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Microsoft / Adobe Competition Heating Up
MicroAdobe writes "Microsoft has noticed that some of the coolest sites on the Web, YouTube and MySpace included, get much of their flash from Flash and other design programs sold by Adobe. But as Microsoft gets ready to ship its own line of tools for designers and Web developers, the company is finding it must also defend against Adobe on its home turf, the desktop. At the same time, the line between Internet and desktop programs is blurring, and both companies see an opportunity to capture new business." The article focuses on the competition and doesn't even mention that Adobe's CEO called Microsoft a $50 billion monopolist.
Id rather set up shop for doing development business for 386DX33 webservers than jump ship on any web related stuff microsoft puts out.
so many times we are having to bail out refugee clients running away from microsoft stuff on the web that its not funny anymore. (i wont mention names)
i wouldnt want to imagine a beowulf cluster of what microsoft would put out. and i dont want to be in an "in a microsoft internet microsoft DEVELOPS YOU !" situation.
so count me any many devs out.
Read radical news here
On the plus side, if the MSFT version is Windows-only, I suspect we'll all have a brand new reason to persuade folks to abandon the OS for Linux/OSX/(and yes)*BSD after this little battle gets done...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Adobe's CEO brought up what should be the single most important point everyone who is considering a switch to MS products - Microsoft doesn't maintain anything cross-platform.
They may start out cross-platform, but eventually the mac version will fall behind on patches and then get EOL'd.<br><br>
For any broadcaster that relies on compatibility and reaching the widest market possible, MS would be a bad choice.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I don't know about this move for M$. They are spreading themselves thin trying to conquer every electronic related market (zune, 360, computers, etc..). Flash is a well established format that many people are accustomed to using and familiar with. Unless M$ has an awesome solution at hand already I believe that they should consolidate their efforts and try to make some headway one their other fronts instead of moving focus from failing efforts.
Did not MSFT claim that it is going to make web app building the main thing? Its MS Visual Studio was morphed into something called MS .NET framework or something? C# and managed C, and ASP server working seamlessly with IE to deliver web applications or some such claim was made?
How many Web Enabling technologies MSFT has peddled so far? DotNetFramework? ActiveX? some dhtml thingie? The new one is going to replace them? Complement them?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
He might be a smaller "monopolist" than Microsoft, but he still has his own little monopoly and all the great things that come from that.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
...there was an OS.
then there was an office-packet.
eh, it's great to have a server-os, so let's build on. it's really handy with all those nice folks already using our desktop-os.
uuuuh, some guys are makin' big bucks with a search engine, let's have one.
hey, gaming. GAMING is the next BIGBIGBIG issue. what about a gaming console?
see those fruity mediaplayer-guys? they are making big bucks! let's build a rip-off.
ha, those adobe-guys seem to live from their software. why not try that one, too?
i think there's a pattern there, but i can't fully grasp it. duh...
More like Wolf-359.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Great, it's $600 cheaper, but nobody will buy it if it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
As someone who has worked with Flash since version 4 (in both a graphical and RIA capacity), the biggest stumbling blocks for Flash were/are:
1- Adobe Photoshop integration [*check!*]
2- Usefulness as a RIA application [remember the disaster that was Flash Googlemaps?]
3- Horribly broken scripting language [still an issue]
If Microsoft can compete on those points and bring something radically new to the table (say, easy 3D graphical development, quality OO scripting, etc) then they'll have an adoptable product. Otherwise, developers used to using Adobe & Flash products will look the other way.
Microsoft announced yesterday its "Silverlight", previously named WPF/E:r oducing-microsoft-silverlight.aspx.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/04/15/int
They call it "cross platform, cross browser plug-in" and it is basically a replacement for flash with wmv lock-in. Oh, and no linux (cross platform means XP+Vista+OSX, I guess)
One nice feature being HD streaming, I have to give it to them.
I'll still stay away...
Microsoft views new rich web apps as a threat to Microsoft dominance. Imagine a world where you use a functional web application that doesn't lock you down to Microsoft's .NET / windows OS. Right now people must use a win32 executable for a decent GUI experience, but with these new technologies, you need only to click a link.
.NET / non-linux world, adobe is more interested in truly cross-platform work, so MS is acting quickly to make sure we use their XAML, vs the XUL and the open standard SVG. Adobe, too, isn't thrilled about open standards.
