Don't get me wrong, I love Apple products, but they've got it wrong this time. With members on the board of WHATWG, Apple have a vested interest in HTML5, so they'll make you think it's a simple case of HTML vs Flash. IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. The 'standards' in the canvas tag are a long way from the semantics of XHTML, which are used both on Apple's website and in the eBook format. There are many great HTML5 features, but canvas is still a bit of a mess.
And although royalty fees are not being charged until at least 2015 (companies still pay other licensing fees), h.264 is still propriety software. It is a great technology and companies like Apple (and now Microsoft and Google) have backed this format in their browsers, but Firefox has not. So the argument of using video tags in HTML5 is not that clear-cut. There is also no standard API or tags to control interface or things like buffering in HTML5 video. Clearly Quicktime and Safari have these in place, but then that is just proprietary software that doesn't run consistently on all platforms
Between H.264 and HTML5, a lot of big companies have a vested interest. Apple, Google, MS and Intel (and ARM from an architecture standpoint), to name the heaviest hitters. For Adobe and Mozilla to fight against the inevitable will not result in a David v. Goliath outcome.
I'm suggesting an app that will be backward compatible with all Adobe CS5 apps including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
If you look at the lag to introduce Mac versions of Adobe's apps compared to Windows versions for the past several years, it is clear Adobe forgot its origins.
If Apple had not helped Adobe when it started, there would be no Adobe today. I worked in publishing when Macs were launched (we dumped al IBM PCs at the time when we switched to Macs) and the original Adobe apps showed promise but were clunky. Even after Photoshop and Illustrator were introduced, publishing typically relied upon film-based photos and hand drawn artwork which was scanned by service bureaus since it was faster and cheaper to do so.
Also, if Apple had not provided an OS that could handle Postscript fonts, and laser printers that could handle them, Adobe would have been out of business since Windows was not up to the task.
Just because Apple are shunning Flash in their mobile environment and because the Flash plugin may be buggy on certain Mac OS X set-ups, it doesn't mean the whole Adobe Creative Suite is going to crumble. And just because your comic doesn't require the apps above, it doesn't mean that the creative world is going to ditch industry-standard software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects. You have to remember that if it wasn't for companies like Adobe and technologies including PostScript and the desktop publishing revolution, there would be no Apple.
Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to that good Adobe. The new one has a bunch of whiny little brats where there used to be reasonable, intelligent management teams.
Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to that good Adobe. The new one has a bunch of whiny little brats where there used to be reasonable, intelligent management teams.
I'm struck by the "redacted" remarks (one actually removed, where he had claimed that Apple is trying to kill CS5, several simply struck through so you can still read them regarding his status as an official Adobe spokesperson).
The net effect is that Adobe read and slightly moderated their evangelist's remarks, while giving tacit approval to his even more inflammatory rantings.
"Go screw yourself Apple" amounts to the Adobe response, via plausibly deniable intermediaries. Which is kinda chicken shit, and probably not very productive.
In all the years that Adobe openly thumbed their nose at Apple, encouraging their customers to migrate to the PC , charging more for less, and refusing to adapt their UI to OS X conventions, did anyone so closely associated with Apple ever publish a "screw you Adobe" manifesto? Probably not, because they were too busy trying to build products. But they noticed. They remembered. And it turns out Adobe fucked up by assuming they didn't have to care about the Mac market, even as they made 50% of their money off of Apple's customers. They made it very clear that those customers could either make do with whatever Adobe deigned to give them, or move over to the "approved" platform.
Anyway, Adobe is run by a sales guy now, and seems to spend a lot of their resources on PR and bullshit like "The Open Screen Project" (i.e. if everybody users Adobe products for everything what a wonderfully interoperable world it would be), so I'm not sure they have the corporate culture to do anything but wage a PR initiative now. God forbid they write better software for the platform.
I'm struck by the "redacted" remarks (one actually removed, where he had claimed that Apple is trying to kill CS5, several simply struck through so you can still read them regarding his status as an official Adobe spokesperson).
The net effect is that Adobe read and slightly moderated their evangelist's remarks, while giving tacit approval to his even more inflammatory rantings.
"Go screw yourself Apple" amounts to the Adobe response, via plausibly deniable intermediaries. Which is kinda chicken shit, and probably not very productive.
