Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash.
 

Good.

fascinating!!

Some people criticize Apple for their treatment of the OpenSource and Open standards communities. Interesting to see them ragging on someone else.

My personal take is that Adobe is getting a bit fossilized. For example, getting a trial version of Acrobat--and then buying it---was a convoluted exercise.

And there's still no Linux Acroread for 64-bit systems....

I don't necessarily care for Apple, but I can see the advantage of Apple ragging on Flash. I'm not a fan of Flash either, and Jobs DOES raise good points.

Remember: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", but in this case, temporarily. :D

Sometimes it does pay to be treacherous, and why not? Jobs has done the same thing. Using OSS when it suits him, then stabbing it in the back, so why not do the same here?

I beg to differ:

This is for Debian Testing amd64.

HTML5's claim of need no plugins is a total smokescreen. The standard failed to specify a video codec. Apple seek to take advantage of this by pushing for H.264, which they hold some patents over, to become the de-facto standard for video on the web. Apple intend to do this by restricting what formats will play in the iPhone's browser - websites that want their videos to be seen on iPhones and iPads have to use the format dictated by Apple. As ever, Free Software gets shafted.

And Apple have gone much further than attacking Flash - they've said "thou shalt not choose thine development tools". They've opened up the mines and created a goldrush, only to suddenly confiscate everyone's jackhammers.

Ultimately, Apple are doing something I think is unbecoming of them - they're not doing what the customer wants - for either the end-user or the software developer as the 'customer'. If your goal is to be popular, you need to do what people want. Ultimately, that's going to backfire. iPhone with no Flash support, or competing smartphone with as good a user interface and Flash support - which would you choose.

And this is telling.Reading between the lines here: Apple doesn't want to have cross-platform apps on its systems. Apple wants to keep everything exclusive. They've got a big lead in the smartphone market, and now in the most shameless fashion they want to use that monopoly to gain more monopolies. It's the kind of behaviour I'd expect from MS, not from Apple. They don't want people playing Flash games in the iPhone browser, because that doesn't give Apple any revenue - Apple wants to make the only games through the App Store, from which Apple does get revenue (30% of any selling cost, plus what developers have to "pay to play").

And the iPhone is one of the most closed systems allowed. Free Software on the iPhone cannot exist. These days, Microsoft behaves better towards Free Software than Apple.

I've never been a fan of OSX technically, but my opinion of Apple is now at an extreme low. I'm not sure who I dislike more - them or Sony.

/rant

Where in there does it tell me that it is a 64-bit version of acroread? I have 9.3.1 installed and it required that I install the 32-bit libraries (the "lib32 group in Arch parlance).

My last foray into Googlespace (maybe a month ago) said that a 64-bit acroread was still in some pre-release stage.

Sony.

I agree with a lot of points in that article, but the funny thing is thet they are pushing an Open Standards web and a proprietary codec for Web use at the same time.

Apologies pixellany,

It would appear i spoke too soon:

It's a 32 bit package that depends on ia32-libs.
I'll shut up now ;).

Yeah, that seems to be the logical conclusion.

It happens that I am about six months into a complete rewrite/rehost of an application of mine that I started in 1992 and sell commercially. The rewrite is motivated because the framework in which the original system is written is thoroughly obsolete.

I'm rewriting into a new multi-platform environment (SIMPOL) which presently is somewhat immature but which is logically the technological successor to the old environment. Presently, my rewritten package runs in both Windows and Linux, and I had hoped to support OS-X and iPhone/iPad also (I will be supporting Nokia cellphones and cellphones based on Linux).

However, seems like maybe Jobs doesn't want me to do that.

After reading that particular paragraph in Jobs' statement, I contacted the SIMPOL developers (we talk all the time anyway) and asked what they thought about it. The response, in part: "The fact is, we don't envisage running on Apple's iPhone or iPad, partly because of the attitude of Apple (if a developer can't make use of a
feature but doesn't need it in their app, so what?)." He then went on to say that in SIMPOL the underlying API is available so it isn't relevant to them, but the point is that Apple has a pretty unpleasant attitude.

Another point to consider is this: If we lose the Network Neutrality fight, and the telcos manage to get control of the content of the pipes as they are presently trying to do, then in the worst case we could see the internet morph into a business model that resembles the cellphone business model. That would make lots of $$$ for all the telcos and media companies, and would rape the rest of the world.

Who wants Acroread anyway?

Why not Okular, Evince, etc.?

Not me.
If you look at my first post you'll see i don't have it installed.

This is complete and utter nonsense. I'm sorry but this is just a weak attempt to make apple not look like the money grubbing company they are. The one and only reason flash does not work on the iphone / ipad is because 99% of paid for apps that run on the damn thing can be done in flash on a web page. This is of course not to say that he does not make good points and that the whole thing is untrue, but the reasons behind them not supporting it is just a bucket load of BS that no one should believe. That said flash does pretty well suck and there needs to be an alternative.

There is a problem with the alternative: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...upport-806139/