Collateral

Some of you may have seen the news that Apple has changed in TOS for iPhone OS developers, some of you may not. In a nutshell, the change means that Adobe’s plans to provide a way for Flash developers to compile and run their Flash projects on the iPhone, and distribute them through the App store have been stopped dead in their tracks. 

The Adobe community is understandably up in arms about the change. They feel cheated, and rightly so. They were promised something new, exciting and most importantly, profitable, only to have it snatched away at the last minute. Although in my opinion they’re blaming the wrong team. This isn’t Apple’s fault, it’s Adobes. 

Why Adobe thought it could announce and release this sort of functionality without even speaking to Apple begs belief. Apple and Adobe speak all the time, mainly so Adobe can ignore Apple’s software and hardware updates, but they speak none the less. So there’s no excuse for things to have gotten to this point…. unless of course it’s exactly what Adobe wanted to happen. Which it totally is. 

Back in reality world: Adobe knew this would happen. Apple have been clear from the word go about Flash on the iPhone; ‘Not gonna happen’. Adobe also know that any future updates to the iPhone OS could (and probably would) break any apps developed in Flash CS5. At this point Apple have to wait for Adobe to bring their own platform up to speed, which as they’ve demonstrated time and again in the past is not something they’re really all that into doing. So Adobe suddenly gain control of Apples development timeline which would be a cluster-fuck doomsday scenario of the highest order. In geek terms at least. Most other people probably wouldn’t even notice.

Adobe also know that end users don’t know and don’t care what language was used to create their iPhone fart apps or iPhone flash light apps so when apps created in Flash CS5 start crashing and generally screwing up the end user experience it’s Apple that takes the flack, not Adobe. 

Adobe have behaved in a way that (from my point of view at least) is irresponsible, unprofessional and shows utter contempt for their own user base. It is Adobe that promised something it knew it would not deliver and it is Adobe encouraging it’s user base to rally against Apple in what can only be described as a smear campaign. This is PR of the lowest order that uses Adobe’s customers as pawns in a game of chess they know they wont win. Although it will at least do some token damage to Apple’s image which I guess Adobe thinks is like, totally worth it. 

So allow me to misquote Lee Brimelow, one of Adobe’s platform evangelists by signing off like this… “Go screw yourself Adobe.”

The Infinite Loop

Do you remember when Apple was the first and last name in personal computing? Probably not, but that’s how it used to be. And then Microsoft happened and the rest is history.

But here we are at the arse-hole end of the naughties and Apple have taken the lead in the smartphone market. You could argue that the iPhone was the first ever true smart phone, since all alleged smart phones before it clearly had learning difficulties, verging on retarded. And while Windows Mobile is the kind of operating system geeks install on their friends handsets as some sort of cruel prank, Google’s Android seems like a real life viable contender (I don’t count the Pre because I’m not an idiot).

So, it seems Apple might have found itself right back where it started. It’s got the iPhone, and every other hardware manufacturer and software powerhouse want their own iPhone. Just like back in the good old days of the Apple Lisa, llc and the original Mac.

Motorolla and Google could be the IBM and Microsoft of our time with the Droid handset and Android operating system.

I can’t help but feel that Apple could be poised to go through the exact same story all over again. Although to be fair, they’re old hats at this now, so the odds are in their favor.

More Adobe Suckiness

While I’m on a rant against Adobe and Flash, I figure I may as well comment on Adobe’s latest shenanigans in which they try to drum up dissent against Apple for not allowing Flash on the iPhone. Engadget has the details. The comments are full of idiots literally defecating in their own pants in a fits of rage over not being able to use Flash on their iPhone.

Now, as far as I know, there’s no phone out there that runs Flash. There’s a couple that run Flash Lite, but that’s a completely different beast and nothing like Flash on the desktop at all. It’s literally just an interface layer and simply can not handle the kind of flash content you get on the web. But I don’t think anyone really cares about that. They just want to stamp and scream and shout until they get what they want. No matter how stupid it is.

I was over the moon when I found out Flash wouldn’t work on the iPhone, and I almost wet myself with glee when Apple repeatedly told Adobe to go forth and multiply every time they whinged and cried like little girls because they weren’t invited to the party. And here’s why.

Flash runs like crap on a Mac. If you own a Mac, open up Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) then go to any Flash powered website (BBC iPlayer or Hulu should do the trick) and watch the Flash player start to eat up all your CPU cycles. If you’re on a Mac Book of any sort, you might want to make sure you don’t have it resting on your lap as it’s about to get crazy hot down there as Flash literally sodomizes your hardware.

The point to take note of here is that there’s nothing wrong with your Mac. It’s working just fine. It’s doing everything the Flash player tells it to do. It’s just that Flash is telling it to do a lot of stupid shit. And that’s the problem. Flash is simply a bad product. Adobe know this, they made it, they know as well as anyone how it runs on a Mac, but they just don’t care. It also runs like a dog on a Windows machine too, but they apparently put some extra special magic in there to screw over OS X users.

And the fun doesn’t stop at the CPU. The very nature of Flash and Flash powered projects makes them prone to memory leaks, which will gobble up RAM with gay abandon. It’s also worth mentioning at this point that the iPhone doesn’t support Java either for pretty much the same reasons… but then who cares about Java these days?

If Flash were to make it onto the iPhone, it would be the same bug filled resource hog that it is on the desktop, and in turn it will eat your battery and crash repeatedly. It has no place on an iPhone. It has no place anywhere.

And what do we need Flash for anyway? Currenlty, it’s used to serve up Video, Audio or Banner Ads. Yeah yeah, you can make entire websites with it too, but there’s a reason Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Ffffound, Quantcast, and the vast majority of the rest of the top 100 websites don’t use flash. Because it sucks at websites, it sucks at web standards and it sucks at accessibility.

But Mobile Safari (the iPhones web browser) does support HTML 5, which comes complete with the Audio and Video tags. And it supports H.264 video, which is vastly superior to Flash video. So all you’re left with is a shit load of advertising that depends on Flash. Pffft, no big loss there then.

On top of all that, Mobile Safari also supports the totally boss awesome Canvas tag, which kicks the crap out of Flash in my opinion. In fact, I would not be surprised if at some point in the near future Apple released a Canvas Tag framework to completely replace Flash, which would not only be great for the iPhone, it would be great for the web as a whole.

Oh, and there’s always Cocoa Touch, which um… well, it’s not even fair to compare the two. Seriously, Flash doesn’t even come close.

But anyway, the point is, Flash is really really bad. You don’t want it on your iPhone. You don’t want it on any phone. You don’t even want it on your desktop computer. I know, I work with it. I build those crappy Flash websites. I’m a black belt in Actionscript. And I’m telling you, you’re better off without it. It’s what I tell people that offer me money to use Flash, that’s how bad it is.

But for those people that still think their lives would be better with Flash on the iPhone, I’ll sum it up thusly; Be careful what you wish for, you fucking idiots.

iPhones & Accessibility

Apple has created this video detailing how the visually impaired can use an iPhone. They’ve been the gold standard in this area for a long time, but their work on the iPhone, a one button, icon powered interface, demonstrates just how serious they are about it.

Make sure you see what they’ve done with Safari.