Adobe evangelist lashes out at Apple over iPhone 4.0 - Page 3

Then Apple would be providing a push, a pull, and a steel-toed boot to the groin (for Adobe).

I understand Apple wants to get everyone to play nice together. It is the amount of control that Apple seems to take to protect us all that has me scared to death. First they seem to have an arbitrary selection process for there apps store. Second they seem to have one set of APIs for them to develop apps and another APIs for everyone else. This creates a situation that allows them to take over any market some other developer creates. This is very similar to what MS did. The power that the apps store and APIs give Apple will be hard to not abuse.

The dumb developer do not know how to code in HTML 5. That's why he had to code a dumb site for iPhone.

[QUOTE=Apple Ambivalent;1609777]
No one can sue Apple for monopoly if it doesn't have a monopoly.

[QUOTE=jaypres;1609793]
Apple is getting very close to a monopoly in mobile operating systems. If they keep having the success that they have had, it won't be long.

Oh give me a break! This is simply pure FUD. Last time I checked, there is Android, RIM, WinMo, Palm, Symbian, etc. Nice that you conveniently left that part out eh? Besides, with the way the Android boys are kicking, Android will overtake the iPhone by when????? This time next Thursday? Then, you can sleep nice knowing open source (and the world) was victorious over closed, "safe", and proprietary toasters.

You are blowing this thing WAY out of proportion. Tech-heads may not like this situation because they have some sense of holier-than-thou attitude that transcends the average-Joe that Apple is concentrating on for their mobile systems.

What it comes down to is one simple thing. Money. Clamor all you want but developers will go to where the money is. Joe's will continue to buy Apple's products because they have no clue whatsoever about the whining and screaming that Adobe is putting out nor about the gestapo-policies you folks are screaming that Apple is implementing.

You even mentioned the success Apple is having in selling iPhones. Maybe they have that success because they are doing something everyone else loves but you deplore? Might want to do some inner soul-searching.

The people generating most of the profits for Apple simply do.not.care!
The majority of iPhone developers (IMHO) simply do not care.
So who does care??? Flash folks... which goes back to iPhone users that do.not.care.

Next time at 11 - Our sun will go supernova in 5-billion years! Let's not innovate! Let's evacuate!

Hate the game, not the players will you?

I have to disagree strongly with you. A good case in point was Avid pulling out of the Mac market. That was said to be a nail in Apple's coffin. Apple doesn't just sit there and watch the product vanish entirely with no response. Apple bought several companies and the results arenthe Final Cut Suite which has basically marginalized Avid, the industry standard.

If Adobe and even Microsoft ever decided to drop Apple they'd live to regret it. Apple's response would be to build software that's better and cheaper than Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. And it can be done. Apple simply doesn't go after Adobe's market so long as Adobe doesn't force Apple to do so by pulling out.

Remember Avid truly was in Adobe's position. It was simply unthinkable that anyone could topple Avid. Apple did and they did it in record time.

I've been using Adobe's apps since the very beginning. And I am so sick of Adobe. I would love Apple to go after Adobe. Virtually everyone I know feels the same way. We're sick to death of Adobe's rising prices and extreme activation measures.

If Adobe dropped Apple, I'd clap clap clap. Because I know what Apple's response would be. Build a better graphics suite and sell it for less.

Bring it on.

*Gets out very tiny violin for Adobe.

'Oh dear.' (Says in a high tone mocking voice.)

What's this? What goes around comes around?

"You're a big guy. But you're in bad shape. Now, for me, it's a 24 hour job." Carter (Michael Caine.)

And Apple are giving Adobe the bitch slapping they're had coming for a llllllooooooonnnnnnnng time.

In bouncer talk? Adobe are being piled on, dragged to the exit and thrown down the stairs. Sure, you kinda feel sorry for the drunk that got it in the neck...but you think, also, perhaps he had it coming. kinda his fault.

Adobe for years treated us to 2nd rate ports, feature omissions or no software at all or refused to support Apple's initiatives, waiting for the Mac platform to whither and die while nailing their support to the PC mast. Now that it hasn't panned out that way, they're complaining Apple isn't supporting them? Too bad. Coupled with their CEO's patronising attitude, and Adobe in general, to Apple and Mac users.


