

Adobe attacks Apple - "You're undermining the next chapter of the web" - whyleyc
http://www.adobe.com/choice/openmarkets.html?

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tewks
Apple's engineering decisions have produced a platform that works pretty well
and is enjoyable to develop for. They've sold a lot of handsets as a result.
If it weren't for these decisions, then the sales wouldn't have happened and
Adobe wouldn't be trying to strongarm their way onto the platform.

In short, decisions such as not supporting Flash are in fact part of the OS's
appeal and this entire debate is bizarre.

Furthermore, Adobe's entire argument that developers and consumers should shun
Apple's lock-in for Adobe's lock-in is absolutely absurd!

edit: In thinking about it, the danger of an Adobe (or any other vendor)
monopoly on the write once, run anywhere application market is huge. It's
several orders of magnitude greater in significance than that of Apple
controlling the development environment for its own devices.

Apple will have a large market share in internet-connected devices for quite
some time, but it probably won't ever command a majority of marketshare in any
given segment (it will command an abnormally huge amount of revenue share
though, the way it does with PCs and now phones). If you don't like what Apple
offers you as a developer, there are plenty of other targets. If Adobe gets
its way and controls the runtime everywhere, and even assuming it works and is
fast everywhere (it won't be), then all developers are probably screwed.

Lastly, it's disappointing that Google in recent times has reneged on its
relative commitment to HTML5 given its Android and Chrome development
decisions to bundle flash into both platforms. This is a much more significant
development, with much greater consequences, than changes to the iPhone dev
agreement because Android and Chrome, in various forms, are likely to be run
on the plurality of devices going forward. We need HTML5 to succeed flash, but
this won't happen until the infrastucture is built: implementations need to
get faster, dev tools need to be built, et cetera and Google's decisions have
likely impeded this process by removing some of the incentive for these things
to happen.

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renewableGuy
While native apps are amazing and performs real well on iPhone and
iPad,performance of web apps is a disaster on these devices. iPhone struggles
to render even the basic javascript effects properly. Having said that i am
not disappointed by this. I do not expect the iPhone to provide a full blown
internet experience. Its a freaking phone! I still dont get why Adobe tries so
hard to provide Flash on Iphone.

On the other hand, the choppy -almost unusable- HTML5 experience on iPad,
makes me feel like these devices arent optimized to provide rich experience
within the browser realm. Perhaps Apple wants us to depend more on the app
store than the web based apps (Google's business).

~~~
tewks
Agreed to some extent. There's a lot of work to be done. Adobe as an
additional middle man, however, won't fix anything.

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tptacek
_But Flash is popular with developers for building smartphone apps. Many
developers use automatic translation tools - some built by Adobe - to convert
Flash code so their apps can run on Apple gadgets._

They do?

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misuba
"We publish the specifications for Flash — meaning anyone can make their own
Flash player. Yet, Adobe Flash technology remains the market leader because of
the constant creativity and technical innovation of our employees."

Read: our player remains the only viable one because we keep moving the
goalposts on everyone else.

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bbatsell
Also: because they're lying — they don't publish the full Flash spec. Any
alternate Flash implementation simply doesn't work on video sites with
encrypted streams, which means it will never gain traction.

~~~
misuba
Oddly, such a Flash player would probably do fine on major mobile platforms.

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amix
HTML 5 and CSS3 should be the next chapter of the Web and not Flash - - Flash
is hopefully a closing chapter.

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jsz0
_We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite
content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser
they like, or what device suits their needs_

That just doesn't jive with reality. Adobe is the sole gatekeeper of where
Flash is available and how good the experience is. I don't see Flash Player 10
available for FreeBSD/PPC, NetBSD/anything, Solaris/SPARC, Linux/SPARC,
Linux/MIPS, nothing for IA64, etc. Of course I don't blame Adobe for not
supporting these platforms but the point is no one else can offer Flash
support on them either.

~~~
doki_pen
You are absolutely right. How long did has the UNIX community had a
substandard, or non-existent flash player? Flash 10 still crashes alsa on my
Gentoo systems. It seems petty that they can't open source the player. The
community will fix it for free! And then they have the nerve to criticize
Apple, which is clearly looking out for it's own best interest(Which I don't
support, I haven't bought any Apple products). This is blatant hypocrisy.

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thenduks
I don't really follow what they're trying to say here.

The reason I (we?) don't want flash in the iPhone/etc web browser is because
it performs poorly, eats battery and is unstable.

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pixelbath
Then don't install it. Adobe's entire point is that you should have a choice.
Do you have that choice right now?

