Jobs posts open letter about Flash position.
- Thread starter Data Holmes
- Start date
When Ogg stops sucking and gets hardware decoding support, then we'll talk. Until that day, H.264 is the only viable option.
I know one of the guys working on that. Expect significant improvements soon. (I don't know what sort specifically.)
However, Mozilla made him an offer that must have been pretty good to pull him from the company I work for, and he has GPU programming experience, so....
He may not have a job for long... Seems that Theora is looking at a lawsuit if the latest Jobs email response is true:
http://www.9to5mac.com/Jobs-codecs-ogg-theora-3409376
Jobs is full of shit. Theora is covered by patents, however the company that holds them issued an irrevocable, perpetual royalty-free license for all implementations.
It makes sense that he would say that, though, since Apple is part of the H.264 patent pool. It's not like Apple supports H.264 out of a kindly motivation to standardize video so as not to fracture the Web; they have a monetary interest in its success. The patents covering H.264 don't fully expire until 2028.
Theora was originally "recommended" in the HTML5 spec. Not required--just recommended. Apple threw a shit fit and got it removed.
Apple is all for standardization--as long as the standard is theirs and there is money to be made.
I'd love to know what patents Jobs is referring to. Pretty classy, making a vague reference to a secret patent pool designed to destroy open source codec implementations.
It makes sense that he would say that, though, since Apple is part of the H.264 patent pool. It's not like Apple supports H.264 out of a kindly motivation to standardize video so as not to fracture the Web; they have a monetary interest in its success. The patents covering H.264 don't fully expire until 2028.
Theora was originally "recommended" in the HTML5 spec. Not required--just recommended. Apple threw a shit fit and got it removed.
Apple is all for standardization--as long as the standard is theirs and there is money to be made.
I'd love to know what patents Jobs is referring to. Pretty classy, making a vague reference to a secret patent pool designed to destroy open source codec implementations.
See, this is another example of FUD... Apple fought hard to keep MPEG4 from having fees on streaming video using that codec (which also includes Apple IP) that MPEG LA wanted to impose back in 2002.
But of course that is something that you would conveniently forget.
It would be nice if you would stop letting your irrational hatred of Apple cloud your ability to gather facts... which is what I'm assuming is happening because the alternative is that you are knowingly disseminating misinformation, and I'd rather not believe that of you.
I don't like Microsoft (and for very good, solid reasons based on direct interaction with them), but I neither make up stuff nor do I foam at the mouth when talking about them (as you have on more than one occasion when talking about Apple or Jobs). If this was an ODF vs OOXML debate, I could tell you a thing or two about how a big corporation can really screw over standardization efforts (for file formats whose importance to the world make video codecs seem trivial), because Microsoft makes Apple look like an amateur at this (specially when Apple isn't really the one pulling the strings you are pointing to).
It is a pretty screwed up brush that you keep trying to paint Apple with, and I'd like to know why you are the one holding it.
And drop the hypocrisy here. If you can hold your nose and use Microsoft's products, and they make Apple (at it's VERY worst) look like Mother Theresa, then the very least you can do is dial back the FUD around here. Because the indignation you keep displaying is coming off as hollow.
_________
Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
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Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
The way I hear it, Apple and Nokia are the primary opposition to including Ogg Theora in HTML5.
And anyone for Ogg Theora is by definition the good guys and anyone for something else is evil?Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
The way I hear it, Apple and Nokia are the primary opposition to including Ogg Theora in HTML5.
Boy... that seems pretty extreme.
I've heard that Apple has been promoting iPhones over other mobile devices as well... those cads!
It is amazing... three years ago when the iPhone was announced people in the know said it was going to flop and dismissed it. And now that it is popular, it is evil.
Apple makes a self contained platform (hardware and software) which users and developers are invited to use. No one is force to use iPhones, no one is forced to develop for iPhones, the iPhone OS is not supplanting other mobile operating systems on other devices, and Apple isn't forcing other devices out of the market.
They made something that people want to use... and that makes them evil? They don't want the environment they've made polluted... and that makes them evil?
