It's important for Jobs to convince the rank-and-file at Apple that Google's "Don't Be Evil" is bullshit. Right now it looks an awful lot like Apple is being closed and evil, while Google is being open and excellent with Android apps.
If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers.
Not allowing third parties access to your walled garden is hardly in the same ballpark of possible evil as having access to all of your personal communications. In the worst case of Apple being evil, you can't run Bob's cool software without buying another (non-Apple) device. The worst case of Google being evil is that you go to jail (or worse depending on where you live). And yes, people have gone to jail based on searching Google [1][2].
ADDENDUM: Yes, the evidence in these cases was not provided by Google. No, that does not discredit my statement. The point is that the business Google is in has far more capacity for "evil" than the business Apple is in. Some comments have pointed out that Apple could have backdoors in their software that would allow them to be equally evil. While that is technically possible it would be easily detectable using network monitoring tools, and no one has found one. On the other hand, we have no idea how Google uses the data they have on us. They claim to play nice, but there is no way that anyone could verify this, and it could change retro-actively at any moment.
"Google’s press office did not respond Friday to an email inquiry about the case, but a lawyer standing by for Petrick said he believes the evidence was all culled from the hard drives and he has no information that Google participated in the investigation."
So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.
Speaking of which, as the company that writes the OS and Mail.app, doesn't Apple have just as much access to personal communications for its users as Google does? How do you know that the OS and mail programs don't have back doors that can be used whenever it's required? You can't even get root on your own iPhone (unless you jailbreak it), so in a very real way they have more control over you own device than you do. How can you be sure that it's not beaming your GPS coordinates to [insert evil institution here] all the time? You know when you're sending information to Google, but Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
So this shows Google's "evilness" about as much as it shows the evilness of the browser and OS the guy was using.
Enabling private browsing eliminates local browser history. There is no such recourse for server-side tracking. Even turning off cookies (and Flash [1]) won't stop that [2].
Apple controls closed-source software running on a location-aware personal device with a microphone on it that people carry around all the time.
There is merit to your accusation in that there is no way to monitor network traffic over 3G to verify that audio is not transmitted. However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all.
"However, all cell phones allow basic geo-location via triangulation (most carriers lie about that), so if you don't want to be found you shouldn't have a cell phone at all."
It is technically possible for all web pages to track your activity there, so if you don't want to be tracked you shouldn't be using the web at all.
Maybe, maybe not. What if Mail.app is programmed only to turn on this back door in certain circumstances? Only a very small percentage of people would ever think to packet sniff all the data their computer is sending. If this privacy-invading mode could be turned on by, say, sending a very specific spam-looking message to Mail.app, you could use this capability only when needed and be almost guaranteed that the target user is not running a packet sniffer.
Also, how are you going to packet sniff what your iPhone is sending over 3G?
To play Devil's advocate: The United States controls over five thousand thermonuclear missiles. Sudan controls none. So what country has been more evil in the last decade?
It's important to acknowledge, too, that Google likely has more blackmail-able information on us than the FBI.
Probably the united states. They've killed millions of people around the world in the last decade. If you don't limit it to the last decade, it's even worse.
Being utilitarian about it, India or China is ahead no matter what, because of all of those little sacks of utility known as "babies" they've produced. ;)
I agree that Google's scope of possible evil is much more significant. But this is really all about perception, not reality. What Steve Jobs says at an internal Apple employee meeting isn't going to truly change Apple, but it may change how the employees view their company.
The way I see it, he's blowing off some steam around friends. The man is peerless (and has yet to name a successor), and has his '60s ideals at heart. He is right to call a slogan like "Don't be evil" bullshit when it comes from an ambitious public company that makes all of their money selling ads (targeted by mining collected private data) on a "free" service. "Organizing the world's data," is appropriate, but no company can say honestly say "Don't be evil." At least with Apple you know what you're getting, and you know what it costs.
There's good reason he has yet to publicly name a successor--when you publicly name a successor, the successor gets all anxious to take over and people start expecting you to step aside in the near future. If you don't believe me, ask Jay Leno or Brett Favre.
You don't think Apple has access to that kind of info on people? Have you heard of MobileMe? There's plenty of opportunity for Apple to do the same works.
They may not have data on as many people, but it's just the nature of their business. I think that Google has a pretty decent track record with that kind of thing.
