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Will Adobe Sue Apple Over Flash?
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's iron-bound determination to keep Adobe Flash out of any iWhatever device is about to blow up in Apple's face. Sources close to Adobe tell me that Adobe will be suing Apple within a few weeks."
You could just root for the lawyers.
http://astutehosting.com/
This reminds me of a line from a movie...
"But in the Iran-Iraq war you sold guns to both sides."
"Did you ever consider that I wanted both sides to lose?"
We should be pointing out more reasons for the guys to sue each other than just a petty Flash dispute, we should arm them with the means to sue each other into oblivion!
Than, if my calculations are correct, the lawyers will have made enough to buy new yachts, bolstering the economy slightly. It's really a win for everybody all around.
"It was Microsoft's operating system." Oh, right, I forgot, under modern antitrust laws you're allowed to be a total anti-competitive asshole until you become the 800lb gorilla. Part of me is hoping that Adobe wins and takes Apple to the cleaners because I don't buy the hypocrisy here that Apple should be able to get away with behavior that would have launched an online World War 3 if done by Microsoft.
Personally I'd think that Adobe standing up for itself, and perhaps threatening Apple with some-sort of discontinuing of it's products on Macs may knock some sense into Apple; it'd probably be a good thing for Adobe in the long run.
If Apple obviously doesn't want to play nice with Adobe, why should Adobe keep providing Apple with a main selling feature of Macs? (The supposed fact they're for multimedia work).
This is actually a "story"?
It's literally some anonymous guy on the internet saying something.
There's no information. These are anonymous sources close to an anonymous coward. Don't take it any more seriously than graffiti on the bathroom wall.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Can Microsoft do that as well? It's their platform right? Oh, wait, it's Apple so it's fine now.
I don't know who should win in this one. Perhaps I'll wait till the docs are actually filed and can read the actual arguments and get actual law instead of some journalists opinion on what is.
The one with the closed source, insecure framework.
On an open platform, you are free to kick software vendors you don't like to the curb, in favor of ones you do, and in a granular fashion. On a closed platform, your decision is entirely deprived of granularity. It's a take-it-or-leave-it, all of it, thing.
In practice, the latter gives you much less power as a customer. Yes, you can not buy the closed platform; but that means that you cannot have any of it. Technologically bundled. On an open platform, you can pick and choose. Bundling(whether technological or contractual, and whether or not it meets the legal standards of Sherman) gives the vendor great power over you because, as long as one part of their product is good, they can be more or less assured that you will just have to suck down the bad parts. Open platforms, which are much less subject to bundling, barring particularly nasty contracts, subject individual parts of the system to competitive pressure.
Yes, flash sucks. Don't install it if you have the choice, use flashblock and a whitelist if you just need it in a few places; but never forget that the vendor who can choose for you, even if their taste is impeccable, is more dangerous than the vendor you can choose, even if they suck.
The short version: Apple is telling developers that they can't buy Adobe *tools* to produce *native* Apple-platform applications.
The long version:
1. Adobe Flash is buggy and crashes a lot. Steve Jobs also seems to have a personal beef with it for some reason.
2. Apple says, "No flash on our iAnything platforms."
3. Adobe says, "Please?"
4. Apple says, "No!"
5. Adobe says, "Okay, we've made a compiler that takes a Flash script and compiles it to an iAnything native application, using HTML 5, Apple's C-variant, and Apple's API."
6. Apple says, "We've added a clause to our developer contract that says that developers are not allowed to use anything that translates code from one language to another for the iAnything platform. You have to use OUR tools, and you must write in OUR language from the start, or you - the developer - cannot play with us."
7. Adobe says, "..."
It's very good, except that it's wrong. Apple did know about the iPhone packager, of course (there are approved apps in the AppStroe built with the prerelease versions of it, and Adobe has been bragging about it for a while) - and they did nothing to hint they would prevent it, up till the very last second.
(banning "interpreted code" does not count, the iPhone packager did not create interpreted code)
They have a platform worth billions. Tens of billions. They have chosen to make it closed. You as a consumer can chose to use there platform or not, that is up to you. For them, to potentially put the fate of a multi-billion dollar product in the potential hands of a company that makes development content for this multi-billion dollar platform and not control it is suicide.
You can argue the merits of closed or open but in this case the point is moot. iPhone is closed and Apple wants it that way. They are not going to put their fate in the hands of Adobe. The only legs Adobe may have to stand on is if they were lead to believe that their platform was to be accepted (written contract or verbal) and then at the 11th hour to be shafted? Well then maybe they have a case.
Hey, I was the engineering dept. manager back at VLSI Tech back when chip sets was a good business. Intel decided, rightly so, that they could not put the fate of their CPU's in the hands of 3rd party chip set vendors. In ONE product cycle (after they finally figured out how to make them) they took 90% of the PC market with their chip sets. Did it hurt? Yea, it hurt. We went from $250M/yr to $25M/yr in 12 months. I lost my job along with a host of others. That being said, I still can't fault Intel for what they did. Quite frankly I'm surprised it took them as long as it did. The case in point with Apple and Adobe is no different.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
*Sigh* The rules change when you are a monopoly. MS has a monopoly. But that isn't the where they got into trouble because it's legal have a monopoly. It's illegal to use your monopoly powers to limit and thwart competition. That's where MS got into trouble.
Apple does not have a monopoly on smart phones. They don't even have the biggest marketshare in the US much less the world. RIM has the lead. Therefore monopoly rules do not apply.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Anti-Trust laws are not exclusive to monopolies.
Quite simply, any anti-competitive behavior may be grounds for an anti-trust case under section 1 of the Sherman act. It could certainly be construed that allowing a specific application constitutes an agreement between Apple and the applications developers, and that if Apple refuses to allow Flash-based alternatives to that application that it then is a conspiracy that restrains competition, and if that application is for sale then this agreement by definition restrains competitive commerce.
"His name was James Damore."
Sometimes laws are complex for useful and legitimate reasons. When the problem domain is a complex beast, the laws governing it are going to be complex. Just like software - complex problems yield complex solutions most of the time. And laws have to deal with things that are far more complicated than software, because software systems are generally deterministic whereas legal systems have to deal with human failings.
For instance, let's take the very simple crime of murder. You'd think it was straightforward - you kill somebody, you go to jail or death row. But it's not, because sometimes killing somebody is justified, sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's an accident that required the killer to do a whole lot of extraordinarily stupid things, sometimes it's because the person wanted to die, etc. If you make the laws too simple, the judge will be stuck with the sentence for running someone over because your brakes failed (due to poor maintenance) being the same sentence as hiring a hit man to kill someone in their sleep.
In the case of the 1100 page health insurance reform law, it's as big as it is in large part because health care is a hugely difficult problem with both lives and billions of dollars on the line. Yes, there are also a lot of riders, special interest stupidity, loopholes, etc, but you can easily leave 300 pages for that stuff and still have a hugely complex bill.
I am officially gone from
They don't have to cut off their software entirely. They can just make their Mac versions half-assed ports of the Windows versions.
Oh, wait, they already did that... Well, they can release them months after the Windows versions.
Oh, wait, they already did that too... Well, they can make them even more half-assed, and maybe kill a few of the smaller apps on the Mac, like Premiere.
Oh, wait, they already did that for a while. Gosh, can't think why Apple isn't more enthusiastic about keeping Adobe happy...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak