COMPANIES LIKE ADUMBE and MICRO$HIT should just DIE and ROLLOVER or just go BANKRUPT, they are becoming more and more irrelevant as the days go by...
ADOBE left US MAC USERs in the DARK many times with this BULLSHIT of not working with APPLE to move over to the 'newer' technologies when APPLE clearly was making it easy for them-
so i say FUCK and LET 'EM EAT $HIT!!!!
I HATE WHAT ACROBAT does to my MAC and all the other crappy shit ADOBE puts out and tries to ignore APPLE like they are some 2nd class software/hardware company, well the CHICKEN has come HOME TO ROOST!!!
and NO COURT is going to make APPLE change ANYTHING!!!!
sorry sore loSERs...
Has anybody seen the new iPAD or the new MacBook Pros that just came out Tues??
You sound extremely bitter, despite protestations to the contrary. And, it seems like this is very personal for you, and very much directed at SJ personally. The venom, which you apparently tried to "soften" with your edit is dripping from the bits I quoted above.
It's also quite clear, that you don't give a damn about iPhone OS as a platform, or iPhone users for that matter; your only interest is in how you personally, or your employer, can exploit it for your own ends. If there's any hypocrisy here, it is yours, and yours alone.
Well, either that or you're so fixated on your SJ hate that you just aren't able to think rationally on this topic.
Wow, you formulated my thoughts better than I could. This is exactly how Pseu's essays have struck me as well. A well-spoken and knowledgeable person who, sadly, is somewhat intellectually hobbled by the points you so ably laid out.
Pseu seems to beautifully and passionately argue the micro points, while pretty much ignoring the macro situation. The elephant in the room. Steve Jobs did save Apple, has garnered the highest respect of the business press, and Apple has been phenomenally successful.
I just sold one block of Apple stock I bought in the bad old days to pay for remodeling my kitchen. I'm very happy with the way Steve does business. Pseu's wishful thinking about Apple "peaking" taints her otherwise worthy opinions with a bit of the same Apple-hating troll posts one reads everywhere.
I'll leave the rest for those with development experience to explain why Apple is not required to make it easier to develop Windows software and APIs. You'll also notice during the Olympics, that the Norwegians don't stop in the middle of an event, to go help the Swedish team. Really?!?! Sheesh.
Heh.
And that's it.
Adobe's software is overpriced. It smacks of PC software ported to the Mac. They burnt their bridge along time ago.
They dragged their heals in delivering, feature-less, bloated and slow software to the Mac. A substantive user and profit base for their products.
They have a monopoly on the desktop internet with slow, crap, buggy, insecure flash. And they want Apple to let that monopoly extended to Apple's (yes, THEIR) platform with a minimum of effort. They want Apple to support an intermediary layer to make the iPad slower and burn battery quicker and drag their heals on supporting Apple's new OS features annually. (Y'know, a year cycle...vs Adobe's 18 month if they feel like it cycle.) And then...of course, Adobe wouldn't treat Apple iPhone/iPad any better than than Android or Window's mobile. They'd all be the same. Except everybody would be user Adobe's archaic flash monopoly. Instead of Apple's feature rich environment.
Why don't Adobe get back to creating authoring apps. Get flash back on track as a HTML5 authoring tool. Use Apple's iphone programming environment. They're a multi-billion dollar company, put some backbone into App development and optimise for Apple's platform. Apple's House. Apple's rules. No. They've had their time to make flash go mobile. And they've sat, and sat, and sat on it...whining and bitching instead of putting out a nimble product. Apple ported the leviathan OS X to an iPHone. And Adobe are whining about porting flash to iPhone. Go away Adobe. You suck.
Apple aren't going to give you control of their platform by proxy. Apple's been burned by your 'crocodile friendship' in the past. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Apple have got you right where they want you.
They have 200k apps. Xillions of developers who CAN play by Apple's rules and ARE making a basketful of money. Adobe are just too lazy to do what they really are. They think they're a platform developer because they bought flash off Macromedia. A travesty of a takeover if ever there was one. It reduced choose in image, vector, web authoring software.
And check out the UK prices of Adobe's software. Don't give that currency BS. They could sell from the US store, as downloads or offer DVDs that cost the same as the last generation. The prices are obscene. Oh, and they're going to sue Apple for being a monopoly? That's rich.
It's looking like I may just buy Pixelator, Manga Studio and Painter and give Photoshop the finger. Eh. People say their aren't Photoshop alternatives. But I did great Art on Photoshop 4. Shrugs. All the other features since? Indespensible? Sure, if you say so. And? I can get all three for much cheaper than Photoshop and probably a few other software programs.
It's like MS office. The crap that we use at our school. For me, iWorks is much better for kids, private individuals and probably much of small and big business. Pages is a great word processor. You don't need the clunky bloatware that is office.
I'm seriously considering making my existence Adobe as well as M$ free. It can be done very easily.
If Adobe push Apple...if they do...(and I hope they do!) Then I think Adobe are in deep trouble. It took very little time for Apple to saw the legs off Avid with Final Cut. Go on, Adobe, I DARE you to pull Creative Suite Apps. It will take Apple about a year to come out with a basic competitor..and another year to refine it, bundle it, sell it cheaper and blow your Photoshop out the water. What's more. I'll support them every inch of the way. Get that.
Proponents of Adobe Flash insist that Apple?s iPhone 4.0 restrictions amount to ?restraint of trade,? that the company?s Flash platform covers the vast majority of computers, that Adobe doesn?t need Apple and could bury it by cutting off its apps for the Mac in retaliation, that Apple really owes Adobe a hand, and that by not offering Flash, Apple is violating a universal doctrine demanding Choice. They?re wrong, here?s why.
.
Ready for a roller coaster of emotionalist tirades directed at Apple? The Flash Brigade is out in full force, so there?s no asking for clarification or analytical thoughtfulness going on, just a lot of malicious motives being hastily attributed based on a series of conspiracy theory assumptions. Buckle up.
Myth 1: Apple?s great ?restraint of trade?
The first argument being thrown at Apple is that its new restriction on the source languages that can be used to link to its iPhone SDK APIs is a ?restraint of trade,? apparently because Apple has a legal obligation to support third parties who want to apply their tools to build iPhone apps.
Never mind that such accusations have never been thrown about when the subject was developing titles for the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, or any other game console. Those developers must not only use the languages and tools the vendor outlines, but typically must also pay thousands of dollars for licensing fees, specialized development hardware, and jump through a variety of other hoops.
