[jokell82]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Wrong conclusion.

Internet Explorer 9 will natively support h.264.

Firefox is dead.

Firefox's position on which codec they support is dead. They need to get on board with h.264 so that we can actually have a standard.

But Firefox is not dead.

[Dork.]

To me, this looks more like Apple's decision to can all the legacy ports and use USB on the first iMac. Apple was well aware that customers relied on ADB (and I think they got rid of SCSI at the same time, am I remembering correctly?), but they looked at the PC world, where USB was starting to become ubiquitous and really was the better solution, but since everyone still relied on their serial and parallel peripherals, the market for USB peripherals never really took off. Steve threw down the gauntlet and basically said "Our customers will hate us right now for taking away the legacy ports, but down the road they'll love us for it". And he was right, since the rest of the industry followed suit, and now nobody bats an eye at a low-cost PC with only USB for peripheral connectivity..

To me (who knows just enough about software development to fsck it up badly), Flash seems like those old peripherals, which no one was really happy with but everyone used anyway because they didn't trust the newer technologies yet. Steve is betting that people will trust them more if his little i[Pad|Pod|Phone] products force them to use the newer stuff more, and he wants to pull the rest of the industry with him.

As long as Steve is running Apple, Apple will take these actions that aim to steer the market or create a new market rather than appeal to the market that already exists. He is usually correct, which sucks for the folks on the other side of that.

[Spheric Harlot]

The difference between this and USB is that $69 bought you a serial-USB or ADB-USB adapter.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I'm no print guy, but from what I gather:

That is quite the caveat. Very well.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Before InDesign came out, Quark users went through a HEFTY dry patch of utterly crappy user support

Not really. Some people were whining, but because they had to pay money for user support, apparently. How egregious!! Pay for support!? -- Who calls user support anyway? Printing technicians?, not designers. That's for sure. Though say this to yourself aloud: people hated Quark because of bad user support.

It doesn't even make sense, because only a fraction of users ever contact user support.

BTW a "HEFTY dry patch of utterly crappy user support" indicates that there was a substantial amount of time where users couldn't get bad user support. i.e A dry patch of bad support.

Moving on.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

and ever-more-bloated mess of a monster with complex and expensive upgrade requirements.

Wait. UNTIL there was InDesign, Quark XPress was ever-more-bloated mess of a monster? That's a good one!

First, have you ever seen InDesign? It is the paradigm of bloated monsters, even in its first iteration. It was slow, it was buggy. It was a fail, which was bugfixed more or less in version 2 (paid app btw) but ID was and is immensely bloated.

Quark XPress never felt very bloated, in fact much whining was because Quark didn't release a new version for an unusually long time in the early 90s. That actually was the source of much wailing.

XPress never became any sort of a bloated monster, it has always been and still is a very slim application - which makes it very fast on otherwise slow computers. For instance Quark XPress 8 runs fine on my old iBook G4. The screen is too small to use, but the app runs fast enough.

On the same iBook InDesign CS3 crawls and is basically unusable. Now which one is bloated? QXP was never bloated and certainly isn't today. It's a magnitude faster than InDesign. Not bad for an app that you've "gathered" so much about. Despite not being in print yourself.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

The company changed leadership twice IIRC, and it wasn't until the last change that Quark finally began realizing that they had CUSTOMERS, not victims, and treating them as such.

Yes, I reckon they did change leadership at least once. Other than that I don't see where you get your victims.. ? Quark sells a layout app. The best in the business because it's fast, stable and reliable. In fact, those things were never a criticism - though there's always that one user who always has app X crash on him - but rather that people didn't get the 'tech support' they wanted.

If we are to engage in hyperbole, then Adobe's attitude to it's customers is the one of a plantation owner to his slaves. Or a king to his serfs. Just keep on paying Adobe the CS tax every year for no gain whatsoever and we'll call it a business relationship.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

People defected from Quark in droves not because they were whiny Adobe fanboys,

InDesign was easier to pirate. It also came bundled in the CS. But all in all, InDesign was easier to pirate.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

but because the Quark infrastructure SUCKED,

You're using a lot of loaded words, hyperbole and all-round crazytalk about a subject you admittedly don't know anything about. Strong words for a person who doesn't know what he is talking about, right?

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by 'infrastructure'. At the the company HQ? In the app? Well, not in the app at least. That was always fast and stable.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

and InDesign came along as the nimble new kid on the block that did 90% of what they needed, natively on OS X, without the cruft, and without the politics.