In both of the examples you posted, the evidence was [probably, in the last case; the article is ambiguous] retrieved from the accused's computer's history and/or cache, not Google itself.
MobileMe is paid up front, and not ad supported. There is no collection of private data for the purposes of targeting ads, and your actions are not correlated to your search history, or any website that uses AdSense or DoubleClick. Your email may be on their servers, but it is not connected to a tangled net of tracking information that follows you everywhere that you go. Maybe Apple could add these things, but their business model has been for the customer to pay for their service up front, not for them to find creative ways to monetize any personal information they might have.
They did recently purchase Quattro Wireless for mobile advertising, but they say this is to provide a framework for iPhone developers to include ads in their apps. It's probably a competitive play to get developers to not use Google ads.
Sort of how you "pay up front" for newspapers and cable TV, and therefore don't see any ads? Oh wait.
No, it must be how you "pay up front" for printers, and therefore the manufacturer isn't trying to make money off you on the ink. Oh wait.
"Paying up front" is no guarantee that the company isn't still trying to make money off you after the fact.
Do you know that your MobileMe isn't connected to your iTunes search history, the songs you've bought, the sites you visit on your iPhone, the apps you search for and buy on the app store, etc?
MobileMe still gives them a pretty extensive network of information about you ... all of your emails, contacts, etc. Google might track more, but you have no evidence to support a postulation that we should fear for its evilness. I agree that we should try to break the monopolies where Google has them, but they've been friendly heretofore.
And MobileMe isn't Apple's only source, it's just the most directly analogous to Google's data, but as pointed out above, all of Apple's offerings are closed-source and at least on the iPhone you have no idea how often Apple is pinging your phone or what data they're sending back. They have plenty of opportunity to gather even _more_ data than Google.
I don't think the "paid up front" thing matters very much, either. I would be surprised if Apple wasn't after the same kind of profiling that Google performs insofar as it has adequate data on a group of users. The same information that advertisers want (that Google automatically applies to their ads) so that they know what to sell you, Apple wants so that it knows what to sell you.
No need to prove that Apple is evil or not, that's Google claim not Apple one. Apple claim to be original and sophisticated not that they are the next mother Theresa, they fully embrace the fact that they are a business and don't pretend otherwise.
> If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers.
I certainly consider Google to be a more ethical company than Apple. Currently, I own neither an iPhone or an Android phone; if I did get one it would be the Android because it is more open. If I did have an Android, it's quite likely I would develop software on it.
On the desktop, I currently use a Linux box. I've considered getting a Mac; several of my friends have them. But the locked-down nature of the iPhone and iPad deter me from buying any of their products.
So Apple has certainly lost me as a potential customer, due to my perception of them being evil. Do they care? Probably not. However, if lots of programmers think like me, the software ecosystem around their product will suffer.
Their being closed dow not make them evil. Is every company that doesn't give you access to everything they've made, or at least all the information on everything they've done evil? I don't think so...
They're keeping it closed for the sake of their users (most of whom would actually be worse off by a very open environment). For example, a couple days ago I talked with a non-technically savvy owner of an android phone, and my god. A Verizon tech has her killing all the background apps every hour so that her battery life isn't atrocious. Might be good for you and I, but not real consumers.
According to [1], it was because the costs of connecting are too high. Since Google voice is a free service, I (at least) see no issue with it; you get what you pay for.
However, saying that Apple never did that while Google did makes no sense; Apple isn't a service provider, while Google is, in this case. It makes just as much sense to say that Google never required their devices to be jailbroken to be user-controllable, while Apple did - or that Google never said that jailbreaking was illegal, while Apple did.
Does Google Voice say, "we don't want to pay a connection fee" or does it just block the call? Was Google open about blocking certain people? I think if they cost one person a job or internship because of blocked calls, that qualifies as "evil". I find it funny that AT&T had to figure out who was getting blocked and how sloppy Google was doing it (Google was blocking more numbers then they had to to avoid the fee).
I'm glad that you are unaffected by such things, tis a shame for other people.
There are plenty of developers who'd rather work on Android, since it's much more open than iPhone OS. But I'd bet there are equally many developers who'd rather work on iPhone OS because they feel it's the better OS.
Apple gets the developers for whom the closed vs. open debate is far less important than the better vs. worse debate. (Corollary: those tend to be people who do not always grant better-until-proven-worse status to openness.)
