Growing tired of Apple
Warning: this is really just a long rant. Their may be useful points, but mostly I needed to vent as I'm sick and tired of Apple, Steve Jobs, open source fanboys and the ignorance they all show in their understanding of how the web as we know it today came to be and their short-sighted visions of how it will move forward in the future.
I was never an Apple fanboy. I've spent my whole life working on PC platforms. I acknowledge the flaws of Windows and I recognize the pieces of Mac OSX that make it a more appealing environment for many people. There is a simplicity about it that makes it easier to work in. The only Apple devices I own are an 80GB iPod, a 1st gen iPod Touch and an iPhone 3GS. The iPhone OS is pretty amazing. What it's done for mobile is incredible and I'm still waiting for some other hardware manufacturer and mobile OS developer to even come close to what Apple has achieved with the iPhone.
The above is all context for the next point. I'm sick and tired of Apple, Steve Jobs and the legions of real fanboys who think Jobs is the leader of a new world online. The part I often find ironic is that many of Jobs' followers are open source fanatics too, going on about the ideals of the "open web" and fighting the evils of proprietary systems. Somehow they remain completely oblivious to the fact that Apple is the maintainer of all of the most closed off software and content delivery systems in existence. Every single thing about every one of their devices and software is highly controlled and regulated by Apple so as to maximize the amount of money flowing into their wallets.
Clearly making money is the goal of most organizations, but it's more common today for companies to give something away in exchange for our loyalty and money. Google and Adobe are clearly leaders in this space. While Apple claims to be an advocate of an open web, Google is the company I see as being the most responsible in this space. They also have the most to gain from it. Adobe fills another space that Apple and Google do not. Flash Player is the ultimate platform for pushing the web forward. While we spend the next few years struggling with implementations of HTML 5 across browsers to get the same functionality we've had from Flash for years, Adobe will continue to push Flash forward into new spaces.
What the announcement of the iPad has done for me this week is make it incredibly clear that Apple is looking to protect no one's interests but their own. I really want an iPad, it's the content consumption device I've been dreaming of. But given the arrogance the Apple and Jobs continue to spew forth I can't bring myself to give them one more cent. I'm still bitter that the iPhone OS SDK is Mac only. I know there are ways around this and other tools I can use for app development. Nevertheless, this alone has made me consider buying a Macbook. This past week has made up my mind though. There will be no Apple products appearing on my credit card any time soon.
My next laptop is probably going to be the Alienware M11x, a full powered gaming machine crammed into the form factor of a netbook and sub $1000 pricing. It comes with the ability to switch the high-end GPU on/off so you can optionally have some serious video power or solid battery performance. I'll also be looking more closely at all the other tablets coming to market, particularly anything looking to compete in the eBook space. iPhone app development will be done with Flash CS5, Phonegap, or as straight-up web apps.
I am not looking forward to the next 4-5 years of web development. I think the writers of BSG who wrote, "all this has happened before and it will happen again" may have formerly worked as web developers. We are entering a new age of highly fragmented browser capabilities, new HTML/CSS capabilities with no solid set of authoring tools to help use them and countless painful hours trying to make things work for as many users as possible.
Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. 9 years later, at least 30% of web users still use it. Take the rest of the current browser install base into account and almost no one but the most technologically savvy amongst us can see the HTML5 video players that Youtube and Vimeo have been going on about. As I wrote on my FITC post about this, I think HTML5 support of video, audio and numerous other things is great, but I think saying that we need to support these things now because Apple says so or else we can't put our stuff on their mobile devices is complete bullshit. Apple is now telling me that I have to more than double my development efforts because in order to best deliver a cross-browser experience, I need to continue to use Flash for many things but also mimic that Flash functionality for mobile Safari.
I'm often one of the biggest advocates of pushing things forward so we can give our users more and I've maintained that not supporting IE6 has been ok for some time now, but there are limits to this. Wide spread use of even the current state of the art browsers is several years away. I'm guessing upgrades will be faster than they were with IE6 now that the web is much a part of everyone's lives, but I'd still give it 4 or 5 years at best before we can say that 90% of the web can view HTML5 content. Funny thing is that this still isn't even close to the 98% ubiquity that Flash already has nor close to the incredibly rapid update speeds that Flash has seen since making it auto-update.
The other thing I saw today that really irked me was a comment that stated basically that Apple's choice to not support Flash and to maintain focus on native apps was good for developers because native apps is where the money's at. Pardon me? Really? That's funny because I know hundreds of Flash developers and companies that are making much better livings doing Flash development. Many of them have dabbled in iPhone apps only to find they are lost in mix and no one downloads them unless they are free. The .99 cent thing on the App Store is one of the worst things to happen to software developers in years. This basically says, all your work is worth very little unless tens of thousands of people decide to buy your app. I can't put out a niche app that is useful to a smaller audience because they'll want it for .99 meaning, I don't get compensated for my time. I'm much better off finding a sponsor or company to work for so I can paid up front than to gamble on potential app sales.
Every day I'm seeing hundreds of blog posts, tweets and tech stories that are really making me feel like the next few years are going to be dark days for web development.
Google, Adobe and everyone else – even the open source fanboys who I often hate on – interested in giving users, developers and content creators the broadest choice of options for doing what they do have my continued support. As for Apple and Jobs, you've fallen back in the tiny corner of disapproval where I'd previously held you for most of my life due to your incredibly over-priced hardware and lack of support from software developers.