Steve responds to the "flash not on the iPad" hysteria...

[Wayne]

Steve Jobs responds to the criticism of both himself, and Apple where the decision to ban Adobe's Flash on the iPad is concerned. Reading it, he makes a lot of very valid points and squashes a lot of the reasons people have for bitching about it;

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Summarized into the six major reasons;

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-six- ... pad-2010-4

Next complaint please?

Wayne

 

[Glaucus]

Although I agree that Flash has problems, I still resist the idea that Steve Jobs gets to decide what the customer can do with his device. I'd never argue that Flash needs to come pre-installed with the iPad, but I also see no reason why Jobs needs to go out of his way to make sure no customer could ever have Flash on his iPad. If people are happy with a 5 hour run time due to Flash or feel comfortable with increased security risks, shouldn't that be their call, not Steve's? I just don't like it when companies have this kind of power over their customers.

 

[Wayne]

Although I agree that Flash has problems, I still resist the idea that Steve Jobs gets to decide what the customer can do with his device. I'd never argue that Flash needs to come pre-installed with the iPad, but I also see no reason why Jobs needs to go out of his way to make sure no customer could ever have Flash on his iPad. If people are happy with a 5 hour run time due to Flash or feel comfortable with increased security risks, shouldn't that be their call, not Steve's? I just don't like it when companies have this kind of power over their customers.

I can see that, EXCEPT... If people installed Flash on their iPad and it suddenly started crashing and battery life started sucking, 3/4 of those idiots would blame the iPad and not Flash for the problems.

While I can agree that too much control is a bad thing, the lack of any sort of control whatsoever is what got us the Uber-stable and infinitely cool Windows platform as it is today.

Wayne

 

[Glaucus]

Maybe, but bug-free software doesn't exist. But I hear what you're saying, a recent study (I think posted on Ars) showed that Vista's & W7's main vulnerability came from 3rd party software like Adobe PDF & Flash - not the OS itself even though most Windows haters love to blame MS. However, if it wasn't Adobe software it would be some other software, it's just that Adobe software is very common. Like I said bug-free software doesn't exist and everything is hackable. Even the "unhackable" PS3 was hacked recently (by the same guy who first hacked the iPhone & iPad; Geohot). And considering how quickly the iPad was hacked I'd say that Apple's products aren't all that bullet proof either.

 

[Wayne]

Ding, dong, Flash is dead. Microsoft joins the fray...

HTML5 Video
There’s been a lot of posting about video and video formats on the web recently. This is a good opportunity to talk about Microsoft’s point of view.

The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

H.264 is an industry standard, with broad and strong hardware support. Because of this standardization, you can easily take what you record on a typical consumer video camera, put it on the web, and have it play in a web browser on any operating system or device with H.264 support (e.g. a PC with Windows 7). Recently, we publicly showed IE9 playing H.264-encoded video from YouTube. You can read about the benefits of hardware acceleration here, or see an example of the benefits at the 26:35 mark here. For all these reasons, we’re focusing our HTML5 video support on H.264.

Other codecs often come up in these discussions. The distinction between the availability of source code and the ownership of the intellectual property in that available source code is critical. Today, intellectual property rights for H.264 are broadly available through a well-defined program managed by MPEG LA. The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press. Of course, developers can rely on the H.264 codec and hardware acceleration support of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty.

Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/0 ... video.aspx

 

[ilwrath]

While I can agree that too much control is a bad thing, the lack of any sort of control whatsoever is what got us the Uber-stable and infinitely cool Windows platform as it is today.

Yes, but answer me this. If it weren't for this artificial limitation, would you have installed flash and gotten additional enjoyment out of the device for being able to watch the flash videos posted here and elsewhere?

To me, someone artificially limiting my device is a much bigger problem, and much less forgivable offense, than someone having the ability to release a crappy application that crashes things.

 

[Glaucus]

@Wayne,

Not sure what MS is thinking, but I suspect h.264 will not be the next world standard. At least not if Google (owners of YouTube and makers of Chrome) have a say. MS still thinks it can easily direct technology, but if Google opens up the VP8 codec it'll probably be lights out for H.264, at least as far as HTML5 is concerned. Meaning IE9 will probably fall flat on it's face as that's all it will support.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

h.264 licensing while maybe a little over the top, the implications are worth pondering and the links are worth following and reading - there is a danger in future license changes for adopters of this technology (especially for the little guys who are pretty much forced to adopt it and its future lurking licensing liabilities. Microsoft say they have a bout 75 patents in the pool (if remember correctly) but that they are currently paying more than they make. Could microsoft use license changes to acquire a mobile phone company using h.264 for video at some point down the road? Would the other patent partners go along or could they put the kibosh on such a thing? Having a business that has played criminally ruthless games in the high tech sector having gained a near monopoly in desktop OS angling for what looks like it could leverage into a near monopoly on content delivery gives me pause for thought.

