Adobe evangelist lashes out at Apple over iPhone 4.0 - Page 2

Cross compiled code has nothing to do with this. All Objective-C method invocations are compiled to C function calls to objc_msgSend(). Instantiating Objective-C classes is just translated to a call to class_createInstance(). Indeed, Objective-C itself was originally just a preprocessor, a "code generator" if you will, for C.

Any code, compiled from whatever source, that uses these interfaces is indistinguishable to the Objective-C runtime. This new rule targets so much more than just Flash and bloated middleware. They are forbidding developers from taking advantage of any computer science progress made in the last 30 years in developing their native, iPhone/iPad only apps. Reiterating what I posted in another thread, Apple is perfectly happy to kill lots of friendlies in order to take out a few more, irrelevant bad guys.

Brimelow's ineptitude must surely gall his Adobe masters, but really, what is the likely outcome?

Flash is gone from iPad, iPhone, fait accompli. John Gruber illuminates perfectly Apple's reasons for changing the iPhone Developer license, and clearly that's not going to change.

Adobe is angry at all of this, just like a gambler is angry when his horse dies out of the gate. I can remember reading articles for years saying that Adobe was on the wrong track here, and if it all went wrong they had nowhere to go - and now it seems those predictions are coming true.

So what's the point of Adobe's public fury and whining? Are we supposed to feel sorry for their self inflicted injuries?

Isn't it time they accept reality, and put some serious work into protecting what's left and mending some fences? If they don't, they will surely find that even the mainstays of their business are far from invincible.

The change in the SDK agreement is the push and iAd is the pull from Apple to help move towards HTML5.

I hope Apple release good HTML5 authoring tools so iPhone developers can make money form Apps and money from writing the Ads!

This war goes back a long way. With the introduction of the OS X concept, Adobe baulked at rewriting apps in a completely new framework and forced Apple to compromise the original plan (Blue Box for legacy, all else in Cocoa). That's why Apple introduced Carbon, a short-term hack that wasn't great for development of the platform, requiring a lot of cruft to be maintained (Carbon + Blue Box versions of the same API as well as Cocoa). Most developers would have been a bit leery of developing in Cocoa straight off, but Apple could have put more effort than they did into maintaining Blue Box until they all moved over, a much cleaner break with the past. Adobe got their comeuppance with the shift to Intel, when their favoured tool chain, Codewarrior, died out on the Mac, and they pretty much had to redevelop from scratch.

You may argue that Apple should play nice with one of their bigger developers, but I would have more sympathy with Adobe if they consistently produced great product. Illustrator is terrible to use, with an interface designed to show off the cool things you can do directly in Postscript, and Photoshop is also not exactly obvious in its user interaction model.

I have CS3 installed and rarely use it because it's designed on the premise that a pro user should be willing to bash their head against a wall for a week then forget the pain and get used to doing things in weird unnatural ways.

Adobe can and should do better. Not to say Apple couldn't be nicer to them, but that's not the Steve way. Ask IBM and Motorola.

If this kind of crazy politics leads in the end to better designs, we all benefit so in a way it's better that these guys are not all good friends scratching each others backs.

If what you say is true then Adobe is a monopoly that needs to be broken up

PERHAPS.... but answer these for me first.

1. What % of Apples total business (and profits) are from "Computers running pure OS X"?

2. What % of THAT number is directly related to users demanding "Adobe CS"?

3. In the years to come will "Macintosh Sales" and more to the point "Macintosh Sales who demand Adobe CS" account for 'MORE & MORE" or "LESS & LESS" of Apples bottom line?

3. What % of Adobes total business (and profits) are from "Mac sales of Adobe CS"?

Now... Lets ask that question again... Who has the upper hand?

It's for these very reasons why I give even the most remote glimmer of hope that Apple may one day release a legend of AI hardware forums for 10 years+++... Of course I'm taking about the 'xmac' , 'headless-iMac' ... or whatever the current name happens to be... Once the 'Mac Computer' becomes such a small part of Apples over all bottom line... something like that (or dare I say it... dare, dare) OS X licensing may actually be reconsidered.

That was just the opening salvo of Apple's revenge on companies that have long treated Mac users as second class citizens. Next, Apple will unveil it's own suite of professional apps for the Mac to kill the overpriced Creative Suite.

