Adobe CTO paints Steve Jobs as Big Brother Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch believes that Apple barred translated Flash from the iPhone not because Flash runs poorly on the Jobsian handheld but because it runs so well. "We have already done a great job - technically - of getting Flash applications to run on the iPhone," Lynch said today during a question and …
Apple have always been on the side of stifling innovation. They did it back in the 80s when they hijacked xerox wimp interface and sued everyone for look and feel, they did it in the late 80s when they tried to stop people running mac emulators. How they ever got a fanboi following is a complete and utter mystery.
Yep, just like the new Core i7 iMacs....oh you had to send yours back due to not booting/cracking? So sad.
Your iPhone gets spotty 3G or WiFi service, even next to a cell tower/router? *comfort*
You can't go to the movies with friends because you had to take out a small personal loan just to by your Mac Pro (without a monitor even)? I feel for you.
Can't watch YouTube or news video on your iPhone? Oh yeah, Apple banned Flash. That's your fault for buying it.
Yep. Apple makes excellent products that work extremely well.
Perhaps more of the Mactastic crowd should take to their neighbor's 10yr old. They could probably cobble together a better PC solution nowadays. Sure, you'll have to run Win7, but honestly, is it really that bad? No more having to explain to grandpa that he can't "borrow" his neighbor's copy <insert some app that he absolutely has to have (MS Office for instance)>.
As referenced at http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1657
"This is the first strip drawn entirely in Adobe Photoshop CS 5! It crashed five times in the process of drawing this comic! GOOD JOB ADOBE"
I hope Steve beats the crap out of Adobe, even though I'd never buy a Mac or iAnything.
Right now I have to do silly magic shit like "export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=TRUE" to get the mouse to work in Flash. WTF?
Hit 'em with the lead pipe again, please.
So you think that Steve Jobs should be able to dictate how the world should be just because a piece of software has quirks and you have to do a little bit more, actually learn and remember stuff, AND DO YOUR JOB?? What an idiot. Almost as big an idiot as Jobs himself.
Adobe might produce crappy software but at least they don't tell you how you can and can't use it or where you can run it.
"at least they don't tell you how you can and can't use it or where you can run it"
hahahaha of course Adobe does!!!
This is not about freedom. This war is about money. Remember Flash is proprietary. So you pay s**t loads of money to Adobe to make it work on your mobile platform. Apple refuses to pay that license for flash.
End of story.
It makes me sick that Adobe is taking the freedom stance here. If you build an app based on Flash, you are choosing a proprietary platform to build on! So you have absolutely no right at all to complain that some people might not be able to view it. If you want everybody to view your website, use an open standard!
What lovely hyperbole which renders your argument moot.
Do I think Steve should be able to dictate user experience on his products when that's their mantra as a company? Absolutely - it's why I buy them and though I don't agree with all his moves (e.g. not allowing other video codec on it and other products) I do believe his products are the best at user experience on the market today. If someone gets eliminted in the pursuit of that, so what? I'm happy with my lovely product and I don't give a toss that Adobe loses out. Boo hoo hoo.
that if it were written in Flash it *should* be cross platform, so write once/run anywhere. As it was written for the iPhone it would need to be re-written to run on a different phone. Hence the developer probably wouldn't bother.
I say *should* be cross platform because, in practice, I've never seen anything that's WO/RA work properly *everywhere*.
"that if it were written in Flash it *should* be cross platform, so write once/run anywhere. As it was written for the iPhone it would need to be re-written to run on a different phone. Hence the developer probably wouldn't bother."
Can Flash control external devices - ie. radio transmitters?
I think not!
They both get on my tits, Apple for being so closed and "you can only use the software we authorise" which severely limits innovation, and don't get me started on Quicktime for Windows - piece of shit kludgy software with non-standard Windows interface, it's like they're trying to bring a piece of Apple to PCs, and it's rotten.
As for Adobe, Flash just sits there doing feck-all on webpages chewing up CPU like there's no tomorrow, embedded video from sites such as YouTube & Vimeo etc. are the number one cause of my browser going sluggish, I say roll-on the embedded video solutions that don't use Flash.
And as for their PDF reader - slow, awful piece of shit, had to install FoxIt on my mother's PC because she got sent an A3 PDF and Adobe's pathetic offering wouldn't scale it down to A4 when printing.
Opera and MS have waded into the fight too, more or less on Apple's side.
This could get messy.
Gotta say, though, as a former developer; while I appreciate the speed you can deploy multi-platform apps with on something like Flash, it's no substitute whatsoever for writing native apps for each platform from the user's perspective. Once you know each platform you can taylor the app to a much better experience for the user that fits more with the OS than the deveopment tools.
