4 ms·

> Much like Adobe did to Macs in the 1990s, WeChat has become so powerful they control the platform. I'd enjoy listening to the story here, spacebanana.

spacebanana7 3y ago
Adobe almost killed Apple by developing Windows-first and sometimes Windows-only products in the 1990s. Many professionals cared about Adobe software more than their hardware device, so moved platforms. Adobe’s motivation was largely revenge against Apple for opening up printing standards. Previously Adobe had a de facto monopoly license on these. Steve Jobs was extremely pissed off by seeing Apple get hurt for making a pro consumer decision that was good for the wider industry, and held the grudge for a long time. Even though he wasn’t CEO for much of this period. This article has more detail if you’re interested [1] [1] https://www.alphr.com/blogs/2010/05/05/apple-adobe-history/ https://www.alphr.com/blogs/2010/05/05/apple-adobe-history/
- yreg 3y ago
  Steve eventually got his revenge: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...
  - paulmd 3y ago
    This is a perfect explanation of apple’s relationship with NVIDIA and the CUDA platform too. Bumpgate affected AMD products too, this was the era of baking your 7850 to try and reflow the solder bumps, and apple was just trying to get the supplier to pay for the problems with the RoHS solders that apple specified in the product designs. Apple has always been a clientzilla that ruthlessly leans on its partners and suppliers (most recently Goldman Sachs is feeling the pain from the Apple Card) and believes that it’s a privilege to hold their business. And nvidia isn’t a company that got rich by bending over for that kind of treatment either (see also their relation with Microsoft). Apple really wanted to terminate their relationship with nvidia anyway and this was just them demanding a big check on the way out the door. Nothing like making your ex pay for the cost of you moving out during the breakup.
pavlov 3y ago
The story with Adobe on Mac in the 1990s is that their apps were so important to the platform that they practically had a veto on the API for Apple’s next-gen OS. When Apple acquired NeXT, the original plan was for the NeXT API (now called Cocoa) to become the only way to build apps on the new Mac OS. But Adobe made it clear they were not going to port everything to Objective-C. In response Apple came up with Carbon, which was a port of essential plain-C APIs from Classic Mac OS to the new environment. Apple retaliated pretty hard in 2007-2010 by first knifing 64-bit Carbon when it had already shipped in Leopard betas, and later strangling Flash.
- deepsun 3y ago
  Well, asking to rewrite all your stuff, especially such large platforms as Photoshop is a very big undertaking and resource investment. Don't see where the grudge comes from. E.g. if someone comes to our organization and ask to rewrite half of what we do in their new language, we won't move. Should that someone hold a grudge against us?
- kelnos 3y ago
  I think Apple was the one who was unreasonable here, not Adobe. I loathe the idea of giving Microsoft credit for anything, but one thing they got right was their focus on backward compatibility. Certainly that has frayed at times here and there, but MS generally doesn't ask their developers to completely rewrite their applications to use a new application framework.
  - ack_complete 3y ago
    Except for UWP, where they are doing just that. Some OS features, such as multi-layer swap chains, are exclusive to UWP apps.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    And because of that, even as far back as 2005, there were 10 ways to create a string in C and depending on which Windows API you were using, you had to convert between them constantly. Considering how Microsoft has failed to move past Windows while Apple uses the same OS more or less for watches, phones, tablets, monitors, set top boxes, etc without having to support legacy crap.

spacebanana7 3y ago

Adobe almost killed Apple by developing Windows-first and sometimes Windows-only products in the 1990s. Many professionals cared about Adobe software more than their hardware device, so moved platforms. Adobe’s motivation was largely revenge against Apple for opening up printing standards. Previously Adobe had a de facto monopoly license on these. Steve Jobs was extremely pissed off by seeing Apple get hurt for making a pro consumer decision that was good for the wider industry, and held the grudge for a long time. Even though he wasn’t CEO for much of this period. This article has more detail if you’re interested [1] [1] https://www.alphr.com/blogs/2010/05/05/apple-adobe-history/ https://www.alphr.com/blogs/2010/05/05/apple-adobe-history/

yreg 3y ago
Steve eventually got his revenge: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...
- paulmd 3y ago
  This is a perfect explanation of apple’s relationship with NVIDIA and the CUDA platform too. Bumpgate affected AMD products too, this was the era of baking your 7850 to try and reflow the solder bumps, and apple was just trying to get the supplier to pay for the problems with the RoHS solders that apple specified in the product designs. Apple has always been a clientzilla that ruthlessly leans on its partners and suppliers (most recently Goldman Sachs is feeling the pain from the Apple Card) and believes that it’s a privilege to hold their business. And nvidia isn’t a company that got rich by bending over for that kind of treatment either (see also their relation with Microsoft). Apple really wanted to terminate their relationship with nvidia anyway and this was just them demanding a big check on the way out the door. Nothing like making your ex pay for the cost of you moving out during the breakup.

pavlov 3y ago

The story with Adobe on Mac in the 1990s is that their apps were so important to the platform that they practically had a veto on the API for Apple’s next-gen OS. When Apple acquired NeXT, the original plan was for the NeXT API (now called Cocoa) to become the only way to build apps on the new Mac OS. But Adobe made it clear they were not going to port everything to Objective-C. In response Apple came up with Carbon, which was a port of essential plain-C APIs from Classic Mac OS to the new environment. Apple retaliated pretty hard in 2007-2010 by first knifing 64-bit Carbon when it had already shipped in Leopard betas, and later strangling Flash.

deepsun 3y ago
Well, asking to rewrite all your stuff, especially such large platforms as Photoshop is a very big undertaking and resource investment. Don't see where the grudge comes from. E.g. if someone comes to our organization and ask to rewrite half of what we do in their new language, we won't move. Should that someone hold a grudge against us?
kelnos 3y ago
I think Apple was the one who was unreasonable here, not Adobe. I loathe the idea of giving Microsoft credit for anything, but one thing they got right was their focus on backward compatibility. Certainly that has frayed at times here and there, but MS generally doesn't ask their developers to completely rewrite their applications to use a new application framework.
- ack_complete 3y ago
  Except for UWP, where they are doing just that. Some OS features, such as multi-layer swap chains, are exclusive to UWP apps.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  And because of that, even as far back as 2005, there were 10 ways to create a string in C and depending on which Windows API you were using, you had to convert between them constantly. Considering how Microsoft has failed to move past Windows while Apple uses the same OS more or less for watches, phones, tablets, monitors, set top boxes, etc without having to support legacy crap.