 

[Glaucus]

It still irks me that people choose to use the GIF format for anything. H.264, or any patented codec is wrong for HTML5. I'd rather see Theora or VP8.

 

[minator]

It still irks me that people choose to use the GIF format for anything

Why? The patents on it ran out some time ago.

H.264, or any patented codec is wrong for HTML5. I'd rather see Theora or VP8.

All video codecs are covered with patents, you can't avoid them.

I don't see why everyone is complaining about H.264. You'd have to be making fairly substantial sums (>$100,000) before they'd even consider going after you for royalties.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

It still irks me that people choose to use the GIF format for anything

Why? The patents on it ran out some time ago.

And all the current video codec patents will have expired in twenty years too (though in an industry like software a twenty year protection is far too long. You can make your investment back in much less time than that just because of the infrastructure and distribution and setup and productization times being so short. You write it, you compile it, it's done. No factories to build etc etc. On the other hand, bet it wouldn't take long to find prior art in expired patents if you really went looking for the stuff. The patent system is happy to rubber stamp just about any crock that passes by - especially in software where it all sound like magic.

You'd have to be making fairly substantial sums (>$100,000) before they'd even consider going after you for royalties.

But it's still a good weapon to wield against competing businesses.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

shennanigins

 

[Glaucus]

Why? The patents on it ran out some time ago.

It has? Well good then. GIF still sucks, but at least now I can't be mad at people for using it. :mrgreen:

All video codecs are covered with patents, you can't avoid them.

Theora is open source and so far hasn't been attacked by patent trolls. Steve Jobs, who's firmly in the H.264 camp, has warned Theora developers of possible future lawsuites, but so far nothing has come of it. VP8 is currently closed source and has it's own patents, but Google has promised to open it up. VP8 may in ways be better then H.264 (it supposedly uses half the bandwidth for similar quality) and Google is in a unique position to both push (YouTube) and pull (Chrome) the codec into the mainstream. It even has the capital muscle to defend it from any patent suits.

The only thing H.264 has going for it is that decoder/encoder chips are already embedded in numerous hand held devices. But I'm not sure that this alone will be enough to make it the standard for HTML5.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

The only thing H.264 has going for it is that decoder/encoder chips are already embedded in numerous hand held devices. But I'm not sure that this alone will be enough to make it the standard for HTML5.

h.261 is 20 years old. Those patents have expired. Nokia advocated for this as part of the HTML5, I believe.

But 20 years is far too long for software. 14 years is more than enough. 10 years would be fine. Biggest problem with patents is that they are wholly assignable to corporations. The actual creatives almost never benefit from their innovation.

 

[Glaucus]

But 20 years is far too long for software. 14 years is more than enough. 10 years would be fine. Biggest problem with patents is that they are wholly assignable to corporations. The actual creatives almost never benefit from their innovation.

I'd prefer zero years, but 2 years would be enough for a company to bring a product to market and exploit what ever advantage the tech brings. The idea that any one company could lock down a format or codec isn't something that any consumer should think is a good thing.

 

[Wayne]

I'd prefer zero years, but 2 years would be enough for a company to bring a product to market and exploit what ever advantage the tech brings.

Two years I could get behind.

The idea that any one company could lock down a format or codec isn't something that any consumer should think is a good thing.

Yes, but playing devil's advocate, if there's no profit in developing something, most people / corporations / etc would never bother. They'd at least never bother funding R&D, which would preclude most inventions from happening.

What i don't understand I guess is why -- if "all" formats are trademarked -- they would recommend any given format. Let's not forget that -- worse comes to worst -- Big Steve can probably just write a check for H.264 and open source it.

 

[Glaucus]

Yes, but playing devil's advocate, if there's no profit in developing something, most people / corporations / etc would never bother. They'd at least never bother funding R&D, which would preclude most inventions from happening.

Well, that is the common rational for patents in the first place. But the fact is that patents also hold us back. VHS vs Beta is a classic example. sony tried to keep their format closed and we ended up using the vastly inferior VHS because it was cheaper. There was no need for a Bluray vs HD DVD format war, the industry could have come together to build a newer better DVD and they could have all shared the profits. Now, everyone who bought a HD DVD player got screwed. In the case of DVD Audio vs SACD, both sides lost. Fact is for these types of formats more is not better, in fact one is all we need at any given time (eventually the format will need to be upgraded or replaced but that typically happens once a decade or so). With products like media players, more choice for the consumer is a good thing, but the format for the media itself should be tightly standardized. Best way to do that is to open it up.

 

[faethor]

Yes, but playing devil's advocate, if there's no profit in developing something, most people / corporations / etc would never bother.

And to play devil's advocate to the devil himself ... there's an open source (read free) software community whose marketshare exceeds Apple. Linux, Firefox, PHP, PERL, MySQL, Drupal, Apache, Tomcat, Ogg and others come to mind.