I view many pages on the BBC site every day. There are many, many video clips that use Flash - including their News streaming service. I'd like to get an iPad, but the BBC site would be a no go area on an iPad, so that's making me hesitate.
Spoken like someone who has never read a 10-K or 10-Q. Gil was an operations guy. He got the operations in order, hiring/firing and restructuring, remember the iMac was developed under him. Etc.
Of all the decisions made by him the NeXT acquisition was the best and the worst. Fanboys will only look at the good they got, and not the costs or what they could have done without NeXT. But this isn't really the main topic.
What they could have done without NeXT? Copeland was a disaster. They were dead without NeXT.
And the most immediately important thing that Jobs did on resuming control of Apple was to kill the Mac OS licensing program, something that Amelio was full steam ahead on, and which was the stupidest thing Apple ever did (at least given the timing of doing it) in its history as a company.
Apple didn't need an operations guy. They needed someone with a vision and a real understanding of technology. (Technology in the big picture sense, not knowledge of various technologies.) This is entirely relevant to the main topic.
What they could have done without NeXT? Copeland was a disaster. They were dead without NeXT.
And the most immediately important thing that Jobs did on resuming control of Apple was to kill the Mac OS licensing program, something that Amelio was full steam ahead on, and which was the stupidest thing Apple ever did (at least given the timing of doing it) in its history as a company.
Apple didn't need an operations guy. They needed someone with a vision and a real understanding of technology. (Technology in the big picture sense, not knowledge of various technologies.) This is entirely relevant to the main topic.
Be! I wanted Be!
And Amelio may have been bad, but Spindler was a wreck. Amelio was only CEO for about a year and half. he did some good, he did some bad. Mostly he was ineffectual and wishy washy. Cloning could have worked, but damn if the execution wasn't the worst ever. PowerComputing was great though.
I know you probably don't know this -- but most of that was radically improved by Gil Amelio. Steve knew that, so stepped in and took credit.
I know that Amelio was responsible for getting Apple's fiscal house in order, as was Fred Anderson. And of course it was Amelio who decided to buy Next in the first place. I'm not trying to deny credit to Amelio.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
But even so, who cares? It doesn't change the history I'm talking about. Apple was screwed up, and still is (in different ways). All companies are. It doesn't change the facts of what they did -- it just gives it a little context.
Hmmm... a strangely rational statement from you. How nice!
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Apple wasn't wrong to thin up. But then Adobe wasn't either. Or if Adobe was, then Apple was worse. That's not bitter or selective, that's just a balanced view of both companies. You should try it.
*this* is a balanced statement. What you wrote earlier was not. And I never said anything about Adobe at all (I think you're projecting some other people's arguments onto me). I actually agree with your point here --- Adobe has been pursuing their own interests. The statement that Adobe is "lazy" is itself a lazy statement, if it were made by an objective observer with no vested interest in the situation. But it was made by Steve Jobs, who is not at all objective, and has a deeply vested interest in the situation. So I take that with a considerable grain of salt. But I'm also not "offended" by Jobs' statement. He's doing what he thinks is in Apple's best interest, and it's very hard to argue with his success in advancing Apple's interests. Doesn't mean he won't make mistakes in the future, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
I didn't think that was relevant. If it was, then Adobe gets a bigger pass -- they've had two to three different CEO's since then. So keep it fair. If Apple gets a pass on everything before Steve, then Adobe gets one one Shantanu. If Adobe doesn't and has to own their whole history, then Apple does too.
for me this is not about "fairness". I don't see this in moralistic terms. Apple made a decision to stomp out any development efforts for the iPhone that try to circumvent their development tools and approaches. Strikes me as a reasonable choice, although there are some costs. I don't agree with the AppleInsider moralistic slant on these things, but I don't agree with yours either.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Sorry, look at the {Current Sitting President} speech technique again. It isn't black or white -- my way or a stupid alternative.
Your fixation on one particular politician who uses a much more mild form of the exact same strategy that every other politician uses strikes me as unbalanced. I'm 37 years old and every president or major party presidential candidate that I've seen in my lifetime has used variations on the same strategy. It's political speech making 101. I'd say calling out the current president on this issue shows a lack of objectivity on your part. And trying to bait people into a political debate is also a poor strategy for winning an argument on an entirely different topic.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Steve could have saved a few technologies. They could have worked with developers. And so on. As mentioned look at Metrowerks example -- how did it hurt Apple to give Metrowerks access to headers as they'd been doing for the prior twenty years to other companies?
It makes no sense if you're looking at "Poor Steve and Apple struggling to make ends meet". It makes perfect sense if you're looking at it as "Control Freak Steve wants to control the platform completely so kicks out all competing tools, especially superior ones". Notice any patterns?
yes -- I notice a pattern of you seeing things from only one perspective. I see it from both. Yes, Jobs is a control freak. But yes, Apple was up sh!t creek and probably benefited greatly from having a control freak in charge. Could another strategy have worked? Possibly. But we see now that the one that was tried worked surprisingly well. So I tend to give Jobs the benefit of the doubt.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
I'm not saying the choices were all bad. I'm saying they chose to do them in a way that was the most disruptive and expensive for developers possible. So blaming the developers who ate all those costs and still stuck by the platform for not doing more than Apple was doing, is just stupid and ignorant of the situation.
I agree -- I don't blame the developers. But I also don't blame Apple. The Mac was a platform in a death spiral. It sucked for everyone, including customers. You can Monday Morning QB this all you want, but Apple is approaching Microsoft in market cap --- I think it's pretty hard to believe that Jobs' strategy was fundamentally flawed given that level of success.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
You can worship Steve or not. But understand software business enough to understand basic risk/reward ratios and Apple's actions have costs.
I am impressed by Jobs' accomplishments. I appreciate his products. And I'm happy with what he's done for my retirement fund. But I do not "worship" him. Frankly, as a human being, I don't even particularly like him. He strikes me as a narcissistic a-hole. But that doesn't mean he isn't good at his job.
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Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Imagine you're Adobe and you have a fixed budget and fixed timelines for release. Jobs hits you with things like change from highly productive CodeWarrior to the far less efficient XCode, move from PPC to x86, and from 32 bit to 64 bit Carbon (then we'll pull it away after you're a year into the port), and Apple was saying they were completely committed to Carbon (until like 2007 WWDC) so at some time in the future you might want to move Carbon to Cocoa, even though Apple's own Apps haven't moved over, it is still buggy and a subset of functionality, and it offers negative value to your customers. (The only thing they get is new bugs for the transition).
Adobe was so busy chasing Apple's changes and spending more on Mac development than Windows. So Adobe couldn't get to Cocoa as fast as they would have liked. Ignorant fanboys blame Adobe, and don't even understand the whole other side of software development. They see the problem as Adobe and other ISV's didn't get screwed enough by Apple. The ISV's are thinking my costs are already 2-4 times higher supporting the Mac for less marketshare and a bunch of negative PR every time Steve Jobs opens his mouth. Should we just go away? They don't -- but get grief from the Mac community for being more loyal to Mac customer than Apple is. (But most of Apple's bad moves are camouflaged under some lame excuse that the fanboys buy).