I'm actually rather ambivalent about this development as I can already play Flash 1 and 2 on an iPhone/iPad, which is just perfect to annoy the hell out of you Adobe haters with animated ads that you can't block.

So use XCode and not be included in the collateral damage. I'm pretty confident thinking that Flash does nothing that can't be done natively do why bother about Flash?

Flash is only good for watching video, unfortunately it is also a medium to deliver advertisements. There for I do not want flash on my iPhone. I rather enjoy website that don't annoy me with over-bearing flash ads. I don't need my bandwidth taken up by fucking full page flash ad that covers the content of the website.

The fact is that Adobe, like every other developer, has access to a variety of APIs that give it access to the GPU. Microsoft has implemented those same APIs in Silverlight and to much success. What Adobe wants is something that it doesn't need. They want an amount of control that is unreasonable for something like Flash.

With that being said, it's estimated that 50% of Adobe's sales are to Mac users. If such a large portion of your user base is on the Mac, then they should care, but they just don't. As a company, they screwed with Apple from the inception of OS X and at a time when Apple was struggling. Now in the mobile market where Adobe doesn't really have any leverage, Apple isn't going to pander to their needs. They have a strong platform that they have been working on for years and with open standards at their disposal, they aren't kissing anyones, especially Adobe's, rear end.

Adobe has been lazy for quite some time and with no unified corporate vision. They have been screwing over their users across all platforms. Creating insanely bloated applications, even forcing Flash into the UIs of those applications for no reason and having users struggle through such awkward concepts, that it would drive any normal person insane.

Finally, even if you put aside performance on Mac desktops and laptops, it has been almost 3 years since the iPhone has been released, and Flash is still not optimized enough to even run on other mobile OS's. They are still trying to optimize it for them with no release date set in stone. If the Flash player is at that level, what makes you think Apple would even contemplate putting Flash on the iPhone?

There are a lot of Photoshop and CS3 users who haven't upgraded to CS4. If Adobe drops the CS suite for OS X, users will still be able to run CS3 or CS4 (and CS5). Adobe hasn't ported its code to Cocoa, which would make it a damn sight more efficient. Everything each application needs would be wrapped in a package instead of being strewn all over your root and user Library folders. Also, don't forget that most of Adobe products rely heavily on Plug-Ins (Photoshop CS3 alone has over 200MB of them).

Steve jobs isn't stupid: Apple developed OSX to run on Intel processors years before actually moving the whole Mac line to Intel Inside. iWork was a response to MS threatening to stop Office development. OSX has loads of APIs that can do a lot of what Photoshop can. Wouldn't surprise me in the least if Apple already has basic applications to compete with Photoshop & Illustrator. QXP can always take its user base back from InDesign. Apple could do for Photoshop and Illustrator what FCP did to Premiere on the Mac.

Flash isn't even that good for playing video. It is just ubiquitous. There are plenty of other methods that are more optimal, including native formats. All Flash does in regards to video is put a layer on top of the video that it is streaming. That is why it was relatively easy for Apple to develop a YouTube app that plays the actual source video. It's also why you see so many of the TV networks with players on the iPad. They are just streaming the source videos.

Microsoft was smart enough to provide server-side capability for Silverlight enabled sites like Netflix to stream the source videos to platforms that don't have Silverlight on them. That is why you see such broad distribution (iPad, PS3, XBOX, Wii, and soon even the iPhone) of Netflix players in the market.

It's not the 90's any more, and there are a lot of users on the Mac platform that are not in the design or publishing industry.

Adobe had the power then, so Apple made Carbon.
Now Apple has the power so it has made the iPhone, iPod Touch and now the iPad, all without flash!

Get with the times!

Posting in all capital letters means you're shouting -- Netiquette demands that you do not shout.

I assume the address you have posted is his residential address? I think that you should edit your post to remove this.

No offence meant...

You make some wonderful points. Expect the majority to just gloss over it.

There are apparently technical reasons related to efficient multitasking why they can't do that. Which would you rather have. Flash based apps without efficient multitasking or efficient multitasking without flash based apps.

actually it was pretty common for people to complain about flash hogging the cpu and being responsible for most crashes. Both of these are why "clicktoflash" exists.

Good news. Real apps please.

