kylerove

For those who care to read about this interesting history, I can paraphrase it something like this:

1. Google buys Android and plans to make cell phone. First cell phone prototypes look/feel like then-current-day Blackberries (aka, key pads, small screens, no touch). 2. Apple makes iPhone. Touch-only. Changes world. 3. Google then remakes Android in mold of iPhone, copying its new touch-based metaphors and more. 4. Apple understandably does not take the imitator kindly.

Enter present day.

Don't you think you're reading too much into the "opaque" intentions of Apple? Apple is fairly tight-lipped about what they do, so to assign words like "moral superiority" feels more like your feeling than some larger truth.

Take flash. When the iPhone came out, Apple and Adobe had discussions. Apple said, show us what you have. My guess is that it was shitty, didn't respect new iOS touch-based metaphors, made for bad UX and poor battery life. Apple passed. Now according to other reports about Flash, Apple gave them chances, but Adobe COULD. NOT. DELIVER. So when the iPad came to fruition and it began to seriously dawn on Adobe management that they were being left behind, they had only one option: try to garner public sympathy for something that Apple had originally intended be an option: flash on iOS. Apple realized, early on, that Adobe didn't care enough to solve what Apple saw as a true problem. Adobe completely whiffed their chances. So here we are today. Is that "moral superiority" or true pragmatism in dealing with someone who can't or won't deal?

This whole "slippery slope" things is pure FUD. Apple makes pragmatic decisions, not vengeful or hateful ones. Java for every other platform is maintained by Sun/Oracle. Apple has little need to spend precious engineering time maintaining a runtime that sees little use by end-users. Interested parties (Sun/Oracle) can certainly continue to maintain a runtime if needed and will probably have less overhead than Apple doing it.