Adobe exec: Apple's fight against Flash is a 19th century tactic - Page 3

Funny, I always thought of Flash as a 19th Century technology.

Whatever you're smoking, please save me some. I really need to get crazy this weekend.

I don't like Java applications on my Mac and I don't want Flash applications on my iPad!!!!

The only railroad similarity I can see between Apple and Adobe is that Apple is running a stable system on a two rail system and Adobe is trying to balance on a monorail. This isn't about different gauges, it is about the basic design concept.

The railroads were important to interstate commerce and the national expansion. It can't be argued that the failure of one computer/mobile device manufacturer with market share the size of apple's has any comparable significance for the nation. So let the company say, "it's time for something new" and take its chances.

Still, what if...?

What if a railroad innovator realized wide gauge rails proposed by an industry group increased stability and carrying capacity and decided--for purposes of speed and reliability and safety and thereby market share and profit--to build engines and cars that ran only on those new tracks?

What if the company said, "we believe with this new system we can make the experience of passengers and freight shippers the best in the country. We think by focusing on this standard gauge we can create a superior system. You can decide whether or not to start developing for that new standard instead, but we hope you do."

The company with the better plan would succeed.

What if the company that had developed lots of narrow-gauge railways wanted to continue to do so? Maybe it had millions invested in ties that wouldn't accommodate the new wider standard? Naturally it would resist the change. But the new standard is available to it, too.

What if that legacy company wanted to force the manufacturer to only build engines designed to run on its old tracks? Or to force it to offer wheelspan adapters that would allow the new wide-track engines to run on its old narrow gauge lines, but at the expense of all the benefits of the new standard?

Again, the company with the better plan would succeed.

I don't know who's being more honest in the apple/adobe brouhaha. But it does seem to me a company ought to be allowed to control what it sends out of the station. That's how the passengers (consumers) and freight shippers (media creators) ultimately will get the best product.

I would love to see a modern creative suite alternative, either from Apple or another developer, but as of right now, Apple has other priorities. Apple will only enter a market if they feel it is absolutely necessary and right now, it isn't. FC Studio and Logic Studio exist because the tools were really lacking before hand. Adobe was pushing their Windows versions and Apple saw that as a threat to the Mac platform, so they developed and acquired new applications. Lest we forget, Adobe at one point completely pulled Premiere from the Mac platform and had Soundbooth as a Windows only version up until a few years ago.

It's hard to compete with Photoshop & Illustrator (the only real applications that Apple would need to compete against) on a massive scale, mostly because of entrenched mindsets. Here's hoping somebody steps up and does.

Yes of course - I meant what you said above, but coming from the other side. And of course there are some promising developing programs like Acorn (PhotoShop alternative). Competition is great all around. When Adobe bought Macromedia I remember a sinking feeling in my stomach - for a long time those two companies were competitively fighting each other, which helped all of us...

1800s, eh? Adobe really is living in the past.

Flash is free on the "user" end. But on the developer end it's a license fee! A fee that means developers are locked to having to use Adobe's CS. Am I wrong in this? And we all know how expensive CS is! Plus where is the competition to Adobe's CS? Who competes to bring down their price?

I looked at your posting history, and your posts are really funny.

Is Adobe paying you on a per-post basis? If so, you'd better ramp it up a bit, buddy!

Actually Adobe licenses it to companies like Swish that do a better job than their own product.

People keep repeating that 50% figure but I have not seen any official numbers. I do find it difficult to believe based on how many Windows business users have Acrobat Pro loaded. Sure a lot of the high end CS packages go to Mac, but a ton of Flash and Dreamweaver people are Windows based so 50% sounds high to me.

But some might say your addition should fall into the best case scenarios.

That's absolutely correct. A lot of people forget that Adobe is trying to sell the Creative Suite. All this crap about Flash has nothing to do with the end-user or even developers. Responsible developers don't think "code once, deploy everywhere". It is about Adobe lining its coffers with overpriced CS licenses. It's about Adobe making Flash an OS substitute and locking people into their development tools.

The Macromedia buyout was one of the worst things to happen in the creative industry (all the companies Autodesk bought is right up there). It should have been blocked. The Creative Suite is insanely bloated and continues to get worse with each release.