Please keep in mind that Google IS presently the world largest censor. It's pretty clear that they only avoid doing evil when it is not financially incentivized. Apple is just being stupid and shortsighted, especially with the iPad. An open market alongside their closed one would boost them both. It's clear that Google realizes this as a point of business, and I think given their other actions it's clear that they are doing it for those reasons and not to avoid evil.
That depends. Closed doesn't have to be 'evil', but open almost never is. So even if there isn't a 1:1 correspondence between the two you'll be finding 'evil' (lock in, proprietary protocols, overpriced hardware and so on) invariably when stuff is closed.
But of course there are manufacturers of closed source that do not do 'lock-in', that open up their interface layers and protocols and that price their hardware reasonably.
edit: I really just have a nitpick with the tossing around of the term "evil". It's almost as if Godwin's Law should adapt to cover not only Nazi comparisons, but also absolutes of morality.
Producing closed product ecosystems is hardly "evil". Don't like it, don't buy/support it. (Now try getting away from the Google surveillance system on the web. Can you opt out?)
Yes, you can; just block all of Google's known IP blocks in /etc/hosts.deny, or send all their domains to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts
A bit more than the average user can manage, and not so good as actually opting out (in the sense of getting Google to throw away all of their records on you), but you always have complete control of which pages your computer will load.
"Don't be evil" clearly is bullshit to the extent that you can always rationalize an evil action, and three words aren't going to stop you from doing what you want.
On the other hand, though, a mantra like that can help entrench a culture that makes it harder for "evil" ideas to find roots.
On balance, I'm not sure a mantra makes a difference. It's sort of dangerous when it becomes so entrenched that you start to think your actions are by definition non-evil. From time to time, we do see Google pulling out "it's not illegal if the President does it"-type rationalizations.
That said, it's a tough pill to swallow coming from Apple of all people. Especially with the lawsuits over rumors/leaks. Especially with the, "you can't run non-approved apps on iPhone OS," attitude. If I had to rank companies on the spectrum of 'evil,' Apple would be closer to evil than Google.
Tough pill to swallow? Apple never staked a claim to some fuzzy moral high ground. All Jobs is pointing out is that to the extent that you equate greediness with evil, Google is precisely as evil as every other company.
Google is open where it thinks it can afford to be and not where it doesn't. So is Apple.
Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone. Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives.
Maybe I'm not a good judge of morality. I still hold the romantic notion that people giving you money means people think you're doing something good for them. Apple's fans are some of the most loyal on the planet. It doesn't seem as though they're extorting folks into buying their stuff.
> Google locks down its algorithm to give a good user experience in search. Apple locks down its App Store to provide a good experience on the iPhone.
You lost me at this point. Out of all of the things that Google does or has done, locking down their algorithm hardly ranks on the scale of evil.
> Both of these moves are designed to make money, but mysteriously, Teflon Google easily sheds all acknowledgement of its motives.
Google locking down their algorithm does not prevent someone from competing with them. On the other hand, Apple locking down the AppStore does allow them to prevent others from competing with them (i.e. where is iPhone Opera Web Browser?). Google's algorithm is more in line with the hardware design blueprints of the iPad and the source code to the operating system. No one but the most rabid FSF supporters are railing on Apple for not open-sourcing their operating system. And no one is railing on Apple for not posting their hardware design blueprints for the iPad and/or iPhone.
No, your analogy isn't right. Or rather, using your analogy, no one is being prevented from competing with Apple either, all you need to do is build your own wildly successful gadget with AppStore. Easy!
No, a better analogy would be to look at how Google restricts use of their APIs. I remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to geo-code a couple of hundred addresses of handicapped parking spaces in Paris for a handicapped friend. Google's terms of service required me to pay money for this access, because a couple of hundred hits, run over a few minutes, was considered commercial use of their service. I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits.
Both companies are very restrictive in how you, as a developer, may use the services that they provide. And they are both near-monopoly providers of those services. As others have pointed out, both are publicly traded companies that are there to make a profit, and both will put restrictions on developers that they feel are using their systems in ways that they have decided are inappropriate.
"I didn't have an automatic right to use Google's service in an innovative way. And indeed, I tried it anyhow, just to see how they reacted, the server stopped responding after the first 50 or so hits."