Yup -- life is hard. I understand that. I frankly wouldn't have blamed Adobe at all if they had completely abandoned the Mac in the late 90s (that's what I did). But so what? Who cares? That has nothing to do with the question of whether it makes sense for Apple to slam the door on Adobe's iPhone development efforts. I think that decision is plausibly a good one for Apple and ultimately for Apple's customers. It really sucks for Adobe, and it kind of sucks for some developers. As a human being, I sympathize. As an apple stock holder and customer, I don't care *unless* my apple stock or the platform I like using were to suffer as a result of these decisions. It sounds like maybe you think that will happen (although you spend most of your time arguing about ancient grievances).
I don't doubt that. I have some problems with Flash too.
Here's the issues:
1) It costs more to develop on Mac than Windows. This is made worse by many of Apple's choices. If you devote equal budget to a smaller market, you'll fall behind on Macs. Whose fault is that?
2) Microsoft is more open and helpful overall. Period. If Flash is a superior experience on Windows, do you think Apple owns any part of that?
3) Do you think all of the crashes in Flash are Adobe's fault? Do you think some might fall down to bugginess poor documentation or support in the OS? Safari crashes just fine without Flash. Many times Flash gets blamed for things that aren't its' fault. But there are plenty that are its fault. Right now, fanboys blame Flash 100% and Apple 0%. Truth, probably more like 60/40 or 70/30. But Adobe does a major reinvestment to fix things, and Apple punishes them in a rather petty way. What do you think this does for Adobe and others future motivations towards Apple?
4) Many hate Flash because of Ads. I don't. I understand the business. Advertising pays for editorial. Period. Because of Flash ads I get more content for free. If you cut down on the revenue publishers make (or increase their costs like with HTML5 right now), I lose free editorial, they cut staff or cut quality. It's just economics.
Is Flash too buggy? Yes.
Is Mac OS or Safari too buggy? Yes.
Is Flash often a victim of Apple's bugs? Yes.
Is Flash too slow at finding and fixing bugs on Mac? Yes.
Is Microsoft much more helpful in doing the same on Windows? Yes.
Has Apple made it much harder to write good software on Macs? Yes.
You can choose to see only the pro-Apple or anti-Adobe statements. But the world is a lot more mixed.
You can hate Flash. You can turn it off or not load it. I don't care. What I care about it claiming that lies are the truth. Mac fans ignore that at least some of the problems with Flash or all software on Macs is at least partly Apple's fault.
Sorry I think You mix some technical points with economical points.
Safari and Chrome use Webkit, the most progressive web-engine.
Both Browser are fast and stable in my experience.
What's discussable is the plugin-interface. Apple and Google decided to sandbox plugins and transfer to them to encapsulated threads while others don't be as restrictive.
This was mainly done because of security reasons. It's simply a big risk to give a browser connected to the whole wide world free access to your local resources.
MS had no problem in the past to take this risk because their own ActiveX technology needed this local access and it is/was a security nightmare.
You may not be lucky that you can't have complete access to system resources in your sub-system inside the browser inside the OS, but there are a lot of reasons why modern multitasking , multithreading, sandboxing designs prefers another paradigm.
So it's discussable if it's Apple's fault to implement a security design that prohibits such direct access.
Looking at the security. If You use Apple certified frameworks and there is a security problem it's their responsibility to solve it. Therefor it's a big difference if Flash would use e.g. core animation or pass a video stream to QT or a native decoder or if it does completely it's own stuff.
Back to economics. You might save some time and money but others have more efforts and cost.
I don't doubt that. I have some problems with Flash too.
Here's the issues:
1) It costs more to develop on Mac than Windows. This is made worse by many of Apple's choices. If you devote equal budget to a smaller market, you'll fall behind on Macs. Whose fault is that?
An interesting, yet entirely unsupported assertion. The development tools on Mac OS are free, and many developers seem to have no problem producing good software in a timely fashion. I'd say your argument here, at least as presented, is so weak as to amount to nothing but bluster.
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2) Microsoft is more open and helpful overall. Period. If Flash is a superior experience on Windows, do you think Apple owns any part of that?
Let's assume that Microsoft is more open and helpful. Let's even agree that Flash is superior on Windows. It in no way follows that it is Apple's fault that it sucks on the Mac. Oh, but you were just employing a rhetorical trick there, weren't you? Implying that it's because Apple hasn't been "cooperative" enough, without actually committing yourself to anything.
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3) Do you think all of the crashes in Flash are Adobe's fault? Do you think some might fall down to bugginess poor documentation or support in the OS? Safari crashes just fine without Flash. Many times Flash gets blamed for things that aren't its' fault. But there are plenty that are its fault. Right now, fanboys blame Flash 100% and Apple 0%. Truth, probably more like 60/40 or 70/30. But Adobe does a major reinvestment to fix things, and Apple punishes them in a rather petty way. What do you think this does for Adobe and others future motivations towards Apple?
Two problems here. Well, maybe three if we count another of your little rhetorical tricks: implying that it's due to poor documentation and support without actually committing yourself to it, or even stating what exactly you mean by that.
The first problem is that you're tossing around numbers that are pulled out of the air. Anecdotally, and based on information leaking out of Apple, we know that a lot of Safari crashes are caused by Flash. But we don't know how many. The majority, based on the information available, it seems. But, maybe it's actually as high as 80-95%. At what point would you accept that Flash is a real problem. Frankly, if even 50% of an applications crashes can be attributed to a single source, that seems like a serious problem to me.
The second problem is your continued assertion that Apple is somehow doing what it's doing to "punish" Adobe. There's no evidence this is true. In fact, the evidence seems to indicate that Apple's moves tighten the development license are entirely motivated by self interest, not directed outwardly.
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4) Many hate Flash because of Ads. I don't. I understand the business. Advertising pays for editorial. Period. Because of Flash ads I get more content for free. If you cut down on the revenue publishers make (or increase their costs like with HTML5 right now), I lose free editorial, they cut staff or cut quality. It's just economics.
Red Herring. Ads won't go away with the death of Flash. If you need proof of this, just look at Apple's iAd framework. The only thing that will change is the delivery mechanism.
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Is Flash too buggy? Yes.
Is Mac OS or Safari too buggy? Yes.
Is Flash often a victim of Apple's bugs? Yes.
Is Flash too slow at finding and fixing bugs on Mac? Yes.
Is Microsoft much more helpful in doing the same on Windows? Yes.
Has Apple made it much harder to write good software on Macs? Yes.
Agree
Unsupported assertion.
Unsupported assertion
Agree
Possibly, although the assertion is unsupported
Entirely unsupported assertion
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You can choose to see only the pro-Apple or anti-Adobe statements. But the world is a lot more mixed.
You can hate Flash. You can turn it off or not load it. I don't care. What I care about it claiming that lies are the truth. Mac fans ignore that at least some of the problems with Flash or all software on Macs is at least partly Apple's fault.
You're very big on vaguely assigning blame to Apple. But your arguments are so baseless that it's hard to see how they differ from the "lies" you are railing against. The simple fact is that plenty of developers have created fantastic software on the Mac using Apple's tools and without any special access to hardware or help from Apple. It's unclear why you think Adobe can't do the same.
Sue Denim, you have gotten tiresome. Like a little dog you have locked your jaws on one basic argument and are shaking it to death. Go away now, please.
Sue "Teabagger" Denim, you have gotten tiresome. Like a little dog you have locked your jaws on one basic argument and are shaking it to death. Go away now, please.