The same people who seem so morally outraged about about Apple?s still minority share of the smartphone market (in terms of hardware units sold), seemed completely cool with Microsoft?s reign over the entire PC market, which it micromanaged in meticulous detail, telling PC makers what hardware they could and could not sell, what software they could not bundle, and so on.
If Android had a nickel for every ?developer? who threatened out of rage to run to that platform every time Apple enacted a new policy, that hobbyist platform could probably afford to buy itself a real game.
Myth 2: Flash is ubiquitous
Adobe likes to say that 96% of all computers in the US have Flash installed. What it doesn?t say is that more than 60% of all smartphone web traffic, and 96% of all ?Mobile Internet Device? (that?s a euphemism for ?iPod touch?) traffic doesn?t run Flash at all.
Additionally, it?s not as if Adobe had created a great mobile Flash platform and Apple stomped all over it to be mean. Adobe didn?t have a mobile version of Flash that could even play Flash videos until Flash Lite 3 appeared, well after the release of the iPhone. Even then, that product couldn?t run most of the Flash content created for desktop PCs.
Adobe didn?t pass that hurdle until last summer, when it introduced an early version of Flash Player 10 for Android. But that version still doesn?t play back everything the PC version does. The latest 10.1 version for mobiles is supposed to do better, but it?s still in demo stages and requires a Cortex A8 class processor, meaning it only runs on Android or webOS devices from the last several months.
If Apple supported this, it could only run on the iPhone 3GS. So Adobe?s mobile strategy is actually just now emerging. Apple has been selling the iPhone for three full years now. There was no suitable version of Flash to sell, so Apple made its own plans.
To hear from the tech media people who feed from the Adobe propaganda machine like ducks being force fed for foie gras, you?d think Adobe has had a real mobile strategy all this time and Apple has just been playing the role of a conniving obstructionist.
The truth is that it?s Adobe?s fault there?s no Flash on the majority of mobiles, because the company was completely happy just misleading the world of pundits while talking instead of doing. Well it?s not 2007 anymore, it?s 2010, and that?s three years of work that everyone else has put into HTML5.
Adobe hasn?t done anything to earn the rights to cram the Internet back into the Flash box it likes to sit upon as it collects taxes from those creating content that only plays back via Adobe?s own players. Adobe never been on top of things in the mobile world, and the desktop version is not exactly doing all that much anymore either. As companies shift their resources from everything Flash to HTML5, Adobe?s desktop monopoly over interactive content will rapidly erode. It?s not Apple?s fault that?s happening, it?s Adobe?s.
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Myth 3: Adobe?s gonna get Apple
With Apple making no effort to bail Adobe out from the consequences of its own incompetence, the Flash Brigade is calling for a merciless reaction from Adobe. Perhaps the company will give up a huge chunk of its Creative Suite sales by snubbing Mac users?
That?s what Microsoft did when it realized Apple was now competing against it in productivity apps. Look at how much money Microsoft saved by not developing Mac versions of Office 2008 and 2010. Oh wait, Microsoft did develop generations of Office for Mac even though Apple is now selling iWork. Microsoft made lots of money selling Office for Mac.
And that?s why Adobe will keep selling Creative Suite for Macs. Adobe can make lots of money even while it snubs Mac users, so why would it stop making money to snub Mac users? Adobe is also rolling out new apps for iPad and iPhone. Clearly, the company is around to make money, not to behave like a 15 year old girl dramatizing her contempt for those who have offended her in some fashion. Somebody tell the Internet.
Sorry Flash Brigade, Adobe isn?t about to retaliate against Apple. The reason Adobe is talking is because that?s all it can do at this point after screwing up its mobile strategy and failing to anticipate years ago where computing was headed and what changes it needed to make. It?s not Apple?s job to keep Adobe in business.
Office Wars 3 ? How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly
Myth 4: Apple owes Adobe a living
The Flash Brigade also likes to tell tales about how Adobe (like Microsoft) lovingly rescued Apple back when the company was having hard times, so Apple should be paying Adobe back by establishing Flash as the proprietary alternative to open web standards.
This is curious (or perhaps hilarious) because Adobe?s support for Apple has long been just as money motivated as Macromedia and Microsoft. Back when Apple wanted its major developers to embrace NeXTSTEP and port their existing code to a modern new API that would solve a lot of the old problems with the Classic Mac OS, it got nothing but blank stares from all threes of those ?partners.?
Had they invested in Apple?s plans, we?d have gotten a Mac OS X with the sophistication of the iPhone back in 1998, rather than living through a decade of Apple building Carbon and then weaning its developers off it. Adobe and Macromedia helped delay Apple?s plans for a decade just so they could safely make money selling Mac users less sophisticated software.
When Apple turned itself around, it was no longer in a position to beg for the support of companies like Adobe and Macromedia and Microsoft. It has begun telling developers what to do. It told Adobe that if it wanted to build 64-bit Mac apps, it would need to do it using Cocoa. Adobe balked for a while, pushing off the 64-bit port of Creative Suite for the Mac by a year and a half. This spring, Adobe will finally get portions of Creative Suite apps to Cocoa, just a decade plus a few years after Apple asked the first time.
The only thing Apple owes Adobe is decade of torturous knuckle dragging. Let?s see if Flash is still around in 2020. Maybe Steve Jobs will accommodate Adobe by throwing in a version of Flash with iPhone OS 14 as payback for Adobe sticking it out like a trouper.
Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody
Myth 5: Apple should just solve Adobe?s problems by offering Choice
With hearts bleeding more dramatically than even the most tortured religious figures ever imagined under centuries of Christendom, the Flash Brigade next insists that no matter how justified Apple is in restricting its own platform, no matter how incompetent Adobe was in screwing up mobile Flash, without regard for how powerless Adobe is to demand that anything really change, and ignoring how awful Adobe and Macromedia were to Apple in the past, it?s Apple?s duty, no, moral obligation, to support Flash as a Choice.
That?s because a variety of Choices are always preferable to a subset of ideal options. Who needs a web based on open, interoperable standards when you can have the Choice of all dynamic content being locked up in Flash? What a wonderful option.
I know when I plant a garden, I don?t do any weeding first because I want to give all forms of life an equal opportunity to spread and benefit from my efforts and irrigation. If I just planted vegetables and herbs, I?d only have things that were good. Why not also have the weeds that are already here? By not weeding, I get the things I want to grow AND the option of weeds. Who cares if those weeds will choke out any positive development and keep things just the way they were before I did any planting. Choice is always preferable to change, because change is scary!