Holy revisionism Batman! That was amazing!

1. InDesign nible? It has been praised with many things, but being nimble is not one of them. It's sort of like swimming in Jell-O unless it's on a workstation. - While Quark XPress runs just as fast on a Mac-mini as it does on the latest MacPro.

2. The OS X *native* version of Quark XPress was released in 2003, shortly after ID2 but then the last non-native version of XPress worked perfectly in Classic. OS X compatibility was never an issue - because maybe you don't know this, but in the printing business change happens very slowly. People wait a year before upgrading.

3. You keep harping on that XPress was or is badly coded, which is false.. and then there is politics?

Pardon me, but what.. are you talking about? Did Quark run for office and I missed it?

I'm talking about a computer app here, a tool. If the tool works and it works well as XPress does, then I can't imagine the 'politics' that would make me think twice about buying it.

In the broadest sense, does anyone like Adobe politics? To attempt to force Apple's hand to allow their proprietary Flash platform to be used for app development on the iPhone?

Anyone like Microsoft politics? Etc.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

It took Quark years to dig themselves out.

I seem to recall it took Apple a few years to dig themselves out. But Quark wasn't digging themselves out so much because they made a 'bad' product, but rather because Adobe used their leverage to strong-arm InDesign into the market.

And ID is way easier to pirate.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

NB: This was my take as a non-expert in that particular market.

Well it certainly isn't as black and white as you portray it nor is it this simple that Quark was evil and Adobe good.

Looking at Adobe today, you should see that quite clearly. Amusing the tenacity of the tale of bad Quark tech support. Amazing really, considering you'd have to be somewhat inept to need tech support on an app you actually take courses to learn and has immense amount of literature on it - both from design perspective and tech perspective.

It just goes to show that the reason Quark XPress is still around is that it is pretty damn good. Nothing else. The app you describe would have been obliterated as soon as there was *any* competition. But that didn't happen, instead there was a long drawn out marketing battle.

Did Adobe win it? Sort of, yes. The easily pirated ID which is bundled with pretty much all versions of CS anyway is common enough. Though serious designers use ID and Quark 50/50. So sort of not.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by starman 

That would break the paradigm of clicking a link because the user doesn't yet know what they're clicking is a link.

Tell that to Apple, that is the convention they came up with, and frankly it's better than leaving mouseovers out. Sometimes mouseovers trigger the display of menus and other content that needs to be visible in order to click on something.

[besson3c]

It does bother me that h.264 is pay-to-play. I honestly think that there *should* be an open codec that is widely supported in HTML5 in addition to h.264. Maybe the (future) solution is to encode the video in multiple formats? We wouldn't want to leave out any developer who wants to embed video from the web out of the picture just because they can't afford the funding for h.264.

If you were to make an h.264 player like Quicktime open so that people can play h.264 video by running it through a player such as Quicktime, that would also be a viable solution.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Tell that to Apple, that is the convention they came up with, and frankly it's better than leaving mouseovers out. Sometimes mouseovers trigger the display of menus and other content that needs to be visible in order to click on something.

Huh ?

Apple isn't promoting mouseovers, are they ?

At any rate, mouseovers translate horribly bad into a touch UI.

With a mouse, you can move around and explore the screen for potential mouse overs.
On a touch screen, you can not just touch and move the finger around. It would move the visible part of the canvas.

Having to tap once to activate mouseovers would be tedious. This would be like an easter egg hunt, trying to find where the possible mouseover would hide.

Bottom line: mouseover events need to be completely retought for touch UIs, and can not just used for mouse-based and touch-based UIs equally.

-t

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If you were to make an h.264 player like Quicktime open so that people can play h.264 video by running it through a player such as Quicktime, that would also be a viable solution.

QuickTime is "open" in that sense. Every developer can make use of it to play h.264 videos free of charge since Apple already paid for the licensing fees.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

We wouldn't want to leave out any developer who wants to embed video from the web out of the picture just because they can't afford the funding for h.264.

That's not how the license fee works.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It does bother me that h.264 is pay-to-play. I honestly think that there *should* be an open codec that is widely supported in HTML5 in addition to h.264. Maybe the (future) solution is to encode the video in multiple formats? We wouldn't want to leave out any developer who wants to embed video from the web out of the picture just because they can't afford the funding for h.264.

If you were to make an h.264 player like Quicktime open so that people can play h.264 video by running it through a player such as Quicktime, that would also be a viable solution.