Great analogy. Except Apple has built a Maglev railway and Adobe wants to run its diesel electric trains on them. You might be able to make an adapter to make it work, but wouldn't really be a maglev, would it?

I think that's all Apple's lawyers need to say in their response to the FTC.

The reality is there are cases where HTML5 is slow and uses far more CPU then Flash 10.1. There are alot of advantages to Flash 10.1 over the current version the problem is you simply don't understand how the technology works.

Using Chrome under with Windows Flash 10.1 is about 55 to 60% more efficient then HTML5.

Firefox cpu with Windows is about 6% Funny how Safari for Windows using Flash 10.1 is using about 7-8% cpu.

Apple and OSX are the problem not Flash. This entire siuation at this point is nothing more then Steve Job as always attempting to control content.

Whats going to be best is when they get hit with the anti trust.

Looks like Fire Fox might get left in the dust if they don't do something soon.

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

IE9 Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/201...evelopers.aspx

- INTERNET = Train Tracks
- iPhone = One (of many) new diesel trains you can use to ride the tracks

- Flash = that old wooden water tower designed to cater to steam engines

First off, performance is insanely variable. Apple (Steve Jobs) has come out and said that Adobe has a poor performing version of Flash on the Mac (10.1 is better but that only exists because of the pressure Adobe has been feeling) and they don't have a publicly available, high performance version for ANY mobile platform. They are supposedly going to release a BETA of it at Google I/O but we'll see. The iPhone has been out for 3 years and there is still no version for any other mobile OS.

As far as Steve controlling content, HTML is a open standard that I can use any text editor to develop for. Where is Flash in that argument? You need to buy Adobe's developer tools in order to develop a full Flash site. If other software companies want to develop anything related to Flash (Swish, etc.), they have to license technology from Adobe. Who's controlling more here?

Apple has every right to control THEIR OWN platform. Adobe wants to control EVERY platform. With Lynch's comments, it's even more clear that there won't be any anti-trust lawsuit.

The argument, Apple is killing Adobe by not allowing code compiled by non-Apple tools! Right?

So if this is the case then is the following not also true?

- Google might NOT be killing Adobe (whenever they release Froyo)
- RIM might NOT be killing Adobe (sometime later in 2010 ... maybe)
- Microsoft Xbox is killing Adobe?
- Sony PSP is killing Adobe?
- Nintendo Wii is killing Adobe?
- Nintendo DS is killing Adobe?

Also Adobe seems to also have some odd positions...

Adobe bans its Media Player from digital-signage devices

See last sentence of first paragraph of Steve's letter.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Yes this is why they have no case because if Adobe wins. All gaming consoles lose. Hey even Reich says it's crap and nothing will come of this.

Your points can be debated. But the "true" point this is not about Flash vs. HTML5! It's about Apple not wanting to rely on third party "Proprietary" tools on its OS. Apple has an interest to its consumers an interest that makes them money which is good for the well being of the company. One of the "Big" success to the iPhone is its App ecosystem! An ecosystem that is very important to Apple. To Apple along with its slick OS (which everyone has now copied) the Apps are a very important feature. So you damn right Apple wants to control that space. It is the game changer in some cases. Look Apple could give a shit about Android or any other mobile OS just like they could give a shit about Apple's OS. It's a battle field and competition is good. Apple is not trying to tell developers how to develop on other mobile OSs. They are just saying how they want development on their OWN OS. But now Adobe is trying to tell every developer how they should develop on ALL PLATFORMS: BY BUYING INTO FLASH AND RELYING ON THEM!! I am sorry that is not an option and Apple thinks so too!! There are other tools. USE THEM!!

A great VIDEO WIN for all of you pro FLASH 'developers'... Here is a GREAT example of what people have to look forward to with the INCREDIBLE marriage of Android + FLASH + Tablet!

Seriously... it's so unexpected... you gotta see it to truly appreciate it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hqFTx8rLsg

You can't help but smile knowingly when you hear the guy say... "This one does FLASH" you couldn't have timed things that well if you tried.

A number of Flash developers have also said this. And at the moment it is pretty much true.


this from the company that is the number one reason why Carbon ever existed. And a company that has never hidden that they took apps made for Windows and just wrapped them to make them work on Macs.

Their iphone arguments are based on the same 'all systems are the same' fallacy


Erroneous. Apple does NOT block Flash on Safari for the desktop.


