Can we file a class action against Apple?

[silverx2]

its almost ironic when you think back to the 1984 commericial.

[Googooboyy]

Jeff, your last line could potentially hurt Apple more than a class action sue would, and I agree that there's alternatives out there, and they're literally screaming at anyone who's had enough with Steve Jobs' and his company to try them.

And what compels and complexes me is why doesn't Apple flinch at the competition, but instead intentionally draws flak unto itself?

[creativeinsomnia]

So, too, will people eventually realize that Apple's intention is to protect users from garbage and guarantee consistency through total control.

In the end, if you don't like it, you don't sue, you buy a droid.

Wait, what?

You're saying the reason Apple is not letting people publish iPhone apps from flash is to keep out the garbage? You say they are very strict with what they accept. They already have a buffer in place.

Do you realize how many trashy and completely useless apps are created every day, using Objective C?

I think it's funny that people immediately assume that every little script kiddie with CS5 is going to be publishing crappy apps by the thousands and flood apple's approval process.

I was actually excited about this opportunity, and thought it was a great idea to open the door to another realm of developers to make an already superb app library, even better.

You can spin it anyway you want but the only thing I see, is Apple holding a grudge, which is completely understandable if that's what they want to do.

And in the end, if you dont like it, why would you buy a Droid? The argument is based on publishing apps, you still cant publish an app from flash to the Droid so that makes no sense.

[Frets]

http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/arch...e_screens.html

air running on an Ipad and Ipod touch.

Go build your apps just don't try and sell them on the apple store

[creativeinsomnia]

That was before all of this hubub Frets. The guy who built that app, works for Adobe, and has not commented or responded, since Apple went public with their lack of Flash publishing support.

[Frets]

Regardless of the apple v adoble debacle it still runs on Ipad, Ipod, Iphone. It's just that he and any other flash developer won't be able to sell it on the apple app store. Which is the central hub for all things apple.

Earstwhile HTC hero is running flash10 and adobe has announced that they are developing a new flash player that will run flash 10 on mobile devices.

[joshstrike]

No. I really think we should file suit.

RE: Frets: "How do you know the apps on your phone were'nt designed by 12 yr olds?"

I think this really gets to the crux of the issue. Bad code can be written in any language. Anyone who blames Flash specifically for slowdowns has never written a line of code in his or her life. Not only that, but it would take a really good flash coder -- a 1-percenter -- to write an app that would handle memory and graphics in a way that delivered a superior iPhone experience once it was rendered into native code, and which would be accepted to the store. So what's the worry? Bad iphone apps already proliferate on the store. Since bad apps sink fast, there's no legitimate reason for Apple to prohibit development in other languages that can be compiled into native code. Who cares if they suck? Let the market decide. Let the hardware make the final call on what can't be run. I know that my very slim HTML5/js/canvas apps run at least 5x as heavy on the processor as an equivalent Flash app under AVM2, and I've optimized them to bounding boxes and never re-rendering a whole canvas on any iteration. No one with skin in the game wants to rewrite their site in HTML5, not because they're lazy, but because the current implementation blows; we will, but just to cater to Apple fanboys. I love Apple. I'm writing this on a Macbook Air. But I love portable code a lot more. Besides Apple fans, it's obvious to anyone who's made a serious effort to code a game using nothing but JS and HTML5 that fundamentally the browsers aren't up to the task yet, and probably won't be for some years. I'm sure if I optimized my AS3 games, I could get them fast enough when compiled down to C that they'd be indistinguishable from a native-written app. If they didn't, no one would buy them, and I'd suffer, but I doubt anyone would blame Apple for it. So why throttle innovation, other than over some internal gripe with Adobe? Because it would require more time on Apple's part to weed out those third party apps that failed to conform to their rigorous UI standards? Or because a system under tighter controls (like Facebook, vs. Myspace, as Jeff2A suggested) tends to be more user-friendly by limiting user experience? Isn't there a difference between running a free website with some, none, or all-user-generated content, versus selling a piece of hardware for a lot of money, and then prohibiting developers from developing and users from downloading and/or generally, you know, USING it to the best of its potential?

Right there is the basis for a lawsuit.

The app store is already loaded with plenty of garbage written in Objective C. There's no reason to mandate people write in an Apple-only language when we can cross-compile. As a developer, why shouldn't I hedge my bets and make sure my app can run on an Android, or in IE for that matter? My issue with this isn't only as a Flash developer, but also as a Java developer and someone who occasionally codes in HaXe and Unity3d -- all banned or threatened under the current Apple regime from running perfectly good code on one of their pieces of hardware. It's not like my ideal CMS platform is amfphp+flex because it's easy or I'm lazy; I choose that combination personally because it's a lot faster for transmitting large objects between client and server than are JSON or XML post/get methods, and more security-flexible than opening a socket is. I don't tell a client I'm going to use a particular CMS because it's easy to write a skin for; I roll my own if it won't do what I want it to do under the hood. I loathe adapting my Javascript to IE not because it's a pain in the a**, but because IE isn't standards-compliant. If it were, and firefox wasn't, then I'd hate porting my code the other way around instead.