It just doesn't bother everyone - in fact mp3s are still the de facto standard and it's just as proprietary as h.264 video.


Granted in the principle of the thing it would be wonderful if the codecs were free - as in no license fee free. However a modest fee seems to be quite fine as well and very likely h.264 will go the same way as mp3 when the time comes.

That is, for non-profit use it is free. For-profit use it costs a modest amount.

Call me a radical, but I think that's fair.

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Yeah, see unlike Adobe it turns out Quark doesn't suck. There were just a lot of loud Adobe fanbois whining in unison:

Well, as a designer (and owner of a design agency - back in the day) I can tell you that we switched to InDesign for several reasons. One being that Quark really was failing to do any of the things that we really wanted in a page layout app. For over a year we were basically laying out double page spreads in photoshop and using quark as a container and to place the text. With no sign of QXP getting an update any time soon we switched to InDesign. Also cost. Yes ID came with the rest of the CS suite but it was so so much cheaper than upgrading to a new version of Quark (whenever that was happening) that still didn't so what we wanted (this was v4 to 5 and then 6). We always found qxp from 5 onwards to be quite unstable compared to ID. It's only real saving grace was speed. Since we used PS and AI a lot the learning curve to ID was quite small.

Quite simply Quark took their eye off the ball and Adobe snuck in. It was only once Quark really started to bleed customers that Quark got even half good again and it;s taken until 8 to call it really competitive with ID.

Now Adobe find themselves in the same boat. Flash was pretty darn useful back in the day but now it's struggling as people find more appropriate technologies. Adobe really need to stop whining and fix flash so it runs lean and clean on both PC and Mac platforms. That's the only way it might survive.

Originally Posted by torsoboy 

He has some good points, but when it comes to the web, it should be up to the consumer what they choose to adopt or not adopt.

It is up to the consumer. They can buy whatever device they want.

If the consumer is fine with a Flash site, and they don't care about only watching 5 hours of video at a time, it should ultimately be up to them.

It should also be up to the consumer to complain to Adobe about the poor battery life on their iPad instead of Apple - but we all know who will take the blame.

It should also be up to the consumer to ask the web site developer to make sure their flash apps are touch-compatible. But we all know consumers will do nothing but complain.

Keeping flash off forces consumers to avoid flash-heavy sites, or it will force site developers to make better non-flash versions of their site.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

Well, as a designer (and owner of a design agency - back in the day) I can tell you that we switched to InDesign for several reasons. One being that Quark really was failing to do any of the things that we really wanted in a page layout app. For over a year we were basically laying out double page spreads in photoshop and using quark as a container and to place the text. With no sign of QXP getting an update any time soon we switched to InDesign. Also cost. Yes ID came with the rest of the CS suite but it was so so much cheaper than upgrading to a new version of Quark (whenever that was happening) that still didn't so what we wanted (this was v4 to 5 and then 6). We always found qxp from 5 onwards to be quite unstable compared to ID. It's only real saving grace was speed. Since we used PS and AI a lot the learning curve to ID was quite small.

Quite simply Quark took their eye off the ball and Adobe snuck in. It was only once Quark really started to bleed customers that Quark got even half good again and it;s taken until 8 to call it really competitive with ID.

Now Adobe find themselves in the same boat. Flash was pretty darn useful back in the day but now it's struggling as people find more appropriate technologies. Adobe really need to stop whining and fix flash so it runs lean and clean on both PC and Mac platforms. That's the only way it might survive.

Yes, I agree pretty much, except I never experienced any instability in QXP - granted I skipped version 5.. I was very happy with version 4. Though I distinctly remember reading on some forums that version 4 was crashing a lot. I never had that issue.

For me QXP 4 was stability incarnate. I used it until QXP 6 was released for OS X in 2003, so I skipped 5 and maybe that one was unstable, but I can't say when I remember XPress crashing last. I can tell you when Photoshop CS3 crashed last time, though it's over a month ago... so it's longer than that since QXP crashed.

Speed is no minor feature, and quite impressive that QXP 8 feels responsive and nimble on my 4 year old iMac at home! The learning curve is not much between QXP and ID, that's true - but I've never been a fan of all those floating palettes that Adobe likes so much. Everything contained in three palettes in QXP - and they've been simplified in version 8.