Not really a change since they never allowed Flash or Java apps. They just clarified that said are not allowed in any form, wrapped or not.


Nothing you sign with Apple says you can't make a version of your apps for someone else. Apple has no market power to abuse. and since when were companies banned from doing right by their customers/products and instead have to make it easy for folks to 'spread the wealth'. Does this mean that from now on my xbox games will play on my PSP etc.

Holy Crap Adobe.. Flash is like a decade old.. it was great while it lasted but get over it. Move on. They remind me of the record labels pretending cd sales will somehow comeback if they go after downloading hard enough.
Steve Jobs is holding the door open for you, but he won't forever. Embrace the next generation.

Yep. if folks jump on the ipad etc bandwagon and make apps or switch to HTML5 they have no cause for Adobe's software

you might find this an interesting read. I particularly like his comment that Apple would only be potentially hurting themselves restricting what developers use cause those that dislike the rule will not make an iphone version.

A train-wreck. In so many ways.

I'll stick to my iPad.

Hard for you does not imply hard for everyone.


Hmm... no. Although Apple is taking a hard line on just how pants Flash really is, Adobe know that even if it performed almost as well as native apps, Apple would still not want it. Unlike the Mac, Apple are not in any way constrained by PC hardware or software conventions with their iP* devices. That lets them move fast and make a product that's innovative (relatively speaking) and distinct from the competition. If Apple had allowed any-old-software in the first place, do you think that answering a call when you were in an app would work? Would most of your software be usable without a keen eye, a steady hand, and a stylus? So Apple are a bit fussy about what to accept, they have their complicated HIG, and they reject outright anything which was made without due consideration for the usability in the device's context and the functionality of the user's device itself.

I doubt Apple has any strong interest in killing Flash; they'd be quite happy if it just wasn't relevant to their users, for example HTML5 which falls back to Flash if you've got an older browser. No problem there.


I've had Macs since 2001, and I wouldn't say that makes me "a fan for a while". There's nothing wrong with criticising Apple, but owning Apple products for a few years doesn't make you more entitled to do so.


I think that sounds like you have great interactivity with your videos. Not really stuff I'd use though - I'm more a play, pause, scrub man. All of that works just fine in YouTube's HTML5 beta. I think interactive transition control sounds fun, but I think video is fine without it.

The lack of presentation you're talking about is because the slideshows in question are HTML4, not HTML5, and the developers are unimaginative. Even in HTML 4 you can do more than just one-direction movement. Interactivity in HTML5 can be much higher, of course, because it integrates directly into the page, but that doesn't mean everyone will do a good job of it.


Wow. You really love Flash don't you? But that doesn't mean everyone else does. In fact, most users probably have no clue that it even exists. They just go to "the YouTube" and click on something, and a video starts playing. If you want to suggest that Flash is great, that's okay, but it'd be nice to have technical arguments for why that is necessarily the case.

Apple do not, at all, make devices that most people want. It might be true that most people own mobile phones, but if most people wanted iPhones, most people - or a very significant proportion thereof - would have them. They don't. Lots of people like iPhones. Not most, just lots.

You can argue that Apple are abusing their power if you want (although you should explain why it is abuse and not use), but to suggest that they are trying to manipulate the entire internet - or even would be able to do so, after all Microsoft never really managed it - is quite without foundation. I should hope that it is also retrospectively obvious to you that it's not Apple's job to make Flash work (and thus make Adobe richer) in any context.


If you're going to assert that Adobe was a white knight to Apple in the past, you should at least vaguely allude to the matter you're thinking of. I imagine you mean that Adobe continued to sell their software to people who wanted to buy it?

As for the amazing influence that Adobe CS somehow has on people to make them buy a Mac (and then pay as much again for Adobe's software) instead of a Windows computer, please provide evidence of this. Even anecdotes will do! I can say that I know six people who have definitely had a Mac in recent years, none of whom have had Adobe CS. So there's a number for you: 0% take-up rate.

