Yes, Apple Really Is Out to Obviate Flash, But They Do Listen to Customers (Sometimes)

If you haven't heard, John Gruber at Daring Fireball has the lowdown on Apple's pointed attack on Adobe and Flash in particular in the iPhone 4.0 license agreement. The key point: Apple has basically banned the use of tools like the Flash -> iPhone packager that is a key piece of Adobe's flagship Creative Suite 5, set to launch on April 12. The bits are finalized, the discs are being burned and pressed as I write this, and a marquee feature of the suite has just been rendered null and void by a change in Apple's licensing agreement.

While I'm more on the HTML5/JavaScript side of the fence than the Flash side of the fence when it comes to building rich internet applications, there's a lot of great stuff that Flash can do that HTML5/JavaScript simply cannot. It's not just about video. It's about the applications that can be built. For now and the foreseeable future, Flash makes it drop-dead easy to build multi-user, rich media applications. It's a shame that those apps won't be able to make it on to the iPhone, or the iPad.

While the change in the licensing agreement also affects Mono (.NET) -> Objective-C and other similar converters, it seems like the result of the will of one very powerful and very gifted individual who has exercised his power to reshape the landscape of the Web. It's feels mean, but that's business sometimes, isn't it? (See Gruber's most recent post on the issue for the business reasons (alas, logical) why Apple made this change.)

On that note, there was something that struck me in the iPhone 4.0 SDK announcements yesterday which I thought was interesting from a UI perspective: the inclusion of folders in the iPhone UI.

While Apple's products (and team) are extraordinarily opinionated, and those opinions are rigorously thought through, I found it surprising that an "old" desktop metaphor found its way back in to the iPhone/iPad UI. With Apple's very clear attempt to break from the desktop UI of files and folders in the iPad, and their reluctance to introduce any kind of hierarchical organizational system in to the iPhone SDK in previous iterations, the return of folders was surprising.

My guess is that folders returned for a very simple reason: it was the choice that made the most sense to their users. While Apple may appear arbitrary and capricious, they listen very, very carefully to their users when it comes to designing the experience. They probably iterated through a number of organizational ideas and most likely came back, time and again, to a simple, obvious, universally understood idea: the folder. Rather than forcing something new and unfamiliar to most (ie; stacks), they said "Simple and already understood, if not radical and new."

So Apple does listen to their customers. Sort of. Sometimes.