Yet everything is accessible from those three palettes. It's not a question of a learning curve for me, but rather that I prefer the simplicity of the UI and speed of QXP. It's worth the money and you don't have to pay every year, like at Adobe, so price is a relative thing.

But yes, in general I agree with you completely and I sort of understand why you made the switch to ID at the time, but I'm also very happy that I didn't.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Huh ?

Apple isn't promoting mouseovers, are they ?

At any rate, mouseovers translate horribly bad into a touch UI.

With a mouse, you can move around and explore the screen for potential mouse overs.
On a touch screen, you can not just touch and move the finger around. It would move the visible part of the canvas.

Having to tap once to activate mouseovers would be tedious. This would be like an easter egg hunt, trying to find where the possible mouseover would hide.

Bottom line: mouseover events need to be completely retought for touch UIs, and can not just used for mouse-based and touch-based UIs equally.

-t

Okay, correction...

Download the iPhone Simulator and you'll see that the iPad/iPhone does support mouseovers, but they are invoked on click. If you have cancel the click event in your Javascript (for links or other events that would otherwise cancel the mouseover) you can get your mouseover event and mouseover based dropdown menus to work.

Put it this way: mouseovers are invoked with clicks along with click events.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

QuickTime is "open" in that sense. Every developer can make use of it to play h.264 videos free of charge since Apple already paid for the licensing fees.

Except Quicktime itself is not open so that it can be ported to OSes other than OS X and Windows.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

That's not how the license fee works.

What am I missing?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

It just doesn't bother everyone - in fact mp3s are still the de facto standard and it's just as proprietary as h.264 video.


Granted in the principle of the thing it would be wonderful if the codecs were free - as in no license fee free. However a modest fee seems to be quite fine as well and very likely h.264 will go the same way as mp3 when the time comes.

That is, for non-profit use it is free. For-profit use it costs a modest amount.

Call me a radical, but I think that's fair.

That would be nice. This would allow adoption in various open source projects and perhaps projects such as ChromeOS (not that Google couldn't afford the fee regardless) and various phone OSes...

[OAW]

Originally Posted by Paco500 

I wish I had known about ClickToFlash years ago- thanks for the (unintentional?) tip! Best bit of free software I've downloaded in years!

I used to run more generic ad blocking software at first. Then I realized it wasn't the ads per se that were slowing my machine down ... it was Flash that was slowing my machine down (ads or otherwise). So I ditched the ad blocking software and went with ClickToFlash and life is good.

OAW

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by OAW 

I used to run more generic ad blocking software at first. Then I realized it wasn't the ads per se that were slowing my machine down ... it was Flash that was slowing my machine down (ads or otherwise). So I ditched the ad blocking software and went with ClickToFlash and life is good.

OAW

Agreed, can't praise ClickToFlash enough! It makes the internet ok again

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Funny how in only a month many people here have already flip flop their tune about Flash and Apple and jumped on the "flash is old" bandwagon. Hmmm.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Funny how in only a month many people here have already flip flop their tune about Flash and Apple and jumped on the "flash is old" bandwagon. Hmmm.

Perhaps, but the influence of Apple on technology trends is immense. However, I've yet to see any real defection from Flash on the major websites.

Flash is still ubiquitous just about everywhere except on apple.com and html5 doesn't work 100% on some major sites such as youtube.

People may be flocking on the bandwagon, but no real effect is visible yet - even though many websites offer h.264 video when using the iPad or iPhone, we still get Flash when browsing with a Mac.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Perhaps, but the influence of Apple on technology trends is immense. However, I've yet to see any real defection from Flash on the major websites.

Flash is still ubiquitous just about everywhere except on apple.com and html5 doesn't work 100% on some major sites such as youtube.

People may be flocking on the bandwagon, but no real effect is visible yet - even though many websites offer h.264 video when using the iPad or iPhone, we still get Flash when browsing with a Mac.

Ok well it seems to be the opposite experience for me. I am running into almost no websites that don't have backup video formats that play seamlessly. Almost all major new websites even have their own apps.

The only broken flash icons I am seeing are for banner ads which I am happy with.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Doc HM 

Well, as a designer (and owner of a design agency - back in the day) I can tell you that we switched to InDesign for several reasons. One being that Quark really was failing to do any of the things that we really wanted in a page layout app. For over a year we were basically laying out double page spreads in photoshop and using quark as a container and to place the text. With no sign of QXP getting an update any time soon we switched to InDesign. Also cost. Yes ID came with the rest of the CS suite but it was so so much cheaper than upgrading to a new version of Quark (whenever that was happening) that still didn't so what we wanted (this was v4 to 5 and then 6). We always found qxp from 5 onwards to be quite unstable compared to ID. It's only real saving grace was speed. Since we used PS and AI a lot the learning curve to ID was quite small.

