Chapter 7                               Software Development

1.       Should Apple conduct extensive screening of Apps before they are allowed to be sold to the App Sore? Why or why not?

Answer:

Yes, in order to be sure that the apps available in the Apple Store are reliable and can be trusted, in terms of the customer’s information especially those information that are personal. In today’s generation, the more the industry uses “high-tech” technologies the more the ways of those who wants to harm other people becomes “high-tech” also, especially to gain financially.

2.       Do research to determine the current status of the FCC investigation of Apple for banning the use of the Adobe Flash software on devices that use the iOS operating system.

Answer:

In 2010, Steve Jobs had the courage to question the applicability of the Flash technology going forward.  Jobs made waves and enemies when he banned Flash from use on all iOS devices.  iOS is the operating system from Apple.  Jobs was almost unanimously criticized by the industry.

Jobs took a big risk banning Flash, which also precluded users of Apple devices from seeing video and animation on most sites.

Steve Jobs championed an alternate technology called HTML5.  Revisiting an open memo that Jobs wrote is instructive.  Here is the memo.

“Thoughts on Flash:”

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 Laser writer 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.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/11/09/adobes-flash-   surrender-proves-steve-jobs-and-apple-were-right-all-along-with-html5/

3.       What do you think of Apple’s guideline that says it will reject an app for any content or behavior that they believe is over the line? Could such a statement be constructed as a violation of the developer’s freedom of speech? Why or why not?

Answer:

        For me, maybe not. There company has guidelines to be follow by the developers. So, if I the developer, why not develop an app that follow their guidelines rather making my own guidelines? It really depends on the side of the developer if it violates his/her freedom of speech. But for me, it doesn’t.