You are clearly not paying attention. It is not about fanboyism, it is about personal experience that many contributors to this forum have with Flash--and Adobe. You've been lurking on this forum for six years. I've been a Mac user for 21 years. Adobe has been an important developer for the Mac for each of those years. However, Adobe has also been a problem for most of them. Flash is only the latest example.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it can

Remember your comrades who stood up for you, and also helped define who you are, even though you were in the brink of destruction to loosing millions and fileing for Bankruptcy.

I'm dissappointed with Apple and these lastest pesky moves it has decided tighten with loyal developers and users.

Why does Apple need to work with Adobe to make Flash more efficient, when Adobe has all the tools necessary to make this happen, but as told by Adobe have been dragging their feet in the past. We has mac users have been irritated by Flash in Safari and its inefficient way of taking over CPU or making our computer act like Windows operating system (except Windows 7, have to give it its dues) and freeze up. Sorry but I want Apple to apply the pressure and ensure I have the best computing/mobile experience on my iPhone/iPad as possible without having to learn the technical know hows to resolve issues that should have been resolved by developer company.

Flash was allowed on iPhone, there goes multitasking (9/10 from Apple, will worth the wait)vefficiency way of handling adds, since Flash would hog CPU and cause slow running of the phone (Flash in its present form).
I agree Apple is trying to ensure that inefficient tools do not make their way into their ecosystem and destroy the positive experience majority of us are feeling every day with their hardware and software.
Flash is not open source software and is controlled by one company Adobe, Apple have decided to control what goes on their systems, fair play to Apple.


Unfortunately what makes our experience of using Apple and its success, is the way Apple have controlled the installation of such inefficient software that may ruin the experience for the consumer. Freedom is beautiful thing, but sometimes people need to be controlled so that the end result, they do enjoy their freedom and don't get frustrated by situations that could have been controlled with a little outside help.

I parsed that as "script kiddie" somehow. Same thing, I guess.

Well, what I meant was only useful purpose is for video. Not saying flash is any good at it.

I laugh when people cite lack of flash as some sort of knock against iPhone. I'd say it's one of the best reason why iPhone is so much better mobile web device.

Flash sucks ass and it has no place on your desktop or your mobile device.

Unfortunately if Apple were to make this customer's option, all you ever hear is people botching about iPhone browser sucking ass. Because most people will install flash and have terrible experience an just blame Apple.

Those that don't adapt will wither away and die. Adobe had three years to get their act together and did absolutely squat. Instead of putting their resources to work and actually developing the next-generation of software and plug-ins, they ignorantly sat on their backside on the porch and watched the world go by.

I have no sympathy for Adobe. They placed a good quantity of eggs in one basket. They should have known better. They bet that Apple needed them in the long run and Apple called their bluff.

If Adobe seriously wanted to go under, they could conceivably drop all support for the Mac platform. However, we all know that Apple (and their $40B+ cash hoard) pretty much guarantees that they have a plan B in the works should Adobe pull out.

If I were to have to choose between having Flash and having malware on my computer, I would probably keep Flash and get rid of the malware, but I would have think seriously about it before giving a final answer.

Oh yeah, such as announcing that your video editing software would be Windows only , that Adobe will released their products first for Windows and port them later to the Macintosh Platform. Oh, remind me, where is that Photoshop Suite that was supposed to be built on Cocoa instead of Carbon? Apple made it simpler for Adobe by migrating their whole computer line to Intel based processors and how long ago was that ?? BTW, Adobe did not stood up for Apple during it's darkest days, if it was any other CEO, Adobe would had left Apple to die in 1999 or during the Mac OS X transition which btw, Apple bend over for Adobe by creating Carbon to help Adobe with the transition from OS 9 to OS X . Which of course, Abode botched that as well by providing Mac users a very inferior UI , bloated applications and oh , forced many Mac users to use OS 9 in order to use Adobe's software suites which also delayed the adoption of Mac OS X by many Mac based companies and users.

Adobe should had thought about that in 2001 when it decided to support the Window OS all out and leave Apple and the Mac users behind.

Well, I am no developer, just a person who has a beautiful website, that moves elegantly and displays my photography and video in spectacular fashion. It has won awards and brought me a lot of business. It is a Flash site.

I am also huge Apple fan, a stockholder, and owner of almost every Apple since the II+.

And, I have had Photoshop since day 1.

I am perturbed by this pissing contest, but am resigned to live with it. I'll just make a dumbed down version of my site for the iPhone and go on from there.