I agree with the above.

Poor backstabbing Adobe is bleating that friends should treat one another better? How ironic. They dropped Premiere for the Mac. Apple did Final Cut and sawed them off at the knees.

This isn't just sawing them off at the knees, this lack of support for Flash (justifiably) is a kick in the nuts, a knee in the face and a push down the stairs.

Adobe stopped writing software years ago. They stopped innovating. They stopped trying.

Adobe, Jobs gave you a hint. Write some HTML5 tools...and get back to being a creative authorship company. Cos you sure as hell aint a standards based company. Flash. Slow. Buggy. Insecure. How come Apple has to be the only company that supports it? It's old. It's outdated. There's a new kid in town that aint proprietary.

Abobe Flash proprietary? Or Apple proprietary? I'm going Apple. Everytime.

I don't want Adobe's Mac users can suck it generalised platform to the lowest coming denominator. It wasn't built from the ground up to be mobile. It shows.

Adobe are a fat, lazy company that have been sitting on their ass for years...charging us every more for CS for very little return and even feature omission.

Go screw yourselves.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Lemon Bon Bon.

Dell, M$, Google and Adobe.

Notice a theme?

Apple are out competing these guys. Out innovating these guys. They had their day in the sun. Jobs is going after them, gunning them down, one by one.

They'll rue the day they crossed Jobs.

Every last one of them.

Lemon Bon Bon.

How did that article go from being about Apple banning 3rd party compilers to talking about Flash in web browsers and even mentioning IE9. There completely different technologies only related in the fact that CS5 could compile a project into a Flash movie or an iPhone app.

If you didn't know any better you would assume that the iPhone ran HTML5 rather than basically it's own proprietary language which ultimately is comparable to Flash and Silverlight except that it only works on the iPhone.

Read my post again. I said MOBILE Safari.

Wow, just wow.

Apple are out competing Adobe how exactly? Flash has near 100% penetration on PCs. Photoshop totally dominates the graphic design market.

Google dominates search. Android is a far more advanced OS than even iPhone OS 4, and Android market share is rapidly rising.

And as for MS... oh come on. Think before you type.

I've read through any number of these threads now, thousands of comments on this issue, and one thing strikes me. Nearly all of the comments supporting Adobe's position are doing so from a position of self-interest. Now that's fair enough, arguing your own corner, but to dress that up as a wider ethos or principle is fundamentally dishonest. As Adobe's abysmal management surely depreciates the value of Flash, people whose livelihood depend on it need to move on from the dying to the emerging technology. Old tech is succeeded by new tech, and although transitions can be painful for some, the only alternative is stagnation.

Another element to this 'debate' (more like shouting match) is the casual tossing in of the phrases 'monopoly' and 'anti-trust'. This is just ridiculous! Apple's main strategic thrust here is to promote the development and adoption of HTML5 - an open standard - the very antithesis of monopoly! Instead, the argument goes, Apple and others should subvert their development plans to fit in with Adobe's monopolistic hegemony! The late George Carlin did a bit in one of his HBO specials where he laments that critical thinking is no longer taught in US schools. Boy, did he have a point!

What the world needs, and has needed for many years, are serious, viable competitors to Microsoft and Adobe. In the absence of that (and Apple are not really directly competing with MS because they have an entirely different business model and do not participate in the mass commodity sector of the market) we've got bloated quasi-monopolies dominating their respective fields. Adobe were in such a position of strength, they could have innovated from the front. Instead they sat back on the profit pile accruing from their captive market and have slowly fossilised. In five years' time all this blather will be forgotten and the tech world will be a better place. Apple are one of the key instruments of change here, and all kudos to them for that.

It's too bad you don't know what you're talking about. At all.

Many of the performance optimizations afforded to Flash on Windows (in 10.1 specifically) are a direct result of access to hardware acceleration. The plugin development structure in Safari does not allow the same access. It cannot be done because Apple does not make available the required APIs.

