[frabjous]

Originally Posted by scottjl

my point is, why should apple care about adobe running flash on their platform any more than apple care about windows applications running on their platform?

Why should they care about having a web browser on their platform? Why should they care about having an ebook reader on their platform? Obviously, because they want to make a device that their consumers can use to access the content they want to access. If their web browser, for example, only supported. jpgs and not .pngs, people would complain. This is similar.

And we're not talking about them simply "not caring". I'm sure there are all sorts of apps they allow but they don't personally care about; if they're not the ones making the apps. We're talking about them actively trying to kill a certain form of content. Adobe is not asking Apple to make flash for them. They're just asking for the ability to distribute an app that they make. Many of their consumers want to make use of that.

apple != adobe. apple != microsoft. adobe flash is a parasite that runs on many platforms at the whim of that platform's creators.

Such claims just show you to be an ideologue. Flash may not be optimal in all sorts of measures, and certainly there alternatives that may be better in the long run, but to call it a parasite, when the vast majority of flash apps work perfectly well all the time, is just ridiculous.

It's just false to say that it's up to the "whim of the platform creators". Microsoft didn't have to *do* anything to make it the case that flash ran on their platforms. Adobe did. Apple wouldn't have to do anything to allow flash to run on their platform. The only difference in this case is that the iPad is so closed that nothing can be installed without their say-so.

apple chose not to allow flash. adobe can cry foul all they want (or publish "i love advertisements" as they just recently did) but at the end of the day, the iPad is apple's platform to do with as they see fit. it's not mine. it's not yours and it certainly isn't adobe's.

Perhaps I'm confused about what this thread is about. We're not here discussing whose decision it was. We're discussing whose decision it should be, and what the best decision is. And on that score, it should be the consumer's decision, and the best decision is the one each customer makes.

I'm not saying that Apple can't make that decision. I'm saying that they made the wrong one. You points are all completely and utterly irrelevant to that discussion.

It's as if a friend gambled all their money away, and I said that was a bad thing to do, and you responded by saying that it was their money to spend. I wasn't saying it wasn't their money to spend. I'm saying they spent it poorly.

microsoft wrote silverlight, they could pull the plug on flash at any time and you think they haven't considered it? just look at the ie 9 h.264 announcement. that was a light warning shot to adobe, "don't screw with us or we can pull an Apple too."

You seem to be confused about what the issues are. h.264 and flash are not competing technologies. Adobe has nothing against h.264, and I don't think they have anything to fear from IE9 using h.264.

the ipad doesn't meet your needs. don't buy one. buy a device that does meet your needs. encourage and reward the company that does create the product that does meet your needs. sitting around crying that the ipad doesn't meet your needs isn't going to change it to make it so.

I have already discussed ways in which Apple's policies affect me even if I don't own their products. Saying the same thing over and over again in a way that doesn't address these concerns is not furthering the discussion.

You seem to be taking a very odd attitude about this thread. You began this topic so we could discuss Apple's flash policy. But then you complain when people complain. This is a discussion board. It is for discussing. What did you intend the discussion to be like? A bunch of people saying how wonderful Steve Jobs is and how we'd be lost without his infinite wisdom? Where is it more appropriate to complain about the lack of flash support than in a thread on fighting flash?

And complaining about these things IS the way they get changed. It's the reason, for example, that Microsoft's attempts to kill xhtml failed, and even IE9 will support its native mimetype. These were complaints by content providers, not by end users.

Personally, however, Apple's policy wouldn't bother me so much if they had done even a semi-adequate job implementing HTML5. But since the implementation of HTML5 in Safari on the iPad is so poor, we are left with nothing in place of flash. That disappoints me, yes.