Adobe has worked long and hard to not let anyone pollute PDF. Sun had worked long and hard (and even won a suit against Microsoft) to not let anyone pollute Java. Apple is not the first to attempt to protect it's environment from people who claim to be adding enhancements.
There is a long history to all this and Apple has seen all of it, and is acting now to prevent it. I think that Adobe's license for the use of the PDF specification is a model for this type of thing, and has protected PDF quite well from those who would pollute it.
But if that is how you guys want to classify evil, then you guys have some really bizarre standards.
I found it petty,condescending and baseless. Especially, as there's only one mobile platform that has encouraged porn sites to develop mobile versions of their media, and it starts with an "i."
I would also point out that the underlying foundations of the iPhone's application environment has been open since 1993 (when NeXT/Sun published the OpenStep Specifications), and if the Android platform wanted to, it could have built it's application environment based on GNUstep, which would make it much easier for developers to make cross-platform apps.
Just a thought.
Except, Android has been in the works as long as iPhone OS. They really didn't have time to analyze an OS had not yet been released. So, what they did was choose a platform that would allow apps to be easily ported from the dominant mobile platform at the time, java 2 mobile edition.
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And anyone for Ogg Theora is by definition the good guys and anyone for something else is evil?Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
The way I hear it, Apple and Nokia are the primary opposition to including Ogg Theora in HTML5.
No, H.264 has some legitimate functionality advantages over Theora at the moment, it makes sense to support it. But pushing for exclusive support of H.264 to the exclusion of a royalty-free option is definitely taking a step towards the dark side.
Apple is trying to kill the (for now) less capable but royalty-free option in favor of the one that gets them money.
That's not the same situation at all. Embrace and extend is a known problem, and doing everything possible to suppress it is just fine. But that isn't the situation here. HTML5 can support multiple video formats; it's part of the spec. The browser is supposed to just pick the first supported encoding that's present and play it. However, Apple----and apparently Microsoft too, given recent IE news----are trying to distort that to make it so only H.264 is supported, and it must therefore become the de facto HTML5 video format.
There's no technical merit to many of Apple's decisions lately. I'm not familiar with their specific platform, but I'm a programmer; I know how these things work in general terms. Steve Jobs' recent letter on the matter said all the wrong things. I'd been hoping he would have a reasonable, comprehensible explanation for Apples' latest moves, but he didn't convince me of anything, just said some empty stuff about "open" and "closed" which came off as just a bit hypocritical. He tries to argue that letting developers grow to rely on tools instead of writing native code will stifle their ability to add new features, but there's plenty of precedent to say that's not true. Look at GPUs: new hardware features are added with each new generation of cards, but OpenGL drivers are released to support the new capabilities within months, and a new DirectX version shows up within a year or two as well. The system isn't stifled if the paradigm is carefully chosen to begin with. Or how about C++? From Jobs' arguments, you'd think that the limitations of a particular IDE were limitations on the language, and that therefore all C++ programmers should be writing in emacs. (Okay.....bad example. They probably should.)
But you know what the worst part is? I grew up on Macs. They've been in my family since 1989. I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro. I *like* OSX a hell of a lot more than Windows, and I want to like Apple as a company.
But they're making it very difficult. And if they can't convince me they're doing things for the right reasons, I have no idea how they expect to convince anyone else.
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Apple does not set the royalties on H.264... that is totally up to MPEG LA.
And a standard is a standard by not having tons of options. It is designed that way so that people know what they are getting before they get it. It is why it is important to fight for what you want in a standard while the standard is being written rather than waiting until after the standard is finalized.
But in the end, Apple doesn't have final say over H.264... and it is very much like if I blame you for every moderator decision made at TrekBBS just because you are a moderator around here.
First of all, I was talking about the iPhone OS, not HTML5. Apple can lobby all they want about HTML5 (and so can you, and I, and anyone else for that matter), in the end it is up to W3C as to what finally becomes HTML5.
This is the most bizarre paragraph I've read in weeks!
Is this a joke? Are you joking?
Tell me this is a joke!
