Another twist has developed in the war between Apple and Flash as the American Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission prepares to investigate Apple for antitrust practices.
It all boils down to the vehemently anti-Flash stance Jobs has taken in recent months, with the Feds' keen eye on a particular section of his software developer kit license agreement:
“3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”
Jobs claims that “a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer [and] ultimately results in sub-standard apps”. So, he's doing this for you, not his pocket. Really, however, it's clearly another anti-competitive stunt by a company that trembles at the idea of others making something better.
If this ends up in court Adobe could easily show how its cancelled range of Flash programs for Apple products has resulted in financial loss. The license agreement is not exclusive to Flash either and may present a bigger case for the Feds to ponder.
Apple has become well known for its requirement that you don't eat any other fruit, but if this Federal probe goes ahead and the outcome doesn't favour them, Jobs' Mob may yet be forced to eat their five a day. See PC World here.
"Once the access is available then the content should be usable by all. Access to the Internet without the ability to use the content is a hollow shell. Access to the Internet without the ability to use the features or participate in e-commerce is nothing more than lip service to the idea of universal access... Universal Design simply stated means that as many people as possible can use Whatever process, object, or electronic or information technology that is being made available. "
Since the release of Flash 4, authors can export HTML pages with embedded movies from within the Flash authoring environment. This markup produced by Flash is the de facto standard that you’ll find in 99% of sites that use Flash movies.
No matter if your movie is made from beef, chicken, or pork, you still need to skewer it and dip it in the sauce to make it work. We call this the Satay Method.
Even Snow Leopard eats meat - If you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?