Mind you, it's just as easy to go completely wrong too. Mac apps on Windows that try to still be Mac apps (iTunes for example) are terrible. Windows apps on Mac that try to still be Windows apps (e.g. MS Office). Cross platform apps that try lowest common denomonator (e.g. OpenOffice). They all work after a fashion, or even very well, but often fail to take advantage of the platform's strengths and usually ignore the UI and style guides completely.
Sure, it's a major pain and not terribly cost-effecttive, but who are we developing for?
I'm shocked at the number of Adobe/Flash fanbois crawing out of the woodwork, TBH.
Bet this post gets voted down by them.
Evidently, though I've not seen any of them myself nor any reference to a specific product, there are 100s of Flash apps on the App Store. Evidently, anyway.
Someone must have taken a look (critical and technical) at these at some point? The obvious would be Adobe - does anyone know if they have??
Used to use their products all the time, now the only one I rely on is Fireworks and in the last 12 months that has crashed more times on my Mac than any other application I own. Don't even get me started on updates and the frigging cost of their web tools compared to how much they used to cost when they were owned by Macromedia.
So for my personal needs I've replaced Dreamweaver with Coda, Photoshop with Pixelmator, don't use Flash anymore and I'm now just waiting for a replacement for Fireworks and Adobe are history. I've had enough of their overpriced, poorly supported, bloated, nagware - I'm with Jobs - fuck Adobe.
They ignored Apple for a decade, shovelling out late, second-rate, slow versions of their software (where they released them at all) with nightmarish licensing. Flash has been awful for as long as I can remember, and even Acrobat Reader has been unbearably slow and unstable. It hasn't been that good on Windows either, being both slow and a constant source of security problems. In short, all the hallmarks of a company that hasn't had any real competition in a long time. So when, for example, it's pointed out that Safari crashes frequently with Flash installed (yet runs smoothly with Flash removed) how do they respond? "It's all Apple's fault!"
Now they claim to have made it all sweetness and light on the iPhone, but I'd like to see some proof of that work elsewhere. After promising a mobile version of Flash for years, there doesn't seem to be a full implementation *anywhere* to perform tests with. All we have is this stream of hot air from a CTO who realises he's missed the boat. And once again, "it's all Apple's fault!"
And with respect to open Web standards, Adobe should put their money where their mouth is. Who is the railroad baron excluding other's from the tracks when it is only possible for Flash content to be produced and played through Adobe products? Make Flash entirely open source and then perhaps we won't laugh when you call for open standards. And take some responsibility for the problems you caused, e.g. stop outsourcing your development and support to the cheapest bidder!
"Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch believes that Apple barred translated Flash from the iPhone not because Flash runs poorly on the Jobsian handheld but because it runs so well"
What a wonderful sense of humor! Flash is crap on Mac OSX - and drains the battery fast. It would fare no better the iPhone.
Smiley face - cause the adobe CTO is funny.
Flash 10.1 isn't quite here yet. Isn't this the point? The popularity of the iPhone is that even a 2 year old can use it. The sloppy way windows system need updates,drivers etc to erm basically just work all the time, doesn't really cut it anymore. Adobe's new Flagship CS5 has some great bells and whistles but a lot of them are "under development"
Computers should be as reliable as ones washing machine, or dishwasher. You don't expect to have to turn it off and on a few times just to get ti to work.
I'm not pro or anit Apple I just like stuff that works..
Not me, not one bit. I'm completely against proprietary anything - what Flash can do should be included in the web standards. Flash can be fun in games I admit, but I'm willing to pay extra money or a custom iPhone/iPad app from the App Store if it'll keep Flash off my lovely device.
Adobe are second only to Microsoft in churning out lazy minor evolutions of software and charging a fortune.
Who in their right mind pays £640 for a graphic tool? I bet 50% or more of Photoshop users are using a pirate copy.
I really hope Apple produce a rival to Photoshop at half or less of the price. I remember buying Logic Audio for about half RRP on Ebay thinking I had got a good deal. Then Apple released Logic Studio for less than what I had paid (approx £319) and they dropped the USB dongle, I upgraded for £129. This for a professional audio tool used by all manner of recording artists.
Contrast this with Cubase which was over £500 at the time. Now Cubase Studio 5 can be bought for £299!! So competition is good, it's about time Adobe had some competition so they can't charge their extortionate prices and release lazy bloat-ware.
Photoshop is the second most pirated non-game software after doze itself (gah, forget where this comes from, though I didn't pull it out of my ass).
