
Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself - larryrubin
http://innerdaemon.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/sorry-adobe-you-screwed-yourself/
======
radley
What a tool. It's a shame this made it to Techmeme. He really had to twist the
facts to make his point. Here's what he didn't say:

 _ZDNet 2001_ (Dec 2001) Article is actually _Adobe: OS X's new best friend?_
"Analysts and creative professionals say that Adobe's release of products for
OS X could be the most significant turning point in the new operating system's
adoption." "Developers privately complained of stability issues with the
original release of OS X, saying that these problems hampered their efforts to
move their products to the new operating system. That finally changed in
September, when Apple issued the Mac OS X 10.1 update."

 _A slice from 2002_ Article is from March '02: OSX 10.2.1 was established as
default OS on Macs only 3 months prior!

What he left out: "Adobe is actively working to add support for the full
version of Acrobat 5.0 running in OS X native mode." "Adobe currently plans to
offer native support for OS X in the next major release of After Effects."
etc.

 _CNet 2004_ "At the same time, Apple has quietly pushed Adobe out of a few
markets by selling its own applications or bundling them into its OS X
operating system. "

 _John Nack, 2006_ (Feb '06) _No Intel OS X updated Adobe apps till 07_ "Ever
since Apple's Intel announcement last summer, they've told the industry (at
least the consumer side) that Intel Macs would appear by summer 2006."

Wikipedia: "On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first
Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had
transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over 1 year sooner
than announced."

~~~
mtarnovan
He has a point, although the way he arrives at the conclusion is flawed. Adobe
made a rational business decision at a time when nobody could have predicted
the Apple renascence. This decision might cost them dearly now, but that
doesn't mean that given the facts known at that time, they should have made a
different one.

------
barrkel
This article is, frankly, childish. Apple was a fading platform when Adobe
made that decision, and it made perfect business sense.

Until about 2008, the last time I had even _seen_ a Mac on this (Eastern) side
of the Atlantic was about 1991 or so.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I think the article is unduly harsh but I think it makes a valid point. It's
sort of a live by the sword, die by the sword thing. Adobe made the right
business decision in 2002 and I don't think you can fault them for that. But
Apple's making the right business decision now and I don't think you can fault
them for that. So I think the bottom line is that Adobe's falling victim to
the same thing that they did to Apple back in 2002 and that's just the reality
of the world.

~~~
noamsml
> Apple's making the right business decision now and I don't think you can
> fault them for that.

Yes, I can. Restricting developers' rights isn't a valid business decision.
That's like saying Highway robbery is a respectable income source.

~~~
glhaynes
_Restricting developers' rights isn't a valid business decision._

Why?

Developers aren't a constitutionally protected special class.

~~~
jasonlotito
What does the constitution have anything to do with this? Why bring the
Canadian Constitution into it? Finally, you have a misunderstanding of a
right. It isn't something you need to be given via a law. A right is something
you have despite laws. The US Constitution doesn't give you the explicit right
to "think whatever you want," but you have it.

As for rights, he's referring the right of a developer to use whatever
programming language he wishes to developer software on different systems. A
closed system prevents a developer from exercising that right.

It's even worse when a system establishes itself with certain restrictions and
freedoms, and then changes that later on. In fact, it's called Bait and
Switch. Apple had certain rules and requirements, and certain people bought
into that idea. Now they've changed that. You can argue with they are allowed
to, but that doesn't diminish the criticism thrown at them. Just because they
can do something doesn't mean they should do something. There are a million
examples to demonstrate that.

For a long time, a lot of intelligent people were saying that Apple was
inching closer and closer toward restricting rights of its users more and
more. People disregarded us, and said "Hey, Apple can do this!" While they
might be legally able to, this doesn't mean they should. They restrict the
content. They restrict how you display that content. They restrict more and
more. I have no pity for Apple supporters anymore. And when Apple restricts
that thing you hold dear, you'll cry. Or you'll do what others have done:
decide what you wanted was wrong, and you shouldn't have wanted it, and Apple
was right.

~~~
glhaynes
I haven't heard a good case that developers are born with an inalienable right
to write any code they want for any platform they want. It devalues the very
concept of rights you're arguing for when people claim anything they'd like to
do as a "right".

Whether Apple's recent move is a good decision or not is totally up for
debate. As is whether the change is distasteful or offensive. But whether it's
a "valid business decision [because it violates some God-given right]" is not.

~~~
jasonlotito
"I haven't heard a good case that developers are born with an inalienable
right to write any code they want for any platform they want."

Probably because I can't think of a single time when this has been an issue.
The argument isn't over what Apple can do. It's that Apple is dictating how
developers are allowed to develop their applications. This isn't about writing
Java apps that will run on the iPhone. It's about writing Objective-C apps
using whatever tools we want that will run on the iPhone.