It would be nice to not have the politically charged language.
Thank you Sue Denim, DominoXML, ltcommander.data, and others that have posted thoughtful messages. I found this thread while looking for more information on the apparent rift between Apple and Adobe.
Picking up on ltcommander.data?s comment ?Are there concerns about Apple being able to pick and choose what and how a developer reaches the user??
Maybe reviewing apps written using Flash takes more time than Apple is willing to spend reviewing apps for their store, maybe Apple wants to narrow app development to keep control and drive their processes forward, or maybe Apple?s chosen development process (C, C++, and Objective-C for compiling) is really the best way to produce stable applications people want to buy.
I don?t know. I am a consumer. I want quality, cost-effectiveness, and enjoyment. I am disappointed.
I purchased my first MacPro and Snow Leopard less than a year ago so that I could have a 64-bit operating system, a well-designed and quality computer, and the ability to run multiple operating systems. The 64-bit environment was primarily wanted to use for my upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) software purchase. Apple Script was also intriguing -- how could efficiency be increased?
In my world (admittedly narrowly career-oriented), the only real reason anyone owns Macs is because they are creative professionals using Adobe design products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). All the business software (Microsoft) is still run on PCs. While still learning the Mac world, right now there are more things I can do better with a PC (another post entirely).
So why can?t Adobe and Apple work together? From my point of view, Adobe kept Apple alive all these years until the iPod sales gave Apple enough cash and charisma to fund further innovation. Adobe has made real progress recently in developing better software in general--though with a cruel pricing structure--and Apple dropped a bomb in its lap right before the Adobe launch event. Brutal kick in the face.
I am no fanboy of either Apple or Adobe. Both companies do some things very well and make products I want to buy. But neither company does what they do well enough to have the sole say in how and what technology reaches me in the future. In the end, application developers will end up paying more to make lesser products and pass the cost and results to me.
For the Apple fanboys: I treat my MacPro very well, but have had 3 hardware failures requiring new parts since I purchased it directly from Apple. Ridiculous lugging this heavy box to the Apple Store at a crowded mall.
For the Adobe addicts: The Adobe bundling and upgrading structure is terrible. Let me buy the suite and only upgrade the apps I want to. I need to make a profit too!
"Annanmty" and "Sue Denim." Similar name themes. Both show up for the first time in April. Both try to sound like honest brokers by offering some kind of cred ("I use a Mac", "I used to work there", "Adobe has its flaws too", etc.) while at the same time bashing Apple. I am not normally a conspiracy type, but these two seem a bit too coincidental, don't you think?
"Annanmty" and "Sue Denim." Similar name themes. Both show up for the first time in April. Both try to sound like honest brokers by offering some kind of cred (I use a Mac, I used to work there, Adobe has its flaws too, etc.) while at the same time bashing Apple. I am not normally a conspiracy type, but these two seem a bit too coincidental, don't you think?
Anyone with a join date after Nov 2001 is suspect in my books. Actually, anyone not registered before the Great Crash is just a newb.
I think you're missing the point. Apple implemented a subset of the spec. That subset holds back both platforms. Apple fails silently so users don't even know they're missing something. Like they did by taking the little blue lego out of webpages where there's something they don't see.
Apple was saying that not implementing Mac-only features holds the platform back -- while actively not implementing specs/functions, and hiding it from users.
There are, however, some aspects of the Adobe Reader's functionality that... are not provided in Preview. For example, forms can now be created in Acrobat that have dynamic content fields (such as drop-downs and check-boxes) and while Preview will display these fields, interactivity is not available and therefore the fields become static.
Go through this, and you'll find a long list of things that Apple doesn't support that the spec does:
Should Apple be held to a different standard than they hold others or not?
And most of those features are not allowed to be implemented by Apple due to the license. Adobe reader still works fine, nothing has been done to thwart it on Apple's end, even though Adobe is the outfit protecting Reader and Acrobat Pro by restricting the features which can be implemented in previous PDF versions.
If you're going to bring up part of the story to rant, be prepared to get hit with the rest of the story.
Anyone with a join date after Nov 2001 is suspect in my books. Actually, anyone not registered before the Great Crash is just a newb.
I missed out on the Great Crash! Ah, the good ol' days I guess....
I am definitely a newbie to Apple topic forums and my opinions are my own. I make no claims to being a programmer (experimented with Visual Basic in college--don't we all), reading this website before today, or speaking with authority regarding my Mac beyond my recent experiences.
I love the internet as a forum for discussion, but that means having to scroll through the conspiracy theorists, trolls, and people with difficulty parsing emotions from topic posts. For those folks, imagine me to be who you want, but please imagine me rich and beautiful. If I find a topic interesting and I have something to say, I'll write again. This thread was certainly engaging!
If anybody has any links beyond those presented here with good information regarding Adobe's potential legal actions, please let me know.
I rejoice in Apple commercials and product placements because it makes my stock go through the roof. But right now my Adobe stock is looking shaky until I find out how their CS5 sales are actually doing and whether they put finances slated for development into legal fees.
If anybody has any links beyond those presented here with good information regarding Adobe's potential legal actions, please let me know.
I rejoice in Apple commercials and product placements because it makes my stock go through the roof. But right now my Adobe stock is looking shaky until I find out how their CS5 sales are actually doing and whether they put finances slated for development into legal fees.
Sorry, I'm an engineer and no lawyer or analyst therefor I can't provide information about these topics.
What I can provide is my first impression that CS5 seems to be a great step forward especially for Mac users (64 Bit).
If Adobe expands support and features like HTML5, flash to h.264 transcoding etc. they can dominate print- and web-publishing because they are the only company that can provide both Flash and HTML.
Currently "the mobile web" is <1% and we have nearby no suitable Flash content for phones (Flash 10.1 isn't shipped, Flash light is nearby not used and old content would have to be reworked to be "finger-friendly"). So I don't see a significant impact in the near future.
Analyst are people who bet on the future. So let's have a short look at the long term.
The question is if Flash would gain a significant market share as IDE (Development environment). As a developer I would say no, at least as long people can't get the most out of their devices like GPS, Multitasking, optimized touch UI etc.
(Current PC's and Macs are much more standardized regarding to this.)
There are currently some Flash-apps in the app store I was able to test. I was not impressed.
They lack the wow effect I was able to produce with flash web sites some years ago. This wow was IMHO the reason for the incredible success of flash and it was the reason why I loved it at this time.
Therefore I doubt that the exaggerated expectations of Adobe about cross-platform development are realistic because a good app would take a significant time to rework for every device, screen-size etc.
Maybe analysts don't agree and maybe people are thrilled about Flash 10.1 on Palm, Android etc., but I doubt.
And most of those features are not allowed to be implemented by Apple due to the license. Adobe reader still works fine, nothing has been done to thwart it on Apple's end, even though Adobe is the outfit protecting Reader and Acrobat Pro by restricting the features which can be implemented in previous PDF versions.
If you're going to bring up part of the story to rant, be prepared to get hit with the rest of the story.
@SueDenim said … a lot. I agree almost totally and in support of her showing that Apple is totally being a jerk, while Adobe only does wonderful things for its developers, I weigh in.