In all the years that Adobe openly thumbed their nose at Apple, encouraging their customers to migrate to the PC , charging more for less, and refusing to adapt their UI to OS X conventions, did anyone so closely associated with Apple ever publish a "screw you Adobe" manifesto? Probably not, because they were too busy trying to build products. But they noticed. They remembered. And it turns out Adobe fucked up by assuming they didn't have to care about the Mac market, even as they made 50% of their money off of Apple's customers. They made it very clear that those customers could either make do with whatever Adobe deigned to give them, or move over to the "approved" platform.
Anyway, Adobe is run by a sales guy now, and seems to spend a lot of their resources on PR and bullshit like "The Open Screen Project" (i.e. if everybody users Adobe products for everything what a wonderfully interoperable world it would be), so I'm not sure they have the corporate culture to do anything but wage a PR initiative now. God forbid they write better software for the platform.
SNIP You have to remember that if it wasn't for companies like Adobe and technologies including PostScript and the desktop publishing revolution, there would be no Apple. SNIP
that works both ways though, doesn't it? without apple and the mac, there would be no adobe. why do you think we're so pissed? it seems that adobe is too busy building 'platforms' and nickel and diming everybody to death, instead of giving us mac users the care and attention that they used to.
anybody that has used adobe software for more than ten years has been witness to the gradual decline of adobe's support for the mac. i don't know how much of adobe's bottom line depends on apple - i see all kind of numbers been tossed around - but i am sure that it's not peanuts.
if they can't support and embrace apple's technologies for over a decade, then they have no right to be belligerent in their response to being locked out of the iphone. they should get off their ass, give us back the old adobe, give us a true mac interface for their software instead of pushing their windows first ports on us, fix flash on the mac, and then we can talk about flash on the iphone.
so far the only reaction from adobe has been a resounding 'whaaaaa - not fair' and cries of 'freedom, freedom'. that is laughable from a company that wants to lock up the entire content creation on the web. they should go out and hire some competent mac programmers with the money they're spending on anti apple pr.
i remember reading that they got rid of their mac developers years ago. i don't know if that was true, but it wouldn't surprise me. even their awful installer was outsourced, a point that was used by adobe as an excuse when users had problems. puh-lease! it might be convenient for adobe to write for windows first, then port to the mac, but if they think that this lack of attention to our favourite os is going to stay unnoticed by their longtime core users - they have another thing coming.
it's funny how much we hear from adobe all of a sudden, when our complaints have been falling on deaf ears on for years. the way adobe is reacting is telling. they take zero responsibility, react with public outrage (like they did to a rumoured remark from steve jobs at an internal meeting). for years and years there has been zero reaction to criticism from mac users. things have just steadily gotten worse.
get it together adobe. we want our toolbox back and we expect it to work properly on the mac. restoring your credibility when it comes to supporting apple technology will go a long way in gaining our sympathy for your 'war' over mobile platforms.
There's an ironic example in Quark, which managed to build up a bunch of customer ill-will over the years by standing pat on their virtual monopoly industry standard software, while aggressively attempting to extract money out of their long-suffering but pretty much stuck user base.
Then Adobe came along with inDesign which launched a pretty good alternative into a market featuring long simmering unhappiness with the incumbent, and took away a big chunk of Quark's customers.
Creating a reasonable alternative to CS would be a Herculean task, but it's not impossible. And the fact is that Photoshop and Illustrator are huge old teetering piles of code that include tons of functionality that 99% of the user base never or seldom needs, ala Office style feature bloat (gotta keep the kids updating year after year, after all).
Pixelmator has demonstrated that it's possible to provide a lot of image editing functionality by leveraging the existing OS X technologies, and do it relatively quickly with relatively slim resources. If they had the deep pockets of an Adobe (or if they received the backing of deep pocketed angel), how long would it take them to grow into a legitimate competitor? And how happy would Adobe's ignored but significant Mac customer base be to drop them like a hot potato?
Please note I'm not claiming that Pixelmator is in any way, shape or form a Photoshop competitor, as it stands. I'm just saying that, with the right import/export options, plug-ins, and an intelligently selected subset of the vast Photoshop feature bloat, it's really not inconceivable that it could grow into one. Or if not them, the work of some other motivated (ahem) entity.
i do not want to read through all the pages of this thread, so can anyone tell me if Apple wrote Safari and iTunes for Windows in native code, or do they use some sort of interoperability layer to get it to run on Windows
i do not want to read through all the pages of this thread, so can anyone tell me if Apple wrote Safari and iTunes for Windows in native code, or do they use some sort of interoperability layer to get it to run on Windows
Entirely irrelevant, a Microsoft does not have any restriction related to this in place for Windows development, just as Apple has no such restrictions for Mac OS X development. iPhone OS is a new platform with new restrictions and obligations associated with it, that's just the way it is.
