A site devoted to discussing techniques that promote quality and ethical practices in software development.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Joke of the century - Steve Job calling Apple iPad/iPhone open system

Steve Jobs must be using a different dictionary than mine and may be high on illicit substance when he said:
Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards.

While the web part may be so only in a very limited sense. It still does not work with 80% of the web that other browsers can competently handle. It is like saying my car's ride is so good only one perfectly laid road surface but any pot-holes or expansion joints will throw the car off course.

What he did not say is that it is not open to industry adopted defacto "standards" (Steve you quoted the word open and I quoted the word standard, fair swap!), of which Adobe Flash is one, even though it API and standards belonging to Adobe.

If Apple, in particular, is so open as Steve Jobs, why is there a dictatorial control over what development languages one can use?

The whole issue is not whether Adobe Flash is proprietary or not. It is just the culture of Apple's insatiable thirst to retain control over its products - Google Voice Native removal - and it will not allow others invention to outshine his.

The so called "open" system supports Object-C, which does not have any formal written standard unlike ANSI-C or ANSI-C++. Even C# is an ISO & ECMA standard language and hence if Steve is genuine about pursuing only standard or open specification, he should endorse .Net but it is in the banned list.

I can't understand why Microsoft has been charged for anti-competitive when it only have Internet Explorer pre-installed while allowing all other browsers under the sun, including that from Apple, can installed without need for approval and yet Apple is free to impose all the kind of undocumented approval rules that in its tight-fist control of its product.

If it is good for the gander, it is good for goose! So just can't wait to see the US Department of Justice, FTC and EU coming down hard of this villain. It is long overdue.

No comments:

Blog Archive