[X3D-Public] Everybody’s Business - How Apple Has Rethought a Gospel of the Web - NYTimes.com

[Braden McDaniel]

On Thu, 2010-04-22 at 10:35 -0500, cbullard at hiwaay.net wrote: 
> The market argument that controlling more of the backend creates a  
> logistically sounder system for the consumer is hard to refute by  
> numbers.  Logistics curve, number of managed changes and consumables  
> says that for the most bug-free consistent experience, the Apple  
> method is sound.
> 
> It may not be true.  Closed systems are typically non-resilient  
> diverse environments.  How this will work out feature for feature in  
> fielding useful systems to the web is obvious:  more closed gardens  
> with noise at the interfaces.  On the other hand, telling Adobe to go  
> screw themselves given the number of professional Flash authors (a  
> non-trivial skill set) is hubris and they will pay dearly for that.

Will they?  The iPhone has been without Flash support for some time now.
How dearly would you say they've paid so far?

> No Joe, HTML5 is not enough.  HTML5 plainly has become Apple and  
> Google's to play with and Microsoft's to cope with.

That's very much an issue of what parties have taken leadership roles by
devoting resources to the problem.  Microsoft *could* have been a leader
in this effort, had they opted to do so.

Really, countering Flash is something Microsoft has bungled badly.  They
could have embraced SVG some years ago and helped evolve it to the point
that it would be a reasonable Flash alternative.  There's a contingent
of Web developers eager for these sorts of technologies.

Instead, Microsoft delivered Flash Redux and called it Silverlight:
technology practically guaranteed to be embraced by anyone already in
the Microsoft camp, and yawned at by everyone else.

So now I hear that Microsoft is finally embracing SVG.  Maybe they
finally Get It.  We'll see.

>    Trying to smooth  
> over Apple's strategy to dominate all of the backend processes and  
> applications that enable third-party applications to be vended to  
> Apple hardware consumers is a straight forward monopolistic and  
> predatory move on the developer ecosystems at every level from code  
> head to contentDiva.   This isn't simple an X3D problem.

It certainly is.  The biggest problem in countering this offensive:
Apple is exactly right in asserting that Flash is a resource hog and a
frequent culprit in browser crashes.  Flash is viewed by many (with
informed opinions) as bad software whose few virtues could be replaced
with more efficient solutions.  If Apple doesn't back down, it's because
the only stick we have to beat them with is a dry, rotten twig.

-- 
Braden McDaniel <braden at endoframe.com>