Chapter 138 Flash, App Store, and Control

Jobs' insistence on end-to-end control manifested itself in other struggles as well.At the staff meeting, he not only attacked Google, but also criticized Adobe's website multimedia platform Flash, thinking that it was made by "lazy people" with "many loopholes" and high power consumption.iPods and iPhones will never run Flash, he said. "Flash is a technical mess, has poor performance, and has serious security issues," he told me that same week. Jobs even blocked those applications that use Adobe's official transcoder to compile Flash code into Apple's iOS system.He despises compilers, which allow developers to write code once and port it to multiple operating systems through compilers. "Allowing Flash to be portable across platforms means that the product is limited to features that all platforms must support, so it can only be mediocre," Jobs said. "We spend a lot of effort to make our platform better. If Adobe can only be compatible with the features that all platforms have, so developers don't get any benefits at all. So we want developers to take advantage of Apple's better features, so that on our platform, their applications can be compared to other run better on the platform." On that point, he's right.If Apple relinquishes the ability to differentiate its platforms—allowing them to become commodity like HP and Dell machines—it would spell the death of Apple itself.

Also, there is a personal reason. In 1985, Apple invested in Adobe, and the two companies joined forces to launch the desktop publishing revolution. "I helped Adobe become famous," Jobs said. After returning to Apple in 1999, Jobs asked Adobe to make video-editing software and other products for the iMac and its new operating system, but Adobe turned it down and focused on developing products for Windows.Soon after, Adobe founder John Warnock retired. "When Warnock left, the soul of Adobe disappeared," Jobs said. "He was the kind of innovator I would want to deal with. When he left, there were just a bunch of guys in suits and ties, and Adobe became a company." garbage."

Adobe evangelists and Flash supporters in the blogosphere began bashing Jobs for being too controlling.So Jobs decided to write and publish an open letter.His friend, Apple board member Bill Campbell, made a special trip to Jobs' home to read the letter. "Does it feel like I'm picking on Adobe?" he asked Campbell. "No, what you wrote is the truth, so be it." Campbell replied.Much of the open letter focuses on Flash's technical shortcomings.Despite Campbell's pointers, Jobs couldn't help but lament the historical entanglement between the two companies at the end of the open letter."Adobe was the last major third-party software developer to fully adopt the Mac OS X standard," he said.

Later that year, Apple lifted some restrictions on cross-platform compilers, and Adobe introduced Flash authoring software that took advantage of key features of Apple's iOS system.It was a bitter war, but Jobs had a greater initiative.Ultimately, it pushes Adobe and other compiler developers to take better advantage of the iPhone and iPad interface and its features. And when Apple wanted to tightly control which apps could be downloaded to iPhones and iPads, Jobs was under more pressure.It is natural to prevent applications that contain viruses or violate user privacy; it is also commercially reasonable to require that subscription-related applications must allow users to subscribe through the iTunes store instead of jumping to other websites for subscription.But Jobs and his team went one step further: They decided to ban any app that disparaged others, whether it was politically controversial or deemed obscene by Apple's censors.

Apple's attempt to play babysitter came to the fore when an app based on Mark Fiore's political cartoons was rejected.The app was found to have violated a ban on defaming others by attacking the Bush administration's prisoner abuse policies. In April 2010, Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, and Apple's decision was made public and ridiculed.Apple had to backtrack, and Jobs apologized publicly. “We felt guilty for our mistakes,” he said. “We were as good as we could be, and we learned as fast as we could — but we did think there was a point to that rule.” This is more than just a bug.Apple controls the apps we can see and download if we want to use an iPad or iPhone.Jobs seemed in danger of becoming again Orwell's Big Brother, the very man who so gleefully destroyed Big Brother in the Macintosh's "1984" ad.Jobs was very concerned about this problem.One day, he called Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist, to discuss how to draw the line without becoming a censor.He asked Friedman to lead an advisory group to help him draw the line; but Friedman's publisher said there would be a conflict of interest, so the matter with the advisory group fell through.