Microsoft wants to lock this up and make this a
I think the closest thing we have to a great dev environment+rich web app is Google's GWT. It makes GUI and server integration easy. This makes Microsoft scared. I would love to see more open standards in this respect.. Make XUL a standard, create a library, add it to all browsers, all platforms, same with SVG.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
One of MS's talking points was that there's nothing binary or proprietary: it's all plain text XML. That might be slightly easier to work with than binary flash files -- but it also makes work easier for visitors to "borrow." Decompiling even protected flash files isn't hard either, but it's enough to slow down casual moochers and stop most corporate ones.
Of course, it's kind of silly to brag about openness when the whole thing is based on a closed source plugin. My big problem with the whole thing is that I fully expect support for "unfavored" platforms and browsers to start slipping as soon as there's some market share. I don't want to become a MS henchman, and pay for the privilege too.
Maybe that's not what MS has in mind this time, but with their record the burden of proof is on them. Not to mention that it's common sense to tread carefully with first releases of any new technology, even from companies with a track record (unlike MS) of producing quality products.
It's about to get worse with CS3 too, it's split into Vista style packages so now you have to really pay a lot of money to get the programs you need to do business as a professional in the creative industry.
Probably the only exception to this is Premiere, cos few - if any - professionals use that. Otherwise, there's absolutely no alternative to Adobe products. (Yes, technically GIMP etc exists, but they aren't industry standard so professionals have no chance of using them.)
80% of my work is done on Adobe products and I really would like to change that.
I find it funny that Adobe's CEO has the gall to call Microsoft monopolistic considering that Adobe essentially has a complete monopoly over the design industry. Microsoft's control over the PC market pales in comparison to Adobe's control of the design industry, the obvious distinction being that Microsoft's market is much larger.
I welcome the competition and although I'm not optimistic I would like to see Microsoft become a serious competitor in this market. I'd prefer it were someone else entering this market, I can't say I'm looking forward to bloated applications with cumbersome interfaces. Nevertheless it's been long overdo that something take Adobe down a few notches.
I'm sure Adobe's CEO is only upset that Adobe's purchase of Macromedia didn't ensure a complete lack of competition for a longer period of time.
http://www.openlaszlo.org/
Uses XML/Javascript to drive either Flash or DHTML.
Some of their examples are pretty good, while other examples could have used a QA person.
How does Microsoft leverage their monopolies to take control of the situation? Should they incorporate it directly into their operating system and browser or as a free addon to their office product?
Maybe they could tweak IIS so that it slows Flash down while optimizing the speed of their products?
So many dirty tricks and so little time...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Unfortunately.
this is a matter of business.
setting up a client in a framework/infrastructure means this client will be doing all his/her/their business on that framework/infrastructure, building and expanding on that, adapting to that, basically living on that.
and when the company that provides that platform pulls the plug or pulls a crap with that platform's users, client and his business is in trouble. this had happened before with many "new experiences and products", and many people had gone through arduous restructuring and readaptation in order to go on with their business on a new platform.
And apologies, but microsoft is not some company that has a great reliability record.
ill set up as many clients as i can on open/free platforms as i did before. because this is their BUSINESS, they are making a living on that, and that cant be risked.
Read radical news here
I remain convinced that part of the reason that Microsoft is attempting to push it's own alternative to Flash is because Linux support is finally decent.
Not only is there the binary client but some of the free alternatives can now handle YouTube. Development was getting a little closer to cross platform content and entertainment that the internet promised rather than the platform locking that was looking likely at one point.
Anyway I installed swfdec today on a PPC machine and documented the steps. The results are very good for an application in such an early stage of development. While you might think the internet *with* Flash is annoying, you try living without it for a while and see how much the Firefox "you need more plugins to view this page" bar bugs you.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
A quick google for "SVG plugin internet explorer -adobe" turned up MozzIE (hackish) and Renesis Player which is cross-platform for "Windows, Windows CE, Linux, Mac and more".
You haven't tried very hard to find an alternative, have you?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've read this thread, and it is obvious to me that unity is simply on an anti-MS rant. MS has the most attacked platform/products on the market because they are easy to hate. A monkey could realize what that means in terms of perceived reliability. The fact remains Microsoft has great products and well documented support compared to most other alternatives. MS certainly doesn't hold the monopoly on bad business ethics. Please, stop following your open source idols and go make some money.
And many of us who use other opensource operating systems can't use ActionScript/Flash from Adobe *either* because they have a very limited platform portfolio.
Just because they happen to do a Linux version, it doesn't make them any less evil trying to push a 'standard' that is closed and proprietry.
I'm not a 'everything open source' zealot - I happily run the Nvidia Binary driver blob for my video card on FreeBSD, but media formats -- ESPECIALLY WEB FORMATS -- SHOULD BE OPEN!
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