“…QuickDraw GX … was completely incompatible with everything else, and was quite buggy originally…”
Well, we are shocked! Imagine, that new software had bugs! For a fine counter-example, look at how Adobe has had full Flash running on the hundreds of millions of smartphones (except for Apple's because SJ is just a jerk). Why, just go to YouTube and watch those fine demos of the prototype Android slate running Flash.
“…Apple then pulled those same technologies out on a whim, screwing all the developers…”
Yes, the company is obviously totally incapable of developing software. They must have done it just to kill their sales. Couldn't have been any good reason. Another good point.
“Apple repeated that with OpenDoc, Bedrock, Newton, MacApp, and about 50 other technologies.”
Yes, how DOES Apple manage to force millions of developers to try out new directions, when firms like Adobe support Freehand, GoLive, Flashpaper and others) forever, while Microsoft is still promoting ActiveX for websites, not to mention MultiPlan? Sue, maybe Steve Jobs personally tortured you until the day the Newton failed, but you still enjoy your PlaysForSure music player from Microsoft that died stillborn in most of our minds.
“Microsoft is slow moving and stable… Apple goes for a fast-moving, fast-changing and high-breakage model…” Yep, it'd have been much better if Apple stayed with the original MacOS running on the Motorola 68000. THAT'S a business model that developers could work with! Sue, you must have a bunch of those old machines around to play with; I'm envious. And those stupid iPhones. Why can't they just run Windows 7 Lite?!? Anyway, Microsoft will have Win7Phone real soon, and it'll be fully compatible with… uhh…??? Well, Android 2.2 is sorta backward compatible with 2.1. And WebOS had a compatibility box, even though nobody used it. So yeah, the way forward in handsets is NO CHANGES!!!
“Steve Jobs killed [a toolkit] a year later, because it helped developers too much and used Carbon.” Ahhh, I'm seeing a pattern: Apple would rather go masturbate in a corner than see any products shipped for its computers. Never mind Apple's Rhapsody effort tried to put Apple s/w on Windows but developers refused to follow along, and with MacApp, Apple would've been required to support a tiny base of programs in a fast-changing environment with almost no revenue advantage. Real software developers GIVE AWAY all their work and promise to support it forever!
“There was a version of Cocoa (OpenStep) that ran on top Windows. This would allow developers to write on Mac first and run on Windows. Apple wouldn't release it.” Yes, Apple obviously didn't want developers to write first on the Mac. What could they possibly gain from that? For once, Apple showed some common sense cause-and-effect in killing a product that people might actually buy. Makes me suspect that all those iPhone contract changes aren't actually to promote Apple's business, after all. Must be some secret ANTI-business reason, just like 1984.
“Apple started up many different failed efforts to do the same things (Taligent, Dylan, OpenDoc / ODF, Bedrock, MacApp for Windows, not counting OpenStep for Windows, and YellowBox). Apple systematically killed them, usually after a few developers were stupid enough to trust Apple and get on board.” Which were you: one of the devs who said, “not for me, thanks,” or one of the stupid ones? You kinda wonder why Apple even tries to hold developer conferences, they so obviously hate dealing with these greasy, low-rent types. Maybe it serves a sadistic purpose? I predict that the 2010 developer conference will have exactly zero devs who waste their money flying to SF.
“Apple first attacked Adobe by making incompatible Fonts (TrueType)…” Ahhh, good ole 1989, and so relevant today, 21 years later! And imagine the gall that they also developed scalable, on-screen versions of those fonts, which Adobe was gonna do REAL SOON. And then, forcing Microsoft into ALSO sharing this new technology instead of letting Adobe control ALL professional typefaces in the PC business! The utter shamelessness of doing anything that Adobe would've been pleased to continue monopolizing at the (IIRC) $300 I had to pay for Trump Medieval (1989 dollars, btw). So Sue, you're wise to watch out for somebody that 21 years ago decided to enter a market that somebody else monopolized.
“Adobe had Acrobat and PDF which supports the full standard.” You have a great point here, but you're either forgetting some of the history (even though you DO know so much about Adobe for being a disinterested third party developer, Sue Jeans) or tuned in late: the PostScript standard (and the derivatives EPS and PDF) appears to be only a de facto one, similar to the Flash ‘standard.’ (Both, no standards body, but Flash differs in never, AFAICT, been declared free for anybody to implement or modify.) And if an old Fortune article is correct, the “standard” became known to the world only after Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would also offer TrueType, leading Warnock to publish PDF for the first time. So yes, Adobe supports Adobe standards, and a Good Thing, too. But they weren't — maybe, still aren't — “standards” by other people's definitions. Still I agree that Adobe is more pro-standards even if Apple's sharing a standard with Microsoft coincidentally preceded it!
“…Apple uses an open ePub (eBook) format, but instead of licensing the standard DRM or making it compatible with others, they make a proprietary implementation that is incompatible with everyone else.” There goes Apple again, Sue. they hadn't even entered the book market and they go do something different than what Adobe likes. So publishers are able to submit standardized materials to Apple's store, minimizing their costs, but what Apple sells wouldn't run on a Sony reader, for example. So devious! And then, the utter chutzpah of selling materials that run on your devices (sorta like that other non-Adobe company, Kindle) requiring pipsqueak independent firms like Sony to go out and arrange their own deals! Yes, people the world over should rage at Apple for not falling into line and not selling books that could work on everybody else's hardware. Except Kindle, which also has a proprietary format and gated transfer: $0.15/MB. And except for the other 50+ formats for e-books, which aren't worth mentioning because Adobe is only interested in ePub.
And this ePub business has NOTHING to do with Adobe encouraging developers to write Flash, suggesting that it'll be ready on phones in 2008… 2009 … 2010. Just because the Adobe software is incompatible with a couple hundred million browsers doesn't have a thing to do with Apple's selling books that are incompatible with the other 32 readers.
“And this never stops. … Apple implemented 64 bit in a much harder to port sort of way.” Yeah, there they go again, bailing on backwards-compatibility mode stuff when they see how much that'll cost them from developing for the future. Now, I'm curious, Sue: no firm appeared to have been more committed to NOT using the Cocoa platform (preferring the deprecated Carbon interface) than Adobe, and no firm's applications would more benefit from the best possible access to power but failed to get it.
Sue, I'm beginning to think that you might be, you know, a little compromised by some Adobe friend who made the opposite mistake you mentioned above — that friend might've been the one who got talked into the business case for not getting on the Cocoa bandwagon when Apple said that was The Future. I don't think it'd be that nice Mr. Brimelow, whose Righteous Anger hit the web recently, but maybe somebody he knows? He maybe has an axe to grind and cares more about Adobe than independent developers like you, and is slipping you all this detailed story. Even though every instance you mention is right (Apple is just dicking third party developers and that's why the whole world of developers resents them and refuses to develop for them) while the halos over Adobe's heads still shine brightly).
“Someone said there are two kinds of Mac developers - those who've been screwed by Apple, and those waiting their turn.” Amen, sister. And with such succinct insights, a good place to wrap up my support of your Fair and Balanced ® history.
Good thing that at least developers can fully trust Adobe's business direction and software release schedule, and they can commit even more to buying/using Flash tools and knowing that their content will be available everywhere.
Thank you for allowing me to share.