If you are a programmer, and you work with Macs, then you should know that there is no easier programming tools ON THE PLANET than Xcode.
It was 30 years ahead of it's time 15 years ago when I wrote my first application on a NeXTstation. I did it in 24 hours with no prior experience, and after that believed that programming was easy! Then I had the unfortunate wakeup call when I bought Metrowerks CodeWarrior for my Mac and found out what programming outside of the NeXT environment really was like.
So why in the world would people need other programming tools when there is Xcode? Xcode today has everything that Project Builder and Interface Builder had in NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, Rhapsody, WebObjects and Mac OS X since 1988, and of course it has been free with Mac OS X since 2001.
But if you've been on a Mac since 1989, then you should know by now that most of the stability issues on Macs before Mac OS X came from extensions installed with applications (which isn't that different from the DLL issues faced on Windows). Apple didn't provide programming tools for the Mac and let third party companies make them and it eventually created a ton of issues, which (of course) the users always blamed on Apple.
But part of the reason that there are so many apps for the iPhone is that everyone and their mother can write them using Xcode. It is that easy. And it is NOTHING like programmers having to write C++ in emacs!
What those other programming tools end up doing is adding an abstraction layer between the developers and Apple's APIs because they aren't making native iPhone OS apps. It isn't that different than the Java runtime environment on most PC operating systems, and it isn't that different from the OpenStep runtime environment (which later became part of WebObjects) for running apps on Windows, HP-UX and Solaris. The idea is write once, run everywhere. On a computer with enough horse power, you can get away with that without many drawbacks. On a mobile device, that will degrade it's performance. That is the type of pollution I'm talking about.
Remember, Mac users blamed Apple (not application developers) for the poor stability of the previous Mac OS... do you really think iPhone users are going to not blame Apple again if their iPhones start acting odd? Apple learned it's lesson and it stopping this before it starts.
As a programmer, Jobs' letter should have been crystal clear to you. As a programmer, what I just wrote should have been crystal clear to you. These are issues that have hurt Apple in the past and sure as hell can hurt Apple in the future.
And how can you not know about Xcode?
I mean this is the same environment that Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser (WorldWideWeb.app) in 20 years ago.
Is this a joke? Are you joking?
Tell me this is a joke!
If you are a programmer, and you work with Macs, then you should know that there is no easier programming tools ON THE PLANET than Xcode.
No, absolutely not. In most areas Apple products outshine Microsoft, but Visual Studio is more polished than XCode in many ways.
I could go into lots of details and examples, but let me put it this way: it took me two days to figure out how to link an external library into my build. I was stuck with debug configuration for all that time since it used ZeroLink and figured it out, but I couldn't build optimized.
I checked every setting, every option, and couldn't find any "list libraries to link against here" field. Eventually I realized I had to just drag-and-drop the thing into the project window to make it work......which I guess kinda makes sense, but really ought to be a way of setting the field, rather than instead of having a field. For those of us who are used to command-line thinking. It also didn't throw a meaningful error when I accidentally tried to add a library built with the wrong settings that it couldn't link against....just kept up its "unresolved external symbol" messages no matter what I did.
Then there's the debugger. I have no idea why, but half the time when I try to debug something it ignores my breakpoints completely. Usually I end up having to close XCode and re-open it to make it work. And the expression evaluator is hidden away in a non-stay-on-top window deep in some menu, and requires way too many clicks to see anything useful. Honestly, occasionally I throw up my hands and just pull up the terminal so I can use gdb directly.
I will give them props for including good STL debugging support in recent versions. That's still missing from most IDEs for some reason.
I'll also acknowledge that I don't use many of the tools XCode makes available because they aren't relevant to my style of programming. When making a GUI I prefer to code the widget relationships myself rather than letting some drag-and-drop tool do it, for instances. But then, I don't use the equivalent tools in VS, either.
Maybe, if I had the time and motivation to sit down and study XCode in depth in a stress-free context, eg, not facing a deadline, I'd come to understand and appreciate its philosophies more. But when I've got a project due and I've spent an hour trying to get the damn thing to do something that I could have done in 30 seconds on the command line, it gets frustrating.
