Posted on 04/10/2010 12:00:11 PM PDT by nickcarraway
[Adobe would like me to make it clear that the opinions below are not the official views of the company and are entirely my own.]
By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms. Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion.
[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.
I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.
Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for 3rd-party editors like FDT to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn’t even think or consider something like that.
Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.
Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.
Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as Speaking purely for myself, I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.
Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.
Ping
Great article. Given that its Adobe’s products that pretty much created Apple’s market share back in the day, this is a huge slap in the face. I didn’t think any other company could make Microsoft look benevolent in comparison, but Apple just did a bang-up job.
Yeah, so, a story like this makes me smile :o)
I think I'll try the Android platforms for a few reasons, of which the first is that I want more choices in hardware. With the iPhone you are forced to wait until Apple introduces revisions to hardware. I like the iPhone OS, but I can only have it with an iPhone - with whatever hardware feaures Apple decides we mere mortals need this go round.
As Android grows - the choices in phone hardware will as well.
Exactly. This makes no sense for Apple at all. The whole reason why the graphic design crowd likes Apple so much was that Adobe optimized their products for OS X. Adobe could easily have chosen to optimize for Windows instead.
Although Flash is a hive of bugs, the real issue is that Flash provides for free what Jobs wants to sell. Untold thousands of Apple’s profitable apps would easily be undermined by bored Flash developers, especially the games.
I’m right with you. I’m not a hater of Apple’s products, I also have an iPhone and iPod. But I’m really beginning to hate the company. I have also been contemplating jumping ship to Android. No closed platform BS there.
I thinking of doing the same thing when my Iphone contract with ATT is up in a couple of months.
Adobe is a lazy and arrogant company and has been for years.
Innovate or get run over.
Doesn't it seem ironic that Apple had that great, classic ad showing the hammer being thrown through the theater screen before the mind numbed robots representing Microsoft users, and they have become just as oppresive in some ways?
I’m with you. I have an iPhone now but unless Apple opens up to Flash development, I’m probably going to Droid when my contract is up. I’m a Flash developer and don’t want to work in C# just for one platform.
Adobe will win this battle and Apple knows it.
Screw Adobe!!! Do you guys know they fired all the Macromedia software engineers during the merger and outsourced every single job to India? Several of the old Macromedia products were “deselected” and given an End of Life classification because the Indians couldn’t make sense of the source code. Whenever I hear the word Adobe I think outsource & offshore.
BTW 90% of the time when your browser crashes it is because of the Flash player plugin.
Um Jobs wants developers to use HTML5. Last time I checked, HTML was free, oh and it’s the web standard. All browsers on all OS’ support it. FR even uses it.
For the record, me a middle aged conservative, is posting this from an iPad. It’s got a bigger keyboard than my iPhone.
Furthurmore, Flash IS a buggy, bloated piece of crap. Also a virus vector.
BTW: My other machines run Linux and on occasion, windows in a VM.
QuickTime don’t work on Linux so I don’t much care about it, and while it’s possible that Jobs has some resentment towards that outcome, using Maturing HTML standards that don’t require plugins will simplify things.
I mean if you want to bloat down you mobile device with a buggy plugin, knock yourself out. Personally i wont miss it. If a website wants me to visit, they’ll skip flash or at least offer alternative views.
My Linux boxes run Firefox and I do have the flash plugins. That said, the browser also has the NoScipt extension where I run with JS locked down. Usually when I encounter with the little “f” icons all over the place, I go elsewhere even though I could turn them on if i wanted. And I really have to want to visit that site for me to turn it on
So web developers are doing themselves, or their clients, no favors as far as I’m concerned, by using flash.
QuickTime don’t work on Linux so I don’t much care about it, and while it’s possible that Jobs has some resentment towards that outcome, using Maturing HTML standards that don’t require plugins will simplify things.
I mean if you want to bloat down you mobile device with a buggy plugin, knock yourself out. Personally i wont miss it. If a website wants me to visit, they’ll skip flash or at least offer alternative views.
My Linux boxes run Firefox and I do have the flash plugins. That said, the browser also has the NoScipt extension where I run with JS locked down. Usually when I encounter with the little “f” icons all over the place, I go elsewhere even though I could turn them on if i wanted. And I really have to want to visit that site for me to turn it on
So web developers are doing themselves, or their clients, no favors as far as I’m concerned, by using flash.
If you look at the provisions for the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK, it requires that any app written to run under iPhone OS 4.0 MUST use Apple's own development tools. That means you can't use any third-party tools to write iPhone/iPad apps, and you're essentially locked into dealing only with Apple. (It would be essentially saying you can drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles but you can only drive a Toyota Corolla sedan.)
Don't be surprised that Adobe files a lawsuit or the DoJ starts investigating Apple within the next two weeks.
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