You make some simple face value statements but that that is not the story about competition is it? You have to look at the strategic moves and metrics movements from the baseline.

Windows had 97% share in US Desktops, now it is high 80s - mostly gone to Apple (some linux) - out-competing (i.e. growing share and sales) - they don't have to have 100% to be winning the war (their share by $ value of PC sales is much higher of course due to their much higher ASP). I imagine they would be happy to never take more than 20% of the traditional computer market by unit sales but 80% of the profit (which is their model).

Google is dominant in search but that is the not the competitive ground - Apple is trying to compete in mobile ad impressions served. iAd is way more innovative than anything Google has dreamed up - Google can't even get their Admob acquisition straight.
Android is not way more advanced - they are pretty comparable (esp w/ 4.0) and iPhone still has a clear usability advantage for the vast majority of users (non-technical people). Google is not growing the Android market, it is giving Android away to myriad handset makers who are making the major $ investments. No wonder Android is growing but it is not attacking iPhone (holding share, growing sales) but WinMob and Nokia. For every Droid/N1/Evo4 there is a MotoDevour, Eris etc. (weak and cheap). Google make nothing from it except the ad impressions it can get on the platform. Apple's business strategy with iPhone has been vastly superior to Google's. We will see how it plays out (iPod vs. All or Mac vs. Windows 95) but so far, clear victory and billions of $s to Apple.

Adobe - near 100% Flash penetration was the baseline where Apple came into this fight. Now all major video sites are moving off it (slowly), there is a growing anti-flash movement and it is largely because Apple got the ball rolling (remember the parallel h264 youtube for iPhone 1.0) and has kept up the momentum. Photoshop is a market leader but it is a fat bloated old-fashioned product, used by a tiny niche of computer users who are all but irrelevant for Apple these days (250K Mac Pros out of 11M Mac sales is not a big deal even at a 2-3x ASP). If Apple wanted to, it could crush PS too - buy Pixelmator, sprinkle its fairy dust and take enough revenue and profit from Adobe to make them the basket case to investors that Palm is today. It would make Apple no real money to invest in competing products and it would divert them from revenue/profit positive ventures so they won't but they could. It could do the same with buying Quark etc. but there are no serious $s in that any more at Apple's current scale and consumer focus. To be honest, all Apple would have to do is something to convince some reasonable proportion users to put off their CS5 upgrades and Adobe is in a world of hurt. Is that what they are doing here... maybe?

Apple is not going to "destroy" MS, or Google (it could do it to Adobe but probably won't) but a case can be made that it is outcompeting them right now. Its moves over the past decade have largely been winners with an unprecedented hit rate. We'll see how this walled garden vs. wild bazaar battle plays out but I'm not betting against Apple yet. Oh, and don't bother with Newton, Cube, AppleTV jabs - those are relatively million $ flops at worst (ATV isn't even a flop) compared to the billion dollar successes with Mac/OSX, iPod, iPhone, iTunes etc.

Meh. I liked it better when i thought apple seriously hated adobe.

Another reason might be that most of the Window PCs run some version of IE browsers which don't support H5 yet. Telling these Window users to switch browsers is like telling you to move off of Safari (if Apple would let you).

I think this sums it up pretty well. Even though Adobe is imho rightfully angry at this attack on one of their core platforms, by opposing Canvas, Adobe is also attacking Apple. That and the "slights" at Apple by not creating an optimum Flash experience on MacOS has prob made Cupertino decide to show Adobe who the Alpha male on the playground is.

Also, the move by Apple has refocused attention and engineering towards HTML 5. So, as sad as it may be for Adobe, the move actually makes a lot of sense. This is also just Apple pushing for a new and open standard. And in the end, Adobe's bread and butter IS developer productivity tools. There's really no reason why it shouldn't be able to repurpose the Flash IDE towards producing native code in stead of a wrapped Flash runtime.

Of course, "open" has never been part of Apple's vocabulary. That sits better with Google. But as long as the end result is the push for open standard we'll all benefit.

The timing of the move though I don't understand. Adobe tools have been crucial to Apple's success. Why they would purposely hurt Adobe before a major launch is beyond me. Perhaps the Alpha dog thing.