"As is whether the change is distasteful or offensive."

One could argue it's both. Either is fine by me.

~~~
glhaynes
_It's about writing Objective-C apps using whatever tools we want that will
run on the iPhone._

Exactly. And that's _not_ a natural right. And Apple not allowing it _is_ a
valid business decision (whether it's a good one for Apple's bottom line or a
good one morally—or whether it even is a moral question—is up for debate).
That's all I'm saying. Let's use reasonable terms so our debate is sensible
and valid.

------
pistoriusp
This explains my disdain for almost everything Adobe on OS X. It's not just
that Flash sucks on my Mac. It's that almost all their products suck...
They're not focused on OS X.

And I'm not the only person: <http://dearadobe.com/top_rated.php>

~~~
barrkel
Change the framing of this for a second.

Suppose instead of Apple, it was the government deciding which apps get
approved, and which don't.

Would you support the government to make the correct decisions, by fiat? Or
would you rather a free market see opportunities in crappy applications, and
produce better alternatives?

~~~
gabrielroth
Boy, that's a terrible analogy. What we're beginning to see in smartphones is
a competition between different business models: one (Apple) that exercises a
lot of control over the platform, and another (Android) that exercises very
little control. We'll get to see how that plays out. That's the free market
for you.

~~~
barrkel
And in a similar way, everybody has freedom of government, because they can
just move to another country, right?

Except it's often not that simple. People can be locked in in lots of
different ways, and suffer at the hands of a dictator, one way or another.

------
n8agrin
_Somehow, Apple making a business decision to protect its customers from your
shitty product is the most egregious ethical concern of our time._

I don't 100% agree with Apple's decision to ban non-native language apps, nor
do I 100% disdain Adobe (Lightroom is a phenomenal product IMHO). But my
dislike of Flash, the now comical number of bloggers jumping on the "Apple is
evil, look at their SDK" bandwagon, and this statement all together made me
laugh.

------
bilbo0s
You know I think Steve Jobs maybe is doing the right thing for Apple by not
allowing all of these cross compilers. I mean, that article really gave me a
look at the history that Jobs is talking about when he says these cross-
compiler vendors never support Apple as a first class citizen.

I don't LIKE it.

But I have a better understanding for it now.

Adobe, obviously, always wants to target windows first. Companies like Unity
and MonoTouch obviously are more in the C# and even .Net camp. These guys are
targeting iPhone as an afterthought. And while we know their products do not
run well on macs at the moment, I used to think that they would run well on
macs in the future.

I'm not so sure anymore.

Maybe Apple does need to go it alone with respect to middleware. Even better,
some enterprising start up could make an Objective-C game engine.

~~~
barrkel
He's not outlawing cross compilers. He's outlawing _innovation_ in third party
tools and frameworks on the iPhone platform. The clause is much more broad
than cross compilation.

~~~
bilbo0s
Not really.

An innovative person could make an Objective-C game engine, or a C++ game
engine or what have you. The language does not disallow innovation in
frameworks or third party tools, it opens up a new avenue for that innovation.

Now mind you I don't agree with the path they have taken. But I do think it is
important right now for cooler heads to prevail. Making statements like 'Apple
is outlawing innovation...' is not contributing in a constructive fashion to
the solution search.

What are Apple's concerns?

Are they legitimate?

How can the developer community address Apple's concerns?

If Apple sees not only real effort, but real progress towards addressing those
concerns, perhaps it might be willing to loosen up on the reigns.

As it stands though, the concerns Apple has are legitimate. Now that we know
what they are, can we move towards addressing them.

I just think that staking out these strident positions makes for good blog
reading, but it is not going to solve anything.