PS: I do not now, nor have I ever had, any relationship with Apple other than giving them my money for various products (at regular prices). I DID seriously entertain developing for them 20+ years ago, but never did — I admire those who do it, but it ain't me. I HAVE written over 100 various in-house apps for Microsoft OS machines. Including in PostScript, a delightful experience. My current use of Adobe software is as an end-user, almost exclusively Flash and the misbegotten AIR-based NY Times Reader.
Comments
I view many pages on the BBC site every day. There are many, many video clips that use Flash - including their News streaming service. I'd like to get an iPad, but the BBC site would be a no go area on an iPad, so that's making me hesitate.
Spoken like someone who has never read a 10-K or 10-Q. Gil was an operations guy. He got the operations in order, hiring/firing and restructuring, remember the iMac was developed under him. Etc.
Of all the decisions made by him the NeXT acquisition was the best and the worst. Fanboys will only look at the good they got, and not the costs or what they could have done without NeXT. But this isn't really the main topic.
What they could have done without NeXT? Copeland was a disaster. They were dead without NeXT.
And the most immediately important thing that Jobs did on resuming control of Apple was to kill the Mac OS licensing program, something that Amelio was full steam ahead on, and which was the stupidest thing Apple ever did (at least given the timing of doing it) in its history as a company.
Apple didn't need an operations guy. They needed someone with a vision and a real understanding of technology. (Technology in the big picture sense, not knowledge of various technologies.) This is entirely relevant to the main topic.
What they could have done without NeXT? Copeland was a disaster. They were dead without NeXT.
And the most immediately important thing that Jobs did on resuming control of Apple was to kill the Mac OS licensing program, something that Amelio was full steam ahead on, and which was the stupidest thing Apple ever did (at least given the timing of doing it) in its history as a company.
Apple didn't need an operations guy. They needed someone with a vision and a real understanding of technology. (Technology in the big picture sense, not knowledge of various technologies.) This is entirely relevant to the main topic.
Be! I wanted Be!
And Amelio may have been bad, but Spindler was a wreck. Amelio was only CEO for about a year and half. he did some good, he did some bad. Mostly he was ineffectual and wishy washy. Cloning could have worked, but damn if the execution wasn't the worst ever. PowerComputing was great though.
I know you probably don't know this -- but most of that was radically improved by Gil Amelio. Steve knew that, so stepped in and took credit.
I know that Amelio was responsible for getting Apple's fiscal house in order, as was Fred Anderson. And of course it was Amelio who decided to buy Next in the first place. I'm not trying to deny credit to Amelio.
But even so, who cares? It doesn't change the history I'm talking about. Apple was screwed up, and still is (in different ways). All companies are. It doesn't change the facts of what they did -- it just gives it a little context.
Hmmm... a strangely rational statement from you. How nice!
Apple wasn't wrong to thin up. But then Adobe wasn't either. Or if Adobe was, then Apple was worse. That's not bitter or selective, that's just a balanced view of both companies. You should try it.
*this* is a balanced statement. What you wrote earlier was not. And I never said anything about Adobe at all (I think you're projecting some other people's arguments onto me). I actually agree with your point here --- Adobe has been pursuing their own interests. The statement that Adobe is "lazy" is itself a lazy statement, if it were made by an objective observer with no vested interest in the situation. But it was made by Steve Jobs, who is not at all objective, and has a deeply vested interest in the situation. So I take that with a considerable grain of salt. But I'm also not "offended" by Jobs' statement. He's doing what he thinks is in Apple's best interest, and it's very hard to argue with his success in advancing Apple's interests. Doesn't mean he won't make mistakes in the future, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I didn't think that was relevant. If it was, then Adobe gets a bigger pass -- they've had two to three different CEO's since then. So keep it fair. If Apple gets a pass on everything before Steve, then Adobe gets one one Shantanu. If Adobe doesn't and has to own their whole history, then Apple does too.
for me this is not about "fairness". I don't see this in moralistic terms. Apple made a decision to stomp out any development efforts for the iPhone that try to circumvent their development tools and approaches. Strikes me as a reasonable choice, although there are some costs. I don't agree with the AppleInsider moralistic slant on these things, but I don't agree with yours either.
Sorry, look at the {Current Sitting President} speech technique again. It isn't black or white -- my way or a stupid alternative.
Your fixation on one particular politician who uses a much more mild form of the exact same strategy that every other politician uses strikes me as unbalanced. I'm 37 years old and every president or major party presidential candidate that I've seen in my lifetime has used variations on the same strategy. It's political speech making 101. I'd say calling out the current president on this issue shows a lack of objectivity on your part. And trying to bait people into a political debate is also a poor strategy for winning an argument on an entirely different topic.
Steve could have saved a few technologies. They could have worked with developers. And so on. As mentioned look at Metrowerks example -- how did it hurt Apple to give Metrowerks access to headers as they'd been doing for the prior twenty years to other companies?
It makes no sense if you're looking at "Poor Steve and Apple struggling to make ends meet". It makes perfect sense if you're looking at it as "Control Freak Steve wants to control the platform completely so kicks out all competing tools, especially superior ones". Notice any patterns?
yes -- I notice a pattern of you seeing things from only one perspective. I see it from both. Yes, Jobs is a control freak. But yes, Apple was up sh!t creek and probably benefited greatly from having a control freak in charge. Could another strategy have worked? Possibly. But we see now that the one that was tried worked surprisingly well. So I tend to give Jobs the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not saying the choices were all bad. I'm saying they chose to do them in a way that was the most disruptive and expensive for developers possible. So blaming the developers who ate all those costs and still stuck by the platform for not doing more than Apple was doing, is just stupid and ignorant of the situation.
I agree -- I don't blame the developers. But I also don't blame Apple. The Mac was a platform in a death spiral. It sucked for everyone, including customers. You can Monday Morning QB this all you want, but Apple is approaching Microsoft in market cap --- I think it's pretty hard to believe that Jobs' strategy was fundamentally flawed given that level of success.
You can worship Steve or not. But understand software business enough to understand basic risk/reward ratios and Apple's actions have costs.
I am impressed by Jobs' accomplishments. I appreciate his products. And I'm happy with what he's done for my retirement fund. But I do not "worship" him. Frankly, as a human being, I don't even particularly like him. He strikes me as a narcissistic a-hole. But that doesn't mean he isn't good at his job.
Imagine you're Adobe and you have a fixed budget and fixed timelines for release. Jobs hits you with things like change from highly productive CodeWarrior to the far less efficient XCode, move from PPC to x86, and from 32 bit to 64 bit Carbon (then we'll pull it away after you're a year into the port), and Apple was saying they were completely committed to Carbon (until like 2007 WWDC) so at some time in the future you might want to move Carbon to Cocoa, even though Apple's own Apps haven't moved over, it is still buggy and a subset of functionality, and it offers negative value to your customers. (The only thing they get is new bugs for the transition).
Adobe was so busy chasing Apple's changes and spending more on Mac development than Windows. So Adobe couldn't get to Cocoa as fast as they would have liked. Ignorant fanboys blame Adobe, and don't even understand the whole other side of software development. They see the problem as Adobe and other ISV's didn't get screwed enough by Apple. The ISV's are thinking my costs are already 2-4 times higher supporting the Mac for less marketshare and a bunch of negative PR every time Steve Jobs opens his mouth. Should we just go away? They don't -- but get grief from the Mac community for being more loyal to Mac customer than Apple is. (But most of Apple's bad moves are camouflaged under some lame excuse that the fanboys buy).
