'We have never, ever abandoned Apple,' Adobe co-founder says - Page 3

FrameMaker

All the crap they've hoisted our way over the years! I really hope this ends badly for them!

And a private beta, at that.

Like it, that would have worked much better, would have stopped the war and kept flash alive. In fact, I think that Apple would have probably respected them a bit more for it. Nice job!

Autodesk? Really? Do you use their products? If I where to list the three worst companies in the software business; from an innovation standpoint, a quality standpoint and a @$#% the customer standpoint, Autodesk is right up there with Microsoft and Adobe. They buy other people's great ideas then milk them to death for max profit, while mindlessly mimicking Microsoft's ass hat ideas and calling it progress. No, not much chance of them pulling anything but a turd out, and that will take them years, or another purchase of their betters.

Gordon

Unfortunately, a man like Shantanu Narayen has far to much pride (some might say "hubris") to take an approach like this. He couldn't do something like this if his company's life depended on it.

the question is however, if apple had done the same if adobe had been on board for cocoa from the start. since carbon had to exist, why not use it? either as a time saver or dogfooding. they did have to showcase its capabilities after all...

Nope. Apple has $40B in the bank. Adobe is likely overvalued at $8B, I've heard anywhere from 2-8 really. Apple could snatch them up at any time and not break a sweat.

the number i hear quoted is about 100. out of 200,000. and apparently none of them are rated all that good (does anybody have a list?)

i'm sure we're going to survive the loss...

maybe. but what would be the point? i'm sure it would cost some software company MUCH less than 2 billion dollars to give us a CS5 equivalent suite.

what else do we need from adobe?

Apart from flash, that is theirs, so it ain't surprising if the best alternative is theirs, all the rest of their suit is actually an open market. Indesign, photoshop, dreamweaver, at least these three, and maybe even Fireworks and After Efects, they are industry standarts for quality in a market that is open for anyone to enter. They just make the best ones.

You blindly bash at adobe, but they do lots of things right, and their dominance in those fields kind of proves my point.

Oh, and the biggest reason why flash shouldn't die anytime soon, like some of you say? If around 50% of the web still uses IE6 or IE7 (according to the stats in wikipedia), that has no support for HTML5 tags, companies won't be jumping on the HTML5-only bandwagon for sure. So flash will be around, as a gift or a curse depending on what side you're on, for years and years.

EDIT: And almost forgot. Remember that Windows actually has some alternatives to CS5 (www.corel.com), but they don't support the mac for now, that I can see at least.

Flash has no EOL in sight, but there are certain aspects of Flash that will continue to drop out of favour from here on out.

We can look at IE6 and IE7 but every single machine that matters can run IE6 or IE7 can also run Firefox, IE8 and soon IE9. Google has dropped IE support and the advent of Win7 has pushed IE8 as the most popular version of IE. IE7 never beat IE6 as far as I can tell. So, if sites want to push standards for more efficient options they can always require a user to use a new browser. it wouldn't be the first time we've seen this in action.

But this is all irrelevant to the real crux of the issue: mobile browsers. It won't be too long before mobile computing is beating PC sales per unit. They don't have to be used as much PCs on the internet for each of those devices to be a great way for sites to get more viewers. Flash 10.1 for Android v2.2 on an 800MHz Cortex A8 is going to represent a small fraction of the devices being sold and even when it's possible it's still going to be far from ideal compared to more efficient methods.

Flash still has plenty of reasons to exist so as you state, "companies won't be jumping on the HTML5-only bandwagon" but they will be moving more into non-Flash as the standard with Flash as the fallback more many things we used to think were only capable with Flash.

With that logic all i need to do is disable all my plug-ins and my browsing experience magnificent

heck, if i dont use my browser at all it will never crash

Not really true, some places are simply companies that haven't updated their browser and users can't do it due to permissions. Remember that it comes with XP that is still (I think) the most used OS.
Also, some people (like my grandmother) just use what comes with the computer. And while flash is easy to install even without you knowing what you're doing (it actually "just happens" in ie6, while a browser requires actions and knowledge)


You guys keep pushing the issue of "800MHz processor", that's where it's been shown, it doesn't mean it won't well enough on a slower one. Just because nexus one is the showcase (afterall, it's the "official phone"), you can't be sure any other android phone won't be able to make it (especially after the web starts having mobile specific and lighter flash sites).



