
take Adobe to adopt these features (if at all)? What if Adobe instead wanted
to create their own "XBOX Live" system? Apple would be at the whim of the
business interest of the meta-platform, much like they are with Flash on OSX.

After all, Flash devs are going to stay Flash devs, they're not going to port
everything to Obj-C just to get one or two features on one platform they're
deploying on, they're going to stick with what their meta-platform provides.
Apple knows this and they don't want to be stuck the hoping meta-platform
want's to move at the same pace they do.

Thats what Apple is talking about when they say these cross-platform apps
suck, and if you look at the big ones out there for the desktop (eg, Eclipse,
Firefox), they're right, those apps don't take advantage of the OSX features
(CoreData, CoreAnimation, GrandCentral), they take advantage of the meta-
platform features.

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mlongo
Couldn't agree more.

That is exactly the situation that Apple wants to head off. Apple wants iPhone
and iPad applications to fully integrate with the infrastructure they are
providing such as fast task switching, social gaming and iAd.

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cscotta
This post is pretty heavy on rant and mudslinging against a variety of
unrelated platforms.

The author forgets that GCC / the GNU toolchain alone is not sufficient to
package, sign, and distribute a .ipa - instead, the developer is bound to
Xcode, signing certificates, and the whims of the App Store approval process.

By declaring ActionScript, C#, and Java (all of which have open compilers and
virtual machines) "vendor lock-in", the author glosses over the fact that the
iPhone OS toolchain is not an open one, in fact, arguably more restricted than
all of the above. Make no mistake - I'm not arguing that any of the above are
"open" platforms, or that open platforms necessarily make for a better product
ecosystem. But I would like to offer a correction to the article's imbalance.

Anyway, I wasn't getting my hopes up. The dream of "write once, deploy
anywhere" software is generally one that disappoints.

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jiaaro
I don't know about you... but I was able to run my javascript application,
"hello world", on lots of platforms with very little modification ;)

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donaq
That's not really a good example. "Hello world" programs written in most
languages run pretty much on every platform where a compiler/interpreter
exists for it.

~~~
jiaaro
haha I was just being facetious

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k33n
Did anyone else WTF when the author claimed that Chrome, Chrome OS and Android
weren't open platforms?

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jsz0
There's a good argument to be made that Android isn't as open & free as it
should be since Google gave so much control to carriers & handset makers. For
example AT&T Android devices with restricted access to third party
applications or wifi tethering apps being removed from the Market upon
carrier's request.

~~~
dagw
That's not an argument that Android isn't open, just that there exists
hardware running Android that isn't open. There exists carriers and hardware
where that isn't a problem.

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buster
I just searched the article in question for the term "open" and couldn't find
the quote that states that Flash itself is an open platform.

What Mike Chambers tries to say, is that he believes open platforms (android,
etc.) will succeed over the closed ones.

Also he might mean that Flash and Air are tools that are open to other
platforms: "The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser,
platform and device development.".

Personally, i haven't looked at Flash for several years, but developing for
Air sounds intriguing, targeting Desktop OS' (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) and
most mobile operating systems at once. I will at least take a look at Adobe
Air.

Edit: The article says that all major companies Apple, Google, MS, Adobe try
to lock in customers. One thing i find positive about Adobe nowadays is, that
it seems to be the only Company to bring different platforms together. Except
for HTML/JS, i don't know how i would write apps/games for the variety of
platforms. xmlvm.org comes to my mind, too. A shame that even this project
won't be allowed on the iPhone (i guess).

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jeremymims
Adobe's market cap is around $18 billion. Apple's is around $235 billion with
$40 billion in cash on hand. There must be a few good reasons, but I'd really
like to know why Apple hasn't bought Adobe yet.

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vetinari
They haven't bought them, because your numbers are wrong. Apple's entire
current assets are 33 bilion; their cash & equivalent is 7,5 bilion.

In other words, you are almost order of magnitude off.

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fh
Do you have a source? Because 40 billion is the number I've seen quoted most
often, for example here:
[http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/a...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2010/01/almost_40_billi.html)

~~~
vetinari
Apple's Balance sheet:

[http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Finan...](http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/FinancialIndustrial.jsp?tkr=AAPl&period=qtr)

or

[http://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=nasdaq:aapl](http://www.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&q=nasdaq:aapl)

(click on Balance Sheet tab, cannot link directly).

The figures I quoted were for 2009/12. There are now for 2010/03, with cash &
equivalent 10 bil and current assets 32 bil.

Total assets are 57 bil, current liabilities 12, total liabilities 17. Equity
is 39.3 bil, but equity is not the same as "cash in the bank".

Apple is well-managed company on the financial side, but let's not get ahead
of ourselves and apply reality distortion field to business side too.

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tomh-
Flash on IPhone is a closed platform on top of a closed platform :)

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alanthonyc
Pretty good article, terrible color scheme.

I'm glad for this (to which I'm currently addicted):
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