Yup -- life is hard. I understand that. I frankly wouldn't have blamed Adobe at all if they had completely abandoned the Mac in the late 90s (that's what I did). But so what? Who cares? That has nothing to do with the question of whether it makes sense for Apple to slam the door on Adobe's iPhone development efforts. I think that decision is plausibly a good one for Apple and ultimately for Apple's customers. It really sucks for Adobe, and it kind of sucks for some developers. As a human being, I sympathize. As an apple stock holder and customer, I don't care *unless* my apple stock or the platform I like using were to suffer as a result of these decisions. It sounds like maybe you think that will happen (although you spend most of your time arguing about ancient grievances).
I don't doubt that. I have some problems with Flash too.
Here's the issues:
1) It costs more to develop on Mac than Windows. This is made worse by many of Apple's choices. If you devote equal budget to a smaller market, you'll fall behind on Macs. Whose fault is that?
2) Microsoft is more open and helpful overall. Period. If Flash is a superior experience on Windows, do you think Apple owns any part of that?
3) Do you think all of the crashes in Flash are Adobe's fault? Do you think some might fall down to bugginess poor documentation or support in the OS? Safari crashes just fine without Flash. Many times Flash gets blamed for things that aren't its' fault. But there are plenty that are its fault. Right now, fanboys blame Flash 100% and Apple 0%. Truth, probably more like 60/40 or 70/30. But Adobe does a major reinvestment to fix things, and Apple punishes them in a rather petty way. What do you think this does for Adobe and others future motivations towards Apple?
4) Many hate Flash because of Ads. I don't. I understand the business. Advertising pays for editorial. Period. Because of Flash ads I get more content for free. If you cut down on the revenue publishers make (or increase their costs like with HTML5 right now), I lose free editorial, they cut staff or cut quality. It's just economics.
Is Flash too buggy? Yes.
Is Mac OS or Safari too buggy? Yes.
Is Flash often a victim of Apple's bugs? Yes.
Is Flash too slow at finding and fixing bugs on Mac? Yes.
Is Microsoft much more helpful in doing the same on Windows? Yes.
Has Apple made it much harder to write good software on Macs? Yes.
You can choose to see only the pro-Apple or anti-Adobe statements. But the world is a lot more mixed.
You can hate Flash. You can turn it off or not load it. I don't care. What I care about it claiming that lies are the truth. Mac fans ignore that at least some of the problems with Flash or all software on Macs is at least partly Apple's fault.
Sorry I think You mix some technical points with economical points.
Safari and Chrome use Webkit, the most progressive web-engine.
Both Browser are fast and stable in my experience.
What's discussable is the plugin-interface. Apple and Google decided to sandbox plugins and transfer to them to encapsulated threads while others don't be as restrictive.
This was mainly done because of security reasons. It's simply a big risk to give a browser connected to the whole wide world free access to your local resources.
MS had no problem in the past to take this risk because their own ActiveX technology needed this local access and it is/was a security nightmare.
You may not be lucky that you can't have complete access to system resources in your sub-system inside the browser inside the OS, but there are a lot of reasons why modern multitasking , multithreading, sandboxing designs prefers another paradigm.
So it's discussable if it's Apple's fault to implement a security design that prohibits such direct access.
Looking at the security. If You use Apple certified frameworks and there is a security problem it's their responsibility to solve it. Therefor it's a big difference if Flash would use e.g. core animation or pass a video stream to QT or a native decoder or if it does completely it's own stuff.
Back to economics. You might save some time and money but others have more efforts and cost.
I don't doubt that. I have some problems with Flash too.
Here's the issues:
1) It costs more to develop on Mac than Windows. This is made worse by many of Apple's choices. If you devote equal budget to a smaller market, you'll fall behind on Macs. Whose fault is that?
An interesting, yet entirely unsupported assertion. The development tools on Mac OS are free, and many developers seem to have no problem producing good software in a timely fashion. I'd say your argument here, at least as presented, is so weak as to amount to nothing but bluster.
2) Microsoft is more open and helpful overall. Period. If Flash is a superior experience on Windows, do you think Apple owns any part of that?
Let's assume that Microsoft is more open and helpful. Let's even agree that Flash is superior on Windows. It in no way follows that it is Apple's fault that it sucks on the Mac. Oh, but you were just employing a rhetorical trick there, weren't you? Implying that it's because Apple hasn't been "cooperative" enough, without actually committing yourself to anything.
3) Do you think all of the crashes in Flash are Adobe's fault? Do you think some might fall down to bugginess poor documentation or support in the OS? Safari crashes just fine without Flash. Many times Flash gets blamed for things that aren't its' fault. But there are plenty that are its fault. Right now, fanboys blame Flash 100% and Apple 0%. Truth, probably more like 60/40 or 70/30. But Adobe does a major reinvestment to fix things, and Apple punishes them in a rather petty way. What do you think this does for Adobe and others future motivations towards Apple?
Two problems here. Well, maybe three if we count another of your little rhetorical tricks: implying that it's due to poor documentation and support without actually committing yourself to it, or even stating what exactly you mean by that.
The first problem is that you're tossing around numbers that are pulled out of the air. Anecdotally, and based on information leaking out of Apple, we know that a lot of Safari crashes are caused by Flash. But we don't know how many. The majority, based on the information available, it seems. But, maybe it's actually as high as 80-95%. At what point would you accept that Flash is a real problem. Frankly, if even 50% of an applications crashes can be attributed to a single source, that seems like a serious problem to me.
The second problem is your continued assertion that Apple is somehow doing what it's doing to "punish" Adobe. There's no evidence this is true. In fact, the evidence seems to indicate that Apple's moves tighten the development license are entirely motivated by self interest, not directed outwardly.
4) Many hate Flash because of Ads. I don't. I understand the business. Advertising pays for editorial. Period. Because of Flash ads I get more content for free. If you cut down on the revenue publishers make (or increase their costs like with HTML5 right now), I lose free editorial, they cut staff or cut quality. It's just economics.
Red Herring. Ads won't go away with the death of Flash. If you need proof of this, just look at Apple's iAd framework. The only thing that will change is the delivery mechanism.
Is Flash too buggy? Yes.
Is Mac OS or Safari too buggy? Yes.
Is Flash often a victim of Apple's bugs? Yes.
Is Flash too slow at finding and fixing bugs on Mac? Yes.
Is Microsoft much more helpful in doing the same on Windows? Yes.
Has Apple made it much harder to write good software on Macs? Yes.
Agree
Unsupported assertion.
Unsupported assertion
Agree
Possibly, although the assertion is unsupported
Entirely unsupported assertion
You can choose to see only the pro-Apple or anti-Adobe statements. But the world is a lot more mixed.
You can hate Flash. You can turn it off or not load it. I don't care. What I care about it claiming that lies are the truth. Mac fans ignore that at least some of the problems with Flash or all software on Macs is at least partly Apple's fault.
You're very big on vaguely assigning blame to Apple. But your arguments are so baseless that it's hard to see how they differ from the "lies" you are railing against. The simple fact is that plenty of developers have created fantastic software on the Mac using Apple's tools and without any special access to hardware or help from Apple. It's unclear why you think Adobe can't do the same.