No, you didn't have the automatic right to use their servers as much as you want in an innovative way. Putting in a time delay (say 2 seconds?) between each request and you can do that just fine. Google is in no way saying either method is inappropriate, just that they consider one to be an action done by businesses and they don't give away as many services to businesses for free.
I hope you got the list done for your friend though, it sounds like quite a nice thing to do.
Yes, that's the way of getting around the technical restriction, but if you read the terms of service, at least as they were a couple of years ago, what I was doing wasn't allowed - I was over the upper limit per month.
I ended up finishing things with Yahoo's service instead, so she eventually had a list of handicapped places in her GPS :-)
I lost you because we have different assumptions. I don't consider either of those things to "rank on the scale of evil". They are both business practices. Just because you assert that Apple's practice is more evil, doesn't make it so.
And, you're quite wrong. Google makes its money as an advertising platform. In this regard, Google's moat around its industry is exactly as deep and as wide as Apple's is around the App Store. People compete against Google search. People compete against the App Store. The lock in effects for both of these enterprises are essentially the same.
If I was Google I'd do a parody of the 1984 ad featuring Apple as the bad guy. -- "We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each iPhone user may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing applications."
And the majority of your userbase wouldn't understand that it's satire because they would love to be set free from the contradictory, confusing, often-harmful experience on other platforms.
Please. Those campaigns weren't self-serious morality stories, they were about anti-conformity. Companies establishing a personality is branding. Companies asserting that whatever they do must not be evil because, hey, that's our motto, is arrogance.
Google has set itself up to be right by default in every action. If I dispute their actions, I just might be evil. After all, we know they aren't.
As a matter of fact, I consider it somewhat evil that they don't have easy (or in some cases any) live support for most of their products. But, hey, the services are free, right? Google couldn't be getting any strategic or first order value from my using gmail, could they?
If I knew someone personally who told me all the time that they refused to do anything or believe anything immoral and then I had to carry on a discussion about politics with that person, it wouldn't be very pleasant. Every public debate where Google's involved, and that's all of them now, is like debating that guy.
True, but Apple doesn't make any special claims that it's not evil. I think if people smell bullshit in "don't be evil", it's because looking at all companies, they see no correlation between claiming not to be evil and actually not being evil.
I think many people are missing the fact that Apple saying Google's "Don't be evil" is bullshit does not imply that Apple claims they aren't being evil.
Filing lawsuits because people tell your secrets is not "evil", nor is a very up-front policy about having a single, moderated channel of distribution for your mobile devices.
It's very "closed", and that's no secret, but that has nothing to do with being "evil".
Eric Schmidt has addressed this multiple times. He just sees it as a conversation starter. Someone at the meeting can always suggest 'Is this evil?' and people can ponder if it's the best course of action.
I think it is refreshing that this line could be said in a meeting and it not just be laughed at.
Part of me agrees with him re. Adobe. Adobe has a mountain of resources, talent and potential. I've been working with Flash for about a decade now - before Adobe even bought Macromedia - for all sorts of different use cases. In all that time it's been and to this day remains a horribly inefficient IDE to program in, and the FlashPlayer is a platform you have to optimize early and optimize often to keep running on performance-intensive uses.
Every new version developers are just praying this time Adobe will give us a product they've gone back and fixed instead of just adding more stuff to it.
>Every new version developers are just praying this time Adobe will give us a product they've gone back and fixed instead of just adding more stuff to it.
I can't tell you how many times I have made this statement regarding After Effects. I've been hoping they would do this since version 6.5.
Google's goal is no less than to assimilate every piece of dearly held private information it can find about you to feed you advertising more efficiently, all while wiping out the individual industries that have made them popular (real estate's next!).
Adobe hasn’t innovated a serious product since flash - it got huge, wiped out the competition through acquisitions and has been producing spammy me-too’s like their media player & mobile devices app ever since.
Apple is of course, open to massive criticism themselves, but it’s fun to see Steve throw other monster media companies under the bus!
Sorry I can't tell if you are sarcastic or not, but in case you're not: what's wrong with being targeted by advertising more efficiently.
Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?
I know in practice we get spammed by noise, but most of that noise is caused by inefficient advertising. But what's wrong with being targeted with something that genuinely piques your interest? People would love to pay for that, because frankly the information we need is not always presented to us right when we need it. Highly efficient advertising is giving people who have something to say, say it to the right person right when they need it.