I don't see what you're getting at... The big chunk of the machines accessing the web (remember, iPads and smartphones are a minority) has easier access to flash than HTML5 compliant browsers.

And I actually talk quite a lot with people that do make websites... And their biggest curse ain't flash. It's IE6 and the fact that most major websites have to work well on IE6, not letting them do stuff the way it is supposed to be done by now.

I see the same happening here, with or without apple's support. And lets face it, both iPads are iPhones are very nice machines even without running flash. Not having it will just make it improbable that you'll ever be able to browse the web at it's full potential.

PS: Oh, and my windows firefox browser actually crashed twice while browsing html5 video dailymotion pages. Not everything is a bed of roses in that department.

It's quite true. Companies still using XP with IE6 are going to be the minority and there is no reason to limit your sales revenue and spend more money just to support these devices. Flash will be the fall back setup. How you can argue that HTML5 won't happen because of their lingering presence makes no sense. You go where the money is, and an decade old OS and browser is not where the money is.


The Nexus One is a 1GHz CPU so why would be stating 800MHz? It's because that is the number that has been thrown around for months, started with Adobe employees.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/26/f...d-devices-too/
Smartphones are machines that access the web, too. You aren't seeing what I'm getting at because you aren't seeing these devices as sources of revenue. Each one of them is a potential avenue for profit yet you think that supporting IE6 on WinXP in some ragamuffin corporate setup or aging granny's PC is more important to advertisers and sites than someone willing to spend $500 for a phone a $60+/month for service? DOES NOT COMPUTE.


Yes, it's been a long battle but it's finally coming to an end. IE6 support is dropped by many site sites for various reasons. Without even adding in the number of smartphone devices in use or their growth, you can take IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera and WebKit-based browsers IE6 is down to 18%. That leaves two main categories: IE7+ and standards-based browsers. Sure, there are variances in all the browsers and their versions, but the for most part you have over 80% of the browser market following two basic paths and IE is becoming more standards based. We won! But this IE6 issue has nothing to do with Flash and HTML5 so I'm not sure why you are bringing it up.


It's not about iPhone OS v. Flash or Apple v. Flash. It's about efficiency v. inefficiency. Flash still has plenty of areas that it's more efficient for devs to code for on the desktop because HTML5, CSS3 and these JS frameworks and browsers are so new. But that won't last forever. Now that much of this is in place they can start building tools that will chip away at Flash's backend dominance. "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.". On the mobile platform Adobe has sank their own battleship, so to speak. They failed to make Flash viable for mobiles. They failed to have Flash ready for touch devices. Now we have HTML5 alive and well in every major mobile OS browser and we have streaming video (their battleship) without the use of Flash.


Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux. I can play HTML5 video on my iPhone just fine. Granted, Flash doesn't crash my iPhone but that's because it doesn't exist. Check your resource usage between Flash and HTML5 on YouTube. You can even use the HW accelerated version (you'll need Windows or Mac OS for that) and HTML5 still uses considerably less than native code. How is Adobe going to get past that.

Enlighten me! I am an iPhone Developer, but haven't looked at Flash for 7 years.

Just what code does Apple refuse to add to the iPhone OS? Is it code to support a runtime ActionScript Interpreter?

TIA

Dick

adobe tends to buy things just to kill them off

AFAIK, they ban two things that Flash would bring with itself... AS interpreter (interpreted code), and the Flash codebase (outside libraries)....

Now, they've went ahead and banned cross-compilers/code translators, eliminating the last of any presence Flash has ever had on the iPlatform...



Dan

OK, so even if Apple did allow cross-compilers, the apps would still be rejected because they are interpreted?

So, all discussion of UX, OSFA, LCD aside, these apps still break the rules?