Now, of course, we know that your point is, "See what hypocrites Apple are!" (Which, since that is your point, why don't you just come out and say it? No need to be coy here.) However, the important points are a) Apple is playing according to Microsoft's rules for Windows, and b) Apple setting different rules for one of its platforms doesn't amount to anything but just that. There's no hypocrisy involved.
However, if Microsoft somehow imposed such restrictions on Windows software, what Apple would do is get to work and write Safari and iTunes applications that followed the rules and could be installed on Windows. What Apple and SJ would not do is whine about how Microsoft was being unfair to them and write embarrassing blog posts about the same.
Entirely irrelevant, a Microsoft does not have any restriction related to this in place for Windows development, just as Apple has no such restrictions for Mac OS X development. iPhone OS is a new platform with new restrictions and obligations associated with it, that's just the way it is.
Now, of course, we know that your point is, "See what hypocrites Apple are!" (Which, since that is your point, why don't you just come out and say it? No need to be coy here.) However, the important points are a) Apple is playing according to Microsoft's rules for Windows, and b) Apple setting different rules for one of its platforms doesn't amount to anything but just that. There's no hypocrisy involved.
However, if Microsoft somehow imposed such restrictions on Windows software, what Apple would do is get to work and write Safari and iTunes applications that followed the rules and could be installed on Windows. What Apple and SJ would not do is whine about how Microsoft was being unfair to them and write embarrassing blog posts about the same.
It is relevant, but it has nothing to do with the restrictions Apple placed. I have no problem with Apple placing the restrictions that they did. I have repeatedly said that it is Apple's product and they can do with it as they please. The same with Adobe - if they do not want to optimize Flash for the Mac, then as Mac users we need to find an alternative or live with it. Bitching about it is pointless, especially when most of us bought a Mac knowing the situation.
The relevance comes from the putative reasons that Apple instituted the ban - cross compiled code produces (can produce) bad programs that result in instabilities and problems for the OS. So, if Apple uses an interoperability layer, aren't they being "lazy" and "producing a poor product"?
Normally I would not have brought this up, but given how poorly/not usefully at all, iWorks for the iPad interfaces with iWorks for Mac OSX, I just have to wonder.
Interesting blog entry that makes the same points I was making above, but with some good links.
Quote:
In 1996 when Apple was seemingly on the ropes, Adobe made a crucial business decision and one that is coming back to bite them in the ass. They declared that their primary development platform would be Windows; subsequently, every new application or major revision of a product was introduced for Windows first and followed months later, sometimes never at all, by a Mac version.
After Steve Jobs took over and he was charting out a new course with OS X, Apple reached out many times to Abode to introduce a native version of their suite for the new OS. Adobe never committed ? standing by its prediction that OS X would never gain momentum or share and it would ride the Windows ascendancy. Adobe thought that it had the dominant hand and displayed its arrogance in public.
Quote:
Adobe had multiple chances to prove their worth to Apple and they failed miserably. They ignored the OS X version of Flash. They ignored Photoshop ? witness the rise of Acorn, Pixelmator etc.
Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself. You made a business decision in 1996 to screw Apple when it needed you most to gain credibility for its fledgling OS with the creative crowd. Somehow, Apple making a business decision to protect its customers from your shitty product is the most egregious ethical concern of our time.
i do not want to read through all the pages of this thread, so can anyone tell me if Apple wrote Safari and iTunes for Windows in native code, or do they use some sort of interoperability layer to get it to run on Windows
Let me guess... TL;DR?
The desktop OS and mobile OS are necessary different beasts.
There is a longer explanation, but I can't be bothered to type it when you can't be bothered to read it.
The desktop OS and mobile OS are necessary different beasts.
There is a longer explanation, but I can't be bothered to type it when you can't be bothered to read it.
what is TL (too lazy?) and DR (don't read?), which are not the case, rather TB (too busy) to read 8 or so pages of posts.
I am well aware that the Desktop and mobile OSs are different, but as I said in a subsequent post, the reason Apple implemented the policy (which I have no problems with) is that it produces programs that produce instabilities.
If that is not the reason Apple did this, please explain it and I will read it.
