Has there been any hacks for Blackberries to bypass the security somehow? I've never looked too deeply into how RIM's security differs from other companies.

The video you linked to shows the phone being jailbroken, thus bypassing a lot of the security as expected. Seems for now my iPad 2 is safe (since no jailbreak methods have worked), but any other iOS device is vulnerable, even with the latest 4.3.2 firmware.

I don't know what stuff Apple was pulling

From Day 1, Apple has had parental controls that can disable the ability to make any App Store purchases on the device. And by default the phone would ask for the iTunes password whenever a new app was downloaded. The problem initially is that in app purchases didn't require a password every time. Apple has since corrected that.

Outside of that, Apple has done nothing. App developers are the ones putting in the in app purchases and promoting them in a way that children were getting to them. There may be some liability since Apple does have a curated app store, but it's going to be hard to prove intent that Apple was in any way doing this intentionally.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” says Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.” - February 1, 2009

Apple did work with Adobe. Adobe failed to deliver after 3 years. Apple put their foot down and said "We aren't waiting any longer, we are going to move on". Yes, it's a painful move right now with so much Flash content, but it's becoming less and less painful by the day. Just as it used to be painful when the web moved from one "standard" to another in the past. I doubt anyone here would defend the old Real media methods, nor Windows Media and Quicktime. So it puzzles me why people defend Flash with statements like "The whole war against Flash is futile". Was it futile to try and banish Real's crapware player? Nope. Same goes for the security issue ridden performance hogging Flash runtime.

I should also point out Microsoft stopped distributing Flash with Windows well before Apple did on the Mac side. Many Linux distributions don't include it either. So at this point, it's up to consumers to make the choice on every platform. The sooner people start saying no, the sooner we fix the actual root of the problem, instead of extending proprietary methods for showing video online.

I pointed out why it is Adobe's fault earlier (along with a workaround), so I'll expand on something different here.

You state that you don't care if it's proprietary or not. By not caring, you allowed the situation to happen. Adobe is one company, with one proprietary solution they now own (thanks to buying Macromedia) and continued to spread, hitting a high percentage of the desktop market. The iPad is not a desktop computer, it's a new class of mobile device that relies on different architecture for it's CPU. Because Adobe has a proprietary solution, only Adobe can do the work to port Flash to the new setup. And they failed to do so in the 3 years they were given, at a quality level Apple felt sufficient.

Had the web already been using an open specification for video on the web instead of Flash, Apple would have been able to work to make that specification work on their iOS devices day one.

It's for this reason I have been moving to just rid myself of Flash on all platforms. I do not want to be part of the statistics that indicate my machine can run a proprietary solution on what is supposed to be an open web. By having Flash installed, or even the Click to Flash plugin, my machine is counted. The sooner we as consumers drive up the percentage of non Flash capable browsers, the sooner web sites adapt. Apple sees it this way too, and has stopped shipping Flash on new Macs (since it also clears them of taking responsibility for the security nightmares Flash brings to the table). Now while it is true the open standards path hasn't been responsive in addressing video demands, the history of it is in the past. I want to move to change the future today, by promoting standards and hopefully seeing others do the same so that the standards organizations start moving quicker.

You can work around the Flash video issue for now with Skyfire on iOS devices. It's not great, but it's something. (Yes, iOS browsers do exist beyond Safari)

As for the apps, it would depend on what they do. Some may not be touch aware and simply wouldn't work. Others may need a more powerful processor then the ARM chip in the iPad and other mobile devices. It's all a crapshoot right now. Apple did attempt to let Flash on the iPhone initially, by coding in support for browser plugins and everything. The fault for Flash not being on iOS is Adobe's, not Apple. Apple set a minimum quality bar that Adobe never passed in 3 years of attempts, and Apple finally put their foot down.

From All Things D in 2007 prior to the iPhone launch but after the announcement:
Q: If the iPhone’s Web browser is so good, why can’t it play video on Web sites I visit?

A: At launch, the iPhone version of the Safari browser is missing some plug-ins needed for playing common types of Web videos. The most important of these is the plug-in for Adobe’s Flash technology. Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update, which I am guessing will occur within the next couple of months. However, a separate program included on the iPhone can play a limited selection of videos from YouTube, and the phone can play videos you purchase from Apple’s iTunes store, and certain videos you create yourself.

And this was still in the works even in 2009:

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” says Shantanu Narayen of Adobe. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.” - February 1, 2009

Adobe failed to deliver. Apple moved on. And Google embraced it as an attempt to have one more checkbox feature over iOS devices, leading to poor experiences for Android owners trapped in a platform battle. Google normally pushes for an open web, except for Flash.

An open web benefits everyone. It also allows everyone to tackle the challenges that come up. Right now, no one has access to change Flash beyond Adobe. So you are forced to get the annoying pieces with the useful pieces.

Remember when popup windows were annoying? Because they were being called via open web standards, instead of a proprietary plugin, browser makers were able to address the issue pretty quickly. Well, except Microsoft since their team was asleep at the wheel then. The point is though that we didn't have to wait on one company to address the annoyance.

I don't want to get rid of Flash just because my iOS device doesn't support it, nor do I have any comments to address your open web vs open OS as I don't find it relevant here. I want to get rid of Flash because it annoys me elsewhere. It slows down my desktop browser, adds another security risk, and is a poor way to get video. I actually preferred older Quicktime and Windows Media methods since the player UI controls were standard, and generally worked. I stumble across tons of Flash players that have poor controls, won't resume if paused for a while, and seek poorly. And the only company that can address this is Adobe. If people were using HTML 5 video, I could chose a better browser if one annoyed me.