How about FreeHand! Man this is and or was an OUTSTANDING Vector based drawing program.

I and MANY others were very disappointed when it wasn't sold off separately when MacroMedia sold to Adobe.

Speak of monopoly - I was surprise the government didn't make adobe sell it, so as to make sure they didn't have a monopoly in this area.

FreeHand and Illustrator went back and forth over the years, as to which one was best. A good fight for users as it brought about great changes in both applications.

I for one, will only go as high on the Mac OS, as to allow me to still use FreeHand, as it is the application I use most to make a living.

Yes, I am working at learning Illustrator, but don't like being FORCED to do so.

In any case, let the fun begin

Skip

Flash is like a floppy drive its old slow and obsolete. The problem with all of this is many companies and design agency's invested so much money in flash. I like the direction that Apple is taking. We really don't need flash anymore and there are people whining about we need it because they have invested so much time and man hours learning it. Objective-C is a SOLID platform its been around since 1986. Its FAST and reliable. So all of your ACTIONSCRIPT 3 developers Learn Objective-C and quit complaining. If you want to do cool stuff within the browser then learn HTML 5 and learn http://webkit.org/


Adobe has run out of GAS. Most of its selling features for CS5 was the flash iphone but i am glad Apple Put a stop to it. ALSO Adobe should not charge so much money for its creative suite. If there was open source alternatives to it people would switch

Adobe After Effects are used on nearly 90% macs for tv and film. If Adobe pulled the plug, Apple would for sure HEAR ABOUT IT.

I'm going with the DF (if i remember correctly) argumentation here. Why the hell should you (as an OS) give a plugin direct hardware access? There are a ton of APIs (namely Quicktime, Core Video) on OSX for hardware accelerated video playback - use them. It's ridiculous for a browsers plugin to have so much low-level access.

The other day I read about Apple complaining that Adobe needs so deep level hardware access with their software, it's a real pain for Apple. (For anti-piracy things, i guess).

That being said, the reals reason for this post is a littel thought (that already a trillion people got, maybe i missed the remarks in the thread, sorry)
Adobe should start to develop a "Web-standard" IDE, be it that they implement a "export to HTML-Package" into the Flash IDE or do it any other way. It's IMHO the thing you can make money with in the future. To my knowledge there is no such thing, open or closed source around today. Sure - the standards are not final, but hell, you can release updates, patches. They do it all the time with other software, so why not here. They already showed that they are willing to let the community take a part in the development of a software with the beta releases of Lightroom via the Adobe Labs.

Problem is - if they start doing that, they simultaneously give the impression, they're not 100% sure if Flash is going to be the #1 rich-content medium in the internet and are having second thoughts about it. But on the other hand, if you already know flash, than you can use the tool and create things, that "by magic" work on the iP*ds and all the other no-Flash-devices around the planet. So it should turn out a win-win situation. They need to add a few resources to this, and if in the end, flash goes out of the fight as the winner, they wasted the money on this part, but if it's going downhill for flash, they may have saved their sweet behinds in the long run.

And if i got this idea, surely more than a handful of developers at Adobe got the same thought, but maybe the management just doesn't think it's the right thing to do - or to say it directly "we need to focus, not diversify"

Or, I'm completely off with the guess, and (as it seems to be) have no clue on the whole marketing subject what-so-ever and Adobe just has to sit this one out. You never know.

This. Well, what you quoted.

Yeah, I saw that too. I wonder how they made it though. Surely not in code. Perhaps they will introduce a new iWeb that allows HTML 5 animations.


Of course but they still might do it. If they give in to Apple and lose Flash, it's a big expense and a loss of a stranglehold on the web. If they take away the CS Suite from the Mac, most publishers will migrate away from the Mac platform and continue to use Flash/Air in the short term at least. Even if everyone ends up on HTML 5, Apple loses out.


There's a trickle-down effect though. Linux isn't viewed very highly among consumers as it doesn't get support from big vendors. It's not just about direct sales. Adobe is huge in desktop publishing and those people also write articles about Apple. If they are forced not to use Macs because they are incompatible then it causes a wider effect than simply not having compatible software.