I'm amazed at some of the replies on this thread and others and I'm dumbfounded that the best comparative argument some of you are making is iPhone OS to Windows desktop, despite Mac OS X functioning the same as Windows desktop and WP7 apparently having the same locked in environment as iPhone OS.
I'm with Steve and Apple on this. For far too long, Adobe has completely taken advantage of Mac users. I got sick and tired of their incredibly buggy and expensive software years ago. They can take their piece-of-shit CS software (including Flash) and stuff it.
Apple has been working on it's own suite of imaging software that will be called iCreate: Photo Editing and Illustration/Page Layout software that will handle all the functions that Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign currently provide.
This is why Apple can be so "in your face" to Adobe about Flash right now. Apple doesn't need Adobe anymore and that will be even more true after this year is over. And Adobe knows this, which is why they're exchanging harsh words so publicly with Apple over Flash. They already know the battle with Apple is lost.
Remember what happened to Corel Draw? The same will eventually happen to Adobe. I say good riddance!
I don't think we should automatically assume Apple has the upper-hand here.
Adobe's market cap: $18.6B
Apple's cash: $24.8B
I've heard of few higher hands than "I could always just buy your ass and have it over with."
In a worst case scenario, Apple could buy 51-100% of Adobe, and the first order of business would likely be picking off flash and executive management. Those guys know this and even they don't want to be fired - for some it'd be watching a life's work go down the tubes.
I think Apple wants to kill flash badly enough to do it, too. They're just pushing harder in hopes that the death of flash doesn't have to cost ten billion dollars.
In a worst case scenario, Apple could buy 51-100% of Adobe, and the first order of business would likely be picking off flash and executive management. Those guys know this and even they don't want to be fired - for some it'd be watching a life's work go down the tubes.
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
Have to agree Doc. (excuse my familiarity
At the risk of continuing the debate ad infinitum, Adobe can bluster and continue with the obscurantism for all they're worth, however it's not their fiscal worth that is at question here.
Adobe has lost more and more relevence as it attempts to build the massive and without doubt bloated egregious monster that presented itself in CS3 and I doubt that today's announcement of CS5 'enhancements' to their much hoped-for unstoppable juggernaut will be too late to appease us - the one time dedicated users of Photoshop 3.0 and beyond.
{Re: Apple buying a controlling interest in Adobe}
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
You're right that wasting tons of cash on a vendetta isn't smart. But buying Adobe could be much more valuable than simply killing Flash.
Apple could start rewriting CS using native Apple technologies and things like OpenCL and Grand Central - which would give the Mac version a far, far stronger market position than it has now. They could get back to the point where Macs offered real performance advantages on Adobe apps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eluard
It's as though the Adobe CEO declared at some point "This is how we are going to treat Microsoft, and THIS is how we are going to treat Apple. And Apple will just have to take it." They dug their heels in and sniggered for five years. Now comes the reaction from Apple and they cry foul.
(Oh wait, that was pretty much what did happen. I remember the discussion long ago of how Adobe were going to apportion their coding resources based on units sold.)
Absolutely. The bad news is that this doesn't change the fact that Adobe is arrogant and now is run by people who only care about units sold and don't care about a quality product. While they're clearly not going to stop selling CS5/Mac as some of the trolls here have suggested, they could continue to cut back on the Mac development side and continue to introduce new technologies on Windows first. That's the main reason Apple has to tread carefully here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by simantic
As a web designer and front-end developer, I work with technologies such as HTML5, XHTML, JavaScript and Flash everyday. Several years ago, JavaScript was seen as 'bloated' and redundant, but thanks to JS libraries, it has resurfaced and for good reason. To say that Flash is dead is simply ignorant. With Adobe's adoption of SWFObject in Flash CS4, Flash can easily be embedded in websites using standards-compliant HTML. With the announcement of search indexing in swf files, there is still a chance that Flash can be a complementary technology for developers that choose to use it. I mean really, why can't we all just get along?
I have been a Mac OS user for about 20 years, but I refuse to be an iPhone OS user until options for development become reasonable.
The problem is that Flash is unsuitable for Mobile use - which is why NO smartphone has a full Flash implementation. It's not just Apple telling Adobe that Flash stinks, it's every single smart phone developer. (Android MAY have 10.1 some day, but even that has limited functionality, high CPU and battery usage, and won't run on more than a very tiny percentage of phones since it requires Cortex 8). Flash is bad enough on Macs, but it just doesn't work on mobiles.
