What ? Adobe Flash for iPhone OS is an open platform ?
Mike Chambers of Adobe does sound a bit like a spin doctor when he talks about Adobe Flash Professional CS5 support for the iPhone OS platform. Sure, Flash is open in the same way a closed door is open if you use a very large sledgehammer. And the DRM part of Flash is probably just as sensitive as the DRM part of Adobe PDF. So when Adobe talks about open sourcing their "99 percent of web browsers" platform it is basically that, just talk. AIR and Flex are open because the primary dependency is Flash itself. And really, if Flash is that open to begin with then why is Flash video support in JavaFX shipping as a download-only Web Start extension and why is Videolan almost entirely made up of non-American developers ? As noble as Adobe may sound, the reality is that the American patent system is ****** **.
Apple wants people to use Apple API's. In the same way Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle and SAP wants people to use theirs. When Apple talked down the importance of Java this was a huge signal flag going up where Apple is telling the world "we want to create vendor lock-in too". Just like Microsoft, Adobe, Google, IBM, Oracle and SAP. Microsoft rewrote Java from scratch with C#. Adobe did the same thing with Actionscript and then started telling everyone how they can support C++. Google created Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, Native Client and App Engine while claiming to be open and platform neutral. And IBM, Oracle and SAP are established job titles for developers because of the lock-in effect.
This is all about API control and HTML5 is totally irrelevant because it does not give you any control. Apple is feeling cornered by aggressive technologies like Microsoft Silverlight (MonoTouch), Adobe Flash and Google Android (Java clone) and watches on as Zynga and Playfish redefine the marked for online social gaming. Apple is afraid that their platform will be watered down by copycats and poorly supported cross-platform technologies. Sun Microsystems created the most widely used server side software platform on the planet. And then Oracle, IBM and SAP took over the marked that Sun Microsystems defined. Because Sun Microsystems thought hardware profits were enough to survive. And today they are the property of Oracle.
Apple basically wants more Apple developers. So when the $199 Google Chrome OS tablet comes along the $629 Apple iPad is still a good deal. Sun Microsystems focused too much on hardware and Apple does not want to make the same mistake. Apple is creating a software foundation for the future where content owners are getting paid and not the monetizing slash copyright infringement by proxy industry. Because high quality content is what sells Apple hardware in the first place. Jobs as a person was defined by Pixar, Next and Apple. And he simply believes Apple needs more developers. Because people buy Xbox 360's and PlayStation 3 machines because many software developers support them. People focus on the word "platform" when the real focus should be on "store". And this is the only reason why Apple gets away with this kind of legal nonsense. Because developers get paid.
If the iPhone OS platform was as open as Android, Symbian and J2ME then would anyone make any real money ? And free ad-supported software in a store is basically just parasitic behavior from the store owners perspective. Shelf space costs money. And this is why Apple is clamping down on advertising networks. $99 a year only works if lots of people choose to sell their wares.
What is funny about this whole thing is that Apple is basically telling developers to use the GCC pipeline instead of proprietary, vendor and language specific, compilers. Actionscript is vendor lock-in. C# is vendor lock-in. Android Dalvik Java is vendor lock-in. But GCC is not really vendor lock-in. But modern Objective C is very much a Mac OS X and iPhone OS lock-in.
Personally I just think Apple is tired of being the also-supported platform when they rake in billions of dollars in profits. Only ExxonMobil (XOM) and Microsoft (MSFT) are bigger players.
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