There are about a billion PCs in the world and about four billion mobile devices. If you don’t think this is a problem, consider this. Internet Television, online video, websites, IP-based content … not so much. Free, over-the-air, cable or satellite images will all display (within a baseline of quality parameters) for everyone, everywhere. If you buy a television set, it will tune in television signals. The magic of television is that it is a national standard. It demonstrates, in a very specific way, why we will never live in a truly connected world: there are simply too many conflicting agendas and business models. Sadly, Adobe’s decision to “give up” on trying to interoperate with Apple throws a pail of ice water on a universally connected future. If you buy a digital toaster, or a lawnmower, or a garage door opener, or a mobile device, or an app phone, or a car … it will either connect or it won’t. It is a world where you can buy any device and it will either connect or it won’t. This imagined future has nothing to do with the Internet, Net Neutrality or private ecosystems. If you look at the spirit of the FCC’s new “100 Squared” plan (the name they have given the Commission’s recommendation to Congress for the National Broadband Plan), you can imagine a future where there are only two kinds of devices: connected and not-connected. Adobe war brings into focus is the murky and unfortunate future of connected devices. The Apple model works for Apple … that’s how it was designed. The simple argument for Apple’s position is that, unlike open platforms, apps developed under their strict guidance will have the highest level of quality control and offer the best user experience and consistency.Ĭut away the selfishness shrouded in altruism and you find a company that earns only eight percent of the hardware dollars in its industry, but earns 25 percent of the profits. Apple has the absolute right to limit, prohibit, edit, fix or otherwise augment anything that third-party developers create under the terms of Apple’s software development agreement. I am fascinated by the rhetoric in the blogosphere about open vs. It is entirely under Apple’s control, and quite closed. But - and it’s a big but - they have not created an open platform. They have created a tool set that empowers thousands of third-party developers to help them sell their products. But, as you well know, they do much more. They are a hardware company that gives away free software to enhance the value of their devices. Sell ‘em the razors, sell ‘em the blades. (The reason you can view YouTube on your iPhone is because YouTube uses H.264, an Apple-compatible format, not Flash when you access it from your iPhone.) You can Google the details of the fight they are interesting, but the details are not the overarching issue. Even though this is true, Apple has decided to make it almost impossible to display Flash video and apps on their iPhone, iPod Touch and new iPad devices. Most modern, Web 2.0-ish, multi-media sites incorporate some kind of Flash programming. Ninety-eight percent of desktop and laptop computers (including Macs) can run Flash video and other Flash apps. This may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Adobe decided to discontinue development of tools for making Flash apps for the iPhone family of devices. There was an interesting development in the Apple ( AAPL) vs.
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