As for not developing for iPhone, that's your choice. You're missing out on your share of billions of dollars. If you want to do that for some silly philosophical reason, consumers will just have to choose from among the other 185,000 apps.
Just what is unreasonable about the options, anyway? The fact that Apple won't allow unfettered access to private APIs? The fact that Apple expects you to follow the SDK? Sorry, but lots of other platforms work the same way.
Comments
Don't get me wrong, I love Apple products, but they've got it wrong this time. With members on the board of WHATWG, Apple have a vested interest in HTML5, so they'll make you think it's a simple case of HTML vs Flash. IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. The 'standards' in the canvas tag are a long way from the semantics of XHTML, which are used both on Apple's website and in the eBook format. There are many great HTML5 features, but canvas is still a bit of a mess.
And although royalty fees are not being charged until at least 2015 (companies still pay other licensing fees), h.264 is still propriety software. It is a great technology and companies like Apple (and now Microsoft and Google) have backed this format in their browsers, but Firefox has not. So the argument of using video tags in HTML5 is not that clear-cut. There is also no standard API or tags to control interface or things like buffering in HTML5 video. Clearly Quicktime and Safari have these in place, but then that is just proprietary software that doesn't run consistently on all platforms
Between H.264 and HTML5, a lot of big companies have a vested interest. Apple, Google, MS and Intel (and ARM from an architecture standpoint), to name the heaviest hitters. For Adobe and Mozilla to fight against the inevitable will not result in a David v. Goliath outcome.
I'm suggesting an app that will be backward compatible with all Adobe CS5 apps including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
If you look at the lag to introduce Mac versions of Adobe's apps compared to Windows versions for the past several years, it is clear Adobe forgot its origins.
If Apple had not helped Adobe when it started, there would be no Adobe today. I worked in publishing when Macs were launched (we dumped al IBM PCs at the time when we switched to Macs) and the original Adobe apps showed promise but were clunky. Even after Photoshop and Illustrator were introduced, publishing typically relied upon film-based photos and hand drawn artwork which was scanned by service bureaus since it was faster and cheaper to do so.
Also, if Apple had not provided an OS that could handle Postscript fonts, and laser printers that could handle them, Adobe would have been out of business since Windows was not up to the task.
Just because Apple are shunning Flash in their mobile environment and because the Flash plugin may be buggy on certain Mac OS X set-ups, it doesn't mean the whole Adobe Creative Suite is going to crumble. And just because your comic doesn't require the apps above, it doesn't mean that the creative world is going to ditch industry-standard software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects. You have to remember that if it wasn't for companies like Adobe and technologies including PostScript and the desktop publishing revolution, there would be no Apple.
Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to that good Adobe. The new one has a bunch of whiny little brats where there used to be reasonable, intelligent management teams.
Can we make this a sticky?
Why, yes. Yes we can!
Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to that good Adobe. The new one has a bunch of whiny little brats where there used to be reasonable, intelligent management teams.
I'm struck by the "redacted" remarks (one actually removed, where he had claimed that Apple is trying to kill CS5, several simply struck through so you can still read them regarding his status as an official Adobe spokesperson).
The net effect is that Adobe read and slightly moderated their evangelist's remarks, while giving tacit approval to his even more inflammatory rantings.
"Go screw yourself Apple" amounts to the Adobe response, via plausibly deniable intermediaries. Which is kinda chicken shit, and probably not very productive.
In all the years that Adobe openly thumbed their nose at Apple, encouraging their customers to migrate to the PC , charging more for less, and refusing to adapt their UI to OS X conventions, did anyone so closely associated with Apple ever publish a "screw you Adobe" manifesto? Probably not, because they were too busy trying to build products. But they noticed. They remembered. And it turns out Adobe fucked up by assuming they didn't have to care about the Mac market, even as they made 50% of their money off of Apple's customers. They made it very clear that those customers could either make do with whatever Adobe deigned to give them, or move over to the "approved" platform.
Anyway, Adobe is run by a sales guy now, and seems to spend a lot of their resources on PR and bullshit like "The Open Screen Project" (i.e. if everybody users Adobe products for everything what a wonderfully interoperable world it would be), so I'm not sure they have the corporate culture to do anything but wage a PR initiative now. God forbid they write better software for the platform.
Screw you, Adobe.
I'm struck by the "redacted" remarks (one actually removed, where he had claimed that Apple is trying to kill CS5, several simply struck through so you can still read them regarding his status as an official Adobe spokesperson).