Quite simply Quark took their eye off the ball and Adobe snuck in. It was only once Quark really started to bleed customers that Quark got even half good again and it;s taken until 8 to call it really competitive with ID.

I seem to recall that their neglecting the product and their re-awakening coincided with the takeover and subsequent dumping of the company by some prince or something…? Edit: Wiki says it was Kamar Aulakh who ran the company from early 2004 to mid-2005.

I see InDesign was released for OS X in 2002. From what I've gathered, Quark ran "okay" in Classic, but integration of Classic into OS X print workflows was anything BUT "perfect", as voodoo claims. I seem to recall issues with various Extensions as well, in particular one that was absolutely vital to a publishing house an acquaintance worked at at the time.

I know that print people are extremely conservative in terms of upgrade cycles, but InDesign being out a full year earlier must have knocked out a whole generation of potentially Quark-using upgraders.

I suppose voodoo was primarily disagreeing with the hyperbole in my post (and probably also just because it was me ), because he's agreeing with your assessment, which seems to me a more concise version of the general gist of what I posted.

Anyway, thanks to both of you for expounding.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by analogue SPRINKLES 

Ok well it seems to be the opposite experience for me. I am running into almost no websites that don't have backup video formats that play seamlessly. Almost all major new websites even have their own apps.

The only broken flash icons I am seeing are for banner ads which I am happy with.

That's odd.. is there any way to choose these backup video formats? Like on Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

All I get is Flash.

Same here Video Library Home Page - The New York Times

Both sites support h.264 on the iPad, but on the Mac all I get is friggin' Flash.

[Eug]

There are many good reasons as to why Flash sucks, because in many ways Flash does suck.

But make no mistake, that is NOT why Jobs is dissing Flash. He's dissing Flash because it's a big problem for Apple in terms of market share and control of content delivery, as well as for iPhone app uniqueness.

I fully agree that Jobs statements here are a smokescreen, even if some of the statements happen to be true. This is not about a good user experience. It's about cold hard cash. IMO, Jobs comes across as a hypocrite here, considering the iPhone / iPad is about as closed a platform as they get.

[Spheric Harlot]

He's dissing Flash because it *needs* to be left behind.

Mac & the iPad

I like Tog.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

He's dissing Flash because it *needs* to be left behind.

You're conflating two issues.

1) Some think it needs to be left behind. That's a matter of opinion, but I'll accept you believe that it needs to be behind, and in some ways I might agree.

2) He's dissing it because he *wants* it to be left behind, because Flash can negatively affect Apple's bottom line, not because of its technology faults, but because of its technology advantages: Control of multimedia content, cross-platform development, etc.

Remember, Apple arguably was in the driver's seat for content delivery, but fell asleep at the wheel and Adobe took over very, very quickly on the internet. Apple wants that control back obviously, esp. now that Adobe has managed to weasel its way into app development too. Jobs smartly sees that Adobe could dominate the app store in fairly short order, and doesn't want Adobe calling the shots on the iPhone/iPad.

To put it another way. It's not that Flash is bad that scares Jobs. It's that Flash sometimes can be good, and cross-platform to boot, that scares Jobs.

[Spheric Harlot]

Next time you reply to a post with a link in it, please read the link before repeating what you've already said.

[Eug]

I read the link and I see some ex-Apple dude speculating... just like us.

Personally, I think he's off-base here, except in his statement that Jobs doesn't like Flash.

[Spheric Harlot]

Bruce Tognazzini isn't exactly "some ex-Apple dude", but okay…

[macaddict0001]

I see Jobs as more of an idealist than that.
The bottom line is that flash runs poorly on a modern intel mac. How do you think it will run on an A4 chip?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by macaddict0001 

I see Jobs as more of an idealist than that.
The bottom line is that flash runs poorly on a modern intel mac. How do you think it will run on an A4 chip?

Considering Flash-derived apps run fine on the iPhone, I'd say they'd run just peachy on A4 too.

I think you're mixing up Flash-the-web-browser-plug-in with Flash-the-platform. Remember, Flash-derived apps run natively on the iPhone. They are binary applications compiled for iPhone OS, that were created in Flash.