If we put our 'crowdsourced' heads together we can come up with a solution
that could allow the situation to develop with positive impact with respect to
everyone's interests.

~~~
watty
But I don't see the "quality" concerns that Jobs sees. Do you? Do you think it
could be an excuse to maintain control over the development process and to
hurt the Adobe CS5 release?

They have a review process which is used for quality control yet they allow
60+ fart apps in the store! Why don't they tighten the review process on ALL
apps (including non Objective-C apps)?

I guess you could say it would cost more to hire reviewers but the money made
on the new app sales would certainly cover that (and much more). To me it's
just a huge slap in the face to end users who will miss out on much app
potential (assuming the reviewers did their job) and to developers who have
dedicated time in learning a 3rd party framework - yet so many people here and
other places seem to love it.

------
raysinbran
Bingo. Apple doesn't ever want to find itself in a position where it has to
depend on 3rd party tools keeping up with its OS evolution. If/when Android
ends up being the dominant mobile platform, every dev house will likely make a
"business decision" to use cross-platform tools. The control point for app
innovation would then be in third party hands.

And as for losing out on innovation because developers can't make their own
tools, I'm sure Apple isn't worried about that at all. They seem to have
enough in-house innovation to run circles around what the competition has to
offer, for the past ten years.

------
hristov
I was wondering how Apple PR would handle this issue, and they are being very
clever. They try to frame this purely as a spat between Apple and Adobe. And
lets face it, nobody really likes Adobe nowadays because of various issues
about cross-compatibility of Flash and their attempts to kill HTML 5. So of
course Apple is confident that once the issue is framed as a spat between
Apple and Adobe most developers would go on Apple's side.

But is that really the main issue? If you think about it, the controversial
section of the agreement affects much more important issues that Adobe and
flash.

------
adelevie
I read posts mentioning "crappy [Flash] ports" to obj-c and protecting
"customers from [Adobe's] shitty product". If the port is crappy, then reject
it for being crappy, don't reject it because of the tools used to build it.

------
csomar
My opinion is that Apple is trying to make its platform as closed as possible.
Like that people who want to develop for iPad, needs to buy a Mac, use Apple
software development tools, use Apple browser... and Apple takes care of
distribution and other things. This is exactly like working for Apple as an
employee, but instead of getting paid a fixed salary, you get paid as much as
you work and as much as your product sells. So you now know the rules. Either
accept and work for Apple, or look for another more open platform (and there
are opportunities with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Maemo, Android...)

For those who think Apple is in War with Adobe, I highly doubt it. Adobe can
shut down their CS suit for Mac. So I just think it's a track and a culture,
Apple is taking and working on. If you like it, work with them. If you don't,
there are other options in the market; if you don't find anything that suits
you in this world, so build a nice world of your own.

~~~
sunchild
It's pretty clear that Apple is maneuvering to ensure that CS5 is not must-
have software for Mac users.

If you want to see an example of a vendor closing ranks to the detriment of
users, look no further than Adobe.

------
iamelgringo
Wow, what a dramatic re-interpretation of events.

I was using Macs primarily for graphics work in the late 90's and early 00's.
The close relationship between Adobe and Apple was _the_ reason to be on the
platform then. Graphic designers and creatives were one of the few markets
that Apple had left. Believe it or not, but Apple owes a large part of it's
existence through the 90's to Adobe's support of their platform. In fact,
Apple and Adobe signed an exclusive deal to only ship Photoshop on Mac's in
the early years.

Steve Jobs left, the company floundered and almost went belly up. They sued
Microsoft for patent infringement, and Microsoft settled by investing $150
million in Apple, and becoming one of Apple's largest shareholders at the
time. That helped Apple survive, and it gave Microsoft a reasonable
competitor, so it wouldn't have to fight as many charges of being
monopolistic. Ever wonder why so much Apple advertising punches Microsoft, but
Microsoft doesn't really punch back?

So, with the second coming of Steve Jobs and a fresh infusion of cash from
Microsoft. Apple decided to completely rewite their code base from scratch
based on what he had been doing at Next. OS9 died, and OSX was born.

And, while those were great moves for Apple as a company, Adobe was faced with
a very difficult choice: whether or not to port millions of lines of code over
to a new OS that represented less than 3% of the computing market. Apple was
making a "bet the farm" move, and expected Adobe to come along for the ride.
Then Apple was pissed because Adobe didn't jump on the band wagon immediately
and pony up the millions of dollars it would have cost to port their entire
suite of apps to the new OS.

Three years after the launch of OSX, Apple made another "Bet the farm" move,
and decided to migrate OSX from PowerPC chips to Intel processors.

Again, not only did Apple expect Adobe and the rest of their developer
ecosystem to port their applications to a new OS, but 3 years after the new OS
launched, they expected another dramatic round of rewrites to accommodate
Apple's business and technical decisions.

But, Adobe did begin porting their software, and in the middle of all those
changes, Apple chose to start competing directly with Adobe by launching Final
Cut Pro at roughly the same time that Adobe was launching Premiere Pro. A year
or two following that, Apple purchased Shake a video compositing app that
directly competed with After Effects.

Needless to say, relations have been a bit strained between the companies for
the last 10 years.

As far as I've been able to tell, Apple makes decisions that help Apple. They
tend to have a "love us or leave us" approach to their developer ecosystem.

Microsoft used to play hardball like that all the time with their developers
and with companies that ran on their platform. But they got slapped with anti-
trust lawsuits. They play much nicer with other kids than Apple does these
days. The only reason that Apple can get away with this, is because they are
still seen as the "under dog" by many. I suspect that perception might be
changing.