The net effect is that Adobe read and slightly moderated their evangelist's remarks, while giving tacit approval to his even more inflammatory rantings.
"Go screw yourself Apple" amounts to the Adobe response, via plausibly deniable intermediaries. Which is kinda chicken shit, and probably not very productive.
In all the years that Adobe openly thumbed their nose at Apple, encouraging their customers to migrate to the PC , charging more for less, and refusing to adapt their UI to OS X conventions, did anyone so closely associated with Apple ever publish a "screw you Adobe" manifesto? Probably not, because they were too busy trying to build products. But they noticed. They remembered. And it turns out Adobe fucked up by assuming they didn't have to care about the Mac market, even as they made 50% of their money off of Apple's customers. They made it very clear that those customers could either make do with whatever Adobe deigned to give them, or move over to the "approved" platform.
Anyway, Adobe is run by a sales guy now, and seems to spend a lot of their resources on PR and bullshit like "The Open Screen Project" (i.e. if everybody users Adobe products for everything what a wonderfully interoperable world it would be), so I'm not sure they have the corporate culture to do anything but wage a PR initiative now. God forbid they write better software for the platform.
Screw you, Adobe.
Well said.
SNIP You have to remember that if it wasn't for companies like Adobe and technologies including PostScript and the desktop publishing revolution, there would be no Apple. SNIP
that works both ways though, doesn't it? without apple and the mac, there would be no adobe. why do you think we're so pissed? it seems that adobe is too busy building 'platforms' and nickel and diming everybody to death, instead of giving us mac users the care and attention that they used to.
anybody that has used adobe software for more than ten years has been witness to the gradual decline of adobe's support for the mac. i don't know how much of adobe's bottom line depends on apple - i see all kind of numbers been tossed around - but i am sure that it's not peanuts.
if they can't support and embrace apple's technologies for over a decade, then they have no right to be belligerent in their response to being locked out of the iphone. they should get off their ass, give us back the old adobe, give us a true mac interface for their software instead of pushing their windows first ports on us, fix flash on the mac, and then we can talk about flash on the iphone.
so far the only reaction from adobe has been a resounding 'whaaaaa - not fair' and cries of 'freedom, freedom'. that is laughable from a company that wants to lock up the entire content creation on the web. they should go out and hire some competent mac programmers with the money they're spending on anti apple pr.
i remember reading that they got rid of their mac developers years ago. i don't know if that was true, but it wouldn't surprise me. even their awful installer was outsourced, a point that was used by adobe as an excuse when users had problems. puh-lease! it might be convenient for adobe to write for windows first, then port to the mac, but if they think that this lack of attention to our favourite os is going to stay unnoticed by their longtime core users - they have another thing coming.
it's funny how much we hear from adobe all of a sudden, when our complaints have been falling on deaf ears on for years. the way adobe is reacting is telling. they take zero responsibility, react with public outrage (like they did to a rumoured remark from steve jobs at an internal meeting). for years and years there has been zero reaction to criticism from mac users. things have just steadily gotten worse.
get it together adobe. we want our toolbox back and we expect it to work properly on the mac. restoring your credibility when it comes to supporting apple technology will go a long way in gaining our sympathy for your 'war' over mobile platforms.
Then Adobe came along with inDesign which launched a pretty good alternative into a market featuring long simmering unhappiness with the incumbent, and took away a big chunk of Quark's customers.
Creating a reasonable alternative to CS would be a Herculean task, but it's not impossible. And the fact is that Photoshop and Illustrator are huge old teetering piles of code that include tons of functionality that 99% of the user base never or seldom needs, ala Office style feature bloat (gotta keep the kids updating year after year, after all).
Pixelmator has demonstrated that it's possible to provide a lot of image editing functionality by leveraging the existing OS X technologies, and do it relatively quickly with relatively slim resources. If they had the deep pockets of an Adobe (or if they received the backing of deep pocketed angel), how long would it take them to grow into a legitimate competitor? And how happy would Adobe's ignored but significant Mac customer base be to drop them like a hot potato?
Please note I'm not claiming that Pixelmator is in any way, shape or form a Photoshop competitor, as it stands. I'm just saying that, with the right import/export options, plug-ins, and an intelligently selected subset of the vast Photoshop feature bloat, it's really not inconceivable that it could grow into one. Or if not them, the work of some other motivated (ahem) entity.
i do not want to read through all the pages of this thread, so can anyone tell me if Apple wrote Safari and iTunes for Windows in native code, or do they use some sort of interoperability layer to get it to run on Windows
Entirely irrelevant, a Microsoft does not have any restriction related to this in place for Windows development, just as Apple has no such restrictions for Mac OS X development. iPhone OS is a new platform with new restrictions and obligations associated with it, that's just the way it is.