And therein lies the problem. With CS5, someone can make a cross-platform application that runs natively on the iPhone. The problem here is that suddenly we've got apps that will run on all sorts of phones, with the iPhone platform just being one of many. Instead of the iPhone being some cool wunder-phone with a truly unique app store, Flash has the potential of becoming the great equalizer.

That's one big reason why Apple is scared of Flash.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It does bother me that h.264 is pay-to-play. I honestly think that there *should* be an open codec that is widely supported in HTML5 in addition to h.264.

I think I read somewhere that it would cost Mozilla $5 million bux to licence it. That seems ludicrous to me.

Anyways, MS has allied with Apple to implement H.264 for I think a few reasons:

1) Even though MS prefers Windows Media and VC-1 obviously, it does have some patents in H.264.
2) Making HTML 5 - H.264 the de facto standard would help kill Flash content delivery.
3) Making HTML 5 - H.264 the de facto standard would help kill off Firefox. Safari is irrelevant to Internet Explorer 9 as a competitor, but Firefox competition is very significant.
4) Making HTML 5 - H.264 the de facto standard would help prevent new browsers from making inroads.

I prefer H.264 from a technological standpoint, as compared to Ogg. However, the financial aspects of H.264 bother me too.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by Eug 

3) Making HTML 5 - H.264 the de facto standard would help kill off Firefox.
4) Making HTML 5 - H.264 the de facto standard would help prevent new browsers from making inroads.

Because of licensing fees? I'm just not clear how HTML 5 - H.264 do these things..

[Eug]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

Because of licensing fees? I'm just not clear how HTML 5 - H.264 do these things..

Mozilla is determined to not use H.264 because of its licencing fees. Even if they can afford it, they certainly don't want to spend millions just for a checkbox feature, when free alternatives exist.
Startup browsers would be hampered from becoming established because of licencing fees.

In the end I think this HTML 5 H.264 licencing fiasco will just serve to extend the lifetime of Flash, ironically. The other ironic thing is that this HTML 5 fiasco will probably force me to use Internet Exploder on Windows again... which is exactly what Microsoft wants. On Mac OS X, I use both Firefox and Safari, mostly the latter. On Windows, I currently use Firefox exclusively, but as sites adopt HTML 5 H.264, I'll have to use Internet Exploder.

The other problem is not just the browser licencing. It will also cost money to publish your own H.264 video, unless you are part of a non-profit organization or whatever.

[besson3c]

Why will HTML5 force you to use IE Eug?

It's not just startup browsers too, it's any sort of application that wants to play h.264 video. I wonder how much it would cost Hulu?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Why will HTML5 force you to use IE Eug?

Because some sites will likely be HTML 5 - H.264, with no Ogg option and no Flash fallback, which means Firefox won't work natively. And no, I won't use Safari on Windows.

Quicktime plugin? I dunno, but even if that did work somehow, that's often problematic on corporate sites, since many companies specifically do not allow installation of extras like Quicktime on locked-down computers. OTOH, IE is ubiquitous on corporate machines.

EDIT:

I guess on Windows this could push Google Chrome adoption. It'd be a rocky few years though, since I've never seen Google Chrome installed anywhere. Not on corporate machines and not at home either. Nobody I know has even tried it. The only two Windows browsers I ever see are IE and FF.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Mozilla is determined to not use H.264 because of its licencing fees. Even if they can afford it, they certainly don't want to spend millions just for a checkbox feature, when free alternatives exist.
Startup browsers would be hampered from becoming established because of licencing fees.

In the end I think this HTML 5 H.264 licencing fiasco will just serve to extend the lifetime of Flash, ironically. The other ironic thing is that this HTML 5 fiasco will probably force me to use Internet Exploder on Windows again... which is exactly what Microsoft wants. On Mac OS X, I use both Firefox and Safari, mostly the latter. On Windows, I currently use Firefox exclusively, but as sites adopt HTML 5 H.264, I'll have to use Internet Exploder.

The other problem is not just the browser licencing. It will also cost money to publish your own H.264 video, unless you are part of a non-profit organization or whatever.

Well well Nostradamus, isn't it prudent to wait and see what happens before declaring the end of the world as we know it?

As for the Firefox support. Safari supports h.264 by calling upon the QT frameworks. IE on Windows will support h.264 much the same way, by calling on the Windows Media frameworks. Both of which have a h.264 decoder.

Why would Apple pay h.264 license for Safari, when it's QT that does the decoding?