Now, if Apple wants to impress the hell out of me with XCode, they can-----all they have to do is add a feature which allows you to click on any sort of "not found" error (file, symbol, function, etc) and then click on the location where you *think* the thing is, and have the compiler spit out a probable reason why it isn't thinking the same way you are. That would be pretty doable with a very basic expert system, I think, and it would go a long way towards restoring my confidence in XCode. It may require tighter integration with gcc than it has now, though.
If we're talking about virtual machines like .NET and the JVM, that's an entirely different story. Yes, I can see how Apple wouldn't want such things. My understanding, though, was that Apple is against any kind of intermediate representation----not only at runtime, but also during the compile process. That's the part which I find bizarre.
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Still, moving from tools you are used to to tools you are not is not the same (even if it feels the same) as writing out the code by hand in emacs.
I can understand that people are most productive in the tools their most used to. Work flow is very important. But there are some jobs that require both different tools and different work flows.
I look at it this way... I don't speak French. I'm not good at languages and so will most likely never speak French. Now, I could live in France without speaking French, but something tells me that I wouldn't be as welcome in the French community only speaking English as I would if I could also speak French.
That is different than if I went to live in Canada... where it is understood that some people are English speakers even in areas that are predominately French speaking.
For an app to be a good citizen on an iPhone OS device, they have to understand that these are not computers (desktops/laptops), these are devices with limited resources and every app has to try to be optimized for that environment.
And now that Apple is opening up multitasking, the importance of this has grown significantly.
The key thing here on Apple's part is that they are trying to be proactive... learn from the industry's history of mistakes, and try not to make the same ones over again. Apple has a little more control because they make both the hardware and the operating system... but after years of experience with Macs, they learned that that still leaves a lot of openings for problems... and the iPhone OS based devices have even less tolerances for those than Macs.
For better or worse, Apple has decided that they can't afford to let developers color too far outside the lines in this environment.
I suppose if you think of the iPad as an embedded processor, the limitations become more reasonable. On the other hand, embedded processors are hard to program effectively. So there needs to be a balance between ease-of-development and hardware-specific targeted coding.
This is gonna take a while...
Of course Apple fought MPEG-4 royalties. MPEG-4 is based on QuickTime, after all. Apple can make more money selling their QuickTime software if there aren't onerous royalties for every MP4 video.
I didn't forget.
I will get to this later, but in short, I don't like Apple influencing Web standards. They can do whatever they want with their own platforms, but when they start using their financial interest in a video codec to influence Web standards--at the expense of technologies they don't have a financial interest in--I have to say something.
ODF is a clusterfuck and you'll get no argument from me on that. It's also not a W3C standard. Office document standards have been fragmented for years. It would be nice to see a solution to that problem, but I won't hold my breath.
I'm sure we could write several books on Microsoft's attempts to control the Web. Bundling IE, supporting only a broken, MS-specific subset of the HTML standard, having their own flavor of JavaScript, etc. I never claimed they're guiltless, however the rise of standards-compliant browsers has taken a big chunk out of their market share, and they've realized complying with standards is a Good Thing.
I don't want Apple setting Web standards that are in their financial interest, point blank. The Web is supposed to be an open environment. Please, point me to any other W3C-approved standard that involves patented technology, and was inserted into said standard by the companies with a vested interest in those patents.
Your refrain is always "Microsoft is so much worse!" Yeah, Microsoft sucks. They've also utterly failed at taking control of the Web.
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.[/QUOTE]
Apple is still part of the patent pool, and easily one of the most vocal companies in pushing HTML5--specifically its support for H.264 video.
Yeah, MPEG-LA actually handles the licensing, but come on. That organization works at the behest of the patent holders whose technologies they license. You know, like Apple.
You're comparing apples to oranges here. PDF was never a W3C standard. Neither is Java. Apple can protect their environment all they want. Trying to extend that environment to include the Web as a whole, though? No dice.
You speak as though Apple and the other IP holders have no sway over MPEG-LA, which is absurd. Once again, Apple is one of the biggest proponents of H.264.