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Those are good examples of crapware vendors, but my vote goes to Intuit. Look at the latest Quicken for Mac - which has about 1/2 the features of the previous one and is missing about half of the critical features. Then there's Mac QuickBooks - which can't even access a QuickBooks network. Apparently Intuit thinks that Mac users don't use networks. But it's not just the Mac software that's crap. There's the Windows Point of Sale (appropriately nicknamed POS) where simply moving a data file from one server to another requires you to completely uninstall every single client software package as well as reinstalling the OS on the server.


it just might.


Maybe, maybe not. but creating a software package comparable to CS5 is only half the battle. Getting the customers to switch could take years and cost a fortune, even if your product is better.

If Apple were to buy Adobe, they'd get a huge customer base for starters. Then, they could update the software to take full advantage of features in Mac OS X (Grand Central, OpenCL, etc) and use the CoreVideo functions rather than rolling their own - which would make it much slimmer and faster. It's quite conceivable that the Mac version would improve enough to get a lot more hardware sales.

I'm not suggesting that Apple should buy Adobe (I'd need a lot more information to be able to make that analysis), but clearly there are advantages to Apple beyond the amount of money they'd spend creating a competitor. They'd also have to convince the DOJ that it's not an antitrust violation - and that would be hard, too.

Your whole argument is a giant fallacy. You assume a whole lot of stuff with little to no proof.
How are they going to be the minority if IE6+IE7 is still the majority? And even if falls down quite a bit more, a 30% minority, for example, is still a significant number. Websites will cater to that, like it or not. Just like IE's lingering presence made most of the web IE6 compatible for over 6 years.


That article just mentioned the motorola droid and the nexus one. That's the majority of android phones right there.


Yes, they are machines and they also are a very very very very small percentage of the web. And most of those people using smartphones have computers that will be using flash as it is supposed to be used. You try to ridicule my examples, as if they are the only case, but I'll tell you one more. I own quite a few gadgets. My university uses firefox 2.x and IE6 as their browsers. If I use their computers I'm stuck with what they give me, since my account doesn't give me permissions or space enough to install anything. Don't I matter to your advertiser? Doesn't 30% of the web matter more than a (random number - quite sure it is less than that) 1% that bought a smartphone and uses it to browse the web?



Simple, it's an example on how lingering technologies will influence web development for years to come. Flash won't die, just like IE6/7 don't seem to be dying, and especially since, unlike IE6 that even microsoft wants you to update, some big companies (for example, chrome brings flash inbued) are supporting flash.


There you go again saying X and Y are true and will happen without a single shred of proof. Adobe hasn't failed at anything yet (flash isn't out, so you have no idea how well it'll work), you have no idea if it isn't viable, you have no idea if it works well or not with touch devices.
And even inefficient, if a large chunk of the market can run flash and can't use html5, it'll stick. It won't last forever, but it'll stay for a long long time. And "streaming video is the flagship of flash". Interactive content is also another part of flash. And again, you can see videos on youtube, but some websites still aren't using html5 - some big websites, like hulu.


I'm saying chrome's stability watching html5 video was compromised. And just did your test - if there is a large overhead, I'm not seeing it. Chrome had 6-9% CPU usage on both cases - but I did miss the video anotations and close captions on the html5 version. And was limited to the 380p version of the video.

Within this year or next, Android will be the dominant mobile platform. And it supports Flash 10.1.

Everytime I read an article and thread like this which seem to dominate this forum lately I start to wonder one thing. What if Apple and Adobe actually put as much energy trying to get a good mobile version of Flash instead of putting all their energy into bashing each other and taking the time to write stupid letters.

With a little effort on the hardware end from Apple and some effort on the optimization end from Adobe this just doesn't seem like a massive issue.

Yes, Flash for OSX is a major CPU hog which impacts Windows users far less, but some of that appears to be resolved in 10.1.

Its really annoying because it seems like both these companies wants to bitch about who is right on this issue rather then working together to fix it. Which in the long run benefits their customers.

Wow! you certainly have provided irrefutable facts to back up your statements!

I'm convinced! Monday, I am going to pop down to my local phone store and buy one of these Android phones running Flash 10.1. Which one do you suggest I buy? I have a compelling need to surf the "full web" on my smart phone.

And, I guess most of the Apple fans, here, should log off AppleInsider, then ramble on over to one of the AndroidInsider forums, to compare Flash experiences!

Which one will you be visiting?