In fact, I'll find some numbers on the interweb for you. Adobe says in a recent quarterly earnings release that they took about $800M in "products" in one quarter. It looks like CS is in the region of $1800 each. 800M / 1.8K = 444K, which suggests "up to" 444,000 instances of CS sold in the quarter (Adobe do sell other things!); meanwhile, Apple's quarterly report says that they sold 2.94M computers in a quarter. So there's a take-up rate for you: an estimated maximum of 444K/2.94M = 15% of new Mac buyers also bought CS, assuming that no Windows users bought CS at all and Adobe sold no other software. I think you can be reasonably sure that the actual number will be close to 5%.


That's very random! I suppose it shows that they're all really Windows-heads. Admittedly I don't think you get a case-sensitive filesystem by default on a Mac, so they can get away with it.


In programming, there is no laziness, only deadlines. If Adobe were aware of this (and it does seem like the kind of thing that someone would bug-report), they would have made a quick decision about whether the number of people involved was consequential, not so much to examine a straight cost/benefit ratio as to draw a line below which are features and fixes which are considered beyond the scope of the budget. Yes, the budget will have been far far below the expected profit, but they are a business after all, they're here to take developers' money.


You've seen their code? In my experience, everyone writes bad code (even relatively high-profile software); as long as it isn't shocking, it's acceptable. Bad code in itself isn't really related to performance, that's more about lack of good code.


If Apple wants to do that, they'll just buy Adobe's biggest competitor. It's much easier to buy in a bunch of people who already know what they're doing and already have a working product than to whip something up from scratch. It's not beyond the realms of possibility for professional image editing (Photoshop) and vector graphics (Illustrator), but they would still need a Dreamweaver and a Flash, and you should keep in mind that Apple are not a software company - they really only produce software to improve the Mac owning experience where it would otherwise be deficient. I can imagine the only reason Keynote exists (and Pages and Numbers) would be, hypothetically, a rant from SJ about how terrible Powerpoint is.


Specifically, any CEO who tried that would be fired by their own board. Their job is to act in the shareholders' interests, always.


Somewhat like the iPhone with Flash, Microsoft will probably only be interested in <canvas> once everyone else (ie, web sites) are commonly doing it. There's not really any risk for them until that happens, and that's relatively unlikely as long as MSIE remains in the majority.


I seem to recall that H.264 usage won't require actual money up-front. Their concern will strictly be the pure-open-source kind; probably they will end up putting support in, disabling it by default in the build, but bundling it in all the binary versions. It's actually pretty stupid that it doesn't support H.264 now!


I think there are "mobile flash" versions around, but I gather they are cut-down versions.


Yes, I've noticed the "Feds starting antitrust proceedings, maybe, in the future" stories and wondered what qualified them as "news". Surely any time anything has even the slightest possibility of being an antitrust matter (as reported by some complainant) they have to at least pursue an initial inquiry to see if there's any merit to the allegation and so decide whether to start court proceedings? I'm sure Microsoft get that all the time. It's certainly not the end of the world.


You know, there probably are a handful of 19th-century algorithms in common use in modern software (algorithms intended for manual use at the time, of course). I have no idea what they'd be, but the idea of 19th-century code isn't as ludicrous as it sounds! Consider the humble "for" loop: I'm sure that there will be precedent for that kind of set-state, do-work, alter-state, go-back-if-something-is-true algorithm in written instructions, going back centuries.

Actually Flash is over 15 years old. It was originally called SmartSketch. SmartSketch was ported to Windows and the Mac OS. Then it was called FutureSplash, then it was purchased by Macromedia and rereleased as Flash in 1996. The core tech is quite old. Like the days of multimedia CDs old. Also, Flash hasn't truly ever been good. It was convenient. It helped things move along but it has been stagnant for so long, it's ridiculous.

Especially if you know US railroad history. Part of the gauge problem was due to the fact that some railroads got their stock from overseas and had to go with what ever gauge the company they were dealing with used. Even though the UK had established the Stephenson (Standard) gauge in 1845 the Gauge Act allowed companies to repair and expand using other gauges as well as Ireland and the colonies (called the Indian Gauge--the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in the US still uses this gauge) to use total different gauges so even buying from our brothers across the pond didn't guarantee a common gauge.

Then you had other countries adopting popular regional US gauges such as Russia adopting the most common gauge used in the South at that time.

You have much the same thing with video formats today on the web: Flash vs WMV vs QT vs AVi.

++. I can't ++ this enough. QFT.

Try again. Adobe has spent years demanding that Apple bend over for them. When the iphone came out Jobs put a stop to that game.