Don't misconstrue this as an endorsement of false or misleading advertising. I think there is the ability for advertising to serve the need to present the right information to the right people at the right time.
Theoretically speaking being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency is being persuaded to part with as much cash as possible for as little product.
This is advertising presenting the right information to the right person at the right time.
On account of the consumer not paying for it, advertising is pretty much diametrically opposed to the consumers wants.
A paid for service which tells you what you want and when you want it is not what google are developing.
Think about it this way. Let's say I'm trying to buy a pair of night vision goggles that could see through people's clothes. Well let's say I search google and I get spammed with night vision goggles of poor quality and that can't see through people's clothes. Theoretically speaking, if the manufacturer of a night vision goggle knew how perverted I was, they'd be willing to pay Google to get the right information in front of me. This is because they know with that key perfectly targeted information they can make a sale with me. I want to see through people's clothes, the manufacturer makes money off me. WIN WIN!
That is my definition of perfect targeting. And it also explains why Google wants to get more information out of us. Obviously more information means better targeting. But this better targeting also means better ads that are more relevant. Relevant doesn't mean ads close to what I want but not really what I want. Relevant means genuinely relevant. And I REALLY believe Google is trying to achieve that perfect genuine relevancy.
Sure Good search results are there, but there is still noise. Good search results still requires us wafting through the crap. But with paid well targeted ads, the right information has the potential to come to you by circumventing the things that cause the noise. Companies who know they have an advantage on pervert night vision goggles can pay for that highly targeted area and get the information to the right people.
Oh I do get the theory. I just don't think that's how it is likely to play out in the majority of cases.
Look at current advertising, it doesn't generally help you find the best product that suits your needs, instead it shouts at you that for a small fee you can learn the simple secret to perfectly white teeth.
In your above example no company could legally say that it is making pervert x-ray vision goggles. So what happens is the company with the best marketing strategy (and probably useless non-xray goggles) devises a campaign which alludes to the non-existent x-ray properties of their useless goggles. Google helps them target it at you and do so JUST as that cute neighbor next door is raking up the leaves in her annoyingly baggy gardening wear and BAM you're buying some junk which doesn't fulfill your need.
No doubt in some cases consumers will be provided with a product which fulfills their needs via googles adverts, but generally they will get worse value for money and I suspect they'll also get worse products.
Well if the comapny advertising outright lies, that's a whole different issue. I'm just saying that there is a model for advertising where it's win win for both parties, and I think it's google's goal to achieve that.
A lot of advertising is inefficient but if you stop thinking about advertising in it's current form you can see how a more efficint system can serve a beneficial place in society.
Such an efficient model would show me very few ads indeed, as there is very little I need that I don't already have, and I resent being encouraged to spend wastefully.
That's propaganda, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it. But by my definition (the one I'm talking about; I didn't create it) it's not advertising, and I think Google is working to achieve my definition of advertising.
"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""
That sounds an awful like going to a webpage, for example Google, typing in a query, and having the results be appropriate and useful.
(Roughly, how Google was before it stopped being that and started serving useless shit like dozens of the same mailing list mirrors, shareware download sites and shopping aggregate sites).
"""Theoretically speaking, isn't being targeted by advertising at absolute efficiency being given exactly what you want when you want it?"""
No, because part of the point of advertising is to convince you that you want it. Perfect advertising would be such that whatever they show you, you buy.
Well targeted advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about cars.
Perfectly targeted advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a car that you buy, but that you would have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
This is my definition of theoretically perfectly targeted advertising. This is what I think Google is trying to achieve.
But perfect advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a (more expensive) car that you buy, but that you wouldn't have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
This is a worse outcome for you, but a better outcome for Google and the manufacturer.
I'm not sure if this is possible, presumably if there is something that would convince you to buy it, enough research on your part would hit the same thing and you would buy it anyway - in that case it would be the same as your suggestion - but you wouldn't be doing research on "what's the most expensive car I could possibly convince myself to buy", you would be researching "what's the cheapest" or "the best form/function/cost trade".
It still seems like good search results are what you'd want when buying a car, and adverts are what you wouldn't want.
What would it take you to get into a state where you skip researching a purchase and take the first advert Google shows you, confident that it would be close to what you'd have found anyway?
> But perfect advertising is when you're looking for a car, and you get presented with information about a (more expensive) car that you buy, but that you wouldn't have bought if you spent time doing the research yourself.