Well, at least in the minds of companies who advocate Choice when their particular Choice involves monopoly control. Microsoft wanted music player buyers to have a Choice of music stores and a Choice of hardware vendors, but interestingly, not really a Choice in media player operating system vendors.
Similarly, while Adobe wasn?t so keen on offering users a Choice of Cocoa support, or a Choice of both HTML5 and Flash output from its development tools, it is really interested in Apple offering users a choice between the HTML5 open web Apple is cultivating and the Flash weeds it wants to see choke out any potential for change on the web.
The fallacy of Flash: why Adobe?s ideological war with Apple is bankrupt
Nothing left to do but talk
And so, through a mix of incompetence, belligerence and emotionalist hypocrisy, Adobe has been pumping a non-stop stream of propaganda about how critically important Flash is on mobile devices, even though millions of people been using the highest ranked smartphone for three years now without suffering any ill (not even the rest of humanity on lessor smartphones have missed being able to render desktop Flash content, because they haven?t been able to either). There?s a reason for all that talk: Adobe is terrified.
Like Microsoft, Adobe has long been able to sign up every major player in the consumer electronics industry to pay for whatever garbage it has had the shameless balls to crap out. Three generations of Flash Lite, and now a variant of its desktop web plugin that demands the fastest smartphones on the planet just to run it. Once you get used to getting paid to do next to nothing, it?s a brutal shock when somebody stands up and refuses to play along with your ridiculous game.
Apple isn?t just a rebellious outsider. Not in mobiles, where it controls most of the world?s web traffic, and certainly almost all of the traffic of affluent customers. Flash has found its way to the hobbyist Android platform, and has graced the webOS even as it goes through its final death throes. It is promised to arrive for Windows Phone 7, the ace in the hole Microsoft plans to use to take back all the market share it lost to Android. But Flash isn?t ever going to be on the iPhone OS, and that not only makes a big black hole in Adobe?s strategy for maintaining in monopoly control over dynamic content on the web, but also questions why we were ever using this crap in the first place on the desktop.
Once society awakes to see how duped it?s been, the value of Adobe?s $3.1 billion 2005 deal to acquire Macromedia (largely for Flash) might look like less than a brilliant move.
I want more, better, cheaper Apps, and my app vendors to focus on my needs?
185.000 Apps, average price about 2$ (estimated), at least those 200 Apps I have installed on my iPhone in a stunning quality - missing your needs and me getting a millionaire because I missed the boat. Since 2007 I was convinced that the iPhone will be the big thing, but I started too late to learn Cocoa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Apple could have done lots to lower the risks of the Mac or iPhone platform?
The biggest risk would be to stand still. Apple is in the same boat as the 3rd party devs. I also have trouble in keeping the pace in my job, but I can't slow down this crazy world, although I'm getting too old for that sh**.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Adobe didn't get on stage and promise it one year and pull it the next?
Instead they promised an app store approval guaranty. Did they verify this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sue Denim
Sure. PowerPC forever... ooops. Intel forever. QuickTime rocks, that's why there's no 64 bit version. We support our 3rd party tools vendors, that's why we're killing CodeWarrior/Metrowerks by not sharing enough that they can stay in business. Carbon 64 is a valid way to get to 64 bit -- ha ha, just kidding. Here's the terms of the iPhone agreement: chortle, sucker -- you fell for it.
May be valid. My point is that they would have been dead sticking on PPC while Motorola and IBM were not able to deliver competitive solutions especially for mobile devices.
Metrowerks was a victim, at least I feel like that, but I can't judge it.
64 Bit was / is a big thing. There was need for a fast and consistent implementation. I guess it simply turned out that they were not able to provide the resources for two major frameworks. As I stated Cocoa was pronounced as the future. Perhaps no nice move.
Back to PPC. Apple needed a plan B. And they had it by porting to X86 even at the times they were convinced that PPC would rule the world.
As far as I know Adobe was pretty pleased about the transition because it simplified porting and they ware able to drop CW/MW themselves.
Let me finally state that I understand your anger. But stating that only one party played hardball in this conflict is simply wrong.
Conflicts are escalating when people take tough moves personal.
I unfortunately don't know Steve Jobs and You, but what I know for sure is this:
If You continue to attack him in the public in this way, You both will have one thing in common: anger.
Hey, I thought you liked flash spam in your sandwich?
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. I'm not one to post entire articles. But this time? I couldn't resist posting the entire thing. It covers it all. It's pretty emphatic. Given the vast tracts of verbosity on this hot topic. I think it's the best article of its type. Between that and Daring Fireball? We've got it covered.
M$, Adobe and Google have had their day in the sun. *(Let's not mention Dell, who Apple have steamrollered over...)
Now it's Apple's turn. They're three companies that have one thing in common, they've burned Apple and Steve Jobs. Now it's pay back time. (And Apple are doing it the old fashioned way, no, not with a chain saw...they're just out competing them. So, Adobe. Go make your own phone...and App store...)
They're all run by sales guys and technicians, they have no heart or emotion in their products. They're bloated, overpriced and they suck.
PS. I'm not one to post entire articles. But this time? I couldn't resist posting the entire thing. It covers it all. It's pretty emphatic. Given the vast tracts of verbosity on this hot topic. I think it's the best article of its type. Between that and Daring Fireball? We've got it covered.
If you want to support the article author, what is appropriate is a link plus a short snippet to illustrate the gist of the article. Reposting an entire article falls well outside of fair use.
SJ is supposedly notorious for holding a grudge, but I don't see his actions here (or generally, these days) being motivated by any desire for revenge. If there's a personal element to it, it's SJ saying, "We created the best mobile platform in the world, and (this time) we're not going to let you f*** it up."
You're quite amusing. Being a NeXT and Apple Alumni it's quite entertaining, albeit fantastical.
I also notice that "incompatible with everything else" is used to mean "not interoperable with PCs running Windows." So that Apple's intransigence boils down to "failing to adopt PC centric practices."
Interesting then, that now that Apple has a stronger market position, it is once again demanded of them that they be the ones to provide interoperability.
Apparently being Apple means you have to dance to everyone else's tune, regardless of your industry position.
One thing everyone keeps harping on who is against Apple is that not allowing flash makes things more expensive for developers.
I don't get that. XCode is free and an excellent development environment. It took me two weeks to learn how to write apps for the iPhone and another 2 weeks to learn how to handle the OpenGL ES graphic system.
The biggest costs to my firm developing games for the iPhone: Maya and Photoshop.
Since we all had makes to start with before deciding to develop for Mac and iPhone, the cost to do apps conforming to the Apple HIG was 0.