So the solution to fixing an infestation of proprietary software into what is supposed to be an open web is to just keep using the proprietary software? And the reason is because some web developer picked a proprietary method of embedding videos, and shouldn't be bothered to change them? Do you feel the same for all the web developers who picked the proprietary Real Video solution a while back?

Apple blocking Flash is one of the best things to happen to try and get a proper open way of doing video on the web. Real, Quicktime, and Windows Media were all past attempts we are glad failed now. Flash took over for a while, but it's time to go join it's proprietary buddies of the past.

Browser detection though is the wrong way to do it. Detecting capabilities is the right way. This has been true since I did web development as a job, and this was back when "DHTML" and "Push" were the popular buzzwords.

Doing browser detection leads to failures like Engadget.com. They feed HTML5 video just fine to an iPad or iPhone, but not to Safari on a Mac lacking Flash. Automatic fail on proper web design there.

It's also annoying how many sites don't serve up HTML 5 content when Flash is missing on the desktop. Engadget is one good example of this. Load up a story with Engadget made videos (such as the recent Playbook review). iPad and iPhone get playable videos, Safari on a Mac without Flash is told to install Flash.

I need to try getting rid of Flash again here soon, I didn't get the workflow set up fully last attempt, and gave in eventually. Time to start actively contributing to lowering Flash's desktop market share.

The App Store supports free apps of any size, and iOS allows web apps too. Blocking Flash from iOS was never about trying to block free Flash content from competing with the App Store. It was about blocking technology that wasn't ready for mobiles, and still isn't. I have yet to see an error on iOS saying "This video isn't optimized for mobile" and a chunky 5fps playback. I instead get video I can easily make full screen, and plays with no performance issues since hardware is helping out. Apple is, and will always be a consumer focused company. As such, they will make decisions at times that rile up the tech community, but in the long term still provide a better consumer experience. General consumers don't understand, nor care about the little details about why Flash doesn't work well on Android. All they will do is blame the Android phone/tablet they own for being crappy. Apple understands this, Google doesn't either understand it, or they don't care.

The decision is ultimately up to developers and content producers. Hulu is one of those content providers who does rely on Flash heavily, and actively blocks anything thats not a desktop or laptop computer even if it does support Flash. On the other side are companies like CBS and ABC who don't care about the lack of Flash on iOS, and provide superior experiences on those devices with either native apps, or HTML 5 video.

There are a surprising number of videos out there beyond ones hosted on YouTube that work fine without Flash. Main problem is that sites only present them at HTML 5 video when an iPad or iPhone visits the site. The proper thing to do would be to detect capabilities and fall back. I'd love to see more HTML 5 video on my desktop browser.

I didn't realize how many worked until I tried an Android phone last summer after owning an iPad and iPhone. The Samsung Captivate came with some crappy Flash Lite prior to the update to 2.2, and it resulted in tons of video that I could play on iOS becoming unavailable on the Android side. Sometimes embeds blogs do won't work, but hitting the source link for the story leads to a page doing proper HTML 5 for iOS.

From a business standpoint, I can see why Google did what they did in regards to Skyhook. However, they could have handled the situation better. Instead of throwing a fit only after "Company X" in the complaint had already shipped phones, they could have raised the issue ahead of time. Their inaction earlier, and green light probably cost Company X a decent bit of engineering time. Their touting of "open" led Skyhook to believe they could replace the location API, and Motorola and "Company X" were also under this same impression.

From an "Open" standpoint, what Google did was just wrong. If they really want their OS to be open, then they need to let it be open even if it's not the exact result they intended. If they want to close things down, then fine. But they need to make a decision and hold to it, instead of trying to straddle the line. Their indecisiveness is harming more then just Skyhook, Motorola and "Company X". I'm sure Barnes & Noble picked Android for their Nook e-readers due to the promise of "open", and their engineers are now stuck maintaining the Nook Color on an OS that Google says is only for phones. The more appropriate tablet OS is closed off to them for now, possibly halting progress on a Nook Color 2.

And as far as Microsoft and the OEMs of the time, several did want to remove Internet Explorer. Microsoft prevented this by embedding it deeper into the OS then any other optional component. I don't remember which companies exactly wanted it out, but it's all in the findings of fact published from the antitrust case.

Everyone else who is closed is up front about it. They never set an expectation, so people aren't pissed. Google may be admitting they were too ambitious with the schedule, but they haven't had Motorola recall the Xoom. So either Honeycomb is done, or Google is admitting to using the public as beta testers with an $800 device and an unfinished OS.

Google yaps about how open they are, and then aren't. Other companies have sprung up around this openness, and depend on it. Archos for example is probably mildly irritated about the Honeycomb delay, as they won't be able to ship a non "Google experience" Honeycomb device until much later. This isn't the first incident either. The Skyhook situation has both Motorola and Samsung slightly irritated at Google already, for initially certifying phones with a new location API, then later issuing stop ship orders.

Microsoft pulled similar stunts in the OEM market, and it pissed off vendors to no end. The only difference here is that Android is not the only licensed smartphone OS, so vendors do have a choice to go elsewhere. Google needs to be more professional about how they handle licensing their "open" OS and how they meet commitments, or OEMs may choose to go elsewhere.

It was intentionally replacing the Google location API, a component that was considered on the open side of the OS. The phones with Skyhook passed all of Google's certification procedures, and several phones have it today. Only over time did Google get pissy about it, likely because they wanted to own the location API for ad revenue reasons.

Just as Microsoft got pissy with OEMs for making deals to bundle Netscape Navigator, since it meant people might not use Internet Explorer.