That would be perfect, but only for the advertiser. So I want to ask you this: do you think there is a potential win win scenario in advertising? And if there is, why do you think Google would pursue the advertiser favorable outcome over the both party win outcome?
Example time
---------------------------------------
Ok let's take the Google search example for a ride.
I'm looking for a new pair of headphones. They must be closed, really good quality, and nice looking. I want a good price. But most importantly, they must have favorable reviews. I've spent a few days searching google for reviews and specifications. I've settled on the Shure SRH840 (can't wait for them to get here).
From Shure's perspective, let's see if they could see exactly what I searched for! They would see exactly what I wanted based on the reviews. Then they could decide whether or not their products matched exactly what I'm looking for. Wouldn't Shure be interested in paying to put their headphone, along with all the information I was looking, right in front of my eyes? That would be a win win situation. I save myself some time researching, and Shure makes some money off of me.
---------------------------------------
(How do you type an asterisk?) Please note that in a real world application Shure would not see what I searched for. Instead they would target by telling google what type of people looking for such and such information would want Shure stuff.
But unfortunately advertising has not reached that ideal point yet. There are advertisers who have shitty products that barely function, and they try to target uneducated people. This could be an example of good targeting too, because the advertiser can reach its intended target: the idiot. Unfortunately because of the inefficiencies of ad targeting systems, we have people like you and me who are mistaken for idiots (at least I'm hoping it's a mistake) and served these ads for shitty ass products that we don't want. These targeting inefficiencies add noise to the system and not only serve us unwanted ads, but block the wanted ads. They also make advertising less attractive for people who have genuinely good products that could potentially be exactly what some people want.
It's understandable that you and most people hate ads because they've been quite inefficient. And so far advertiser's haven't been able to target to the point of relevancy. Instead they employ a brute force method of either spamming the masses (television) or minimal targeting and slightly less spamming (Google ads). But I believe there is a place for ads to be beneficial by letting companies pay to get favorable information to a target audience, and I believe Google is trying to achieve that.
I was one of the first people at Macromedia to talk up FutureWave SmartSketch and CelAnimator. From what I've personally seen, the innovation of the entire Flash Platform under Adobe's stewardship has surpassed even the growth under Macromedia.
You don't have to believe it. But that's what I've seen.
Not true. They made massive optimizations to the JIT compiler as well as Actionscript. It still runs faster than js (even V8) for many pixel intensive operations. Just because the original idea of multimedia was from Macromedia, doesn't mean Adobe didn't innovate on top of it.
The word innovation has lost all meaning. Improving a JIT compiler in 2005 (or later), by itself, isn't innovation, it's catching up to the state of the art.
And saying Actionscript is faster than Javascript for pixel intensive operations is fairly meaningless, because that's not really dependent on the language, it's dependent on how those pixels get pushed to the screen.
I didn't say Actionscript was faster, did I? If you took it that way, allow me to clarify: I meant to say they improved the language, and that the JIT is faster than the chrome JIT.
I fail to see the problem here. All three of these companies produce excellent products. If this weren't the case, you wouldn't be so passionate in your arguments. I mean, your criticisms practically describe their business model.
Of course if we want to criticize apple in the same way they just want you to have complete and utter vendor lock in but thats almost the same as every other company.
So, if I were SJ, and I trusted a guy from another company, gave him early confidential information on a revolutionary product I was working on, then found out he was going to undercut me with a crappy knockoff of my product with a wider distribution model, I'd be pretty pissed.
I'd be especially pissed when it happened AGAIN 22 years later.
I'd be even more especially pissed if the person doing it had no business model behind it other than some fuzzy idea of gathering more web page views which would eventually lead to more mobile advertising dollars. In fact, I'd probably buy a mobile advertising company or two to make sure that guy never saw a red cent of the money from the platform I helped revolutionize.
So, on that front, do you see why SJ might be pissed?
Launching a mobile operating system seems very different from launching an iPhone. Possibly the time was just right? People forget that there where mobile phones before the iPhone, and programmable ones, too. You could even buy "apps" for them.
What changed is the viability of mobile internet. It's only recently that it has become fast enough and affordable enough. Why should Apple be the only company inspired by these new possibilities?
Apple was the company most responsible for the viability of the mobile Internet, with their focus on making WebKit in the first place, building on KDE, and then making it practical on a mobile device.