Oh, come on. Should Web browsers only support one image format? Because that's essentially what you're advocating. The <video> tag could just as well support multiple codecs. Apple--and Microsoft!--fought to get Theora removed from the standard. It doesn't hurt Microsoft or Apple at all to have another video codec supported in HTML5, but they both have their own browsers and operating systems to sell, so creating a Web standard that cannot be implemented without paying royalties is clearly designed to kill the free/open-source competition.
They don't have "final say" but they have substantial influence. They were also leading the fight to remove Theora from the HTML5 spec. Why are you conflating the two? I never said Apple "controls" H.264, but they have been very active in getting H.264 put in as the only codec HTML5 will support. I can't condone that.
H.264 was picked because of its wide industry support. I don't think anyone disputes that. However, there's no reason additional codecs could not be supported, except that interested parties don't want them to be supported.
Jobs' threats against Theora are just really low, too. If you like, I can blame MPEG-LA just as much, for being sleazy bastards, but it's not like Apple isn't happy to go along with it--Jobs' letter demonstrates that amply.
Of course Apple fought MPEG-4 royalties. MPEG-4 is based on QuickTime, after all. Apple can make more money selling their QuickTime software if there aren't onerous royalties for every MP4 video.
I didn't forget.
I will get to this later, but in short, I don't like Apple influencing Web standards. They can do whatever they want with their own platforms, but when they start using their financial interest in a video codec to influence Web standards--at the expense of technologies they don't have a financial interest in--I have to say something.
ODF is a clusterfuck and you'll get no argument from me on that. It's also not a W3C standard. Office document standards have been fragmented for years. It would be nice to see a solution to that problem, but I won't hold my breath.
I'm sure we could write several books on Microsoft's attempts to control the Web. Bundling IE, supporting only a broken, MS-specific subset of the HTML standard, having their own flavor of JavaScript, etc. I never claimed they're guiltless, however the rise of standards-compliant browsers has taken a big chunk out of their market share, and they've realized complying with standards is a Good Thing.
I don't want Apple setting Web standards that are in their financial interest, point blank. The Web is supposed to be an open environment. Please, point me to any other W3C-approved standard that involves patented technology, and was inserted into said standard by the companies with a vested interest in those patents.
And drop the hypocrisy here. If you can hold your nose and use Microsoft's products, and they make Apple (at it's VERY worst) look like Mother Theresa, then the very least you can do is dial back the FUD around here. Because the indignation you keep displaying is coming off as hollow.
Your refrain is always "Microsoft is so much worse!" Yeah, Microsoft sucks. They've also utterly failed at taking control of the Web.
Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
[/QUOTE]Apple is still part of the patent pool, and easily one of the most vocal companies in pushing HTML5--specifically its support for H.264 video.
Yeah, MPEG-LA actually handles the licensing, but come on. That organization works at the behest of the patent holders whose technologies they license. You know, like Apple.
And anyone for Ogg Theora is by definition the good guys and anyone for something else is evil?Specially if you don't cross check the facts thrown around in threads like these...
To listen to Robert you wouldn't know that MPEG LA even existed the way he pins their decisions on Apple.
The way I hear it, Apple and Nokia are the primary opposition to including Ogg Theora in HTML5.
Boy... that seems pretty extreme.
I've heard that Apple has been promoting iPhones over other mobile devices as well... those cads!
It is amazing... three years ago when the iPhone was announced people in the know said it was going to flop and dismissed it. And now that it is popular, it is evil.
Apple makes a self contained platform (hardware and software) which users and developers are invited to use. No one is force to use iPhones, no one is forced to develop for iPhones, the iPhone OS is not supplanting other mobile operating systems on other devices, and Apple isn't forcing other devices out of the market.
They made something that people want to use... and that makes them evil? They don't want the environment they've made polluted... and that makes them evil?
Adobe has worked long and hard to not let anyone pollute PDF. Sun had worked long and hard (and even won a suit against Microsoft) to not let anyone pollute Java. Apple is not the first to attempt to protect it's environment from people who claim to be adding enhancements.