But never in my life, since I wrote my first BASIC program in 1985 on the last OS that Bill Gates ever wrote (the internal OS for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100...I learned BASIC reading the included manual cover to cover, at age six) have I ever seen a hardware manufacturer take these kinds of steps against developers trying to introduce new languages to their platform.

Remember SuperCard? It was a straight rip of Hypertalk, HyperCard stacks with color and a few extra transitions, packaged and sold as an expensive produce. You know what, it kicked ass. And in the end, it did nothing but help Apple. It was also the early inspiration for Macromedia to develop Director. Yes, watching the 1984 app now makes me sick.

I don't doubt that there's a case against Apple here. Apple's new usage language goes so far as to prohibit the porting of basically anything to an iPhone or iPad that they don't want to see ported, but in practice it will never be applied to apps ported from anything other than Flash or another ECMA-compliant VM (Silverlight?) that could undermine their grip on the devices' connectivity, or present an alternative path to the creation or downloading of competitive apps from their walled garden. Non-competitive ports written with some LISP or Python or whatever and ported to Obj C will probably not warrant intervention. And at this stage of the game, who other than a 12 year old is going to use Objective C to write a bunch of clones of existing libraries for one device, just so he or she can launch another substandard app in Apple's store? The next Apple ad campaign won't be aimed at users; it'll be trying to convince developers to bother with their dauntingly massive stack of BS.

Apple would be shooting itself in the foot but for the overwhelming adoption of these devices as, not computers, but appliances. The trouble is that an appliance which becomes household name, which inherently does nothing but run software written by third parties, has an obligation to be an equal opportunity provider to all comers, and to run third party software regardless of language of origin. Apple's language is so broad it could be interpreted as preventing the writing of code in human languages, and the porting of said code to Objective C. Beyond legal implications, what it says about their current corporate mindset is disgusting. But in real terms, their policy is directly aimed at undermining and ultimately depriving cross-platform coders, like many here, of our livelihoods. Based on that, I think we ought to hit back hard... harder than simply voting with our thumbs and buying an Android phone.

[gerbick]

Anybody care to tell me why, exactly there should be a lawsuit?

I mean... I can't use C# (3.5) on Mac because there's no port of .NET 3.5 on the Mac yet and Mono hasn't ported it yet. Would I sue Apple? Microsoft? Mono?

The outrage, once it calms down is that Apple is saying that they don't want another level on top of their established API layers. Which... I can understand. Perhaps what needs to happen is a way to get other party apps and code engines into the API's - make them all qualified somehow and licensed. Apple gets more money, they maintain control, people can use validated tools.

Just a thought.

[hanratty21]

Right there is the basis for a lawsuit.

Well put argument, but I isolated the above quote specifically because it eliminates all the underpinnings of your claim. The Apple store is their domain. They can choose to eliminate people from submitting apps based on any reason they want. It's their marketplace and it's their platform. They make the rules. You just get to play the game.

Like I said, I don't think your argument doesn't have merit...I just don't think your lawsuit would.

Incidentally, I don't think your idea of portable code is really appropriate here. They don't want your pre-existing app on their platform. They want people to create edgy, unique, individual apps for them to sell in their store. They probably don't want recycled code from elsewhere. They want new, elegant, iPhone/iPad/iWhatever specific applications.

On a side note, how do you like your MB Air? Is it powerful enough to run whatever you need or are you carrying a more potent Apple laptop as well?

[joshstrike]