In other words, why would the Moz developers have to pay for h.264 support on Firefox if Firefox just calls on QuickTime to do the decoding? Unless of course they are silly enough to make their own decoder part of the app. That would be silly.

If I make an app that uses QuickTime, I don't have to pay license for whatever codecs are called upon through QuickTime. Right?

And what about VLC and MPlayer, both support h.264 and I doubt either one paid 5 million for the privilege. If anything at all.

[macaddict0001]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Considering Flash-derived apps run fine on the iPhone, I'd say they'd run just peachy on A4 too.

I think you're mixing up Flash-the-web-browser-plug-in with Flash-the-platform. Remember, Flash-derived apps run natively on the iPhone. They are binary applications compiled for iPhone OS, that were created in Flash.

And therein lies the problem. With CS5, someone can make a cross-platform application that runs natively on the iPhone. The problem here is that suddenly we've got apps that will run on all sorts of phones, with the iPhone platform just being one of many. Instead of the iPhone being some cool wunder-phone with a truly unique app store, Flash has the potential of becoming the great equalizer.

That's one big reason why Apple is scared of Flash.

There are two sides to it, flash compiled apps and a plugin that would let you view flash content on safari on the iphone/ipad/touch. Your right in that post I was refering to flash content in safari, I suppose I should have specified that. Although it is likely flash compiled apps will not be nearly as well optimized as those made with Apples development package. On the other hand if we were really concerned about that everything would be in assembly.

[Simon]

Eug, you've done a very nice job summarizing why Steve is so hell bent on blocking Flash on iPad/iPhone.

Originally Posted by Eug 

And therein lies the problem. With CS5, someone can make a cross-platform application that runs natively on the iPhone. The problem here is that suddenly we've got apps that will run on all sorts of phones, with the iPhone platform just being one of many. Instead of the iPhone being some cool wunder-phone with a truly unique app store, Flash has the potential of becoming the great equalizer

While reading this I had severe flashbacks.

Apple, Macintosh System, Macintosh
Microsoft, DOS, PCs
vs.
Apple, OS X Mobile, iPhone/iPad
Adobe, Flash, all kinds of smartphones

Seems alarmingly familiar. Hope the outcome won't be the same.

[Phileas]

All of you who think that Jobs is dissing flash because of content delivery issues are dead wrong.

Jobs wants to kill flash because flash has the potential to control Apple product update cycle, just as Adobe has done in the past with other applications.

Every computer maker has a list of "must not break" apps, apps that are so important to the user base that they have to be supported, no matter what. CS is a prime example of that kind of app suite. Adobe, knowing this, has in the past forced Apple's hand on more than one occasion, delaying or nixing both hardware and software developments that Apple thought important.

Jobs wants none of this for the iPad and the iPhone.

And Eug, you do know who Bruce Tognazzini is, right?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Well well Nostradamus, isn't it prudent to wait and see what happens before declaring the end of the world as we know it?

I haven't predicted the end of the world. I have said that MS is supporting H.264 partially to put heavy pressure on Firefox, and that may get me using IE again, unless I decide I like Chrome or something. Even though I use Safari on the Mac, I have never liked Safari on Windows. (I know that Chrome uses webkit, but webkit ≠ Safari.)

As for the Firefox support. Safari supports h.264 by calling upon the QT frameworks. IE on Windows will support h.264 much the same way, by calling on the Windows Media frameworks. Both of which have a h.264 decoder.

Why would Apple pay h.264 license for Safari, when it's QT that does the decoding

Apple is paying for H.264 with QuickTime. Luckily they get some of that money back through the patent pool.

In other words, why would the Moz developers have to pay for h.264 support on Firefox if Firefox just calls on QuickTime to do the decoding? Unless of course they are silly enough to make their own decoder part of the app. That would be silly.

Mozilla has already said they have no intention of supporting H.264 at all. However, they may be forced to. Mozilla is playing a dangerous game of chicken here, and one that they will lose if push comes to shove.

And what about VLC and MPlayer, both support h.264 and I doubt either one paid 5 million for the privilege. If anything at all.

I'd be surprised if VLC or Mplayer are even as patent-safe as Ogg, and Jobs is claiming a patent attack is coming on Ogg.

Originally Posted by Simon 

Eug, you've done a very nice job summarizing why Steve is so hell bent on blocking Flash on iPad/iPhone.

While reading this I had severe flashbacks.