There is a long history to all this and Apple has seen all of it, and is acting now to prevent it. I think that Adobe's license for the use of the PDF specification is a model for this type of thing, and has protected PDF quite well from those who would pollute it.
But if that is how you guys want to classify evil, then you guys have some really bizarre standards.
You're comparing apples to oranges here. PDF was never a W3C standard. Neither is Java. Apple can protect their environment all they want. Trying to extend that environment to include the Web as a whole, though? No dice.
You speak as though Apple and the other IP holders have no sway over MPEG-LA, which is absurd. Once again, Apple is one of the biggest proponents of H.264.
Oh, come on. Should Web browsers only support one image format? Because that's essentially what you're advocating. The <video> tag could just as well support multiple codecs. Apple--and Microsoft!--fought to get Theora removed from the standard. It doesn't hurt Microsoft or Apple at all to have another video codec supported in HTML5, but they both have their own browsers and operating systems to sell, so creating a Web standard that cannot be implemented without paying royalties is clearly designed to kill the free/open-source competition.
They don't have "final say" but they have substantial influence. They were also leading the fight to remove Theora from the HTML5 spec. Why are you conflating the two? I never said Apple "controls" H.264, but they have been very active in getting H.264 put in as the only codec HTML5 will support. I can't condone that.
First of all, I was talking about the iPhone OS, not HTML5. Apple can lobby all they want about HTML5 (and so can you, and I, and anyone else for that matter), in the end it is up to W3C as to what finally becomes HTML5.[/quote]
H.264 was picked because of its wide industry support. I don't think anyone disputes that. However, there's no reason additional codecs could not be supported, except that interested parties don't want them to be supported.
Jobs' threats against Theora are just really low, too. If you like, I can blame MPEG-LA just as much, for being sleazy bastards, but it's not like Apple isn't happy to go along with it--Jobs' letter demonstrates that amply.
Why?
FUD
Apple only sells activated features in QuickTime Player, all the codecs are included in the player, which is free, and all those codecs are available to other applications for free. And as I recall. Apple also provided their QuickTime streaming server software for free back in 1999 as well.
Apple makes it's money selling hardware. All of Apple's software is geared towards helping sell Apple's hardware. That is their business model. Apple gives away Safari, QuickTime and iTunes for free in hopes of people using them eventually buying Apple hardware.
Then... (wait for it)... why are you willing to use Microsoft products?
Microsoft had their hands in both HTML3 and HTML4 in an effort to under cut Netscape... and Apple is doing far less than they did in this case.
Are you sure about that?
You mean like XML, XTML and HTML? Do you believe that those are patent-free?
And patent holders like Microsoft?
As I recall, Microsoft holds more patents within H.264 than Apple does. So Microsoft would have more to gain than Apple... if H.264 is a money maker based on fees.
But as it doesn't work that way, neither company actually gains in that way.
And I wasn't talking about HTML5, I was talking about the iPhone OS application and development environment.
Both of you and Lindley skip past the break between the third and forth paragraph in my text as if it isn't even there. I am very deliberate in everything I write... so you guys should watch for things like that (and be aware that I don't post unless I know what I'm talking about).
But not the biggest contributor, and they only gain by being able to make hardware that makes H.264 content play great.
Remember, Apple's motivations are always hardware driven. They can optimize for H.264 (and have already started).
More FUD.
Are you under the delusion that no other video format will be allowed in HTML5? That if H.264 is picked, none of the other options will work?
Either you don't understand what is happening here, or you are purposely trying to scare people.
If H.264 is adopted, everything else will still work just like it works today. Video today is covered by plug-ins... video tomorrow will be covered by plug-ins (other than whatever video format W3C picks, which will have to be built into HTML5 compliant browsers). HTML5 will support multiple formats, but all the others will need plug-ins just like they do now.
Are you unaware of this? Or are you attempting to make this look worse than it is?
You are blaming Apple while ignoring Microsoft's part in all this, so it is hard for me to tell if you are misinformed or have an agenda here.
Same FUD as before...