The ban on pornography has also created problems. "We believe that Apple has a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," Jobs wrote in response to an email from a consumer. "Anyone who wants porn can use Android." That sparked an email conversation with Jobs from Ryan Tate, editor of the tech gossip site Valleywag.Over a cocktail one night, Tate sent Jobs an email berating Apple for its tight control over which apps users could download. "If Dylan were 20 today, what would he say about your company?" Tate asked. "Does he think the iPad has nothing to do with the 'revolution' at all? The core of the revolution is freedom."

Unexpectedly, a few hours later, after midnight, Jobs responded to Tate. "That's right," he said, "freedom from programs that steal your private data, freedom from programs that drain your battery, freedom from pornography. Yes, freedom. Times are changing. Some traditional PC users feel Their world is passing away. That's right." Tate responded with comments on Flash and other topics before returning to the censorship issue. "You know what? I don't want 'freedom from porn.' What's so bad about porn! I think my wife would agree." Jobs replied, "When you have kids, you'll probably care about pornography. It's not about freedom. Apple is doing the right thing for its users." Finally, he retorted, "By the way, what are you doing again? Anything amazing? Have you created anything? Or do you just criticize other people's work and belittle their motivations?"

Tate admitted he was impressed. "Few CEOs have had such one-on-one interactions with consumers and bloggers," he wrote. "Steve Jobs should be credited for breaking the typical American executive mold, not just for his business. Such a great product: He built and rebuilt his company with a strong will for digital life, and he's willing to defend his views publicly—vigorously, bluntly, at 2 a.m. on weekends. That sentiment was echoed by many in the blogosphere, who emailed Jobs praising his polemical spirit.Jobs was proud, too, and he forwarded me his email correspondence with Tate and some compliments.

Still, there has been unease about Apple's ban on users viewing controversial political cartoons and pornography.Humor site eSarcasm.com has launched an online campaign called "Yes Steve, I Want Porn."The site declares, "We are dirty, lust-obsessed villains who need access to obscene content 24 hours a day. Or, we just want an open society without censorship, one where techno-dictators decide what we can and cannot watch." society." At the time, Jobs and Apple were at war with Silicon Valley gossip affiliate Gizmodo; a hapless Apple engineer left an unannounced iPhone 4 tester at a bar, and Gizmodo got it.Following Apple's complaint, police searched the residence of the site's journalists.The incident calls into question whether, beyond control freaks, Apple is being too arrogant.

Jon Stewart is a friend of Jobs and a fruit fan. When Jobs traveled to New York to meet with media executives in February 2010, he visited Stewart privately.But that didn't stop Stewart from taking aim at Jobs on "The Daily Show." "It shouldn't be like this! Microsoft should be the evil one!" Stewart said half-jokingly.The words "appholes" appeared on the screen behind him. "Dude, you were the rebels, the underdogs. But now, you're Big Brother? Remember the '1984' ad that toppled Big Brother? Look in the mirror bro !" In late spring of that same year, board members also began discussing the issue.Arthur Levinson posed the question at a board meeting.Later, he told me at a lunch: "Steve's attitude is a bit arrogant, which is due to his personality. He will instinctively resist and put out his beliefs forcefully." At Apple, it is still a weak enterprise full of resistance. There's nothing wrong with such arrogance at the time.But now, Apple is the dominant player in the mobile market. “We need to change our mindset to be in line with who we are as a big business and deal with hubris,” Levinson said.Al Gore also addressed this issue at the board meeting. "Apple is changing dramatically," he recalls. "It's no longer the hammer at Big Brother. Now that Apple is big, people think it's arrogant." When it comes to that, Jobs became defensive. "He's still adjusting," Gore said. "He's better at being an underdog than a humble giant."

Jobs had no patience for these kinds of conversations.He told me that people criticize Apple because "companies like Google and Adobe are smearing us and trying to destroy us."So what does he think about the perception that Apple is sometimes too arrogant? "I'm not worried about that," he said, "because we're not arrogant." ----------------------------------------- Notes: