Thanks for taking the time to publish how you got Spotify to work. I experienced similar problems with an install of Fedora 13, but by following your post I was able to get it to work. I had the added complication of a missing ‘libpulsedsp.so’ object file, but apart from that plain sailing.

Thanks,

Chris

Sure, there have been plenty of security holes in Flash but the same goes for Safari:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=safari+exploit
and many other pieces of software that are still free to roam on Apple’s platforms. There’s no such thing as 100% secure software. Everything can and will be exploited.
I don’t think throwing out Flash altogether is the way to deal with this though since throwing out Flash impacts the users of the mobile device in question, which is a large part of the point I’m trying to make here. Put pressure on Adobe to fix the flaws instead. Maybe that is what this is doing already. I hope so. But if so, will we see Flash returning to Apple devices in the future? I hope so too.
I’ve never tried installing or running Flash Lite actually. If it’s a hassle I’ll have to take your word for it. However, I’m pretty confidant that Flash on Android will be good. With all the focus that’s been on Flash on mobile devices lately, Adobe simply can’t afford to fail and I don’t think they will either.

I don’t see what using third-party tools necessarily has to do with not taking time to learn a platform. Sure, it can be seen as trying to take a short-cut but not all short-cuts are bad, especially not if you’re trying to achieve easier cross-platform development.

Unity3D clearly breaks the rules according to Section 3.3.1 and if they get a “free pass” from Apple, what’s 3.3.1 worth really? If they start giving out free passes that’s called “hypocrisy”. If you’re not sticking to your own rules why should anybody else have to? So no Flash-apps for the iPhone OS should mean no Unity3D-apps as well. Equal rights to all developers.

Having an aproval process for the AppStore is OK with me. I do wish there were other ways to get apps onto an iDevice so that the users could make their own choices with the apps that are denied entry to the AppStore. And don’t think the bar is set very high with the AppStore. It’s very clear that the aproval process is just as broken and random as the US patent system is (not saying that one has anything to do with the other in any other way though).

I agree that the ocean of shit metaphor is very true for the internet. I’d say there’s more of a 95/5 ratio of shit/chocolate there though

One thing that I’m hoping this mess will bring though is pressuring more and more websites to move towards HTML5 instead of Flash for their multimedia content, because believe it or not that’s what I’d want in a perfect world. However, this is far from a perfect world and I don’t think we’re anywhere near the point where it is OK from a user-perspective to abandon Flash completely. I think Flash has gotten too much of a focus in this whole discussion though. My beef is mainly with the idiotic Section 3.3.1 rather than about being a cheerleader for Flash. Flash is just the most visible and well-known sacrificial lamb in all of this. I feel a lot more for the third-party tool-makers that are not backed up by a monster of a company like Adobe and all the developers that are negatively impacted by this than I do for Adobe (which I’m sure will pull through whatever happens).

Java & .NET are both two piles of shit.
Its just that when you get used to them, you dont find the smell to be so annoying.

Flash is, to be kind, a trojan horse in sheeps clothing:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=flash+exploit
..although its nice to look at and powers alot of cool sites.
We, the users, have been able to download Flash Lite to our phones for years.
Have you tried installing it? If not. Please do.
It will be really fun to see flash on the Android.
Its like watching a plane fly, knowing its going to crash.

I think that developers that are serious about a platform should take time to learn the platform. Hell, I know Actionscript. Ive actually coded alot of Actionscript. Its easy to learn. Even if I could, I would never write enterprise Java applications with it! I know that there would always be stuff that I would not be able to do.

Unity3D. Thats a different ball. I completely agree.
I would be surprised if Apple dropped the ball on them.

App Store. Nja.
I believe there needs to be an approval process.
It raises the bar. And I like high bars.
Some people dont like bars and some people just like to get high.

I totally agree with the whole ocean of shit thing.
I find that metaphor useful for alot of cases, the internet for example.

All joking aside though, you’re entitled to your opinion but I still stand behind mine completely.

Actually, I have completely missed “the frequent security fixes” and I’ve never had a problem. This may be simply because I don’t use an operating system that is inherently insecure (i.e. Windows) or I may just have been lucky if Flash really is such a “security menace”. In any case I never refuted this. There may or may not be loads of security flaws in Flash. If it is such a menace though I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about exploits and such enabled by Flash, especially since I read plenty of security- and general tech-news every single day.

I didn’t say Flash doesn’t drain batteries either. I said to let the user choose if he wants his battery drained or not. Big difference.

I still think Apple has made the wrong decision.
Concerning Java, I don’t see what Google’s choice to write their own VM for Android has to do with anything. Java is Sun’s product and speaking from experience Java is a very capable platform that powers an enormous amount of business critical applications all over the world.
And don’t even get me started on .Net. It is in my experience such a jumbled mess of a platform that only someone that is at least partially insane or simply brainwashed would choose to develop in it voluntarily.

I never said Apple should open source the iPhone OS or anything to that effect (although I’m not against the idea at least on a theoretical level). My beef is the way restrictions are now being applied to its developers. I don’t give a damn about the actual licensing details of the platform itself.
I do however completely agree with your statements about J2ME. Sun really dropped the ball with that one. It’s such a mess that it’s not even a little bit funny. However, that J2ME is fragmented and mess of differing implementations has nothing to with it being open source. It was like that way before Sun opened it up.

I’m very aware of all the good work Apple is doing concerning open web standards and web applications and I aplaud them for that. But I still think it is the pot calling the kettle black when Steve Jobs has the audacity to criticize Adobe for Flash being proprietary. How open is Quicktime for example? Or iTunes? Or any of Apple’s other flagship products? Not so much.

Like I said already, I have no problem with the internals of the iPhone OS being closed. My problems are with Section 3.3.1 and the bullshit it introduces to developers that have already spent years working with the platform and now possibly have to change everything around. Sure, it’s not a problem for someone that’s just starting putting out iPhone-apps in the past couple of months. But for someone that’s been developing an app and relies on this app for his/her living having the app suddenly excluded and their living taken away simply because The Steve has beef with Adobe it’s a big deal. It’s not fair to completely change the rules on the developers this late in the game. This doesn’t just hit Flash-developers. What about all those games that use Unity3D and already are high in the charts on the AppStore? Will they suddenly be excluded? Most likely yes. Is it fair? No it isn’t. Is it a dick-move that will possibly destroy or at least needlessly complicate peoples lives? Yes, it is.

And there are already shitloads of fart-apps in the AppStore. I’d go as far as to say that at least 60% of everything in the AppStore today is useless crap. How many notepad-apps are there? Flashlights? The list goes on and on. But still really cool apps are being stopped because the acceptance-process is broken and unreliable. It’s a joke. If Apple should change anything about things concerning the iPhone OS it is certainly the AppStore. Trying to find something useful in the AppStore is like wading through an ocean of shit looking for a piece of dark chocolate.

Flash is a security menace. If you have it installed, you cannot have missed the frequent security “fixes”. (Almost twice a week!)
And flash is a battery drain. Flash is built as a highlevel interpreter. You KNOW what this means. Multiple layers of interpreters => poor performance!
This is ofcourse unnoticed on a regular/laptop pc, but on a mobile device it spells TROUBLE.
Ever wondered why adobe introduced “Flash lite” ? Because Flash sucked, battery that is…

And no, I dont think Apple has made the wrong decision.
Look at Java. Not even Google believes its good enough to use out of the box.
Look at .NET. The only people not using MS Visual Studio are retards or individiuals with a anal set of mind (or not physically capable of using a bittorrent client).

Apple owns their platform. They are not obliged to open it up so all kinds of dickwads are able to implement their own interpretation of what is and whats not. Again, look at Java and J2ME. Have you ever tried writing an application for J2ME? Probably not. J2ME is an “open” standard. Do you know how many different implementations there are? Not just one per phone manufacturer, there is atleast one per firmware version of each and every handset! Hows that for open?

The AppStore and the community around apps were clearly not Apples intention from the start.
If you would have bothered to look at the lengths Apple have gone to implement and push the open web standards, you would be amazed!
Have a look at web applications. Apple have built a comprehensive, complete, SDK that allows you to build state of the art web applications that run locally on the phone. You can build high performance applications with only HTML and javascript, that run as a native application - with nothing but standard code! That is open.

If Apple would have unleashed the open public on the internal SDK and skipped the App Store approval process. What would have happened? Besides shitloads of fart-apps, there would be viruses capable of sending themselves to others phones. Making calls to expensive pay-per-call hotlines etc. Ever heard of the Symbian platform and all the bluetooth viruses?

Keep experimenting and sharing.