[pohl]

Why bother inventing an abstract normative claim when you can quote the actual (and only) one that appears in the document:

   "...we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open."

Now, proceed from there.

[cageface]

Why does Apple get to define the boundaries in this debate? What entitles them to demand that standards in the domain of competitor's products must be open whereas standards in their own business domain need not?

I agree that the web should be built on open standards but for exactly the same reasons that digital audio and video and mobile computing ecologies should also be open.

[pohl]

Why does Apple get to define the boundaries in this debate?

The simple fact that the present article accuses them of hypocrisy. For the accusation to stick, one must compare their actions to what they actually say - not to what we erroneously infer from it, or to some semantic-changing paraphrase, or to outright straw men - but to what they actually profess.

Yes, there is a larger debate about software freedom, but there are many of us who value the proprietary software model and open standards and free software for different reasons and in different contexts, so people who are dogmatic one way or the other don't get to set the terms of the debate either.

Regardless, the larger debate is not germane to the current accusation. Retreating to the larger debate does not help make the accusation stick - it's just a way of changing the subject while making it seem as though you have not.

[cageface]

The logical contortions Apple apologists are willing to perform in their defense at this point are truly impressive.

[pohl]

If the logic is truly contorted, you should be able to do better than ad hominem.

[Qz]

Apple is attempting to define the boundaries with all these statements. If they say it enough and people don't call them on it then that will become the de facto truth.

The reality is that they want full control of products they make, and 'open standards' for products that they don't make. Nothing to do with the supposed benefits of 'open'-ness, entirely to do with that is and is not under their control.

[Nwallins]

I think it's clear that a norm of using the Cocoa API is implied here:

> Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago

I was thinking specifically of the Cocoa norm -- which iTunes apparently does not meet -- I should have made that more clear.

How much more open is H.264 than SWF and FLV, anyway?

> Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe

Assuming Jobs is not declaring an obvious tautology, he is omitting FOSS efforts such as Gnash and Swfdec.

[pohl]

I think it's clear that a norm of using the Cocoa API is implied here:

I don't think it's that clear. I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason for the last sentence of he preceding paragraph:

Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

They are establishing Adobe's track record of keeping current on underlying platform enhancements.

[Nwallins]

> I think it's more likely that it's a practical reason

> They are establishing Adobe's track record of keeping current on underlying platform enhancements.

None of that refutes whether or not Apple considers using the Cocoa API exclusively as a norm. I think it's quite clear that they do. Are you really suggesting otherwise?

[pohl]

While the carbon APIs still ship, they are deprecated in favor of Cocoa. Yes, this is true. This fact does not give the author any traction, however, because neither the Finder nor iTunes is a platform that any significant apps depend on. This makes updating them an entirely different engineering decision compared to allowing middleware to introduce dependencies beyond Apple's control.