Apple Secrecy Is Bitter Fruit On The Hill

[samplegirl]

When Apple didn’t participate in an April hearing on children’s online privacy, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, gave voice to his suspicions.


“When people don’t show up when we ask them to ... all it does is increases our interest in what they’re doing and why they didn’t show up,” Rockefeller said of Apple and Google, which both declined to testify. “It was a stupid mistake for them not to show up, and I say shame on them.”


While Apple’s success has earned rock-star status in Silicon Valley, its low-wattage approach in Washington is becoming more glaring to policymakers. Despite its increasing influence over consumers’ use of technology — most recently with the iPad and iPhone 4 — Apple has kept a particularly low profile inside the Beltway.


“It’s unfortunate because they are a major player in this area, and we are going to continue to have a long, in-depth conversation,” on these topics, said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who presided over theprivacy hearing, referring to Apple’s empty seat at the witness table.


Like Microsoft and Google before it, Apple is getting attention from regulators as it grows and starts to compete more directly with other technology heavyweights.


This week, Google complained about Apple’s new rules limiting application developers’ ability to share iPad and iPhone user data with third parties. Google said the new rules restricting advertisers from Apple’s popular platform are anti-competitive.


This follows other objections to Apple’s exclusion of Adobe’s software from the iPhone. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are looking into the complaints.


Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission demanded to know why Apple rejected the Google Voice application from the iPhone App Store. The FCC is also investigating whether exclusive arrangements between wireless carriers and cell phone manufacturers — such as the one involving AT&T and the iPhone — are anti-competitive.


And on Thursday, the FBI launched an investigation of a security breach that revealed information about some 100,000 iPad users, including those working on Capitol Hill and in the White House.


“As Apple continues getting success in new areas, the more they’ll be a lightning rod for attention,” said Rebecca Arbogast, managing director of analyst firm Stifel Nicolaus. “So far, these are all issues Apple’s been able to ignore.”


It’s not that Apple doesn’t pay attention to Capitol Hill. Four respected lobbyists make up its Washington office, led by Catherine Novelli, former assistant U.S. trade representative and partner at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.


Apple is active in several industry trade groups — including TechNet, Business Software Alliance and Information Technology Industry Council — but goes out of its way to stay under the radar. The company would not comment for this story.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38481.html#ixzz0qqJF6Vbh

[alfredo]

1. Flash is not made for touch devices. It is mouse dependent.

[kirby]

2. I do not believe that...

Just about every single 'touch' device emulates a mouse. When you touch the screen, it sends the coordinates like a mouse movement.
The application does not need to know. On Windows for example, the problem with a touch screen is trying to differentiate between a right mouse click versus a left mouse click. Typically that is accomplished by a single tap being a left click and holding your finger down being a right click. On Apple with a single mouse button is it even less of an issue.

My Tablet running Win 7 supports Flash and it has a touch screen.
My Nokia touch device runs Linux, has a touch screen, and supports Flash.

[alfredo]

5. What about the CPU resources used by flash? Apple is known

for pushing new standards like USB, Firewire, HTML5. People griped about there being no floppy in new world Macs, but soon came around when they found that CD's and thumb drives were better. They also found that USB was hell of a lot better than SCSI in that there was no six device limit, and they didn't have to address each new device.

Technology advances.

Why should the iPhone and iPad emulate a mouse? iOS4 is not a desktop OS shoehorned into a tablet, then made to emulate the mouse.

Why haven't they installed a floppy drive on the iPad? What? No PS/2 ports?

[kirby]

6. That is another issue...

The flash player does not typically take advantage of the hardware acceleration capabilities of the video chip used. So CPU resources can be a problem with flash.

As far as the 'why should it emulate a mouse'? They do this for the developers, not the users. It is easier to write an application if the interface is common across many different input devices, whether is it a persons finger, a tablet stylus, or a mouse.

[alfredo]

8. I think Apple wants to keep it as simple as possible for the

user and developer. I see they are loosening restrictions for interpreted code.

Part of their appeal is simplicity. I've spent more time on the phone about my cable in the past two years than I have with Apple in the past fifteen years. Not once have I had to ping pong between hardware and software vendors who claim it is the fault of the other.

[Ezlivin]

3. Flash needs to die

The most clicked button on any Flash-laden site is the one that says "Skip this."

Flash-driven sites are often navigational nightmares; you can't go back a page, bookmark a page or enlarge the text. Designers often get creative with normal scroll bars and render them essentially useless.

Meh.

[kirby]

7. Not if you want to watch youtube videos...

Which is a legitimate flash purpose.

[alfredo]

9. Youtube is moving its videos to HTML5, and has been for

some time now.


http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/youtube.html

Head down to a store that sells iPads and see for yourself.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

4. FYI - Droid phones are now beginning to accept flash.

Droid 2.2 will (does) support Flash 10.1
The only reason Apple refuses support is so it's lemmings are forced to pay for stuff from the apple store

[alfredo]

10. No, they are pushing HTML5 because it is an open standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

Jobs' thoughts on flash.

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

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

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. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.



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Other issues are battery life, security, and performance on mobile devices. Read the article.