It's been so strange to hear a lot of arguments coming from Apple fans that
Microsoft advocates used to use when defending it's platform decisions. "Why
shouldn't Microsoft bundle Internet Explorer with their OS. It's their
platform. Screw Netscape. Microsoft can do what they want. It makes for a much
better experience"

People often ask me why I use Windows 7 as a development platform instead of
OSX. My response is usually a joke and a quip "someone beat me with a Mac when
I was young". Frankly, it was seeing the history of Apple's treatment of it's
developers. Yes, they have great products if want to tow the line and follow
Apple's rules. But, beware. When Apple decides to change the rules on you mid
stream, you're not going to have much recourse.

ref: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple> especially
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple#The_Microsoft_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple#The_Microsoft_deal)

<http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/history/timeline/>

edit: clarity and spelling.

~~~
philwelch
You have all of the events correct, but a few details, and the order of
events, are somewhat misleading:

1\. The Apple v. Microsoft suits began in the 1980's well before Apple ran
into trouble. They finished in 1994, 3 years before the Microsoft deal.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation))
The dispute settled in the Microsoft deal had to do with Microsoft stealing
the source code to QuickTime.
([http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DD...](http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html))

2\. The history of Final Cut is tied into the history of Macromedia and the
Quicktime dispute--Macromedia focused on developing web tools like Flash and
Dreamweaver, and Final Cut was held up by demands by Microsoft not to ship
Quicktime-based video editing software on Windows, so Final Cut was shopped
around until Apple bought it, mostly to bolster Quicktime. Apple released
Final Cut Pro in 1999, four years before Premiere Pro and two years before Mac
OS X. At the time, Final Cut was intended to compete with Avid instead of
Premiere.

3\. Apple did not "flounder" continuously from the moment Steve Jobs left in
1985 to the moment he returned in 1997. The early success of the Mac platform
came with models like the Mac SE and Mac II, which had fans, hard drives, and
even expansion slots--features Jobs had personally opposed. It was relegated
to a minority market share due to early decisions made by Sculley to keep
prices high and not license out the operating system, but Apple was still a
very successful company until the early-to-mid 90's.

4\. Mac OS X was released in 2001. In 2005, Apple announced the transition to
Intel. That's four years, not three--and four years in which Apple had gone
from simply profitable to astounding levels of growth. Whether or not Adobe
was smart to bet on Apple failing to survive the OS transition (or to bet on
graphic designers leaving the Mac en masse), it was monumentally stupid to bet
against Apple in 2005. It's also important to point out that Apple didn't
switch processors just to switch processors--Motorola failed for years to keep
PPC performance competitive with Intel, and IBM failed dramatically as well.

~~~
iamelgringo
Thanks for the corrections, Phil. I really wasn't trying to be misleading, I
knew the events, and while I did some research to verify dates, I missed a few
details.

re: 1. You're correct about the details, but the event that I was referring to
was Microsoft and Apple ending legal hostilities in '97 and signing the 5 year
office/Internet Explorer/$150 million armstice. My point was that Apple had
been on the ropes, and that Microsoft's money helped get back into the ring.
My point was also, that had it not been for Adobe and a core contingent of
dedicated artists/designers that made a living off of Adobe's software running
on Apple. Apple would have been dead in the 90's.

2\. You're correct on the release dates of Final Cut and Premiere Pro. The
Adobe release that I was thinking about was the transition between Premiere
5.1 to 6.0. Final Cut did indeed compete with Avid. Adobe until then had ruled
the pro-sumer video editing market at the time. Apple's decision to compete in
that market essentially knocked them both out of that market.

3\. I didn't mean to suggest that Apple floundered the entire time Jobs left.
Those events were in succession, but not immediate. Apple was getting beat up
pretty bad in the 90's, and had it not been for Adobe's products running on
their hardware, I dare say Apple wouldn't be here today.

4\. You're right, it was four years, not three.

Regardless. My point wasn't that Adobe made a bet against Apple. Adobe did
have software running on Apple hardware most of that time.

I still think my main point still stands, however. That is, that Apple has a
history of screwing developers, especially Adobe on their platform. Caveat
Emptor.

------
blue1
I don't understand. I believe that if you take away the Creative Suite from OS
X, the macintosh platform loses its main professional niche. It would be
suicidal for Apple to do this. But Apple seems not afraid of this possibility.

Maybe is Apple retargeting its line of computers just as development platforms
for the portable devices?

------
jpcx01
I blame Adobe in part for 3.3.1. I just hate the fact that good developers
have to suffer in the aftermath of this useless battle. Why couldn't Apple
just say succinctly in the TOS... "ADOBE AINT WELCOME HERE NO MO".

------
larryrubin
The plot thickens...

------
chanux
Go Apple! Go take the revenge!!.

------
noamsml
What sort of fucking joke is this? Saying that some sort of karma game should
determine developers' freedom to use the tools necessary for the job? That not
supporting a certain platform merits an artificial limitation on the platform?

Please.

------
wrinklz
Finally a balanced analysis of the iPad developer agreement. Screw you, Adobe!