Sue "Teabagger" Denim, you have gotten tiresome. Like a little dog you have locked your jaws on one basic argument and are shaking it to death. Go away now, please.
It would be nice to not have the politically charged language.
It would be nice to not have the politically charged language.
I agree and have edited my post.
Why?
Didn't Apple get that from Adobe during the Macromedia acquisition?
Apple acquired and released Final Cut Pro at NAB in 1999. Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. About a 6 year difference there.
Picking up on ltcommander.data?s comment ?Are there concerns about Apple being able to pick and choose what and how a developer reaches the user??
Maybe reviewing apps written using Flash takes more time than Apple is willing to spend reviewing apps for their store, maybe Apple wants to narrow app development to keep control and drive their processes forward, or maybe Apple?s chosen development process (C, C++, and Objective-C for compiling) is really the best way to produce stable applications people want to buy.
I don?t know. I am a consumer. I want quality, cost-effectiveness, and enjoyment. I am disappointed.
I purchased my first MacPro and Snow Leopard less than a year ago so that I could have a 64-bit operating system, a well-designed and quality computer, and the ability to run multiple operating systems. The 64-bit environment was primarily wanted to use for my upcoming Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5) software purchase. Apple Script was also intriguing -- how could efficiency be increased?
In my world (admittedly narrowly career-oriented), the only real reason anyone owns Macs is because they are creative professionals using Adobe design products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). All the business software (Microsoft) is still run on PCs. While still learning the Mac world, right now there are more things I can do better with a PC (another post entirely).
So why can?t Adobe and Apple work together? From my point of view, Adobe kept Apple alive all these years until the iPod sales gave Apple enough cash and charisma to fund further innovation. Adobe has made real progress recently in developing better software in general--though with a cruel pricing structure--and Apple dropped a bomb in its lap right before the Adobe launch event. Brutal kick in the face.
I am no fanboy of either Apple or Adobe. Both companies do some things very well and make products I want to buy. But neither company does what they do well enough to have the sole say in how and what technology reaches me in the future. In the end, application developers will end up paying more to make lesser products and pass the cost and results to me.
For the Apple fanboys: I treat my MacPro very well, but have had 3 hardware failures requiring new parts since I purchased it directly from Apple. Ridiculous lugging this heavy box to the Apple Store at a crowded mall.
For the Adobe addicts: The Adobe bundling and upgrading structure is terrible. Let me buy the suite and only upgrade the apps I want to. I need to make a profit too!
"Annanmty" and "Sue Denim." Similar name themes. Both show up for the first time in April. Both try to sound like honest brokers by offering some kind of cred (I use a Mac, I used to work there, Adobe has its flaws too, etc.) while at the same time bashing Apple. I am not normally a conspiracy type, but these two seem a bit too coincidental, don't you think?
Anyone with a join date after Nov 2001 is suspect in my books. Actually, anyone not registered before the Great Crash is just a newb.
I think you're missing the point. Apple implemented a subset of the spec. That subset holds back both platforms. Apple fails silently so users don't even know they're missing something. Like they did by taking the little blue lego out of webpages where there's something they don't see.
Apple was saying that not implementing Mac-only features holds the platform back -- while actively not implementing specs/functions, and hiding it from users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preview_(software)
There are, however, some aspects of the Adobe Reader's functionality that... are not provided in Preview. For example, forms can now be created in Acrobat that have dynamic content fields (such as drop-downs and check-boxes) and while Preview will display these fields, interactivity is not available and therefore the fields become static.
Go through this, and you'll find a long list of things that Apple doesn't support that the spec does:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF
Should Apple be held to a different standard than they hold others or not?
And most of those features are not allowed to be implemented by Apple due to the license. Adobe reader still works fine, nothing has been done to thwart it on Apple's end, even though Adobe is the outfit protecting Reader and Acrobat Pro by restricting the features which can be implemented in previous PDF versions.
If you're going to bring up part of the story to rant, be prepared to get hit with the rest of the story.
Anyone with a join date after Nov 2001 is suspect in my books. Actually, anyone not registered before the Great Crash is just a newb.
I missed out on the Great Crash! Ah, the good ol' days I guess....
I am definitely a newbie to Apple topic forums and my opinions are my own. I make no claims to being a programmer (experimented with Visual Basic in college--don't we all), reading this website before today, or speaking with authority regarding my Mac beyond my recent experiences.
I love the internet as a forum for discussion, but that means having to scroll through the conspiracy theorists, trolls, and people with difficulty parsing emotions from topic posts. For those folks, imagine me to be who you want, but please imagine me rich and beautiful. If I find a topic interesting and I have something to say, I'll write again. This thread was certainly engaging!
If anybody has any links beyond those presented here with good information regarding Adobe's potential legal actions, please let me know.
I rejoice in Apple commercials and product placements because it makes my stock go through the roof. But right now my Adobe stock is looking shaky until I find out how their CS5 sales are actually doing and whether they put finances slated for development into legal fees.
If anybody has any links beyond those presented here with good information regarding Adobe's potential legal actions, please let me know.
I rejoice in Apple commercials and product placements because it makes my stock go through the roof. But right now my Adobe stock is looking shaky until I find out how their CS5 sales are actually doing and whether they put finances slated for development into legal fees.
Sorry, I'm an engineer and no lawyer or analyst therefor I can't provide information about these topics.
What I can provide is my first impression that CS5 seems to be a great step forward especially for Mac users (64 Bit).
If Adobe expands support and features like HTML5, flash to h.264 transcoding etc. they can dominate print- and web-publishing because they are the only company that can provide both Flash and HTML.
Currently "the mobile web" is <1% and we have nearby no suitable Flash content for phones (Flash 10.1 isn't shipped, Flash light is nearby not used and old content would have to be reworked to be "finger-friendly"). So I don't see a significant impact in the near future.
Analyst are people who bet on the future. So let's have a short look at the long term.
The question is if Flash would gain a significant market share as IDE (Development environment). As a developer I would say no, at least as long people can't get the most out of their devices like GPS, Multitasking, optimized touch UI etc.
(Current PC's and Macs are much more standardized regarding to this.)
There are currently some Flash-apps in the app store I was able to test. I was not impressed.
They lack the wow effect I was able to produce with flash web sites some years ago. This wow was IMHO the reason for the incredible success of flash and it was the reason why I loved it at this time.
Therefore I doubt that the exaggerated expectations of Adobe about cross-platform development are realistic because a good app would take a significant time to rework for every device, screen-size etc.
Maybe analysts don't agree and maybe people are thrilled about Flash 10.1 on Palm, Android etc., but I doubt.
And most of those features are not allowed to be implemented by Apple due to the license. Adobe reader still works fine, nothing has been done to thwart it on Apple's end, even though Adobe is the outfit protecting Reader and Acrobat Pro by restricting the features which can be implemented in previous PDF versions.
If you're going to bring up part of the story to rant, be prepared to get hit with the rest of the story.
“…QuickDraw GX … was completely incompatible with everything else, and was quite buggy originally…”
Well, we are shocked! Imagine, that new software had bugs! For a fine counter-example, look at how Adobe has had full Flash running on the hundreds of millions of smartphones (except for Apple's because SJ is just a jerk). Why, just go to YouTube and watch those fine demos of the prototype Android slate running Flash.
