For the book itself described a perpetual system where Big Brother always wins. It actively sought out dissidents who thought differently by tricking them into believing they could revolt against the system. But before they could ever do any real damage, they would be railed into room 101, be forced to betray themselves, and after being broken apart, be but put back in line as renewed devotees of big brother.

And just as in the book, Oceania was always at war to explain the rations, Apple too constantly needs enemies to justify its own shortcomings. If it isn’t Microsoft, it’s Adobe. And if it isn’t Adobe, it will be Google.

If you think about it, the parallels are astonishing. Except for the fact that in the book, all the TV screens had built in cams, while in the real world, people are complaining that the iPad doesn’t come with a webcam.

And for those who haven’t read the book yet, it’s in the public domain: http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books/1984.htm

I commented on my blog regarding your update but I still do not believe it is a fair assumption. (and thank you for accepting my comment and replying)

In every single AAPL conference call Peter Oppenheimer explicitly states that the AppStore is operating just above break even on operational costs. True he does not give a number at all due to competitive reasons, but I would hesitate to equate “just above break even” with “massively profitable”. Unless of course Oppenheimer is lying on record every quarter, which I highly doubt.

Do you believe that the profit from the AppStore comes close to rivalling the profit ADBE makes from Flash CS5 development tools? This was one of the reasons I found the comment of “massively profitable” in bad taste.

My totally off-the-cuff understanding is that there’s 2 main issues: patents used by the Flash Player and the fact that an open-sourced Player has greater risk of fragmentation. A Flash Player that’s fragmented gives us the same problem that HTML has today — no consistency, lots of extra code to write to make sure stuff runs the same in different browsers.

And 99% of portable devices (a statistic I admittedly pulled out of my butt) out there don’t run the iPhone OS, even further limiting the scope of this debate and to whom it matters

– Browser extensions break when they encounter Flash applications (websites coded in flash break the navigation system provided by the Vimperator plugin for Firefox, for example).

– Bugs with security or stability issues are harder to find, particularly on platforms that Adobe does not care about.

– Users don’t have functionality that Adobe hasn’t seen fit to provide (for example, preventing “auto-start” of loud, cpu-intensive video streams).

There are open-source projects to reverse-engineer Flash, but this is a difficult problem and they have not produced a completely reliable product yet. If Adobe would give us the source to modify, or a standard to implement, instead of a big middle finger, I would not be critical. As it is, Adobe Flash makes the internet a slower, buggier, less convenient, less secure, and overall less open place, and the sooner it is abandoned in favor of an open standard the better.

I wonder why your experience is different to a gross majority of the population out there?

I’ve never had a web page crash because of Flash. Honestly, its just never happened.

HTML5 is a dream. It needs to be supported by all browsers, then deployed on all systems, to be frank its not going to happen for a while. I would love it to be here yesterday, but I found it so hilarious that people started going on about it as soon as the iPad got released. I don’t think half of them even know or understand what it will take to bring that kind of change.

Flash has enriched the Web. Whether you like it or not, it has been used to turn the website from an information space into a form of artistic expression.

It has allowed video content to be streamed and viewed by anyone, anywhere.

It has enhanced our experiences online, this is just a plain fact.

Like any kind of technology, it can be used for good or bad, does that mean it should just be eliminated?

Jobs is pushing his technology on us and trying to erase another in the process. It has NOTHING to do with usability, and everything to do with business.

Its funny how anyone ever thought Apple would be ANY different from Microsoft. They are not. They tried that before, and they lost, big time. Now they are aggressively taking on the role of the bully, they have a legion of brainwashed supporters following their every word, and they are milking every second of it.

While HTML 5 does hold some promise, I’m afraid that as long as the majority of users are on Windows, your hopes for ‘open’ standards will remain only that. One note of real hope is the surge in Firefox adoption. However, within corporate walls, IE + Windows still reigns. Which is why I am staying quite well-employed developing business apps in Flex.

Modified: September 26, 2007

This is the blog of Rachel Luxemburg, a New York City native transplanted to the SF Bay Area. I am a Group Manager, Developer Relations for Adobe, focused on the global designer & developer customer communities.

Your bias is showing

[RL: I have disclaimers all over the website (as well as in this very post) with my affiliation; it's not exactly a secret that I work for Adobe. Why is this a problem?]