Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

"What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web."

Adobe, you are not the web. Your apps are not the web. And if anyone chooses to make a device that consumers can choose to use, they are free to not have your commercial software on it.

Adobe, a few years ago you yourselves refused to release parts of your "Creative Suite" for the Mac. You refused to maintain feature parity across platforms. I was free to create how I liked, as long as I liked Windows. When you did that, my designer employees needed to switch their computers to Windows to offer certain features customers wanted. We resented you taking away our freedom, and we didn't forget.

Adobe, today you are arguing to take away my freedom to use a device that doesn't include your commercial product, Flash. I chose that device because it supports installable HTML5 apps I can build with notepad. A child in Africa can build apps for my iPhone using a text terminal. I don't want that child to have to buy Creative Suite for a price measured in thousands of dollars.

Adobe, you saying this is about freedom and choice is just like the recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) milk producers arguing that their milk must be sold in organic markets. The organic market is free to not stock your milk, and I'm free to shop at a market that makes that choice. Anyone who disagrees can shop at the many more markets, and buy the many more brands of milk, that agree with you.

Adobe, stop dictating that to be free, I must choose Adobe.

(accidentally upmodded you)

You seem to be saying that by offering people the ability to view flash content, Adobe is forcing people to view Flash content. They're not the same thing.

If I want to view Flash on my smartphone today, I can buy... Well, if I want to view Flash on my smartphone later this year, I'll buy an Android phone. I will have that freedom of choice.

Adobe's handwaving is confusing people. Analysts report more Android phones are getting sold than iPhones. There is choice.

Your remark fails to consider the Whole Foods Market example. Whole Foods should be free to manage their own brand and inventory. Nobody should force Whole Foods to offer milk made using rBGH, regardless of whether offering it means people have to buy it.

Whole Foods milk is a disingenuous comparison. There is a fundamental difference in the product and the ethics involved by using hormones. A more proper comparison would be saying something along the lines of "Ranchers can only have worn jeans when working on the farm and in the processing plant -- no khakis or anything else." One can produce organic milk wearing whatever they want -- the end product is still the same. One can produce quality applications with various tools -- the end product is still good.

If Apple has a problem with the quality of the applications then it should reject them from the store. It simply doesn't compare to making a fundamentally different product.

On the contrary, I deliberately selected this example because the farmers using hormones to mass produce milk fast have successfully lobbied to force the organic milk farmers to label their organic milk saying "There's no proof the hormone milk is bad."

It's the same argument here.

The hormones accelerate milk production, like the cross-platform dev tools, and the end result is claimed to be the same, like you just claimed. Defensiveness about production methods and indistinguishable product still don't mean Whole Foods has to stock milk made that way.

Except there are verifiable differences in the product of hormone augmented, traditionally industrialized milk and the organic milk Whole Foods stocks. There are legitimate ethical arguments about environmental impacts and the treatment of animals between both systems.

There are not legitimate ethical arguments against someone coding something in python and porting it over to another environment. Without investigating the company in question, one could not determine what a piece of software was originally written in.

Even if something is technically legal or not worth pursuing in court, it still doesn't mean a company isn't acting uncouthly.

> Well, if I want to view Flash on my smartphone later this year, I'll buy an Android phone. I will have that freedom of choice.

Android, right now today, gives you the choice to turn Flash off if you don't like it.

Not having software available at all on an OS platform isn't choice. A supermarket is not an OS platform, but to continue abusing the analogy, Whole Foods bananas refusing to work in the same meal as Tesco milk would be Strange and Wrong.

> Not having software available at all on an OS platform isn't choice.

You choose the OS platform. And if this is the argument, why aren't people complaining that Windows doesn't run OSX apps, or that the PS3 doesn't run Xbox 360 games?

I think reasonable people understand the platform is the place they make a choice.

> A supermarket is not an OS platform, but to continue abusing the analogy, Whole Foods bananas refusing to work in the same meal as Tesco milk would be Strange and Wrong.

A supermarket absolutely is a platform, an architecture and framework for food distribution, distinguished from competing platforms by philosophy, branding, and positioning.

We're talking about the goods a store offers for sale, and the store's right to decide what goods to carry. We've established that production methodology is a widely accepted criterion for a store carrying or rejecting a good. The platform determines the goods offered, and the consumer chooses the platform.

> You choose the OS platform. And if this is the argument, why aren't people complaining that Windows doesn't run OSX apps, or that the PS3 doesn't run Xbox 360 games?

If someone had a great OS X app they'd ported to Windows, and Microsoft refused to run it, yes indeed, I'd be furious.

I think you're actually the first genuine troll I've met on HackerNews. Feel free to continue posting by this is the last time I'm responding to your posts.

But your're ok with the child in Africa having to buy an expensive Mac?

They don't have to, that's my point.

An HTML5 app is a set of text files with a manifest (also text). It installs on the iPhone from a web site, then runs on the iPhone offline, complete with local data storage.

Apps that install on the iPhone (including PacMan) can be made on the OLPC laptop, no Mac or Windows needed.

http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/257187093/pie-guy

It installs on the iPhone from a web site, then runs on the iPhone offline, complete with local data storage.

Have I missed something: does this capability currently exist on the iPhone? Or this just wishful thinking?

Currently exists. Has for quite a while now.

Check out that link. Extract:

... There’s no easier way to get an app than by installing it right from its website - that’s right, easier than the App Store. One tap and you’re set. Because it’s a web app, see. Not one of those where you need to be online either - once you add Pie Guy to your home screen, it’ll run even when you’re not connected to the Internet. And of course, your game will be saved to a local database. Read on...

Here's an example tutorial targeting web developers:

http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/

Thanks, that looks very nice.

I feel a bit stupid now. But I'm also wondering how I've managed to remain completely ignorant of this alternative for deploying apps to the iPhone, when I try to follow this stuff pretty closely...

I think the extended soap opera about App Store riches, unfair refusals, Section 3.3.1, etc. has managed to eclipse this deployment possibility. It's a shame, really. Everyone (incl. Apple) might be better off if the issue were less polarised.

Yes, the iPhone supports client-side SQLite databases, accessible from JavaScript, and it has the ability to cache web resources, so that they can be used without network access (again, from JavaScript, you can tell whether you have a network available, and change application behaviour accordingly). Those are both from open standards.

Web sites can also declare themselves to be "web apps", in which case the user can link them to the phone's home screen, and they can look just like native apps, with splash screens on startup; even hiding the usual safari navigation if you want.

A child in Africa can build apps for my iPhone using a text terminal.

Sic...

What, you don't think kids in Africa should be able to write software that runs on the iPhone?

I learned to program as a child in Africa. What's your point?

A child in Africa can also build Flash apps in a text editor using mxmlc, the free Flex SDK compiler.

The argument I quoted is a complete non sequitur in this context, because most people would associate "building iPhone apps" with "all you need is $99/year and Mac with Xcode" rather than "a text editor and a server".

It's not a complete non sequitur. The example was intentional because "most people" need to be reminded that $99/year and a Mac and Xcode is not needed to build apps that install to an iPhone.

Also, text editor != compiler. No compiler is needed for an HTML5 app. An HTML5 app can be built using notepad, edlin, or vi.

You're right. I didn't know that the HTML 5 offline app installation possibility exists on the iPhone.

(It's not just a matter of reminding people -- this may need to be explained right from the basics in order to educate developers. I don't think I'm the only one who has assumed that Xcode + $99 + App Store is the only way to get an icon on the iPhone OS home screen...!)

Sorry about the low-content reply.

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