If you are taking about the costs of developers, you should just sit down. Good developers cost money that you pay no matter what. If you want to be able to hire creative developers you have to pay that cost. If you just want code mechanics who can't or don't need to develop any new components and can stick to the standard toolkit that comes with Flash, then go ahead as long as you can target your audience. I have worked with too many poor Flash and VBA developers to want to put up that kind of lowest common denominator thinking.
I have to work with a lot of these kinds of developers. I get tired of some dim bulb Java developer complaining about me writing in C because I have to manage my own memory "when Java will do that for me so that I do not have to worry about it". (How in the world do people get a comp sci degree without knowing at least one low level language is beyond me, I mean, I learned C and Pascal when I was in school and now they teach Java instead?) Hell, I still do not use garbage collection in Objective-C (and my C/C++ code obviously) and some of my server software runs 24/7 without a memory leak (well, we do bounce them at midnight on Sunday).
And by the way, I have also worked with some very fine developers who worked with Flash and VBA, I really should not paint everyone with the same brush.
So, Lightroom led the way among 64-bit Mac apps (beating Aperture to 64-bit by nearly two years), and Adobe has now converted three major Mac apps--After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop--from Carbon to Cocoa 64. Meanwhile Final Cut Pro 64 and the rest of the FCP suite remain missing in action. Maybe--just maybe--we can now put that "lazy" talk to rest.
Metrowerks was a victim, at least I feel like that, but I can't judge it.
Metrowerks is an interesting example. They were an important part of helping Apple make what success they did out of the PPC. But, when Apple bought NeXT and decided that the future Mac OS would be based on it, they had to make a decision. Throw out the NeXT development tools and frameworks so that Metrowerks (by then owned by Motorola) could maintain their lucrative compiler business, which had been very helpful to Apple, or pull the rug out from under them and make what is now Xcode and Cocoa the official development tools for the new Mac OS.
It might have been "nice" if Apple had not pulled the rug out from under them, Metrowerks had been a valuable partner over the years, but "nice" wasn't going to turn Apple into a success. They did what they had to do, and they did the right thing, but yeah, it must have sucked to have been working at Metrowerks just then.
But, the important point is, they didn't do it out of malice toward Metrowerks, they did it because it was what had to be done to make Mac OS X a success. And, as much as Flash sucks and perhaps personally disgusts Steve Jobs, they aren't doing this to screw Adobe. They're doing it because it's the right thing to do, and because it's what has to be done. Being "nice" and adopting a que sera, sera attitude is not a recipe for success.
(And, well, as far as Adobe goes, did they really think Apple was going to just sit by and watch them turn iPhone OS into just another platform for Flash? If I were a shareholder in Adobe, I'd be wanting to see some heads roll about now.)
Metrowerks is an interesting example. They were an important part of helping Apple make what success they did out of the PPC. But, when Apple bought NeXT and decided that the future Mac OS would be based on it, they had to make a decision. Throw out the NeXT development tools and frameworks so that Metrowerks (by then owned by Motorola) could maintain their lucrative compiler business, which had been very helpful to Apple, or pull the rug out from under them and make what is now Xcode and Cocoa the official development tools for the new Mac OS.
It might have been "nice" if Apple had not pulled the rug out from under them, Metrowerks had been a valuable partner over the years, but "nice" wasn't going to turn Apple into a success. They did what they had to do, and they did the right thing, but yeah, it must have sucked to have been working at Metrowerks just then.
Nice fanboy interpretation. This reminds me of every Obama speech: "we can do it my way, or do nothing and let everyone die a horrible death instead". You feel like saying, "those are the only two choices? Really?"
It also sucked to be any developer that counted on it (like all of them). It also sucked to be a customer that counted on those Apps, because that set Apps back months. In fact, the costs of that, was responsible for more App leaving the Mac than any other event.
In this case, Apple could have continued to give Metrowerks access to the headers so they could continue to release their tools. Since their tools were much better than XCode (and in some ways were still superior to XCode of today), there are many that would have paid. But for it not being malice, they just left them hanging. Since Metrowerks couldn't fight Apple, they were driven out of business. That cost many developers many months or years (if not more) of development costs.
This reminds me of every Obama speech: "we can do it my way, or do nothing and let everyone die a horrible death instead". You feel like saying, "those are the only two choices? Really?"
Although I agree with many of the sentiments that Sue Denim has expressed in regard to Apple's approach to developers, I do NOT agree with any of the political statements. This is in no way relevant to the topic. Kind of like how running the Flash Player on iPhone is in no way relevant to the argument of allowing or not allowing the desktop Flash Application to output to an iPhone App.
Although I agree with many of the sentiments that Sue Denim has expressed in regard to Apple's approach to developers, I do NOT agree with any of the political statements. This is in no way relevant to the topic....
Sorry. It seemed relevant to me.
Ignore the politics and analyze President Obama's presentation techniques (I've been doing so for a presentation on presentation styles): he uses the same technique whenever he talks about "the other side". He does "the only two choices are mine or some exaggerated other one" -- which makes it sound like what he's doing is the only obvious choice. (That's why Joe Wilson yelled "you lie" in congress). It doesn't matter which side you agree with -- it's just his technique.I respect more an arguer that can state why he thinks his view is better in spite of a FAIR representation of the other side.
The poster used the same technique: the two choices were Apple could either release XCode and destroy Metrowerks and the developers in an annoying way... or Apple could not release XCode. So obviously they made the right choice.
Of course Apple could have still supported XCode AND let Metrowerks live -- Apple had done that with MPW, ThinkC, Borland and Microsoft at the same time before. When Apple doomed PowerPlant, they could have tried to buy it up or support it to keep Apps running, and so on. They could have tried to acquire Metrowerks and borrow some of the Code or design or features that people liked. There were many options. They chose the one that hurt the most developers and Apps (and thus customers) and was the most anti-competitive.
Individually, these issues each have some justification (from Apple's side). It would have cost Apple more to play nice. NeXT would have learned how to document, be open, communicate. All things they weren't good at. So it was cheaper and quicker to do it the way they did. But was it better for the customers or community? 5% of your developers here, 5% there, and it adds up.
Comments
COMPANIES LIKE ADUMBE and MICRO$HIT should just DIE and ROLLOVER or just go BANKRUPT, they are becoming more and more irrelevant as the days go by...
ADOBE left US MAC USERs in the DARK many times with this BULLSHIT of not working with APPLE to move over to the 'newer' technologies when APPLE clearly was making it easy for them-
so i say FUCK and LET 'EM EAT $HIT!!!!
