Author: The Macalope

From the annals of misunderstanding

InfoWorld: Adobe circumvents Apple to bring Flash apps to iPhone

Are these Flash apps? Well, they’re apps developed in Flash, but at runtime they’re native iPhone apps.

The piece seems to display this as a great strength of Adobe in doing an end run around Apple. But from where the Macalope’s sitting it seems like a weakness. What they’ve done is go to a lot of trouble to get some kind of answer for their developers who must have been kicking and screaming to get their apps on the iPhone. And the solution they’ve given them seems less than optimal.

From Apple’s perspective, they still control the gateway – the App Store – and still don’t have to deal with a bloated virtual machine sucking everyone’s batteries and crashing all the time. Now these apps will have to compete on their own against apps developed in Xcode. To you, the Flash developer, the Macalope says “Good luck!”

Tease

InfoWorld’s Roger Grimes reopens the old “is it the size of the installed base or is it the technology” argument, writing Macs’ low popularity keeps them safer from hacking and malware.

The Macalope doesn’t have a problem with his piece, really, and pretty much agrees with him.What he was amused by is that this is how InfoWorld teased the piece in its daily email blast:

Macs are safer because nobody likes them

Ahhh, ha-ha! You stay classy, InfoWorld!

Artie MacStrawman is not just a river in Egypt

Cleversimon torches Charlie Brooker’s strawman so the Macalope doesn’t have to, passing the savings on to you. Or something.

Charlie Brooker’s thesis is “I hate Windows, but I hate strawmen Mac evangelists more, so I’m going to marinate in my misery just to stick it to these imaginary fanboys. I’m unhappy and unproductive, and I’m going to stay unhappy and unproductive—that’ll show ‘em.”

UPDATE: Commenters believe the horny one just doesn’t “get” Brooker and that it’s all a satire and not to be taken literally. It’s obvious that it’s over the top and meant to be funny, but it certainly seems like the basic point is still the same no matter how much patented British sarcasm — that no one in the colonies can is allowed to understand because we’re peasants who only understand the twaddle that comes from the plebian “writers” who have so badly butchered their language — there is.

(That, by the way, is just plain old American sarcasm. Which comes with a side of fries.)

Well, maybe the Macalope’s wrong. But he believes Cleversimon is Canadian. What’s his excuse?