More than 25 years after Apple compared IBM to a totalitarian state in an iconic TV advertisement, Google at this week's I/O conference attempted to suggest Apple is now playing the role of Big Brother with the iPhone.

Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google, made the comments during his presentation demonstrating "Froyo," the latest update to the company's Google mobile operating system. He suggested that Google's entrance into the mobile phone market was a move meant to directly oppose the likes of Apple and its tightly controlled iPhone platform.

"If Google did not act, we faced a Draconian future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice," Gundotra said. "That's a future we don't want."

Gundotra was paraphrasing Andy Rubin, CEO of Android Inc. before it was purchased by Google, and current vice president of engineering at the search giant. Gundotra's story earned applause from the crowd as a black-and-white image reading "Not the Future We Want" and "1984" was displayed, clearly referencing Apple without specifically naming the iPhone maker.

"If you believe in openness, if you believe in choice, if you believe in innovation from everyone, then welcome to Android," Gundotra said.

Absolutely love the pic - it shows a lone steve jobs(my guru) taking on this mediocre world. Awesome!!

This was evidently too much for Jobs to bear. So on the 4 July weekend 1997 and despite solemn contractual promises to never do anything of the kind Steve Jobs dumped all his hundreds of millions of Apple stock he'd acquired through the NeXT merger. And caused a panic on NASDAQ.

This of course sent the Apple board through the roof. Who immediately summoned Jobs to chastise him. The NASDAQ run on Apple stock made everyone scared Apple were going to tank after all.

But Jobs is hardly a dummy - at least not in this respect. He went to his board meeting and instead of getting his knuckles rapped and his balls crushed walked out with the CEO title.

Nice Article. Fanboi Stuff!!

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

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.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

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.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

Awesome!!
I had to have the full post on my blog. Rip!

1997. In the design department, Jobs saw the work of a young Briton called Jonathan Ive and asked for a meeting. Ive, underused and ignored for a year, turned up with a resignation letter tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He left with instructions to unleash his talent. The result was the iMac, an all-in-one computer in a white-and-Bondi-blue transparent housing as far removed from the standard beige box of the day as could be imagined. Ive's next major designs would be the iPod and then the iPhone. Apple's transformation from underdog to the biggest beast in the jungle was under way. And look what's iPadding through the undergrowth toward us now.

Read the full article at time.com

The Dawn of Apple’s Dominance: Digital Hub Strategy, Revisited.

2:51 am, January 27th, 2010, Pete Mortensen

This is my last chance to say something before the great and terrible Steve holds his tablet aloft (and even then, rumormongers might have beaten him to the punch), so let me give you a bit of a long view perspective, something usually left out when we’re discussing whether we’ll see a 10 or 11″ LCD panel on the device.

You see, I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple and its insane run of success over the last nine years. Consider this: in 2001, Apple’s revenue was about $6.5 billion. In 2009, that revenue was $42.3 billion. Essentially, the company grew by more than 550 percent in eight years. How exactly is that possible? Was it the great products? Partly. Great leadership? Sure. Killer marketing? No question. But more than all of those combined, the secret to Apple’s success was that it defined and followed the right strategy and the right era. Steve Jobs is king of the world right now because he hit on the idea for the Digital Hub.

If you’ve never heard this term before, or its meaning has faded, take a look back at the video at the top of this piece. It’s the most important moment in the modern era of Apple. It’s not the day the iPod was announced, it’s not when the iPhone descended from the heavens, and no. Instead, it’s the day that Steve Jobs defined what computing would mean in the next decade.

It was January 9, 2001. It was the silver anniversary of Apple, and the newspapers were full of stories about the demise of the personal computer. Lots of digital devices had emerged that were tailored to single tasks that they did really well, from digital cameras to DVD players to DVRs to CD players to camcorders to PDAs. Many thought that we would replace our multi-use but often inefficient computers with a bunch of highly effective single-taskers. But not Jobs. As he made clear, the strength of a computer was its ability to control and integrate all these many digital devices. A Mac, in short, could serve as the Digital Hub that unites those disparate points in your digital life. You can see the key slide at 5:13.

At the time, most people assumed that this was a rather elaborate explanation for why Apple was launching iTunes, iDVD, and DVD and CD burners. But as the ensuing 9 years have shown, it was actually more or less a roadmap for everything Apple would do in the near future. We’ve seen software for nearly every spoke on that hub, from iPhoto to GarageBand, yes, but also hardware. The iPod knocked off both the mp3 player and the CD player on the Digital Hub map. The iPhone has displaced the Palm Pilot. The AppleTV has tried to take the place of the DVD player, though poorly. You could say that the iPod touch is fighting against the Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, neither of which were in the old Hub map but surely could have been had it been made a little later. One could even make the argument that the iPhone 3GS made an effort to get rid of the humble camcorder — or that its successors will.

By focusing its innovation in two areas — hubs (Macs) and spokes (software and hardware for digital lifestyles) — Apple has run the table over the last decade, and made a ton of money in the process. Up until this point, Steve’s focus had been on re-energizing the existing Apple fanbase with the iMac and other nicely designed products. But things didn’t take off until the company turned its gaze toward the ecosystem.

And what’s maybe most amazing about this is that Steve told all of his competitors that this was exactly what he intended to do. If you go back to this keynote, the entirety of the Digital Hub strategy was laid out publicly. Anyone could have executed it, but only Apple did, and the rest of the industry plays catch up.

All of which brings us to today, and the tremendous speculation about the Tablet. For the first time in nearly forever, Apple is introducing a product that doesn’t seem to fit into the Digital Hub as it has been. It seems focused on reading, web browsing, music, video, games, and probably healing the lame and the sick. Though it might be seen as a replacement for the Kindle, the e-reader market is weak enough that it would be shooting fish in a barrel, and this thing will be great because it will be new.

The longer I look at Steve’s map, all I can conclude is that it doesn’t fit on one of the spokes of the Digital Hub because it isn’t a spoke. It’s a new hub, and the first effort to replace the PC since, well, the Mac. Mark my words, this won’t be an accessory to your computer — it’ll be the new center of your digital life. Just wait until you see it can do when hooked up to your TV.

A very interesting read. Including the full article for once.

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. - Steve Jobs

One of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs.