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The crux argument is surprisingly cogent: Adobe needs to make a killer product, not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion, the one mechanism that has

The crux argument is surprisingly cogent: Adobe needs to make a killer product, not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion, the one mechanism that has never been shown to work in the past. I think there's a huge amount of opportunity for Adobe here. Application development for mobile devices is a developing market. There's room for something new. A new programming language, a new framework, new things I can't even imagine involving location, clouds, whatever. Pushing Flash because it's a dominant player in a legacy market is a little like going back to 1995 and arguing that people ought to be able to make web servers in PowerBuilder because that's the language everyone is using for business applications. Adobe doesn't call me up and tell me how to write software, so I'm loathe to tell them what to do. I'll just say that it would be incredibly cool if they went out and bought some tiny startup or lab with a really revolutionary product and pimped it out as the successor to Flash for mobile devices.

josefresco 17y ago
"Adobe doesn't call me up and tell me how to write software" Apple might though.
- raganwald 17y ago
  They told me to write web applications using open and free standards, and I listened. Some other people called them up and begged to be chained to the oars of a proprietary slave galley, and they told them that if they wanted to be slaves they had to be Apple's slaves and not Adobe's slaves. Many of these people are happy and well-fed, so I have no quarrel with their choice. But I point out that it's their choice and Apple have offered each and every one of us the right to write free applications for iPhone and iPad.
  - tomlin 17y ago
    > They told me to write web applications using open and free standards, and I listened. Too bad you can't write any apps (preferred method for accessing information on the iPhone) using an open and free standard. It's not just Adobe this effects, it effects any framework. Including the one built on free and open standards: http://www.phonegap.com/ http://www.phonegap.com/
    - raganwald 17y ago
      What can I say, the servant's quarters are pretty sweet, whereas if you homestead you have to cut down your own trees and live in a rough log cabin. But it's YOUR log cabin!
    - davidedicillo 17y ago
      You might want to double check your facts. PhoneGap won't be affected by 3.3.1
      - tomlin 17y ago
        It's hardly a fact. A few months ago it was a "fact" that you could publish using CS5. http://blogs.nitobi.com/jesse/2010/04/14/phonegap-and-the-apple-developer-license-agreement/ http://blogs.nitobi.com/jesse/2010/04/14/phonegap-and-the-ap... Tomorrow it could also be a "fact" that PhoneGap violates the same 3.3.1 clause. Truth is, the "facts" are flexible for Apple, and not so for the developers who dedicate several hours learning a specific approach/workflow.
        davidedicillo 17y ago
        You can keep thinking like that. In Italy we say "di certo c'è solo la morte" (the only sure thing is death). When you base your business on somebody's platform you play with their rules and if they want to change them so be it. Apple doesn't force anybody to develop for iPhone, if you don't like it, plenty of other platforms. Apple, like every other company, is a business, and they make business decisions, the ones they think are better for their company and profits. Apple didn't force you to learn "a specific approach/workflow" using Titanium. Next time spend those hours learning the native tools they give you and you'll be fine.
        tomlin 17y ago
        That's great rhetoric and philosophy, yet it's incredibly clear that the decision to eliminate other frameworks from compiling into iApps (the day of CS5 announcement, no less) is motivated by ignorance. Ignorance that costs developers unnecessarily. The argument that Flash kills the battery is without merit if Apple is pushing canvas+js, which uses as much if not more CPU (based on personal findings as well as written testimony from neutral developers; ie: not Apple PR nodes).
alec 17y ago
"Adobe needs to make a killer product, not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion." They seem to think they _have_ the killer product, and it's hard to argue with them - Flash is ubiquitous and has been for years, provides the content on a number of important sites (video on YouTube, charts on Google Finance and Analytics, all those stupid games and greeting cards, ...). It may not last long with HTML5, but it's going to be years before that's widespread - hell, there are still people campaigning to get rid of IE6 and 7.
- gaius 17y ago
  But then how's there a YouTube player on the iPad? Something doesn't add up.
  - studer 17y ago
    Because Apple wrote one from scratch?
  - Jun8 17y ago
    Apple payed Google to transcode the videos to H.264.
    - Jun8 17y ago
      FYI downvoters: http://newteevee.com/2007/06/03/youtube-goes-h264-thanks-to-apple/ http://newteevee.com/2007/06/03/youtube-goes-h264-thanks-to-...
      - WiseWeasel 17y ago
        And your cited "article" supports your claim that Apple paid Google for the effort where, exactly?
        Jun8 17y ago
        OK, first, if you find that link unbelievable, which I assume from your scare quotes, there are many others, e.g. http://www.last100.com/2007/06/01/youtube-to-re-encode-videos-for-appletv-and-iphone/ http://www.last100.com/2007/06/01/youtube-to-re-encode-video.... This was big news in 2007, when Jobs demoed (the now kinda defunct but may be due for a comeback) Apple TV. As the quote by Apple VP David Moody says, the transcoding was done purely for Apple. Now, to the question whether Apple paid Google: I don't think anybody saw them writing Google a big check, "paid" in this sense is making concessions to Google, like having Google as the default search engine. This was of course in the good old days when Schmidt was on the board. If you think about it, transcoding all those videos into H.264 is a huge effort, something that Google wouldn't have taken lightly. Of course, at that time YouTube was (and still is) under intense pressure to make profits so that may have helped Apple's hand.
ashish_0x90 17y ago
Agree with your points. They should probably concentrate on their second chance with android, which they can use to show their product potential(if they can only can make a great product experience for end user, not the memory hogging exp. we are used to on the desktops) They should also try to win over application developers community which apple have mostly ignored/dictated upon so far.
- WiseWeasel 17y ago
  I wish they would concentrate on their second chance with desktop users of Flash as well... We're suffering from Flash's crappy behavior too!
isleyaardvark 17y ago
...not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion, the one mechanism that has never been shown to work in the past. But it has worked in the past. Popular opinion has already spoken, in the form of iPhone sales. Lack of Flash did not prevent the iPhone from being a success for the past 3 years, nor has it been desired enough to motivate other phone manufacturers to put Flash on their phones. Or motivated Adobe to make a good version of mobile Flash, for that matter. Adobe just wants Flash on the iPhone because there's a big market of developers they can sell their tools to.
- alec 17y ago
  " nor has it been desired enough to motivate other phone manufacturers to put Flash on their phones" ... except for all the ones using Android. RIM's supposedly also working on Flash for the Blackberry.
  - isleyaardvark 17y ago
    ...which was only added recently to Android. The Blackberry's been around for a long time, Flash has been around for a long time, and they still haven't added it. There are a lot of consumers who are perfectly happy using a smartphone without Flash. I'm willing to bet it does not give RIM or Google any major advantage in the market.
  - perokreco 17y ago
    And Symbian has had Flash for at least 3-5 years.
astine 17y ago
" Application development for mobile devices is a developing market. There's room for something new. A new programming language, a new framework, new things I can't even imagine involving location, clouds, whatever." Except if they can't get it on the iPhone they may as well be Loki Games. They need to be on the dominant player to gain traction, and it doesn't look like the dominant player is willing to let them gain any traction.
- raganwald 17y ago
  What I mean is this: If they are over on Android and Blackberry and WebOs helping developers make the same kinds of applications that developers are making on iPhone, they're going to lose unless Android or Blackberry or WebOS find a way to win independently of Flash. But if there is some new kind of application that I can't imagine that they facilitate, some new category that is so compelling for end users that they buy whatever phone runs the new application, then another phone can supplant iPhone the way PCs supplanted Apple IIs. If Adobe's product is the dominant way to write the new kind of app, Adobe will ride this new market the way Flash rode the explosion of the web. But fundamentally, it has to be something new that makes all of the existing apps seem like yesterday's news.
mustpax 17y ago
"... it would be incredibly cool if they went out and bought some tiny startup or lab with a really revolutionary product and pimped it out as the successor to Flash for mobile devices." Instead, Adobe went and bought Omniture for $1.8B. The acquisition has "completing the loop" written all over it. These are the actions of an incumbent who is more concerned with milking their position than maintaining it. We should be glad Apple lighting a fire under Adobe's feet; somebody needs to remind them to compete.
lwhi 17y ago
The crux argument is: Apple need to stop being _too_ controlling.

josefresco 17y ago

"Adobe doesn't call me up and tell me how to write software" Apple might though.

raganwald 17y ago
They told me to write web applications using open and free standards, and I listened. Some other people called them up and begged to be chained to the oars of a proprietary slave galley, and they told them that if they wanted to be slaves they had to be Apple's slaves and not Adobe's slaves. Many of these people are happy and well-fed, so I have no quarrel with their choice. But I point out that it's their choice and Apple have offered each and every one of us the right to write free applications for iPhone and iPad.
- tomlin 17y ago
  > They told me to write web applications using open and free standards, and I listened. Too bad you can't write any apps (preferred method for accessing information on the iPhone) using an open and free standard. It's not just Adobe this effects, it effects any framework. Including the one built on free and open standards: http://www.phonegap.com/ http://www.phonegap.com/
  - raganwald 17y ago
    What can I say, the servant's quarters are pretty sweet, whereas if you homestead you have to cut down your own trees and live in a rough log cabin. But it's YOUR log cabin!
  - davidedicillo 17y ago
    You might want to double check your facts. PhoneGap won't be affected by 3.3.1
    - tomlin 17y ago
      It's hardly a fact. A few months ago it was a "fact" that you could publish using CS5. http://blogs.nitobi.com/jesse/2010/04/14/phonegap-and-the-apple-developer-license-agreement/ http://blogs.nitobi.com/jesse/2010/04/14/phonegap-and-the-ap... Tomorrow it could also be a "fact" that PhoneGap violates the same 3.3.1 clause. Truth is, the "facts" are flexible for Apple, and not so for the developers who dedicate several hours learning a specific approach/workflow.
      - davidedicillo 17y ago
        You can keep thinking like that. In Italy we say "di certo c'è solo la morte" (the only sure thing is death). When you base your business on somebody's platform you play with their rules and if they want to change them so be it. Apple doesn't force anybody to develop for iPhone, if you don't like it, plenty of other platforms. Apple, like every other company, is a business, and they make business decisions, the ones they think are better for their company and profits. Apple didn't force you to learn "a specific approach/workflow" using Titanium. Next time spend those hours learning the native tools they give you and you'll be fine.
        tomlin 17y ago
        That's great rhetoric and philosophy, yet it's incredibly clear that the decision to eliminate other frameworks from compiling into iApps (the day of CS5 announcement, no less) is motivated by ignorance. Ignorance that costs developers unnecessarily. The argument that Flash kills the battery is without merit if Apple is pushing canvas+js, which uses as much if not more CPU (based on personal findings as well as written testimony from neutral developers; ie: not Apple PR nodes).

alec 17y ago

"Adobe needs to make a killer product, not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion." They seem to think they _have_ the killer product, and it's hard to argue with them - Flash is ubiquitous and has been for years, provides the content on a number of important sites (video on YouTube, charts on Google Finance and Analytics, all those stupid games and greeting cards, ...). It may not last long with HTML5, but it's going to be years before that's widespread - hell, there are still people campaigning to get rid of IE6 and 7.

gaius 17y ago
But then how's there a YouTube player on the iPad? Something doesn't add up.
- studer 17y ago
  Because Apple wrote one from scratch?
- Jun8 17y ago
  Apple payed Google to transcode the videos to H.264.
  - Jun8 17y ago
    FYI downvoters: http://newteevee.com/2007/06/03/youtube-goes-h264-thanks-to-apple/ http://newteevee.com/2007/06/03/youtube-goes-h264-thanks-to-...
    - WiseWeasel 17y ago
      And your cited "article" supports your claim that Apple paid Google for the effort where, exactly?
      - Jun8 17y ago
        OK, first, if you find that link unbelievable, which I assume from your scare quotes, there are many others, e.g. http://www.last100.com/2007/06/01/youtube-to-re-encode-videos-for-appletv-and-iphone/ http://www.last100.com/2007/06/01/youtube-to-re-encode-video.... This was big news in 2007, when Jobs demoed (the now kinda defunct but may be due for a comeback) Apple TV. As the quote by Apple VP David Moody says, the transcoding was done purely for Apple. Now, to the question whether Apple paid Google: I don't think anybody saw them writing Google a big check, "paid" in this sense is making concessions to Google, like having Google as the default search engine. This was of course in the good old days when Schmidt was on the board. If you think about it, transcoding all those videos into H.264 is a huge effort, something that Google wouldn't have taken lightly. Of course, at that time YouTube was (and still is) under intense pressure to make profits so that may have helped Apple's hand.

ashish_0x90 17y ago

Agree with your points. They should probably concentrate on their second chance with android, which they can use to show their product potential(if they can only can make a great product experience for end user, not the memory hogging exp. we are used to on the desktops) They should also try to win over application developers community which apple have mostly ignored/dictated upon so far.

WiseWeasel 17y ago
I wish they would concentrate on their second chance with desktop users of Flash as well... We're suffering from Flash's crappy behavior too!

isleyaardvark 17y ago

...not try to pressure Apple using the popular opinion, the one mechanism that has never been shown to work in the past. But it has worked in the past. Popular opinion has already spoken, in the form of iPhone sales. Lack of Flash did not prevent the iPhone from being a success for the past 3 years, nor has it been desired enough to motivate other phone manufacturers to put Flash on their phones. Or motivated Adobe to make a good version of mobile Flash, for that matter. Adobe just wants Flash on the iPhone because there's a big market of developers they can sell their tools to.

alec 17y ago
" nor has it been desired enough to motivate other phone manufacturers to put Flash on their phones" ... except for all the ones using Android. RIM's supposedly also working on Flash for the Blackberry.
- isleyaardvark 17y ago
  ...which was only added recently to Android. The Blackberry's been around for a long time, Flash has been around for a long time, and they still haven't added it. There are a lot of consumers who are perfectly happy using a smartphone without Flash. I'm willing to bet it does not give RIM or Google any major advantage in the market.
- perokreco 17y ago
  And Symbian has had Flash for at least 3-5 years.

astine 17y ago

" Application development for mobile devices is a developing market. There's room for something new. A new programming language, a new framework, new things I can't even imagine involving location, clouds, whatever." Except if they can't get it on the iPhone they may as well be Loki Games. They need to be on the dominant player to gain traction, and it doesn't look like the dominant player is willing to let them gain any traction.

raganwald 17y ago
What I mean is this: If they are over on Android and Blackberry and WebOs helping developers make the same kinds of applications that developers are making on iPhone, they're going to lose unless Android or Blackberry or WebOS find a way to win independently of Flash. But if there is some new kind of application that I can't imagine that they facilitate, some new category that is so compelling for end users that they buy whatever phone runs the new application, then another phone can supplant iPhone the way PCs supplanted Apple IIs. If Adobe's product is the dominant way to write the new kind of app, Adobe will ride this new market the way Flash rode the explosion of the web. But fundamentally, it has to be something new that makes all of the existing apps seem like yesterday's news.

mustpax 17y ago

"... it would be incredibly cool if they went out and bought some tiny startup or lab with a really revolutionary product and pimped it out as the successor to Flash for mobile devices." Instead, Adobe went and bought Omniture for $1.8B. The acquisition has "completing the loop" written all over it. These are the actions of an incumbent who is more concerned with milking their position than maintaining it. We should be glad Apple lighting a fire under Adobe's feet; somebody needs to remind them to compete.

lwhi 17y ago

The crux argument is: Apple need to stop being _too_ controlling.