Personally, I've been trying the new Lightroom 3 beta- and it's splendid, great image quality produced from the new demosiacing, love the new NR, etc. The interface is a bit clumsy, but I could live with that.
I'm considering buying it- the only think holding me back is that I don't want to pay another £500 on top for Photoshop. If I am going to pirate Photoshop like most people, I will have to stop my machine phoning home to Adobe, which will kill any legit software of theirs that I buy.
Soo, I guess I will be pirating both. I would have been prepared, at a stretch, to spring for £400-500 tops for this software (for my own private home use), but together, but that doesn't even begin to cover it. Frankl, fuck that, I shall pirate it, and carefully strip out various tags before uploading the output anywhere (easy to script).
So yeah, I have a bit of a problem with Adobe, who are every bit as rapacious and controlling. I own Adobe software and Apple hardware and software. Some's good, some's bad, but right now, I feel dirty for dealing with either of them.
Whether you are pro/against flash there is another underlying issue here. A company, in this case Adobe but it could be anyone, can invest considerable effort in developing for the iphone/ipod/ietc only for Apple to come along and on a whim, not just change the goalposts but change the game.
So far the iphone and co have done well as it was the main player in town, however if you come up with an innovative idea would you take the risk investing all that effort aiming for apples products or target another platform?
Sure up to now people (myself included) have done that as for the past couple of years as it was the only real option of earning some from my invested effort. Android is quickly catching up with iphone sales (for my apps anyway) and it is a safer option. I'm no longer bothering with iphone for my own software (I'm still quite happy to continue developing other peoples software for it as it's not my risk).
I can see Apples draconian rules driving innovation from the iphone.
" to come along and on a whim, not just change the goalposts but change the game"
Not really - Apple has said very clearly from day one that they do not want Flash on the iPhone/iWhatever. Adobe just as clearly worked to get around that ban. Apple did the only thing they could to stop them.
Running flash has always been prevented. What has changed is the ability to write something in say flash scrip and TRANSLATING into something that can be run on the iphone. The running application is NOT a flash application, it is not/would not be running in a flash interpreter.
What Adobe did was within the bounds of the rules Apple had in place, Apple is changing the rules to prevent this. The rules also cover any abstraction above the level of c/obj-c/c++ code or the few tools provided by xcode. Apple changed the rules after Adobe invested the effort to do it, what's to stop them making a change that affects mine or your software. True business is about taking risk, but targeting the iphone is a lot riskier than say android and the levels of expected return are tending towards equality.
This change can only be to tie developers to the iphone, there is no technical reason what so ever. True an app coded by hand in say objective-c can be more efficient than one that uses an abstraction library, but the same argument applies to writing an application in assembler or even machine code. And lets face it for the average developer a well written and tested abstraction library is probably going to lead to better quality software than having to do everything themselves.
They're just scared because flash is so efficient and stable.
I particularly like the quality of their Linux version. The "killall firefox" for when flash dies on its arse that I have pinned to the toolbar is just because I'm scared of how good flash is.
Looking forward to when FFox sandboxes flash like Chrome does, as it's a buggy pile of crap.
This bitchfest between Adobe and Apple is tedious. They both make a few things that I'd use through choice, they're both massively shrill and irritating companies, control freaks and need to STFU. I am starting to wish that they could both lose this cripple fight.
There is only one issue, and that envy. Pure old Envy.
The clamour about Flash originates from individuals who want to be seen with a flashy piece of hardware but object to not having Flash and thats fine. I find it highly amusing to listen to the incoherent rants from individuals who refuse to buy something as the manufacturer will not jump to their demands. These are the same people who would try to walk into a car showroom, say GM, and demand that they put an Audi engine in the car and will not accept anything else. Unsurprisingly, they are to go forth .....
There is no obligation of Apple to put Adobe systems on an iPhone, nor is there an obligation for Ford to sell Audi engines in their cars.
You decide what you wish to buy but don't ever think you have the right to demand manufacturers do what you want. It is they who decide what you can buy and the number and volume of purchasers decides whether their choice was correct. Thus far Apple have been undoubtedly right and all the Flash kiddies have been proven to be wrong - iPhone and iPad sales have been spectacularly successful without Flash.
Once Flash is working on Android, and is a success, and is proven to have dented the iPhone sales sufficiently then no doubt Apple will reconsider. Note that it will take several successful events - not the whining of children.
There are so few better examples of the childlike attitude of people to anything which endangers their sense of entitlement to what "Mummy says I can have" than this topic.
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