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Ok, I'll list one: Performance. Historically, Adobe products have been slow as dog shit because they couldn't be bothered to keep their products up to date with

Ok, I'll list one: Performance. Historically, Adobe products have been slow as dog shit because they couldn't be bothered to keep their products up to date with Apple's OS and hardware advantages. Let's say Apple brings out a new iPad with a special graphics processor. What are the chances that all the Flash apps will run slow as shit on the new iPad? Will users complain that developer X is at fault because they used Flash? No, users will complain that the new iPad is slow. Apple has no interest in being at Adobe's mercy like this again.

jrockway 17y ago
Here's a question, then: why is it that developers want to use Flash? Ignorance? Or maybe it offers something that Apple doesn't?
- raganwald 17y ago
  Developers have their interests at heart Apple have theirs. Expecting the two to have 100% overlap is idealism. The key is to find the intersection between the two. Developing in Flash for iPhone is not working with the intersection between developer interests and Apple's interests. That is not a criticism of Apple or Flash, just pointing out that it isn't win-win.
- kelnos 17y ago
  Familiarity, most likely. Support and QA likely play a role as well. If you have one code base that targets web users on Windows, OS X, Linux, and any mobile platform that has Flash, creating a completely separate code base for a single platform is something you don't do lightly.
wvenable 17y ago
> they couldn't be bothered to keep their products up to date with Apple's OS and hardware advantages. Microsoft has maintained 20 years of backwards compatibility and Apple's OS and hardware is constantly in flux. Why is it Adobe's fault? It's hard work developing these projects, they have huge code bases and large numbers of users. This position is not supported by logic. > Let's say Apple brings out a new iPad with a special graphics processor. What are the chances that all the Flash apps will run slow as shit on the new iPad? Assuming it requires a software change, every single iPad developer will need to update their software to take advantage of it. But Adobe any simply update their software once and every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it. Not everything about Adobe's Flash compiler is immediately a negative.
- mbreese 17y ago
  > Apple's OS and hardware is constantly in flux Well, the writing was on the wall as soon as Cocoa was released. While Apple maintained both Carbon and Cocoa as first-class citizens as far as the UI was concerned, it was obvious that Cocoa was the future of the Mac's API. Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated. This forced Adobe to rewrite all of their Carbon apps, which is what took all of the time. Had Adobe gone with the blessed Cocoa kit and XCode tool chain from the beginning, they could have just recompiled Photoshop and had a Universal binary immediately. They chose not to. > every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application. If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast...
  - wvenable 17y ago
    > the writing was on the wall as soon as Cocoa was released. Cocoa came first but Apple couldn't convince anyone to port their applications from Mac classic to a completely new OS with no marketshare. So they had to develop the Carbon API to get developer support. > Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated. Which was a smart move for Adobe. They have a lot of Mac code and converting it all to Cocoa is essentially a complete rewrite. You expect Adobe to have perfect knowledge of the future or a time machine. > They chose not to. It wasn't much a choice. OS X was in no way a sure thing. In fact, the only thing that actually allowed OS X to survive was Adobe's support of the platform. > Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application. Did you read what I said? Isn't the possibility of Flash developers hitting "recompile" a lot more likely than Objective-C developers actually having to make code changes to support this new feature? > If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast... Adobe's Flash compiler is exactly that, a compiler, which converts Flash apps into native code. If Adobe has done their job right, it's unlikely you'd notice the difference. And if you did, you would just delete them. Just like you would delete a crappy Objective-C app -- those already exist in droves.

jrockway 17y ago

Here's a question, then: why is it that developers want to use Flash? Ignorance? Or maybe it offers something that Apple doesn't?

raganwald 17y ago
Developers have their interests at heart Apple have theirs. Expecting the two to have 100% overlap is idealism. The key is to find the intersection between the two. Developing in Flash for iPhone is not working with the intersection between developer interests and Apple's interests. That is not a criticism of Apple or Flash, just pointing out that it isn't win-win.
kelnos 17y ago
Familiarity, most likely. Support and QA likely play a role as well. If you have one code base that targets web users on Windows, OS X, Linux, and any mobile platform that has Flash, creating a completely separate code base for a single platform is something you don't do lightly.

wvenable 17y ago

> they couldn't be bothered to keep their products up to date with Apple's OS and hardware advantages. Microsoft has maintained 20 years of backwards compatibility and Apple's OS and hardware is constantly in flux. Why is it Adobe's fault? It's hard work developing these projects, they have huge code bases and large numbers of users. This position is not supported by logic. > Let's say Apple brings out a new iPad with a special graphics processor. What are the chances that all the Flash apps will run slow as shit on the new iPad? Assuming it requires a software change, every single iPad developer will need to update their software to take advantage of it. But Adobe any simply update their software once and every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it. Not everything about Adobe's Flash compiler is immediately a negative.

mbreese 17y ago
> Apple's OS and hardware is constantly in flux Well, the writing was on the wall as soon as Cocoa was released. While Apple maintained both Carbon and Cocoa as first-class citizens as far as the UI was concerned, it was obvious that Cocoa was the future of the Mac's API. Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated. This forced Adobe to rewrite all of their Carbon apps, which is what took all of the time. Had Adobe gone with the blessed Cocoa kit and XCode tool chain from the beginning, they could have just recompiled Photoshop and had a Universal binary immediately. They chose not to. > every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application. If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast...
- wvenable 17y ago
  > the writing was on the wall as soon as Cocoa was released. Cocoa came first but Apple couldn't convince anyone to port their applications from Mac classic to a completely new OS with no marketshare. So they had to develop the Carbon API to get developer support. > Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated. Which was a smart move for Adobe. They have a lot of Mac code and converting it all to Cocoa is essentially a complete rewrite. You expect Adobe to have perfect knowledge of the future or a time machine. > They chose not to. It wasn't much a choice. OS X was in no way a sure thing. In fact, the only thing that actually allowed OS X to survive was Adobe's support of the platform. > Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application. Did you read what I said? Isn't the possibility of Flash developers hitting "recompile" a lot more likely than Objective-C developers actually having to make code changes to support this new feature? > If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast... Adobe's Flash compiler is exactly that, a compiler, which converts Flash apps into native code. If Adobe has done their job right, it's unlikely you'd notice the difference. And if you did, you would just delete them. Just like you would delete a crappy Objective-C app -- those already exist in droves.