Apple, Macintosh System, Macintosh
Microsoft, DOS, PCs
vs.
Apple, OS X Mobile, iPhone/iPad
Adobe, Flash, all kinds of smartphones

Seems alarmingly familiar. Hope the outcome won't be the same.

I don't think the outcome will be same, but I do think the HTML issues will at least prolong Flash's existence.

Originally Posted by Phileas 

All of you who think that Jobs is dissing flash because of content delivery issues are dead wrong.

Jobs wants to kill flash because flash has the potential to control Apple product update cycle, just as Adobe has done in the past with other applications.

Every computer maker has a list of "must not break" apps, apps that are so important to the user base that they have to be supported, no matter what. CS is a prime example of that kind of app suite. Adobe, knowing this, has in the past forced Apple's hand on more than one occasion, delaying or nixing both hardware and software developments that Apple thought important.

Jobs wants none of this for the iPad and the iPhone.

And Eug, you do know who Bruce Tognazzini is, right?

Yes, I do now (after reading that blog). He provides interesting comments on Jobs 1.0, but I'm not sure he adds much for current events besides a context of Jobs' personality. Woz's comments are sometimes in some ways similar... although sometimes Woz is just nuts.



It's good you bring this product update cycle thing up by the way, but I think it's a part of the Flash cross-platform issue.

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by Eug 

He provides interesting comments on Jobs 1.0, but I'm not sure he adds much for current events besides a context of Jobs' personality.

Then you don't know who Bruce Tognazzini is.

Seriously though, Bruce understands the way Apple works like few others. He is one of the few writers out there who are able to do more than merely speculate.

[Eug]

Well, suffice it to say then, I'm not really a huge fan of his writing, if that linked article is a representative sample. Maybe that is clouding my judgement of the content.

[lpkmckenna]

One of Jobs' nasty comments about Adobe included chiding them for being slow to adopt Cocoa. Which is stupid since several Apple apps are still Carbon, including iTunes.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

One of Jobs' nasty comments about Adobe included chiding them for being slow to adopt Cocoa. Which is stupid since several Apple apps are still Carbon, including iTunes.

I think he was talking about the fact that Adobe apps use TONS on non-standard, hacked up UI elements that cause havoc with expose and Spaces and don't take advantage of built in technologies such as openGL, CL and 64 bit.

Adobe was also one of the LAST big companies to "carbon" their apps to work with OSX.

Carbon in iTunes doesn't matter much but it sure as hell matters with an app like photoshop especially when you charge $1200 for it vs Free iTunes.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by lpkmckenna 

One of Jobs' nasty comments about Adobe included chiding them for being slow to adopt Cocoa. Which is stupid since several Apple apps are still Carbon, including iTunes.

iTunes yes, but more seriously FCP is still Carbon. It is unfair that Apple criticizing Adobe for being slow to adapt Cocoa, but I think it isn't stupid. It's a smart strategy to make Adobe look bad in the eyes of users now when Adobe is working against Apple and trying to push its proprietary development platform for the iPhone.

It demonstrates Adobe is slow to adapt to Apple's new tech (though Cocoa isn't really new) so entrusting them with a dev platform would be a bad idea.

[Spheric Harlot]

While you have a point, the in-house applications aren't as big an issue, since they won't hold back the platform.

If some new tech is introduced into OS X that would break the obsoleted parts of FCP, then that stuff can be rewritten at Apple's discretion and under their direct control.

Adobe can (and has in the past) hold Apple hostage and simply block new developments entirely. How much do you want to bet that Adobe is actually The reason why we *still* don't have resolution-independent interface scaling?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Adobe can (and has in the past) hold Apple hostage and simply block new developments entirely.

Examples?

[Not doubting it happened. Just curious about the details.]

[Spheric Harlot]

/dev/why!?! - /dev/why!?! - Its all about the�framework…

Do call hearsay, as the article doesn't mention specific incidents when talking about Adobe, but it seems like credible analysis to me:

The story of MacBasic is a classic example, but I can think of other (not publicly disclosed) incidents involving Adobe and Macromedia (which was acquired by Adobe, and is where the Flash team comes from) applying extreme pressure to Apple. This is the only case where I feel an active user community was publicly jerked around like this in order for one side to try to gain leverage over the other. That is saying a lot, because I am not pleased with Apple's actions either, but Adobe put Apple in a position where either Adobe got its way or Apple screwed developers.

(Read the whole thing; it's extremely interesting.)