That of course assumes printed media will still exist and not some form of electronic ink, the former being why Adobe's Suite is needed.


They have GPU-accelerated HTML 5 in IE9 too - maybe not Canvas though, which would be a real pain:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/03...bs-all-apps-h/
http://www.guru3d.com/news/nvidia-gp...ted-ie9-video/


That's sometimes seen as the reason behind the Intel/NVidia disputes. It's a possibility but I think unlikely. Given Apple's developments in Webkit/Canvas, I think this is entirely different from a buyout attempt. Often, Apple just step forward from the group of big companies and point in another direction and expect them to follow. It annoys them because they are comfortable making money for doing nothing instead of making things to a higher standard and don't like following the little guy.


That's a good point but "Apple's response would be to build" and "Apple bought several companies" conflict. Apple don't build professional software from the ground up very often. The question is what companies could they buy to take on Adobe.

InDesign CS4 - Quark
Photoshop CS4 Extended - loads of image editing tools out there but plugin support is tricky
Illustrator CS4 - Quark, maybe try to get some of the Freehand devs on board
Acrobat 9 Pro - not going to happen
Flash CS4 Professional - iWeb + animation
Dreamweaver CS4 - Any autocompletion editor like Coda integrated into iWeb, hook it into the Apache server in OS X and it's a great testing platform
Fireworks CS4 - Same as Photoshop replacement
After Effects CS4 - they need to improve Motion but it's on the right path, including good GPUs would help
Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 - Final Cut obviously
Soundbooth CS4 - they do have soundtrack pro in the FCP Suite
LightRoom - Aperture

It's possible for them to do it and in many ways I'm with you on the frustration with the software, the expense etc but I don't want to see them do the same thing they did with Shake. Bought out the industry standard software, did nothing with it, then dropped it. Now all those experienced users have to migrate to Nuke and buy new licenses at great expense.

If they bought out Quark and took on the CS Suite and then do nothing to compete, people are just left with frustration and eventually great expense. Even though Final Cut is very popular now, the software itself is stagnating - yes Apple are lazy too. Their compression software is utter garbage. It is so slow and unstable. Their format support is poor and slow. Their error messages are not intuitive. Final Cut is not popular because it's great but because it's good and cheap, something contrary to Apple's philosophy. It becomes evident that it's little more than a way to sell more high-end Macs.

Adobe software development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f8CKjsYS9k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qZgT...eature=related

What did you expect?

It's all part of the plan.

Apple's making a key transition here. They're among the first to start leaving behind the old "operating system on a computer" paradigm.

"OS X" will in time become the "iPhone OS" or the "iOS" - whatever they'll call it, and you'll see Apple develop the hell out of it. It'll get to a point where it will far outshine OS X in efficiency, scalability, and speed. "Notebooks" in time will look nothing like what we see now. Desktops in their current form will be dead. Retail outlets can hardly move them as it is.

We'll continue to see "Macs." But they'll be quite different. Apple isn't ignoring its Mac business. Apple is evolving it. I'm a bit surprised that quite a few people aren't seeing the Big Picture here.

Risky. Ballsy. And incredibly inspiring. THIS is how the industry moves forward.

All this Flash hate...I don't get it. Flash is a good idea, it just isn't optimized (by a long shot, I know) on Mac or i***. I imagine Adobe is working on that. Although I don't get why it has taken them years and they have nothing to show, or even more, why they haven't announced that they are trying to work with Apple on accelerating Flash on Mac and iPhone.

Now that I use ClickToFlash...I have to say, a lot of the Internet depends on Flash. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't use a lot of the Internet. Try ClickToFlash. I hope they don't piss off Steve Jobs by doing something stupid like hobbling CS5 or something else. Because then Steve Jobs will probably be immature and escalate this "war". This is stupid, Apple and Adobe should be friends and united against Microsoft. So stupid. We are collateral damage as a developer here said. I wanted to get into iPhone apps a bit even and the Flash development environment sounded like a great friggin idea. My programmer colleagues universally seem to detest Obj-C. Big time. Apple is becoming more dictator-like every year and frankly it's unnerving and sad. When MS offers more freedom you know something is wrong...

