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From the department of “This is why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone”
Adobe is warning of a “critical” vulnerability in its Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat software, installed on almost all PCs, which it says is already being exploited by hackers and which “could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system”.
All platforms - Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris - are vulnerable.
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Smackdown
This afternoon, the Daily Telegraph’s Matt Warman posted 10 Reasons not to buy Apple’s new iPhone 4G. Putting aside the fact that the title sets up a piece based around a product that Warman has neither seen nor tried, it’s a veritable pile of shite aiming more at flamebaiting Apple fanboys than offering any meaningful criticism of the current iPhone’s feature set.
Matthew Kempster posted a blow-by-blow addendum to the post (which I’d recommend you read), however the more I read the stupidity from the Telegraph, the more I feel I ought to add something.
It’s anti-technology: When the iPhone launched it was cutting edge – now as other manufacturers announce, for instance, that you can use their phones as shareable wifi hot spots, Apple says no.
Apple hasn’t said no to shareable hotspots: hell, Warman hasn’t actually cited an Apple rep saying they’ll not add this to the iPhone OS. It’s just that, as it happens, it’s not something Apple have announced. At least, not yet. Pointing out the iPhone OS’ weaknesses less than a week before Apple’s WWDC keynote (where the final feature set of the next iPhone release is likely to be announced) seems disingenuous. If, next week Apple doesn’t announce something like this, I’m entirely happy to bash the iPhone for lacking this functionality.
No Flash: The iPhone, the phone that promised to put the web into everybody’s pockets, can’t even show you most of it, because it can’t handle Flash graphics. Google Android can, in the latest version (OS 2.2), and it’s going to be available free on a lot of budget tariffs
If you want a beta, sure. But let’s not forget it’s not so much “Android can get Flash” as “Certain recent Android handsets, capable of running OS 2.2 can” - and since when was “most of [the web]” Flash? If memory serves me right, most of the web is accessible on the iPhone - amazingly because it’s not written in Flash. This HTML thing: have you heard of it?
No Multitasking Tried instant messaging on an iPhone? Oh yes, you have to open the app to see if you’ve got a message. Genius. If Apple announces multitasking next it will be an improvement – but there’ll be no apology for the way it’s treated customers in the past, and no guarantee it won’t behave similarly shoddily in the future.
In clarifying this point, Warman says he’s trying to point out that Apple’s taken its pretty time in bringing multitasking to the device. It’s hard not to agree that multitasking is long overdue on the iPhone. However, with it working so well on Android (ahem), I’m happy to let Apple take its time and - much like copy and paste - do it right from the get-go. If Warman had chosen any other flaw in iPhone OS - such as the previously-mentioned WiFi hotspot functionality - he’d have a point. But to take a misjudged pot-shot at a feature that Apple have announced just makes the piece appear poorly researched.
Its battery life is terrible: This isn’t a problem unique to Apple, but look at phones by companies such as HTC – multitasking, better cameras, better screens, all draining their batteries far more – and yet the iPhone, with its undemanding technology, still only offers equal performance.
Ignoring the fact that this hypothetical device isn’t even out yet, this new phone apparently has terrible battery life. That’s insight, right there. There’s also the small point that he’s comparing the year-old iPhone 3GS (based on the 3G, now 2 years old) with the latest HTC hardware. Next week the iPhone hardware is fair-game.
Developing apps for it is costing you money: The special version of the BBC iPlayer, of Natwest Phone Banking, of Eon’s meter reader – developing all of these came out of money that could have been channelled away from a self-important minority and towards more generally useful ideas.
News flash: things cost money to build. Much like Web sites (mobile or otherwise) I guess. Warman’s complaint isn’t that you’re buying the apps (thankfully). But his same argument could be made for the Android or webOS platform (particularly where marketshares are less than the iPhone).
All-in, there’s a couple of potentially valid criticisms thrown in with a plethora of obscure points that struggle to give any credibility to an exceptionally tenuous piece. Hell, it’s so flawed there’s only one possible answer to why it’s published: provocative flamebait. Warman’s explanation for the flamebait is equally tenuous:
I have a professional interest in being provocative without being ignorant.
Clearly not a particular keen interest, then.
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➶ Adobe®: We Love Choice
The $600 Flash authoring tool is the only way to produce Flash applications.
The free Mac OS X Developer tools (that require an $800+ Mac computer) are the only way to produce iPhone and iPad applications.
Both systems are as closed as each other.
Adobe claims Flash is open.
Apple makes no such claims. If you want to make iPhone or iPad apps you use Mac OS and Xcode, take it or leave it.
If you choose to leave it the alternative is HTML. A truly open platform for which authoring is as simple as editing text. There’s many HTML rendering engine implementations, the best few are totally open source with Apple being the major contributor to the best one, WebKit.
Adobe: not open, claim to be.
Apple: not open, don’t claim to be, contribute heavily to that which is truly open.
Spot on, via Gruber
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How screwed would we be if the WebKit team weren’t so god damn competent?
Joe Hewitt, The State Of Web Development Ripped Apart In 25 Tweets By One Man (via webkitbits) -
Our very alert regulators were apparently on a smoking break when the banking industry started to collapse. But they’re back now! Time to roll up their sleeves and decide whether the company with the 16 percent share of the smartphone market and five percent share of the mobile phone market is misusing its monopoly power!
The Macalope hits the nail on the head about Adobe’s anti-trust complaint to the FTC. -
[Apple is] a big company, and it’s now wildly successful. It assumes that it can write a successful software product in any niche. It’s very talented and very confident. But always, at the back of its collective mind, is fear — the fear of depending on the kindness and competence of others, and the fearful memory of the days when it was cowering in a dark closet, waiting for the blow to fall, while the trade press laughed and jeered.
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![Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen is trying to stir up some FUD about OS X being the cause of Flash’s crashes.
Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes [Mac OS X applications], that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system.”
The above screenshot should be considered me calling bullshit on that statement.
For the curious: that’s from an actual crash log from my Mac (late last year 2008 before installing ClickToFlash). All 511 lines of the crashing thread in that log are from Flash.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l1nne47z1m1qz4skao1_500.png)
Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen is trying to stir up some FUD about OS X being the cause of Flash’s crashes.
Mr. Narayan says if Adobe crashes [Mac OS X applications], that actually has something “to do with the Apple operating system.”
The above screenshot should be considered me calling bullshit on that statement.
For the curious: that’s from an actual crash log from my Mac (late
last year2008 before installing ClickToFlash). All 511 lines of the crashing thread in that log are from Flash. -
Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
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Weird that Steve posted Thoughts on Flash at Apple.com instead of his normal blog, daringfireball.net.
Dustin Curtis, via Twitter -
Wow, really Adobe Flash Player installer? - Chris Messina documents the latest fail from Adobe, requiring the Finder to be quit (?!) before you can install Flash.
© Nik Fletcher 2010 ~ Contact