“…Apple then pulled those same technologies out on a whim, screwing all the developers…”
Yes, the company is obviously totally incapable of developing software. They must have done it just to kill their sales. Couldn't have been any good reason. Another good point.
“Apple repeated that with OpenDoc, Bedrock, Newton, MacApp, and about 50 other technologies.”
Yes, how DOES Apple manage to force millions of developers to try out new directions, when firms like Adobe support Freehand, GoLive, Flashpaper and others) forever, while Microsoft is still promoting ActiveX for websites, not to mention MultiPlan? Sue, maybe Steve Jobs personally tortured you until the day the Newton failed, but you still enjoy your PlaysForSure music player from Microsoft that died stillborn in most of our minds.
“Microsoft is slow moving and stable… Apple goes for a fast-moving, fast-changing and high-breakage model…” Yep, it'd have been much better if Apple stayed with the original MacOS running on the Motorola 68000. THAT'S a business model that developers could work with! Sue, you must have a bunch of those old machines around to play with; I'm envious. And those stupid iPhones. Why can't they just run Windows 7 Lite?!? Anyway, Microsoft will have Win7Phone real soon, and it'll be fully compatible with… uhh…??? Well, Android 2.2 is sorta backward compatible with 2.1. And WebOS had a compatibility box, even though nobody used it. So yeah, the way forward in handsets is NO CHANGES!!!
“Steve Jobs killed [a toolkit] a year later, because it helped developers too much and used Carbon.” Ahhh, I'm seeing a pattern: Apple would rather go masturbate in a corner than see any products shipped for its computers. Never mind Apple's Rhapsody effort tried to put Apple s/w on Windows but developers refused to follow along, and with MacApp, Apple would've been required to support a tiny base of programs in a fast-changing environment with almost no revenue advantage. Real software developers GIVE AWAY all their work and promise to support it forever!
“There was a version of Cocoa (OpenStep) that ran on top Windows. This would allow developers to write on Mac first and run on Windows. Apple wouldn't release it.” Yes, Apple obviously didn't want developers to write first on the Mac. What could they possibly gain from that? For once, Apple showed some common sense cause-and-effect in killing a product that people might actually buy. Makes me suspect that all those iPhone contract changes aren't actually to promote Apple's business, after all. Must be some secret ANTI-business reason, just like 1984.
“Apple started up many different failed efforts to do the same things (Taligent, Dylan, OpenDoc / ODF, Bedrock, MacApp for Windows, not counting OpenStep for Windows, and YellowBox). Apple systematically killed them, usually after a few developers were stupid enough to trust Apple and get on board.” Which were you: one of the devs who said, “not for me, thanks,” or one of the stupid ones? You kinda wonder why Apple even tries to hold developer conferences, they so obviously hate dealing with these greasy, low-rent types. Maybe it serves a sadistic purpose? I predict that the 2010 developer conference will have exactly zero devs who waste their money flying to SF.
“Apple first attacked Adobe by making incompatible Fonts (TrueType)…” Ahhh, good ole 1989, and so relevant today, 21 years later! And imagine the gall that they also developed scalable, on-screen versions of those fonts, which Adobe was gonna do REAL SOON. And then, forcing Microsoft into ALSO sharing this new technology instead of letting Adobe control ALL professional typefaces in the PC business! The utter shamelessness of doing anything that Adobe would've been pleased to continue monopolizing at the (IIRC) $300 I had to pay for Trump Medieval (1989 dollars, btw). So Sue, you're wise to watch out for somebody that 21 years ago decided to enter a market that somebody else monopolized.
“Adobe had Acrobat and PDF which supports the full standard.” You have a great point here, but you're either forgetting some of the history (even though you DO know so much about Adobe for being a disinterested third party developer, Sue Jeans) or tuned in late: the PostScript standard (and the derivatives EPS and PDF) appears to be only a de facto one, similar to the Flash ‘standard.’ (Both, no standards body, but Flash differs in never, AFAICT, been declared free for anybody to implement or modify.) And if an old Fortune article is correct, the “standard” became known to the world only after Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would also offer TrueType, leading Warnock to publish PDF for the first time. So yes, Adobe supports Adobe standards, and a Good Thing, too. But they weren't — maybe, still aren't — “standards” by other people's definitions. Still I agree that Adobe is more pro-standards even if Apple's sharing a standard with Microsoft coincidentally preceded it!
“…Apple uses an open ePub (eBook) format, but instead of licensing the standard DRM or making it compatible with others, they make a proprietary implementation that is incompatible with everyone else.” There goes Apple again, Sue. they hadn't even entered the book market and they go do something different than what Adobe likes. So publishers are able to submit standardized materials to Apple's store, minimizing their costs, but what Apple sells wouldn't run on a Sony reader, for example. So devious! And then, the utter chutzpah of selling materials that run on your devices (sorta like that other non-Adobe company, Kindle) requiring pipsqueak independent firms like Sony to go out and arrange their own deals! Yes, people the world over should rage at Apple for not falling into line and not selling books that could work on everybody else's hardware. Except Kindle, which also has a proprietary format and gated transfer: $0.15/MB. And except for the other 50+ formats for e-books, which aren't worth mentioning because Adobe is only interested in ePub.
And this ePub business has NOTHING to do with Adobe encouraging developers to write Flash, suggesting that it'll be ready on phones in 2008… 2009 … 2010. Just because the Adobe software is incompatible with a couple hundred million browsers doesn't have a thing to do with Apple's selling books that are incompatible with the other 32 readers.
“And this never stops. … Apple implemented 64 bit in a much harder to port sort of way.” Yeah, there they go again, bailing on backwards-compatibility mode stuff when they see how much that'll cost them from developing for the future. Now, I'm curious, Sue: no firm appeared to have been more committed to NOT using the Cocoa platform (preferring the deprecated Carbon interface) than Adobe, and no firm's applications would more benefit from the best possible access to power but failed to get it.
Sue, I'm beginning to think that you might be, you know, a little compromised by some Adobe friend who made the opposite mistake you mentioned above — that friend might've been the one who got talked into the business case for not getting on the Cocoa bandwagon when Apple said that was The Future. I don't think it'd be that nice Mr. Brimelow, whose Righteous Anger hit the web recently, but maybe somebody he knows? He maybe has an axe to grind and cares more about Adobe than independent developers like you, and is slipping you all this detailed story. Even though every instance you mention is right (Apple is just dicking third party developers and that's why the whole world of developers resents them and refuses to develop for them) while the halos over Adobe's heads still shine brightly).
“Someone said there are two kinds of Mac developers - those who've been screwed by Apple, and those waiting their turn.” Amen, sister. And with such succinct insights, a good place to wrap up my support of your Fair and Balanced ® history.
Good thing that at least developers can fully trust Adobe's business direction and software release schedule, and they can commit even more to buying/using Flash tools and knowing that their content will be available everywhere.
Thank you for allowing me to share.
PS: I do not now, nor have I ever had, any relationship with Apple other than giving them my money for various products (at regular prices). I DID seriously entertain developing for them 20+ years ago, but never did — I admire those who do it, but it ain't me. I HAVE written over 100 various in-house apps for Microsoft OS machines. Including in PostScript, a delightful experience. My current use of Adobe software is as an end-user, almost exclusively Flash and the misbegotten AIR-based NY Times Reader.