Now, of course, we know that your point is, "See what hypocrites Apple are!" (Which, since that is your point, why don't you just come out and say it? No need to be coy here.) However, the important points are a) Apple is playing according to Microsoft's rules for Windows, and b) Apple setting different rules for one of its platforms doesn't amount to anything but just that. There's no hypocrisy involved.
However, if Microsoft somehow imposed such restrictions on Windows software, what Apple would do is get to work and write Safari and iTunes applications that followed the rules and could be installed on Windows. What Apple and SJ would not do is whine about how Microsoft was being unfair to them and write embarrassing blog posts about the same.
Entirely irrelevant, a Microsoft does not have any restriction related to this in place for Windows development, just as Apple has no such restrictions for Mac OS X development. iPhone OS is a new platform with new restrictions and obligations associated with it, that's just the way it is.
Now, of course, we know that your point is, "See what hypocrites Apple are!" (Which, since that is your point, why don't you just come out and say it? No need to be coy here.) However, the important points are a) Apple is playing according to Microsoft's rules for Windows, and b) Apple setting different rules for one of its platforms doesn't amount to anything but just that. There's no hypocrisy involved.
However, if Microsoft somehow imposed such restrictions on Windows software, what Apple would do is get to work and write Safari and iTunes applications that followed the rules and could be installed on Windows. What Apple and SJ would not do is whine about how Microsoft was being unfair to them and write embarrassing blog posts about the same.
It is relevant, but it has nothing to do with the restrictions Apple placed. I have no problem with Apple placing the restrictions that they did. I have repeatedly said that it is Apple's product and they can do with it as they please. The same with Adobe - if they do not want to optimize Flash for the Mac, then as Mac users we need to find an alternative or live with it. Bitching about it is pointless, especially when most of us bought a Mac knowing the situation.
The relevance comes from the putative reasons that Apple instituted the ban - cross compiled code produces (can produce) bad programs that result in instabilities and problems for the OS. So, if Apple uses an interoperability layer, aren't they being "lazy" and "producing a poor product"?
Normally I would not have brought this up, but given how poorly/not usefully at all, iWorks for the iPad interfaces with iWorks for Mac OSX, I just have to wonder.
In 1996 when Apple was seemingly on the ropes, Adobe made a crucial business decision and one that is coming back to bite them in the ass. They declared that their primary development platform would be Windows; subsequently, every new application or major revision of a product was introduced for Windows first and followed months later, sometimes never at all, by a Mac version.
After Steve Jobs took over and he was charting out a new course with OS X, Apple reached out many times to Abode to introduce a native version of their suite for the new OS. Adobe never committed ? standing by its prediction that OS X would never gain momentum or share and it would ride the Windows ascendancy. Adobe thought that it had the dominant hand and displayed its arrogance in public.
Adobe had multiple chances to prove their worth to Apple and they failed miserably. They ignored the OS X version of Flash. They ignored Photoshop ? witness the rise of Acorn, Pixelmator etc.
Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself. You made a business decision in 1996 to screw Apple when it needed you most to gain credibility for its fledgling OS with the creative crowd. Somehow, Apple making a business decision to protect its customers from your shitty product is the most egregious ethical concern of our time.
i do not want to read through all the pages of this thread, so can anyone tell me if Apple wrote Safari and iTunes for Windows in native code, or do they use some sort of interoperability layer to get it to run on Windows
Let me guess... TL;DR?
The desktop OS and mobile OS are necessary different beasts.
There is a longer explanation, but I can't be bothered to type it when you can't be bothered to read it.
Let me guess... TL;DR?
The desktop OS and mobile OS are necessary different beasts.
There is a longer explanation, but I can't be bothered to type it when you can't be bothered to read it.
what is TL (too lazy?) and DR (don't read?), which are not the case, rather TB (too busy) to read 8 or so pages of posts.
I am well aware that the Desktop and mobile OSs are different, but as I said in a subsequent post, the reason Apple implemented the policy (which I have no problems with) is that it produces programs that produce instabilities.
If that is not the reason Apple did this, please explain it and I will read it.
Apple has been working on it's own suite of imaging software that will be called iCreate: Photo Editing and Illustration/Page Layout software that will handle all the functions that Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign currently provide.