~~~
thenduks
Is your mom qualified to make the choice? Does she know what impact it will
have to install it? Chances are that's a big _NO_. Implications of this? She
will install it because uncle Joe's crappy photo gallery site needs flash, and
then she'll proceed to complain about the iPhone crashing, go to Apple for
support because "her battery life sucks", etc.

Apple makes consumer electronics devices, you can't install new codecs on your
DVD player and you can't install new VM's on your iPhone.

I prefer it this way.

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macrael
"No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can
create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web."

That argument seems to apply to Adobe more easily than it applies to Apple.

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monkeygrinder
Lots of good commentary about this:
[http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?ent...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2960&blogid=10)

[http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100513/adobe-to-
apple-y...](http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100513/adobe-to-apple-you-
wanna-hug-it-out/)

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joeminkie
"When markets are open, anyone with a great idea has a chance to drive
innovation and find new customers. Adobe's business philosophy is based on a
premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end — and
the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster
than your competitors."

Is it just me or does that perfectly explain Apple's business philosophy
regarding iPhone OS as well? The mobile market is open. Apple doesn't have a
monopoly or a majority of the market. There are plenty of other phones and
carriers to choose from. The bottom line is Apple is trying to make the best
product with the best technology and faster innovation than anyone else – and
they are succeeding. Adobe is just-now-almost-ready-to-release-a-beta of a
mobile optimized flash player. The iPhone has been out and innovating for 3
years. Adobe is not following it's own philosophy very well.

App store approval, no flash player, 3.3.1, all the decisions Apple have made
that have got people angry are all explained by them trying to make the best
mobile experience they can. Is it the best ever? Is it the best for you? Is it
the only way? If you answer 'no' to any of these you have two options: buy
something else or make something better.

Having flash on the iPhone will not make it a better platform (from Apple's
point of view, and mine). Did you see the flash content running on the Nexus
One the other day? (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y7XJI4NN7k>) It looks
great! If it allows reasonable battery life I want one. But at the same time I
want iPhone apps. I don't want the progress of the iPhone and iPad to get
stalled trying to get flash to work. Apple can keep innovating in it's way and
Adobe can work with Google and HP and whoever else to innovate in another way.
They can both coexist.

I think a lot of the issue is Adobe (and by extension flash developers) feel
like they are entitled to develop for every platform. Apple has so much
mindshare (despite is relatively small market share) that it's the new toy for
developers to play with. Flash devs understandably want a piece of it. They
are used to being able to write once run everywhere. Adobe is used to being
able to tout their ability to allow flash devs to write once run anywhere.
Apple's just finally the first company in the position to say no and be able
to back it up.

note: I make a living doing flash and web development (5+ years)

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johnkary
"We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that
could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile
devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is
accessed anywhere and at any time."

So Apple is undermining the advancement of the web by advocating the use of
HTML5 over Flash? And how is choosing to not support Flash on their platform
undermining the web?

Adobe's rebuttal to Apple on all of this sounds like the movie industry:
biding for relevancy when their middle-man is becoming obsolete.

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whyleyc
Criticisms come directly from the 2 co-founders - Chuck Geschke & John Warnock
- love the Sepia-toned photo of the two of them together :-)

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tmcw
They produce open specifications for Adobe Flash, so it's 'kinda like open
source.' Just like Word XML, right?

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protomyth
I would believe its open if a third-party flash player could be used with
Hulu.

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evo_9
Dear Adobe - please stop pretending to be a tools developer because you really
suck at it.

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romland
Sucky or not, I guess one could argue that Photoshop is a somewhat successful
tool, I'd say they are not pretending.

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bjelkeman-again
Maybe he meant "developer tool developer".

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evo_9
I was actually referring to the IDE that one has to use to write ActionScript
code for Flash. Not a very intuitive IDE compared to Eclipse, Aptana Studio,
VisualStudio, etc.