I HATE WHAT ACROBAT does to my MAC and all the other crappy shit ADOBE puts out and tries to ignore APPLE like they are some 2nd class software/hardware company, well the CHICKEN has come HOME TO ROOST!!!
and NO COURT is going to make APPLE change ANYTHING!!!!
sorry sore loSERs...
Has anybody seen the new iPAD or the new MacBook Pros that just came out Tues??
SWEET!!!....
Oh, yes. There it is. Done.
You sound extremely bitter, despite protestations to the contrary. And, it seems like this is very personal for you, and very much directed at SJ personally. The venom, which you apparently tried to "soften" with your edit is dripping from the bits I quoted above.
It's also quite clear, that you don't give a damn about iPhone OS as a platform, or iPhone users for that matter; your only interest is in how you personally, or your employer, can exploit it for your own ends. If there's any hypocrisy here, it is yours, and yours alone.
Well, either that or you're so fixated on your SJ hate that you just aren't able to think rationally on this topic.
Wow, you formulated my thoughts better than I could. This is exactly how Pseu's essays have struck me as well. A well-spoken and knowledgeable person who, sadly, is somewhat intellectually hobbled by the points you so ably laid out.
Pseu seems to beautifully and passionately argue the micro points, while pretty much ignoring the macro situation. The elephant in the room. Steve Jobs did save Apple, has garnered the highest respect of the business press, and Apple has been phenomenally successful.
I just sold one block of Apple stock I bought in the bad old days to pay for remodeling my kitchen. I'm very happy with the way Steve does business. Pseu's wishful thinking about Apple "peaking" taints her otherwise worthy opinions with a bit of the same Apple-hating troll posts one reads everywhere.
I'll leave the rest for those with development experience to explain why Apple is not required to make it easier to develop Windows software and APIs. You'll also notice during the Olympics, that the Norwegians don't stop in the middle of an event, to go help the Swedish team. Really?!?! Sheesh.
Heh.
And that's it.
Adobe's software is overpriced. It smacks of PC software ported to the Mac. They burnt their bridge along time ago.
They dragged their heals in delivering, feature-less, bloated and slow software to the Mac. A substantive user and profit base for their products.
They have a monopoly on the desktop internet with slow, crap, buggy, insecure flash. And they want Apple to let that monopoly extended to Apple's (yes, THEIR) platform with a minimum of effort. They want Apple to support an intermediary layer to make the iPad slower and burn battery quicker and drag their heals on supporting Apple's new OS features annually. (Y'know, a year cycle...vs Adobe's 18 month if they feel like it cycle.) And then...of course, Adobe wouldn't treat Apple iPhone/iPad any better than than Android or Window's mobile. They'd all be the same. Except everybody would be user Adobe's archaic flash monopoly. Instead of Apple's feature rich environment.
Why don't Adobe get back to creating authoring apps. Get flash back on track as a HTML5 authoring tool. Use Apple's iphone programming environment. They're a multi-billion dollar company, put some backbone into App development and optimise for Apple's platform. Apple's House. Apple's rules. No. They've had their time to make flash go mobile. And they've sat, and sat, and sat on it...whining and bitching instead of putting out a nimble product. Apple ported the leviathan OS X to an iPHone. And Adobe are whining about porting flash to iPhone. Go away Adobe. You suck.
Apple aren't going to give you control of their platform by proxy. Apple's been burned by your 'crocodile friendship' in the past. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Apple have got you right where they want you.
They have 200k apps. Xillions of developers who CAN play by Apple's rules and ARE making a basketful of money. Adobe are just too lazy to do what they really are. They think they're a platform developer because they bought flash off Macromedia. A travesty of a takeover if ever there was one. It reduced choose in image, vector, web authoring software.
And check out the UK prices of Adobe's software. Don't give that currency BS. They could sell from the US store, as downloads or offer DVDs that cost the same as the last generation. The prices are obscene. Oh, and they're going to sue Apple for being a monopoly? That's rich.
It's looking like I may just buy Pixelator, Manga Studio and Painter and give Photoshop the finger. Eh. People say their aren't Photoshop alternatives. But I did great Art on Photoshop 4. Shrugs. All the other features since? Indespensible? Sure, if you say so.
It's like MS office. The crap that we use at our school. For me, iWorks is much better for kids, private individuals and probably much of small and big business. Pages is a great word processor. You don't need the clunky bloatware that is office.
I'm seriously considering making my existence Adobe as well as M$ free. It can be done very easily.
If Adobe push Apple...if they do...(and I hope they do!) Then I think Adobe are in deep trouble. It took very little time for Apple to saw the legs off Avid with Final Cut. Go on, Adobe, I DARE you to pull Creative Suite Apps. It will take Apple about a year to come out with a basic competitor..and another year to refine it, bundle it, sell it cheaper and blow your Photoshop out the water. What's more. I'll support them every inch of the way. Get that.
Teh finger.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Five Tremendous Apple vs. Adobe Flash Myths
April 10th, 2010
Daniel Eran Dilger
Proponents of Adobe Flash insist that Apple?s iPhone 4.0 restrictions amount to ?restraint of trade,? that the company?s Flash platform covers the vast majority of computers, that Adobe doesn?t need Apple and could bury it by cutting off its apps for the Mac in retaliation, that Apple really owes Adobe a hand, and that by not offering Flash, Apple is violating a universal doctrine demanding Choice. They?re wrong, here?s why.
.
Ready for a roller coaster of emotionalist tirades directed at Apple? The Flash Brigade is out in full force, so there?s no asking for clarification or analytical thoughtfulness going on, just a lot of malicious motives being hastily attributed based on a series of conspiracy theory assumptions. Buckle up.
Myth 1: Apple?s great ?restraint of trade?
The first argument being thrown at Apple is that its new restriction on the source languages that can be used to link to its iPhone SDK APIs is a ?restraint of trade,? apparently because Apple has a legal obligation to support third parties who want to apply their tools to build iPhone apps.
Never mind that such accusations have never been thrown about when the subject was developing titles for the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3, or any other game console. Those developers must not only use the languages and tools the vendor outlines, but typically must also pay thousands of dollars for licensing fees, specialized development hardware, and jump through a variety of other hoops.
The same people who seem so morally outraged about about Apple?s still minority share of the smartphone market (in terms of hardware units sold), seemed completely cool with Microsoft?s reign over the entire PC market, which it micromanaged in meticulous detail, telling PC makers what hardware they could and could not sell, what software they could not bundle, and so on.
If Android had a nickel for every ?developer? who threatened out of rage to run to that platform every time Apple enacted a new policy, that hobbyist platform could probably afford to buy itself a real game.