According to the article Jobs is quoted saying: “Make no mistake they [Google] want to kill the iPhone”.
What motivation would Google have for this? Considering the apps and services they offer on the iPhone, including iPhone optimized versions of their web applications, this conclusion seems rather strange.
More control of the software, and providing options for how they can be used. Google doesn't just want to offer phones for one or other carrier; they want phones that work independent of any carrier. They want to change the mobile device landscape.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, because you're right.
Adobe feels like that for the same reason: you get an annoying swagger when you own a monopoly.
Adobe owns "rich content" on the web. And just like Microsoft, they also know what a pain technology transitions are. No company wants to support a flash version and an HTML5 version of their site/product/app. And just like Microsoft, they'll start to advertise how all the fun stuff runs on their platform instead of building new stuff.
Realistically, flash is here to stay at least until IE supports HTML5 and achieves a critical mass. Until then, Adobe can give the finger to everyone and maintain control no matter how hard developers or competitors whine. Feels very familiar indeed.
And that's why they can afford to be lazy. And they absolutely are, the laziest software company I can think of.
I hope they get the same kind of backlash Microsoft reaped from similar tactics, they are my least favourite company right now.
That said, the Google comment just seems to be so much hot air; "I know we're being pricks, but everyone is, and anyone who says different is simply lying". Yeah, thanks Steve.
The way you explained it, Apple seems to be just as "lazy"... and I agree. They control the iphone/pad/whatever app store and can approve something, or not. It won't matter for them and they can ignore anyone whining. They're so big, they don't have to care if your app ends up rejected and forgotten. Annoying swagger indeed.
Are you arguing that Apple has a monopoly on phones? Even narrowing the category to smart phones doesn't really make enough of a difference for your point to be valid. Sure, there are plenty of people out there that have iPhones, but there's also people out there with phones running Android and PalmOS. There's people with Blackberry's and WinMos. If you don't like Apple's walled garden, you can easily get a decent experience buying another phone. You want rich media on the web? Well, good luck getting away with that without using Flash.
I'm not arguing for or against the AppStore. I get why Apple is doing it, and I get why people don't like it, but comparing Apple to Adobe in this way is fruitless (no pun intended).
Also, Apple has reversed rejections when the blogosphere cried foul.
AFAIR they reversed rejections when influential enough blogosphere gave them bad PR. Cases that didn't make it into known bloggers' posts didn't matter (and we probably didn't hear about most of them). Just look at apprejections.com to see how silly the situation still is.
Comparing iPhone apps to Android and PalmOS? Sure - just like Flash can be compared to Java embedded/webstart and avi embedding through `<object ...>`. There's almost the same amount of real-world competition in those areas... If you want some app, it's probably already in Flash/AppStore - even if some people push it via other means (avi players/other app markets).
I'm not arguing they have monopoly on (smart)phones - just on real-world smartphone apps. And that allows them to be lazy - it's just strange that they call Adobe lazy for doing exactly the same. Apple: "just port it the way we want, or go away", Adobe: "just let us use what we have, or go away", both: "no" :(
I'm not sure why you can't have something like flash.
Imagine if the browser, noticing it's about to download a .flv, would not d/l the .flv, but would trampoline that to a backend server that would transcode to, say, .mp4 and then your browser (using AJAX for the async call) would load the .mp4 from the backend server.
I know that more complicated flash stuff, like games, and interactivity, would not work this simple way; but if there's a non-flash way of getting the same functionality in the browser via HTML5, then couldn't this "server-in-the-middle" approach work?
The browser doesn't do this. The Flash applet in the page does this. Also, most of the Flash video content on the web is in .mp4 these days, and most big video sites already stream it to iPhones, etc. as .mp4, as if Flash didn't exist.
I think Steve's evangelical streak is showing here at least in regards to Google. You're either with us, or you're against us, and if you're against us it stands to reason that you're evil because we represent everything that is good and pure. I have concerns that Google's sheer size and participation in so many areas creates potential for accidental evil but I see nothing that suggests they are committing an Orwellian fraud on us by projecting anti-evil double speak to cover their true intentions.
You know I miss the days when Apple (as in Steve) went after Microsoft and IBM with a vengeance. That battle didn't turn out too well for him, but it was fun to watch. It would be fun to see Apple and Google go at it.