H.264 would only be required to be built into HTML5 compliant browsers, there is no exclusion of other formats.
And what threats are you talking about? Who has threatened anyone?
That is (again) an inflammatory word... and much of what you say is both inflammatory and wrong.
If you are wrong by an honest mistake (and there is a lot of misinformation going around), I can understand that. But the inflammatory wording you constantly use against Apple extends far beyond this issue and this thread. I'm asking you to dial it back so we can keep our discussion civil.
Dislike whatever you want, but irrational hatred is a bad place to start technical discussions.
This is completely ridiculous; comparing non-native tools on the iPhone to Java is totally incorrect. The tools in question that are now banned from being used to develop iPhone Apps, including the upcoming new version of Flash, MonoTouch, Unity3D, Corona, etc, output native iPhone code. There is no runtime environment, no abstraction layer, and no intrinsic performance degradation other then the programmer writing shitty code, which of course is perfectly possible using native tools. There are some reasons why developers like these tools and if you'd actually care to find out why, you should go back and read the first article I posted in reply to you earlier. You know, instead of dismissing it out of hand because one of the premiere tech websites is apparently a "talking head" if they don't agree with you. Something Ars pointed out was that in the demo of iPhone OS4 one of the apps they demonstrated was actually developed with one of these 3rd party environments; if it's good enough for Jobs to demo on stage how can it be "polluting" the environment because of its horrible code?
Furthermore, this argument continues to make no sense because Apple already has arbitrary control over app rejection. If an app performs poorly, they can reject it. If the app is just a stupid app, they can reject it. If it's porn, they can reject it. They can already reject apps because they don't conform with whatever user experience directives they have; what benefit is there then to denying apps that run well but are made with 3rd party development tools? Why should anyone care what an app is created with if it runs well and efficiently? As it turns out, they shouldn't... unless their motives include trying to extend their control out to their competitor's platforms, which is exactly what Apple is trying to do.
This entire endeavor is about control. Control over not just the App Store, but over as much of the market as they can manage to grab. The very purpose of the change to their licensee agreement is to discourage developers from making cross platform apps; because Apple's store is making the most money right now it puts pressure on developers to target their store first and smaller devs might not be able to afford to create and manage multiple ports in such an environment... hence hurting Android, WM7, WebOS, etc.
And in related news... http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_buvCWcJdjFoLD5vBSkguGO
As for irrational hatred, I don't see any hatred here. I see people pointing out facts and reasonable opinions and you dismissing it out of hand because apparently you equate criticism of Apple with "hatred" which is a very unproductive mode of thought. Personally, I certainly don't hate Apple, I own some of their products and like a lot of the stuff that they've done. That doesn't mean that I or anyone else can't be critical of their decisions and it's unfortunate that you seem to think being critical is the same as hate.
You've already said that you aren't one of the people who knows what they're talking about, which is why you have to quote and link... so there is no point discussing what you don't know and aren't willing to learn well enough to discuss on your own.
So skipping that pointless first part...
I do, but lets be specific in what I'm talking about (and sadly, it shows up on both sides)...
"I believe they've kicked other cross-platform apps out of the App Store for crimes as grievous as, for instance, having an Android version."
"When Ogg stops sucking..."
"Jobs is full of shit."
"Apple threw a shit fit and got it removed."
"I remember when Apple was the good guys and Microsoft was the evil empire."
"Jobs' threats against Theora are just really low, too."
"If you like, I can blame MPEG-LA just as much, for being sleazy bastards"
The need to use such language in a technical discussion shows that the person is basing their posts on emotions. When people take an emotional stand on things they are less likely to look at the technical details. "When Ogg stops sucking..."
"Jobs is full of shit."
"Apple threw a shit fit and got it removed."
"I remember when Apple was the good guys and Microsoft was the evil empire."
"Jobs' threats against Theora are just really low, too."
"If you like, I can blame MPEG-LA just as much, for being sleazy bastards"
Although I am showing a form of bias here as well, as I'll listen to people even if they get emotional over people who have to have others talk for them. So if it seems like I'm more willing to engage people like Robert then yourself, that is why.
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