Don't let your imagination run away with you.

Adobe has supposedly been "working on" fixing and optimizing their Mac products for years. Things have only gotten worse.

Apple decided not to wait and while they're at it, take the bull by the horns and promote a new standard.

All strangely irrelevant in the 3rd Great Age of Computing.

Lemon Bon Bon.

So true. Actually the ironic thing about extreme activation measures is that the very people they're meant for easily bypass those measures by downloading one Volume License serial number. They're spread like wildfire on the net and there's actually never any need for software hacks or anything convoluted. Enter Volume License serial number while disconnected from the net, enter in Adobe's domain names in your host file to block communication to Adobe and that's it. All of the "activation" steps required are quite ridiculous actually. Can view it on YouTube.

I'm currently looking at replacements for Illustrator and Photoshop. Once I've decided I'll be done with Adobe for ever. It will be nice to use a graphic design app on my MacBook without waiting for other applications to slowly open because Photoshop is using 50% of my CPU. Good riddance.

You could have used the developer tools that are specifically for the iPhone and avoided this all together. Relying on someone else to mimic the tool-chain of the manufacturer is just foolish especially on a platform that changes so rapidly. The framework will ALWAYS be behind the "native" framework especially if they have to keep things working on multiple platforms. On top of that you would not only have to worry about bugs in the native framework but you add an entire new level of complexity with the secondary framework.

A-MEN! *(Pats baseball bat...)

Lemon Bon Bon.

Can we make this a sticky?

Yes please.

Lemon Bon Bon.

If Adobe doesn't want to do things the Apple way, they should be bannad from all Apple products!

Sounds more like your programmer colleagues don't know much about objective c. There are 13 year olds writing native iPhone apps using objective-c and your university team can't handle that?

Apple is now a mobile device company. I expect to see them deempahasize the desktop line. they lost to Windows a long time ago.

Apple makes their own Photoshop, Illustrator and HTML 5 authoring tool?

I'd move over in a heart beat. If they dropped Mac support. But they won't. They don't have the b*lls and they'd lose 40-50% revenue that comes from Mac buyers. Apple made Adobe and they can break them.

They can whine like stuck pigs...but they're software on the mobile platform is slow, buggy, bloated etc. And until they get off their arse and get 'creative' (har!) again and create innovative authoring tools that scale instead of bloat...they're going to take one helluva beating. Like Microsoft, Adobe just aren't ready for the mobile age of computing.

This isn't 1984. Apple are prepared this time. They've put massive infrastructure around 'simple' and mobile computing that does 80-90% of the things we really use computers for. Adobe and M$ are stuck in the past. They haven't moved their business models forward and are blowing bubbles with conservative foot dragging. They look paralised with fear.

I look at Pixelator. I see a hungry young app that will do for alot of people. And how difficult to get something going like that, with a small footprint, for the iPad..? Who long before the fizzing Mac developer community bring out a nice 'flash' style authoring tool for HTML 5? Something is going to do it. I think Adobe needs new leadership. They're run by a sales guy. You can tell how they've milked and faffed with the CS Suite over the last few years. On a glacial slow development pace.

Dinosaurs got replaced by the Mammals.

Lemon Bon Bon.

In an industry that changes as much as computers and software, did web developers honestly expect to be able to use the same language for over 15 years? I bet most industries wish they could stay competitive without significant innovation for that long; I know it sure would make my job a lot easier.

I've asked a bunch of people why they hate the lack of flash support, and the only example that keeps popping up is guess what? Not being able to play Farmville. I feel your pain guys, I really do And to quote Homer Simpson: "Ah video games, the reason this generation of Americans is the best ever." But don't worry, I'm sure your precious Farmville will adapt. I'm getting the impression that people just love to hate Apple.

96% of people have a flash plugin installed because they visited a flash site at some point in their browsers' existance, and there is no point to uninstall a plugin. If adobe wanted to cite a meaningful statistic, they'd tell us what percentage of high volume websites still use flash.