On Mar 14, 3:46 pm, Karsten Silz <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thinking he did, but not enough. > > DRM > Content owners (movie studios, publishers) demand DRM, not > distributors (like Apple or Amazon). Apple even suggested getting rid > of DRM for music shortly before the music industry agreed > (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/). For a number of reasons, > most distributors don't agree on what kind of DRM to use, so everybody > (including Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon, Apple) has their own DRM > for movies, ebooks and audio books.
The iPhone/iPad is taking DRM to the next level. As the FSF writes (http://www.fsf.org/news/ibad_launch) "DRM is used by Apple to restrict users' freedom in a variety of ways, including blocking installation of software that comes from anywhere except the official Application Store, and regulating every use of movies downloaded from iTunes. Apple furthermore claims that circumventing these restrictions is a criminal offense, even for purposes that are permitted by copyright law." > > Lock-in > All platforms lock you in, only the degree varies. The iPad is not an > "open" PC/Mac but a closed system which I think will give it a better > user experience for the majority of its users. So it's more like an > Android phone or a Blackberry. > Unless you "jailbreak" the lock-in is very tight - you can only install apps approved by the big brother. > No Flash support > Currently, there's no Flash Player in production that runs fine on > mobile devices - Flash Player 10.1 is that version and is supposed to > be out in the next few months, on "all mobile platforms but Apple" > over time... Flash on the Internet is mostly used for ads, games, video > and rich internet apps (RIA - see Flex). Ads I don't care for, games > are plenty for the iPhone, which leaves video and RIA. Bigger video > sites (Youtoube) already provide video for the iPhone, even when you > come across them on the iPhone's Safari. But a lot of video is not > accessible, which sucks - but if one company can convince big web > pages to show video as plain H.264 in addition to embedding it as H. > 264 in Flash, then it's Apple. Now most desktop apps (including RIA) > don't work well on the iPhone for a number of reasons - they are used > differently (hours on the desktop vs. "quick check" on the iPhone), > the content doesn't fit well (iPhone/iPad: portrait mode, desktop: > landscape), the UI elements are too small to use with touch (vs a > mouse and a pointer), and some functionality is not accessible at all > (there's no "mouse-over" in the iPad/iPhone, so showing controls / > menus / additional info when hovering is flat-out broken). So you're > better off re-writing these apps with the functionality subset that's > applicable to mobile as native apps. PS: Not too long ago, vocal > Internet activists ridiculed Adobe for its slow, proprietary, browser- > crashing Flash Player and wished the open-standard HTML 5 to put Flash > in its place. In the face of greater evil (Apple), Flash now seems to > be the flag-bearer of software freedom... > wow, that was a really verbose way to say - "Flash is an app-store backdoor - we will not allow it" ;-) . This is why Apple will not allow an VM to run on the iphone/ipad including Java. oh... and by the way, Tim Bray had some interesting things to say about Apple and its products (http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/ 2010/03/15/Joining-Google): "...The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger. I hate it. I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient. The big thing about the Web isn’t the technology, it’s that it’s the first-ever platform without a vendor (credit for first pointing this out goes to Dave Winer). From that follows almost everything that matters, and it matters a lot now, to a huge number of people. It’s the only kind of platform I want to help build. Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other. I think they’re wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it..." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