This is why Apple can be so "in your face" to Adobe about Flash right now. Apple doesn't need Adobe anymore and that will be even more true after this year is over. And Adobe knows this, which is why they're exchanging harsh words so publicly with Apple over Flash. They already know the battle with Apple is lost.
Remember what happened to Corel Draw? The same will eventually happen to Adobe. I say good riddance!
I don't think we should automatically assume Apple has the upper-hand here.
Adobe's market cap: $18.6B
Apple's cash: $24.8B
I've heard of few higher hands than "I could always just buy your ass and have it over with."
In a worst case scenario, Apple could buy 51-100% of Adobe, and the first order of business would likely be picking off flash and executive management. Those guys know this and even they don't want to be fired - for some it'd be watching a life's work go down the tubes.
I think Apple wants to kill flash badly enough to do it, too. They're just pushing harder in hopes that the death of flash doesn't have to cost ten billion dollars.
In a worst case scenario, Apple could buy 51-100% of Adobe, and the first order of business would likely be picking off flash and executive management. Those guys know this and even they don't want to be fired - for some it'd be watching a life's work go down the tubes.
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
Have to agree Doc. (excuse my familiarity
At the risk of continuing the debate ad infinitum, Adobe can bluster and continue with the obscurantism for all they're worth, however it's not their fiscal worth that is at question here.
Adobe has lost more and more relevence as it attempts to build the massive and without doubt bloated egregious monster that presented itself in CS3 and I doubt that today's announcement of CS5 'enhancements' to their much hoped-for unstoppable juggernaut will be too late to appease us - the one time dedicated users of Photoshop 3.0 and beyond.
{Re: Apple buying a controlling interest in Adobe}
Talk about your worst case scenarios -- wasting tons of cash on vendetta is about as worst case as it comes.
BTW, Apple has over $40 billion in cash, which is not an argument for spending it just to show someone else who's boss.
You're right that wasting tons of cash on a vendetta isn't smart. But buying Adobe could be much more valuable than simply killing Flash.
Apple could start rewriting CS using native Apple technologies and things like OpenCL and Grand Central - which would give the Mac version a far, far stronger market position than it has now. They could get back to the point where Macs offered real performance advantages on Adobe apps.
It's as though the Adobe CEO declared at some point "This is how we are going to treat Microsoft, and THIS is how we are going to treat Apple. And Apple will just have to take it." They dug their heels in and sniggered for five years. Now comes the reaction from Apple and they cry foul.
(Oh wait, that was pretty much what did happen. I remember the discussion long ago of how Adobe were going to apportion their coding resources based on units sold.)
Absolutely. The bad news is that this doesn't change the fact that Adobe is arrogant and now is run by people who only care about units sold and don't care about a quality product. While they're clearly not going to stop selling CS5/Mac as some of the trolls here have suggested, they could continue to cut back on the Mac development side and continue to introduce new technologies on Windows first. That's the main reason Apple has to tread carefully here.
As a web designer and front-end developer, I work with technologies such as HTML5, XHTML, JavaScript and Flash everyday. Several years ago, JavaScript was seen as 'bloated' and redundant, but thanks to JS libraries, it has resurfaced and for good reason. To say that Flash is dead is simply ignorant. With Adobe's adoption of SWFObject in Flash CS4, Flash can easily be embedded in websites using standards-compliant HTML. With the announcement of search indexing in swf files, there is still a chance that Flash can be a complementary technology for developers that choose to use it. I mean really, why can't we all just get along?
I have been a Mac OS user for about 20 years, but I refuse to be an iPhone OS user until options for development become reasonable.
The problem is that Flash is unsuitable for Mobile use - which is why NO smartphone has a full Flash implementation. It's not just Apple telling Adobe that Flash stinks, it's every single smart phone developer. (Android MAY have 10.1 some day, but even that has limited functionality, high CPU and battery usage, and won't run on more than a very tiny percentage of phones since it requires Cortex 8). Flash is bad enough on Macs, but it just doesn't work on mobiles.
As for not developing for iPhone, that's your choice. You're missing out on your share of billions of dollars. If you want to do that for some silly philosophical reason, consumers will just have to choose from among the other 185,000 apps.
Just what is unreasonable about the options, anyway? The fact that Apple won't allow unfettered access to private APIs? The fact that Apple expects you to follow the SDK? Sorry, but lots of other platforms work the same way.