Myth 2: Flash is ubiquitous
Adobe likes to say that 96% of all computers in the US have Flash installed. What it doesn?t say is that more than 60% of all smartphone web traffic, and 96% of all ?Mobile Internet Device? (that?s a euphemism for ?iPod touch?) traffic doesn?t run Flash at all.
Additionally, it?s not as if Adobe had created a great mobile Flash platform and Apple stomped all over it to be mean. Adobe didn?t have a mobile version of Flash that could even play Flash videos until Flash Lite 3 appeared, well after the release of the iPhone. Even then, that product couldn?t run most of the Flash content created for desktop PCs.
Adobe didn?t pass that hurdle until last summer, when it introduced an early version of Flash Player 10 for Android. But that version still doesn?t play back everything the PC version does. The latest 10.1 version for mobiles is supposed to do better, but it?s still in demo stages and requires a Cortex A8 class processor, meaning it only runs on Android or webOS devices from the last several months.
If Apple supported this, it could only run on the iPhone 3GS. So Adobe?s mobile strategy is actually just now emerging. Apple has been selling the iPhone for three full years now. There was no suitable version of Flash to sell, so Apple made its own plans.
To hear from the tech media people who feed from the Adobe propaganda machine like ducks being force fed for foie gras, you?d think Adobe has had a real mobile strategy all this time and Apple has just been playing the role of a conniving obstructionist.
The truth is that it?s Adobe?s fault there?s no Flash on the majority of mobiles, because the company was completely happy just misleading the world of pundits while talking instead of doing. Well it?s not 2007 anymore, it?s 2010, and that?s three years of work that everyone else has put into HTML5.
Adobe hasn?t done anything to earn the rights to cram the Internet back into the Flash box it likes to sit upon as it collects taxes from those creating content that only plays back via Adobe?s own players. Adobe never been on top of things in the mobile world, and the desktop version is not exactly doing all that much anymore either. As companies shift their resources from everything Flash to HTML5, Adobe?s desktop monopoly over interactive content will rapidly erode. It?s not Apple?s fault that?s happening, it?s Adobe?s.
Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history
Myth 3: Adobe?s gonna get Apple
With Apple making no effort to bail Adobe out from the consequences of its own incompetence, the Flash Brigade is calling for a merciless reaction from Adobe. Perhaps the company will give up a huge chunk of its Creative Suite sales by snubbing Mac users?
That?s what Microsoft did when it realized Apple was now competing against it in productivity apps. Look at how much money Microsoft saved by not developing Mac versions of Office 2008 and 2010. Oh wait, Microsoft did develop generations of Office for Mac even though Apple is now selling iWork. Microsoft made lots of money selling Office for Mac.
And that?s why Adobe will keep selling Creative Suite for Macs. Adobe can make lots of money even while it snubs Mac users, so why would it stop making money to snub Mac users? Adobe is also rolling out new apps for iPad and iPhone. Clearly, the company is around to make money, not to behave like a 15 year old girl dramatizing her contempt for those who have offended her in some fashion. Somebody tell the Internet.
Sorry Flash Brigade, Adobe isn?t about to retaliate against Apple. The reason Adobe is talking is because that?s all it can do at this point after screwing up its mobile strategy and failing to anticipate years ago where computing was headed and what changes it needed to make. It?s not Apple?s job to keep Adobe in business.
Office Wars 3 ? How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly
Myth 4: Apple owes Adobe a living
The Flash Brigade also likes to tell tales about how Adobe (like Microsoft) lovingly rescued Apple back when the company was having hard times, so Apple should be paying Adobe back by establishing Flash as the proprietary alternative to open web standards.
This is curious (or perhaps hilarious) because Adobe?s support for Apple has long been just as money motivated as Macromedia and Microsoft. Back when Apple wanted its major developers to embrace NeXTSTEP and port their existing code to a modern new API that would solve a lot of the old problems with the Classic Mac OS, it got nothing but blank stares from all threes of those ?partners.?
Had they invested in Apple?s plans, we?d have gotten a Mac OS X with the sophistication of the iPhone back in 1998, rather than living through a decade of Apple building Carbon and then weaning its developers off it. Adobe and Macromedia helped delay Apple?s plans for a decade just so they could safely make money selling Mac users less sophisticated software.
When Apple turned itself around, it was no longer in a position to beg for the support of companies like Adobe and Macromedia and Microsoft. It has begun telling developers what to do. It told Adobe that if it wanted to build 64-bit Mac apps, it would need to do it using Cocoa. Adobe balked for a while, pushing off the 64-bit port of Creative Suite for the Mac by a year and a half. This spring, Adobe will finally get portions of Creative Suite apps to Cocoa, just a decade plus a few years after Apple asked the first time.
The only thing Apple owes Adobe is decade of torturous knuckle dragging. Let?s see if Flash is still around in 2020. Maybe Steve Jobs will accommodate Adobe by throwing in a version of Flash with iPhone OS 14 as payback for Adobe sticking it out like a trouper.
Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody
Myth 5: Apple should just solve Adobe?s problems by offering Choice
With hearts bleeding more dramatically than even the most tortured religious figures ever imagined under centuries of Christendom, the Flash Brigade next insists that no matter how justified Apple is in restricting its own platform, no matter how incompetent Adobe was in screwing up mobile Flash, without regard for how powerless Adobe is to demand that anything really change, and ignoring how awful Adobe and Macromedia were to Apple in the past, it?s Apple?s duty, no, moral obligation, to support Flash as a Choice.
That?s because a variety of Choices are always preferable to a subset of ideal options. Who needs a web based on open, interoperable standards when you can have the Choice of all dynamic content being locked up in Flash? What a wonderful option.
I know when I plant a garden, I don?t do any weeding first because I want to give all forms of life an equal opportunity to spread and benefit from my efforts and irrigation. If I just planted vegetables and herbs, I?d only have things that were good. Why not also have the weeds that are already here? By not weeding, I get the things I want to grow AND the option of weeds. Who cares if those weeds will choke out any positive development and keep things just the way they were before I did any planting. Choice is always preferable to change, because change is scary!
Well, at least in the minds of companies who advocate Choice when their particular Choice involves monopoly control. Microsoft wanted music player buyers to have a Choice of music stores and a Choice of hardware vendors, but interestingly, not really a Choice in media player operating system vendors.
Similarly, while Adobe wasn?t so keen on offering users a Choice of Cocoa support, or a Choice of both HTML5 and Flash output from its development tools, it is really interested in Apple offering users a choice between the HTML5 open web Apple is cultivating and the Flash weeds it wants to see choke out any potential for change on the web.