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Some quick searching for browser stats by version shows IE 6+7 totals about 30%. Since when has 30% been a majority of anything? They do make up about half the IE users currently tho.

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For all you Flashers out there... I am curious-- does mobile Flash support OpenGL ES?

If so, what versions?

What GPUs are supported?

What versions of Android OS are supported?

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Apple is doomed!

... is there any other answer to these types of statements...

35.29 to be exact.

About the same as IE8, the most used browser. I wonder, do you know that if someone has 35%, another 30, another 20%, the one with 35% is still a majority? It's still more than firefox, or chrome or safari.


Does it matter? It's not supposed to be either one or the other. Flash on mobile won't stop development on whichever native language a mobile phone supports. But, for example, an on-line poker site wants to have a mobile client. Flash would be a great tool to facilitate that, since it would work more or less the same on every phone with a touchpad that supported it. You don't need a beefy processor or state of the art interfaces. Just something that works on most mobile phones.

When the category is IE 6+7 vs Everyone Else, they total 35%, everything else is 65%. That means they are clearly a minority. The other browsers are all more current as far as standards go.

I wouldn't say that it's simply because HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript are so new (and you probably didnt mean it that way). As a developer, it is very appealing to use a technology like Flash or Silverlight since they will render content and behave exactly the same across the multitude of browsers. Although it would be nice to just use HTML, CSS, JavaScript for building web applications, the idea of making the pages compatible across browsers is appalling. There are even rendering differences between the major web browsers for the new versions (HTML 5 and CSS 3).

This problem will likely be around for quite some time -- until the major web browsers render HTML, apply CSS and execute JavaScript exactly the same. Some of the standards the companies building browsers are trying to support are so complex that it is incredibly hard to have the exact same implementation.

So, if they are the most used tool (tied with ie8) to access the web they aren't a majority?

And you miss the point entirely. Only html5, around 65% can see with no problems. Flash maybe 98%.

Which do you think a company would invest in?

easy now, I have no information on whether they are good or not, other than they were accepted into tha app store at one point. I was just mentioning something I found out recently, and wondered what will happen with those apps. I assume since they likely won't adhere to the new rules they'll be wiped.

No, BluRay is the bag of hurt.

Adobe is buggy and makes Macs crash if they try to surf the web.

this is a point a lot of people who aren't web developers seem to gloss over.

When I do develop something using flash, the one thing missing from the mix is the cross browser compatibility stuff. A feature is only as great as it's complete support across all major browsers both current and the ones still in use.

Though disclaimer, (which you need around here it seems), this doesn't by any means detract from the great new capabilities of html5.

Yes it matters to me... I am currently working on 2 apps that use OpenGL. There are some decisions to be made because all versions of iPhone OS do not support all (basically, both) versions of OpenGL ES.

I googled to see how Flash proposed to handle this... and the results suggested they didn't, currently, but would in the future.., I didn't want to start an investigation.

i just thought some of Flash experts, posting here, would know!

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If the company doesn't have their head in the sand and sees how the % of people still limited to IE 6 and 7 is eroding monthly, then why would they restrict themselves to those?

do you really think apple put a lot of energy into bashing adobe? i see adobe's staff blog a lot lately, certainly bashinging apple (brimelow?), and flash developers post on forums (understandable, we're talking about their living after all). all i've seen from apple is one open letter by mr. jobs and a couple of remarks by some pr person. did i miss something?

I personally don't know very much on the subject of openGL ES, as none of my projects currently would ever use it, but if you google it, you'll find out that player 10.1 will support it. So if a project needs it now, don't consider flash.

But somehow, Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect you wouldn't consider flash player for a project anyway.

i'm still curious to see a list of those apps...

my point was: we're talking about a minute percentage of the overall number. that's kinda the point of the whole thing: adobe claims that apple's app developers are being hamstrung. in reality the people that are being excluded are NOT iphone developers (the 100 apps notwithstanding), but flash developers that want a shortcut into the app store. different thing.

I see a lot more people bashing adobe on forums than the other way round, but it's likely about even.

And a cursory knowledge of the platform would inform you that should flash go down, I doubt any of the real developers would be out of a living.