Okay. Because "Right there is the basis for a lawsuit" is a weak brief and to consolidate my reasoning here, so long as one of the following were not true I think there would be enough maneuverability for Apple to claim it was merely protecting its interests rather than leveraging its market share to shut down competition:
* If the App store were not monetized.
* If the App store allowed distribution based on popularity, regardless of Apple corporate considerations and/or contracts.
* If iPhones/Pads were not locked and prohibited from downloading apps from other sources.
* If users users of the above were not punished for jailbreaking their devices to gain access to external or unapproved apps.
* If developers were allowed under the agreement to translate code and then compile it with xcode, regardless of the "original" language the code was written in.
No single aspect of Apple's current iPhone/iPad policies above, taken by itself, is grounds for an antitrust action against them. Taken together, they present a system under which hardware sold as-is gives users no alternative, nor developers any alternative, but to give Apple a share of profit from any software run on that hardware. This is essentially the same as Microsoft teaming up with Compaq to have a laptop's warranty voided if the user downloads Firefox, or any other product not monetized by the OS manufacturer. It even goes a step further: If you don't use our software to write your software, you're immediately out of the "game".
25%+ of smart phones sold in the US cannot be a private "game" played by Apple's rules. To believe even a fraction of Apple's marketing material is to accept that these devices are, as a whole, a public good which access a public network on which ideas can be freely shared. No developer will write -- no underwriter will invest in -- an application which can't reach 25%+ of a given market. You wouldn't write a website that wouldn't work in IE, nor one that would break Firefox. So long as the writers of those packages don't tell you HOW you can write your code, you're free to use documentElement.innerWidth or extend Array.prototype to handle indexOf() or whatever else you want or need to do to make their platforms suit your needs. Now imagine if Microsoft started having IE block websites that had any reference to -moz-* CSS tags. How fast do you think the Justice Department would come down on them? The fact that they have a huge market share is the first thing that would attract DOJ's attention; but ultimately driving a wedge in the industry is enough to do so. If Apple succeeds in this, others will follow suit, and the entire industry will move to block anyone developing anything that could work or has worked on another hardware platform from compiling or distributing on their own. Given the already incredibly tangled nature of the IP involved in writing applications, this would represent a complete disservice to the public, along the lines of AT&T preventing its customers from receiving calls from Sprint phone numbers.

So again, I think this is the basis for a lawsuit.

[joshstrike]

Oh man. Btw. Love the Air, but I've heard nightmare stories about the earlier editions and the ones with the mechanical drives; I'm very happy with the SSD, though. It does heat up fast. I don't use it for internet video playback (although Flash 10.1.x completely eliminates the issue). I pretty much use it for writing code, design, taking to meetings and traveling, and for those purposes it's the best laptop I've ever owned, not least because I can hold it in one hand and twirl it while I'm typing. I keep a macbook pro around, but it's mostly gathering dust these days except when I feel like watching a dvd in bed.

[EDIT: While I don't live in Vietnam anymore (my profile is outdated), my MBP's fan broke there, and for lack of replacement parts I got very used to living in a hot environment with an extremely hot laptop that needed to constantly be set up on a book or a portable fan base. And I mean scalding-hot, scared if this thing dies it will take weeks to get a replacement hot. So before I got the air, I was already very attuned to how to keep these things cool; relative to that, living in LA with one of these is no trouble at all.]

[Edit edit: My best practice for keeping a MBP cool when it's fan is broken and you have no A/C is to stick a stack of Wired magazines in the freezer, take one out every 15-20 minutes and put it between your lap and the laptop; when it thaws, stick it back in the freezer and get another one. But I'm drunk now and going to sleep so I'm going to stop editing this.]

[hanratty21]

You choose to buy an iPhone. To that end, you CHOSE to play by their rules. This means you now have the 'right' to buy apps from their store that they started, they host and they have the sole responsibility for. Not the DOJ, AT&T, Mozilla or anyone else has any control over that...only Apple. They make the rules. If you don't want to play by them (the general you) then you don't buy an iPhone or choose to be an iWhatever App developer.

[hanratty21]

...keeping a MBP cool when it's fan is broken and you have no A/C is to stick a stack of Gent, Leg Show and Over 50 magazines in the freezer...

fixed.

[jAQUAN]

It's only because your knowledge is so widespread in general HR that I'm not frightened by your knowledge of adult material.

[hanratty21]

And 'Over 50' is VERY adult!

[WannaBe_80z]

Mature, please.

[Frets]

From a legal perspective HR is correct. If the Ipad where just hardware then anything you thru in it would be between the vendor and the consumer.

I give Ipad a year but a year is maybe all it needs to make it's mark. In that year they can redesign Macbook air to a real tablet and who knows maybe they'll throw in a phone.

[hanratty21]

I am going to go on record and 100% disagree withe the above. Aside from the gadget heads who will cling to this thing like it provides them air to breathe, I think you'll start seeing them used in the financial industry, medical professionals and others who need a portable machine with a high usability factor, elegant interface, low learning curve, etc. Let's check back one year from today to see who's in the right.

[jAQUAN]

On paper you're right HR, a few hotels are already integrating. But with the needs they're likely to have, the app store approval and patch process might prove to be a huge deterrent. A few companies converted their entire warehouse inventory tracking systems over to the Newton only to be left in the dust.

[Frets]

HR Medical, Emergency, Police usually use toughbooks.

There are plenty of tablets on the market.

My brother, (who is a comptroller) uses his blackberry in the field.
Everything he needs where he needs it without the fluff.