The fallacy of Flash: why Adobe?s ideological war with Apple is bankrupt
Nothing left to do but talk
And so, through a mix of incompetence, belligerence and emotionalist hypocrisy, Adobe has been pumping a non-stop stream of propaganda about how critically important Flash is on mobile devices, even though millions of people been using the highest ranked smartphone for three years now without suffering any ill (not even the rest of humanity on lessor smartphones have missed being able to render desktop Flash content, because they haven?t been able to either). There?s a reason for all that talk: Adobe is terrified.
Like Microsoft, Adobe has long been able to sign up every major player in the consumer electronics industry to pay for whatever garbage it has had the shameless balls to crap out. Three generations of Flash Lite, and now a variant of its desktop web plugin that demands the fastest smartphones on the planet just to run it. Once you get used to getting paid to do next to nothing, it?s a brutal shock when somebody stands up and refuses to play along with your ridiculous game.
Apple isn?t just a rebellious outsider. Not in mobiles, where it controls most of the world?s web traffic, and certainly almost all of the traffic of affluent customers. Flash has found its way to the hobbyist Android platform, and has graced the webOS even as it goes through its final death throes. It is promised to arrive for Windows Phone 7, the ace in the hole Microsoft plans to use to take back all the market share it lost to Android. But Flash isn?t ever going to be on the iPhone OS, and that not only makes a big black hole in Adobe?s strategy for maintaining in monopoly control over dynamic content on the web, but also questions why we were ever using this crap in the first place on the desktop.
Once society awakes to see how duped it?s been, the value of Adobe?s $3.1 billion 2005 deal to acquire Macromedia (largely for Flash) might look like less than a brilliant move.
Support RoughlyDrafted!
I think that's a pretty thorough hosing.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I think that's a pretty thorough hosing.
Lemon Bon Bon.
Lemon, please don't quote the entire article like that for a short general comment. We've already read it once.
I want more, better, cheaper Apps, and my app vendors to focus on my needs?
185.000 Apps, average price about 2$ (estimated), at least those 200 Apps I have installed on my iPhone in a stunning quality - missing your needs and me getting a millionaire because I missed the boat. Since 2007 I was convinced that the iPhone will be the big thing, but I started too late to learn Cocoa.
Apple could have done lots to lower the risks of the Mac or iPhone platform?
The biggest risk would be to stand still. Apple is in the same boat as the 3rd party devs. I also have trouble in keeping the pace in my job, but I can't slow down this crazy world, although I'm getting too old for that sh**.
Adobe didn't get on stage and promise it one year and pull it the next?
Instead they promised an app store approval guaranty. Did they verify this?
Sure. PowerPC forever... ooops. Intel forever. QuickTime rocks, that's why there's no 64 bit version. We support our 3rd party tools vendors, that's why we're killing CodeWarrior/Metrowerks by not sharing enough that they can stay in business. Carbon 64 is a valid way to get to 64 bit -- ha ha, just kidding. Here's the terms of the iPhone agreement: chortle, sucker -- you fell for it.
May be valid. My point is that they would have been dead sticking on PPC while Motorola and IBM were not able to deliver competitive solutions especially for mobile devices.
Metrowerks was a victim, at least I feel like that, but I can't judge it.
64 Bit was / is a big thing. There was need for a fast and consistent implementation. I guess it simply turned out that they were not able to provide the resources for two major frameworks. As I stated Cocoa was pronounced as the future. Perhaps no nice move.
Back to PPC. Apple needed a plan B. And they had it by porting to X86 even at the times they were convinced that PPC would rule the world.
As far as I know Adobe was pretty pleased about the transition because it simplified porting and they ware able to drop CW/MW themselves.
Let me finally state that I understand your anger. But stating that only one party played hardball in this conflict is simply wrong.
Conflicts are escalating when people take tough moves personal.
I unfortunately don't know Steve Jobs and You, but what I know for sure is this:
If You continue to attack him in the public in this way, You both will have one thing in common: anger.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. I'm not one to post entire articles. But this time? I couldn't resist posting the entire thing. It covers it all. It's pretty emphatic. Given the vast tracts of verbosity on this hot topic. I think it's the best article of its type. Between that and Daring Fireball? We've got it covered.
M$, Adobe and Google have had their day in the sun. *(Let's not mention Dell, who Apple have steamrollered over...)
Now it's Apple's turn. They're three companies that have one thing in common, they've burned Apple and Steve Jobs. Now it's pay back time. (And Apple are doing it the old fashioned way, no, not with a chain saw...they're just out competing them. So, Adobe. Go make your own phone...and App store...)
They're all run by sales guys and technicians, they have no heart or emotion in their products. They're bloated, overpriced and they suck.
Lemon Bon Bon.
eg. I have a wallet. I can spend my pound on Adobe. Or not. I can find other software that does the job just as well if not better.
I want a decent Smart phone. Or tablet. Do I go Apple or pick up Android etc tablets a year later?
I know where my money is going and why.
Lemon Bon Bon.
PS. I'm not one to post entire articles. But this time? I couldn't resist posting the entire thing. It covers it all. It's pretty emphatic. Given the vast tracts of verbosity on this hot topic. I think it's the best article of its type. Between that and Daring Fireball? We've got it covered.
If you want to support the article author, what is appropriate is a link plus a short snippet to illustrate the gist of the article. Reposting an entire article falls well outside of fair use.
I think it is personal.
I don't think it's personal.
SJ is supposedly notorious for holding a grudge, but I don't see his actions here (or generally, these days) being motivated by any desire for revenge. If there's a personal element to it, it's SJ saying, "We created the best mobile platform in the world, and (this time) we're not going to let you f*** it up."
You're quite amusing. Being a NeXT and Apple Alumni it's quite entertaining, albeit fantastical.
I also notice that "incompatible with everything else" is used to mean "not interoperable with PCs running Windows." So that Apple's intransigence boils down to "failing to adopt PC centric practices."
Interesting then, that now that Apple has a stronger market position, it is once again demanded of them that they be the ones to provide interoperability.
Apparently being Apple means you have to dance to everyone else's tune, regardless of your industry position.
I don't get that. XCode is free and an excellent development environment. It took me two weeks to learn how to write apps for the iPhone and another 2 weeks to learn how to handle the OpenGL ES graphic system.
The biggest costs to my firm developing games for the iPhone: Maya and Photoshop.
