Flickr version here.
Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Wow! Who would have expected this essay? Thoughtful and well-argued too.
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
Worth reading in full. If yo’re busy, here’s his concludion:
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Facebook group ‘praying’ for Obama’s death passes 1m members
Really, you couldn’t make this up.
A Facebook group accused of “praying” for the death of President Barack Obama has raised controversy online, with many calling for Facebook to remove the group as “offensive speech.”
The group, which lists its location as “Marysville, OH, 43040,” currently has over 1 million members–Facebook users who say they “like” the group.
Hmmm… That might be protected in the US under the First Amendment. Wonder how it squares with UK law.
There’s a Facebook group campaigning to remove the ‘praying’ group. It now has over 650,000 members. Human nature isn’t all bad. There’s also a comment which says that “if you go to this hate group’s FB page, most of the comments are trashing the group, which means many of the members joined just to voice their dissent. The real number must be far below 1M+.”
The Sun is looking for disappointed NHS staff. I wonder why.
A copy of an intriguing email just popped into my inbox:
From: [redacted]
Sent: 27 April 2010 11:15
To: [redacted]
Subject: request from Jenna Sloan, The SunIf you have relevant information for the media professional concerned
please click this link to reply:
jenna.sloan@the-sun.co.ukRequest deadline: Thursday 29 April, 2010, 4:00 pm
Contact me by e-mail at jenna.sloan@the-sun.co.uk
My request: I’m looking for a teacher and a nurse to be case studies in The Sun next week.
This is for a political, election feature and both must be willing to say why they feel let down by the Labour Government, and why they are thinking about voting Conservative.We’ll need to picture them, and also have a chat about their political opinions.
We can pay the case studies £100 for their time.Please do let me know if you think you can help.
Is this genuine, I wonder? If so, interesting, ne c’est pas? First of all in terms of the implicit journalistic ‘standards’, but also in terms of chequebook journalism. It just shows you what they think of teachers and NHS Staff — assuming that they’d be willing to pimp themselves for £100. Max Clifford’s clients wouldn’t blow their noses for that.
DMCA abuse extends to Twitter posts
Well, well. Looks as though nothing is beyond the reach of the DMCA.
Twitter can be a decent communications medium for some things, but let’s face it: there’s only so much one can say in 140 characters. It’s hard to believe that a user could infringe on someone’s copyright within such tight constraints, but someone apparently thinks it can. Twitter has removed an update posted by the music writer who runs JP’s blog, citing a DMCA takedown request from an unnamed sender. The situation once again highlights the potential for abuse through the DMCA’s takedown system, and raises questions about how much service providers should push back against abuses.
Quote of the Day
“David Cameron will protect the BBC, he sees it as a very important part of his brand of modern conservatism. He loves the BBC programmes. He’s a huge fan of Top Gear.”
Tory Arts & Culture spokesman to David Hare, as
reported in the Guardian.
Roll on that hung Parliament
Lovely, thoughtful piece by Alan Massie in the Spectator in which he dissects the Tory ‘arguments’ against a balanced Parliament.
Tory warnings of the dire consequences of a hung parliament are understandable but, I suspect, unfortunate. There is little evidence that the electorate believes that a hung parliament will be a disaster, far less than they can be cajoled into thinking that they’re letting Britain down if they don’t vote Conservative.
And that, my friends, is the underlying message sent by the Tories’ blitz against a hung parliament.
A hung election might not be ideal but it might also be a fitting end to this exhausted, depressing parliament. But it need not be the disaster the Tories claim. The PDF they released today – and the advert – is thin gruel. Essentially they argue that 1974 was a disaster and this proves that hung parliaments are and always must be a terrible thing. Secondly, they say that many city types worry about financial uncertainty if no party wins overall control. Thirdly, the Tories warn that anything that moves Britain down the road to proportional representation is a bad thing because it's a bad thing that always ends badly.
I particularly like the argument that we shouldn’t have a balanced Parliament because it might upset those nice chaps in the City.
Fred Halliday RIP
He’s died, after a battle with cancer. openDemocracy.net has published a moving list of his columns. What a man.
Random House cedes some e-Rights to Styron family
From today’s NYTimes.
Because e-books were not explicitly mentioned in most author contracts until about 15 years ago, disputes have arisen about who has the right to publish digital versions of older books. But along with other publishers, Random House, which releases Styron’s works in print, has said that clauses like “in book form” give it exclusive rights to publish electronic editions. In a letter to literary agents in December, Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of trade books, said authors were “precluded from granting publishing rights to third parties” for electronic editions.
But in a statement last week Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said the company was continuing talks with many authors or their estates about publishing e-books of their older works. “The decision of the Styron estate is an exception to these discussions,” he said in an e-mail message. “Our understanding is that this is a unique family situation.”
Mr. Applebaum added that Random House had released e-book editions of two titles by Styron published after electronic rights clauses had been added to contracts. “We are hopeful future discussions with his family members will eventually result in additional e-book publications,” Mr. Applebaum said.
People in the publishing industry said Random House’s apparent acquiescence in the Styron case could lead to a flood of other authors or their estates moving e-books to separate digital publishers.
Yep.
Quote of the day
If the iPad were a British party leader would it be:
a. Nick Clegg, because it’s new
b. David Cameron, because it’s shiny
c. Gordon Brown, because it displays the symptoms of severe control-freakery?
Answer: d., all of the above.
From John Lanchester, who has just bought an iPad.