The history of the PC vs. Mac wars showed us that an open platform (as in able to be installed on any non-apple device) wins over a closed platform controlled by one company. It will be interested to see what happens this time around.
Well, most families didn't have computers for a long time, but they did have televisions. Buying a console was much cheaper (and easier to understand). I think that sort of became the SOP as opposed to computers during the rise of gaming.
Oh and let's not forget Shigeru Miyamoto's awesomeness helping out :)
> The history of the PC vs. Mac wars showed us that an open platform (as in able to be installed on any non-apple device) wins over a closed platform controlled by one company. It will be interested to see what happens this time around.
Not necessarily. Care to comment on the era where Apple opened itself up to 3rd-party hardware vendors?
I'm not saying that Apple wasn't successful. Just like they have become the "mind share" (RIM still has the market share) leader in the phone market, they ruled the personal computer market before the PC clones and Windows 95.
I can see how they had some success during their time with 3rd-party hardware vendors but that was short lived never truly made a big challenge vs. the Win/PC market. Also, this was during the non-Steve Apple and we can be sure that he won't be opening up any Mac OS to third parties because he wants to keep that control.
I'm saying that if you look at the entire time period from when Apple had a 90% PC market share to it's less than 10% and compare that to entire Win/PC market you have to say that a system that is open to 3rd parties is more successful than one which is locked down.
The iPhone and iPad will probably be better products than any Android powered device but that doesn't matter because history shows that a closed strategy isn't successful in the long run.
When Apple licensed the Mac OS and Mac ROMs to third parties, in '94, the first clones hit the market in '95.
The truth of the matter is, they did it too late, and when they did, their competition released Windows 95, and later Windows NT 4 ... which were seen as big improvements over their predecessors, and Mac OS 7 wasn't that great compared to Windows.
Practically, it was too little, too late, and it only lasted until 97.
The Apple clones where a success for everybody, except Apple. Apple closed down the clone operation because they started cutting into Apple's profit margins. I think that was then Apple decided that they'd rather have a huge slice of a small pie, than a small slice of a huge pie. I don't think Apple cares too much about winning any sort of platform war. They're perfectly happy about being in second place as long as they make the biggest profits.
It is interesting that the discussion is focused two partner-competitor relationships and not (as far as what has leaked) mostly-competitor relationships such as Microsoft, Palm/Elevation, Nokia or Sony. I wonder if the discussion was broader and the leaker has some reason to poison the cooperation that exists between these companies?
It is ironic that Jobs voices frustration with Adobe for not putting more effort in optimizing Flash for MacOS, in that Adobe's conservation of resources comes from their lack of a strong competitor (and MacOS's weak share of their user base). It is ironic because without Google's potential competition in handheld devices Apple would undoubtably be just as lazy/conservative as Adobe.
It is shocking that Google is more of a handset discussion topic instead of Palm, Nokia and Microsoft. I think this speaks to how orthogonal Google's business model is compared to Apple's. Apple's mindset is one of fee for service, like HBO. Google's mindset is one of free for ads, like broadcast TV. This not only gives Google a consumer-cost advantage in handsets but also in areas such as online services.
Does the article mix his quotes up a bit to "spark controversy", as journalists are so fond of?
The gist his quoted statements seem to be "Google are evil because they compete with one of our products". I thought it was common knowledge that competition is far from evil; it's healthy and necessary. It seems a bit absurd that Jobs would say that.
Wow, you just called someone a liar on the internet. Good job, you totally deserve five up votes for that observation. Note that what I say has no necessary relation to the truth or what I actually think.
They are different. Very much unlike HP or Dell. Not even remotely similar to Nokia or Samsung.
That motto is pretty content free, though. They are different, sure, but is that a good thing or a bad thing? Are they different in the right way or in the wrong way? That motto would also fit both Google and Microsoft without any problems. Those two are pretty unique.
So no, no bullshit, but rather devoid of much useful content.
Like Steve jobs, I'd love to ditch Flash too, because frankly I can't really ever bring myself to like using products from the company that brings us delights such as Adobe Reader, Adobe's updaters, etc.
However. Unlike Steve, I don't have an army of developers to build and test Javascript and CSS to make sure it works across all browsers (as you know... it won't). I use Flash/Flex because it means I spend more time creating value and less time chasing browser incompatibility bugs.
I think Flash will be here for quite some time yet.
If that perception continues, Apple loses recruiting access to a lot of the best developers.