Since we all had makes to start with before deciding to develop for Mac and iPhone, the cost to do apps conforming to the Apple HIG was 0.
If you are taking about the costs of developers, you should just sit down. Good developers cost money that you pay no matter what. If you want to be able to hire creative developers you have to pay that cost. If you just want code mechanics who can't or don't need to develop any new components and can stick to the standard toolkit that comes with Flash, then go ahead as long as you can target your audience. I have worked with too many poor Flash and VBA developers to want to put up that kind of lowest common denominator thinking.
I have to work with a lot of these kinds of developers. I get tired of some dim bulb Java developer complaining about me writing in C because I have to manage my own memory "when Java will do that for me so that I do not have to worry about it". (How in the world do people get a comp sci degree without knowing at least one low level language is beyond me, I mean, I learned C and Pascal when I was in school and now they teach Java instead?) Hell, I still do not use garbage collection in Objective-C (and my C/C++ code obviously) and some of my server software runs 24/7 without a memory leak (well, we do bounce them at midnight on Sunday).
And by the way, I have also worked with some very fine developers who worked with Flash and VBA, I really should not paint everyone with the same brush.
Not Adobe Insider
Sue Denim:
It's clear you are an Adobe insider.
Go back to the hole you came from.
and,
Fck U Adobe !
This site is Apple Insider
Not Adobe Insider
Sue Denim:
It's clear you are an Adobe insider.
Go back to the hole you came from.
and,
Fck U Adobe !
That was uncalled for.
So, Lightroom led the way among 64-bit Mac apps (beating Aperture to 64-bit by nearly two years), and Adobe has now converted three major Mac apps--After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop--from Carbon to Cocoa 64. Meanwhile Final Cut Pro 64 and the rest of the FCP suite remain missing in action. Maybe--just maybe--we can now put that "lazy" talk to rest.
Metrowerks was a victim, at least I feel like that, but I can't judge it.
Metrowerks is an interesting example. They were an important part of helping Apple make what success they did out of the PPC. But, when Apple bought NeXT and decided that the future Mac OS would be based on it, they had to make a decision. Throw out the NeXT development tools and frameworks so that Metrowerks (by then owned by Motorola) could maintain their lucrative compiler business, which had been very helpful to Apple, or pull the rug out from under them and make what is now Xcode and Cocoa the official development tools for the new Mac OS.
It might have been "nice" if Apple had not pulled the rug out from under them, Metrowerks had been a valuable partner over the years, but "nice" wasn't going to turn Apple into a success. They did what they had to do, and they did the right thing, but yeah, it must have sucked to have been working at Metrowerks just then.
But, the important point is, they didn't do it out of malice toward Metrowerks, they did it because it was what had to be done to make Mac OS X a success. And, as much as Flash sucks and perhaps personally disgusts Steve Jobs, they aren't doing this to screw Adobe. They're doing it because it's the right thing to do, and because it's what has to be done. Being "nice" and adopting a que sera, sera attitude is not a recipe for success.
(And, well, as far as Adobe goes, did they really think Apple was going to just sit by and watch them turn iPhone OS into just another platform for Flash? If I were a shareholder in Adobe, I'd be wanting to see some heads roll about now.)
Metrowerks is an interesting example. They were an important part of helping Apple make what success they did out of the PPC. But, when Apple bought NeXT and decided that the future Mac OS would be based on it, they had to make a decision. Throw out the NeXT development tools and frameworks so that Metrowerks (by then owned by Motorola) could maintain their lucrative compiler business, which had been very helpful to Apple, or pull the rug out from under them and make what is now Xcode and Cocoa the official development tools for the new Mac OS.
It might have been "nice" if Apple had not pulled the rug out from under them, Metrowerks had been a valuable partner over the years, but "nice" wasn't going to turn Apple into a success. They did what they had to do, and they did the right thing, but yeah, it must have sucked to have been working at Metrowerks just then.
Nice fanboy interpretation. This reminds me of every Obama speech: "we can do it my way, or do nothing and let everyone die a horrible death instead". You feel like saying, "those are the only two choices? Really?"
It also sucked to be any developer that counted on it (like all of them). It also sucked to be a customer that counted on those Apps, because that set Apps back months. In fact, the costs of that, was responsible for more App leaving the Mac than any other event.
In this case, Apple could have continued to give Metrowerks access to the headers so they could continue to release their tools. Since their tools were much better than XCode (and in some ways were still superior to XCode of today), there are many that would have paid. But for it not being malice, they just left them hanging. Since Metrowerks couldn't fight Apple, they were driven out of business. That cost many developers many months or years (if not more) of development costs.
This reminds me of every Obama speech: "we can do it my way, or do nothing and let everyone die a horrible death instead". You feel like saying, "those are the only two choices? Really?"
Although I agree with many of the sentiments that Sue Denim has expressed in regard to Apple's approach to developers, I do NOT agree with any of the political statements. This is in no way relevant to the topic. Kind of like how running the Flash Player on iPhone is in no way relevant to the argument of allowing or not allowing the desktop Flash Application to output to an iPhone App.
Although I agree with many of the sentiments that Sue Denim has expressed in regard to Apple's approach to developers, I do NOT agree with any of the political statements. This is in no way relevant to the topic....
Sorry. It seemed relevant to me.
Ignore the politics and analyze President Obama's presentation techniques (I've been doing so for a presentation on presentation styles): he uses the same technique whenever he talks about "the other side". He does "the only two choices are mine or some exaggerated other one" -- which makes it sound like what he's doing is the only obvious choice. (That's why Joe Wilson yelled "you lie" in congress). It doesn't matter which side you agree with -- it's just his technique.I respect more an arguer that can state why he thinks his view is better in spite of a FAIR representation of the other side.
The poster used the same technique: the two choices were Apple could either release XCode and destroy Metrowerks and the developers in an annoying way... or Apple could not release XCode. So obviously they made the right choice.
Of course Apple could have still supported XCode AND let Metrowerks live -- Apple had done that with MPW, ThinkC, Borland and Microsoft at the same time before. When Apple doomed PowerPlant, they could have tried to buy it up or support it to keep Apps running, and so on. They could have tried to acquire Metrowerks and borrow some of the Code or design or features that people liked. There were many options. They chose the one that hurt the most developers and Apps (and thus customers) and was the most anti-competitive.
Individually, these issues each have some justification (from Apple's side). It would have cost Apple more to play nice. NeXT would have learned how to document, be open, communicate. All things they weren't good at. So it was cheaper and quicker to do it the way they did. But was it better for the customers or community? 5% of your developers here, 5% there, and it adds up.