I was with you up to this point.

A) Adobe's stance on carbon should not mean that apple gets a free pass on trying to maintain complete control of the iphoneOS dev toolchain in such a manner.

B) Do you *really* think that IBM really hurt much by losing Apple? Apple didnt exactly make up a large piece of IBM's business, nor motorola's really. Between those companies you have the chips in nearly every current set-top box, microwave, gaming system... the list goes on (not to mention all the other areas Big Blue and motorola are in)

isn't that what CS5 to be announced on Monday to ship in May is?

no need to dumb down anything - what does your web site do that can't be done in HTML5?

Apple is already paying the price of adapting WebKit to the severe inadequacies of Adobe Flash.

Why should Apple pay for yet another Adobe-created mess on the iPhone/iPad and have iPhone/iPad users be upset at the uneven performance of the system?

How many people work at Adobe? How many people would have otherwise bought CS5? Isn't better for Apple to make the relative few at Adobe upset?

It could be far worse than you think:

What if Apple were intentionally harming Adobe's market cap to prep for a hostile takeover within a year or two after the price drops far enough?

Then there would indeed be a CS Suite for the Mac - and only for the Mac.

Remember, Apple maintains $7 billion in cash reserves....

no one has mentioned the app store.

let Flash on the iPhoneOS platform (even using Apple's offered APIs) and what do you think will happen to the app store?

I bet overnight you would have a Flash centric equivalent chewing into Apple's revenue...

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't careless about Flash and look forward to the H5 evolution.

I see all of this "hoo-har" simply as Apple executing well planned business strategies.

First the iPod, (Spleen vent some more Sony as you had this market pre Y2K)

Then Apple blew the smartphone industry apart (Nokia & co. sat on their proverbial arse here)

And now Apple have some rock'n mobile devices as platforms for information/media delivery. (took Google a while to realise the need for this also)

And with the iAd demo I watched the other day... I expect to see the equivalent of the iTunes purchasing-of-songs model start all over again...

Oh, and ebooks has to be slot in the above somewhere also...

It just makes you wonder what industry is about to be Appleised next. TV anyone?

What he said.

it's more like $40 billion in cash reserves, or more than twice Adobe's current market cap.

[QUOTE=bvz;1609672]I love all things Apple. I use OSX all day and really love it. I promote Macs to all of my friends in an effort to get them off of the nightmare that is Windows. I own an iPhone. I will be buying an iPad. And I want Apple to go fsck them selves right now.


I have been reading AI for quite a while and this is my first post. I am getting sick of the direction that things have been going in IT. I go back to CP/M days and am a long time user of Unix systems. I have used every version that Microsoft has put out with the exception on 7, I am through with them.

When Apple went to Unix I thought this is cool and I bought my first Apple with a G4 processor. I liked it very much but could not recommend it because of the price. When they went to Intel and I could run any operating system that I wanted I started to become very excited about the product. I started to recommend it to many people who switched from Windows. What I liked was the openness that no other product could match. The price now seemed fair.

If Apple continues with the BS that they have been up to of late, I will move on again. This is sad for me. Apple is starting to act very much like MS and will end up in the same type of trouble that they had with anti-trust. Before you try to say that they are a small player and can do what they want with there system. They are starting to be the dominate player in the mobile field and are going to have to start to play by another set of rules if things keep going in this direction.

Apple has come back from the brink and I hope that they can get there act together and kick ass. If not I for one will move on.

what if this move you are upset about is part of their getting their act together to "kick ass" in that it is directly related to supporting multiple apps running as AppleInsider has suggested? What if their efficient implementation of multiprocessing apps to call their APIs instead of bypassing them?

One question I have re HTML 5 is whether there are any products out there to facilitate the creation of content? Noone seems to have addressed this point. If not, then saying "use html5" is akin to giving someone a screwdriver, some ply, and a saw and telling some one to build a box. Flash development I suspect would already have the box defined and you would declare its dimensions.

You could build your beautiful, award winning site in something other than a web plug-in. Are you saying that Flash is THE only interactive medium for ...the Internet? Or the best? Or just the one you decided to use and can, therefore, decide to do it in some other way. I think Flash is over used and often supplies plenty of smoke, but actually limits the amount of real information (fire). The most useful sites seem to be sites built outside of Flash. Though I love animated intros! Oh Yeah!