Adobe's software for Macs has been an optimized Windows version half ass ported to Macs. And sometimes even with features missing.

Adobe is why Carbon was created. they were too lazy to redo their lazy Mac versions

And so on.


try again. I know a lot of folks that don't do professional apps on their Macs. and a lot of artists that don't have a speck of Adobe software on their Macs. and those that do loathe having to use it and will try out any software that might be half as good just so they can deAdobe their computers stat



Adobe will lose 50-60% of their sales. And a number of smaller companies will finally take off in sales with their just as good software.


not Apple's job. Adobe are the ones that need to make it better. By finally sitting down and writing an actual Mac version instead of a Windows one with a few pasted on lines to make it work 'well enough'

1) If I'm Adobe's board I seriously consider replacing narayen and lynch. In Narayan, they've got someone that is anything but a business leader, in lynch they've got someone that has lead their technology down a monolithic path.

2) If Apple wants to play competitor to CS, perhaps they start a new company ala Filemaker, and make it a cross-platform solution.

Very true.



Actually, I think you're right. I think that Windows and Mac OS X provide native H.264 playback through the OS, getting rid of the need for developers to pay licensing fees to MPEG-LA for playback purposes. Microsoft and Apple pay the fees. Mozilla could just enable that hook without having to pay the fees. It might be somewhat of a gray area though. I think they are primarily doing it on principal, more than technical or financial concerns.



Flash Lite exists, but it only contains a small subset of features of the mobile Flash player that Adobe is touting right now. Flash Lite was a half-hearted attempt to get Flash on mobile platforms.



They are just click generating headlines. As you said, inquiries are constantly launched, but they are far from formal charges being filed.

The do not NEED to come together. This is a straight fight over who will control the largest, most lucrative platform in modern mobile computing. If this were not the case, Adobe wouldn't be so peeing-their-pants desperate about this.
There will be collateral damage but Apple doesn't owe anyone a bloodless fight. If you don't agree with Apple then you vote them out of your wallet and vice versa. For those that don't know what the hell is going on, they either won't care or won't notice or someone will tell them why they can't play Farmville on their iOS device.
The reality is that the last 2 years has moved the ball tremendously in terms of Flash independence. 75% of sites may use flash but most have a non-flash fallback that is acceptable or non-flash alternative media e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, BBC (and soon Hulu). Apple is using its power to move the market and it seems to be successful so far. How much longer before Zynga looks into flash-free versions? Given that the economic demographics of iOS users are so strong (they earn more, spend more on apps/content etc.) it is a market that cannot be overlooked. Next year there should be getting on for 150M iOS devices sold and well over 100M still in use. For reference, RIM has 41M active users after all these years and they spend far less on apps/content etc. Flash is definitely going away, the question is how fast.

Money quote

"All the innovation coming from all those companies will dwarf what's coming from the one company that isn't participating," he said.

Those are some bold words considering Apple's trend.

Apple updates iPhone OS with new major (arguably) features every year. They want people using it right away, not years later. Look at Flash, how many sites/games are deployed using Flash 10 only features. Doubt many, most people use older software. Apple has done an amazing job keeping its devices software all relatively new. Whereas Android and nearly every other device/software struggles getting new updates adopted. Adobe wants people to make applications that have the lowest common denominator. Features present on all devices. Apple wants people taking advantage of hardware and software specific features they put in their devices.

The back and forth may be idiotic and beneath both parties but the stakes are real and burying the hatchet is out of the question. If it weren't so important, they wouldn't descend into this pathetic public pettiness. Remember that this fight is largely visible only to a few million geeks and nerds who mostly already have their opinions and know how to work around most issues.

I don't think Adobe wants to do that. When they stopped delivering Premiere for the Mac, Final Cut Pro filled the void. Now that Premiere is back on the Mac, nobody cares. I imagine the same would happen for the rest of the Adobe suite if they took that route. I think most people agree that Adobe needs to make Flash incredible for every (other) mobile platform. They should then demonstrate Flash running on an iPhone and prove Apple wrong. Short of this, I don't see Apple budging on their No Flash stance. By the way, Apple has been equally as stubborn with regards to Java on the iPhone.

"We'ere not focusing on Apple or fixing Flash so it will work better with Macs."