Adobe Calls Out Apple With Ads In NY Times, WSJ

Hugh Pickens writes "Businessweek reports that Adobe has taken out newspaper advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times today and posted an open letter to call out the tablet-computer maker for stifling competition. 'We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs,' the letter states. 'No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web.' The letter is part of a widening rift between Apple and Adobe. Two weeks ago, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs wrote a 29-paragraph public missive panning Adobe's Flash as having 'major technical drawbacks.' US antitrust enforcers also may investigate Apple following a complaint from Adobe, people familiar with the matter said this month. Adobe has also launched a banner ad campaign to let you know that they love Apple. The two-piece banner ads are composed of a 720x90-pixel 'We [heart] Apple' design, followed by a 300x250-pixel medium rectangle that reads: 'What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.'"

Comments

Hypocritical assholes...

[jx100]

Fantastic how they're crying for "openness" a mere day after they announce Selective Output Control DRM in Flash.

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/05/adobes-new-flash-drm-comes-with-selective-output-control.ars

The choice is Apple's to make

[Space cowboy]

And yes, I know that's not going to sit well with the /. crowd, but it remains a truism. If Apple allowed flash onto the iPhone right tomorrow

• It would be just as buggy and crash-prone as it is right now on the Mac. Unless you believe the demo was one that "shouldn't have been shown", and that seeing a U-tube video made behind closed-doors with as many takes as it needs to get right is in any way comparable to running it on nearly every darn page on the web. For adverts.
• Because it's on every darn page on the web - for adverts - it'd be running almost constantly as the user uses Safari; so the other down-side comes into play - it's a huge battery hog. Suddenly Apple's quotes of 10 hours battery life on the iPad are reduced to 5 hours (or whatever). Uninformed users (you know, the 99% majority out there) say Apple is lying about it's battery times. Now every manufacturer lies about it's battery times, right ? Oh, wait, no they don't. Apple's battery-life figures stand alone (as far as I can tell) as a reasonable guide to how long you'll get out of your machine. That's worth a lot, to Apple.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't advantages to Apple in requiring people to use Apple's API to code on Apple's hardware (yeah, yeah, I know you bought it, I know it's *yours*, but you know what I mean). Of course there are. That doesn't invalidate the concerns above. I'm sure 'the Steve' sees it as a bonus.

Knowing people who work at Apple, they're a focussed bunch. They care passionately about making things easy to use, and frankly about making the very best (whatever) possible. There's very little of the jaded cynicism I've found in other companies over the years - they're more willing to "++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start." than anywhere else I've ever seen, and I (personally) can easily see the above being sufficient reason to abandon Flash as a platform if they think it's beyond saving.

Simon

Re:Pot, kettle!

[Ash-Fox]

Adobe doesn't have any business telling Apple that they're acting too proprietary because they refuse to open up the Flash spec.

Flash spec

There you go. I guess they do have a right now, right?

Re:Pot, kettle!

[schmidt349]

Not even close. The spec doesn't document Sorenson Spark or On2, so tons of SWFs that embed video are out. Until very recently you weren't even allowed to look at the spec unless you signed an agreement saying you wouldn't develop player software (only export filters), and it's still about as far from an implementation white paper as you can get.

Moreover, Adobe controls the format, not an open standards body, so they're free to add new things and not tell other developers how to do them later on to give themselves an advantage (which they've done in the past with major releases like v9 and 10).

If Flash were completely open, why isn't there a 100% compliant open-source player out there? Gnash is the closest but it has serious problems with later versions of the spec (probably due to underdocumentation).

"But look! They released a spec! It must be an open standard!" Yeah, I've heard that before.

Re:Sweet!

[Andy Dodd]

Or at least full and complete Flash documentation (Where is an official RTMPE specification, not the clean-room reverse engineered one that Adobe has sent DMCA takedown notices to anyone trying to implement said spec.), not a partial spec which is not sufficient to implement a fully compliant player.

Oh yeah, and a promise not to sue those who add RTMPE support to third-party players would be nice too.

Re:Right on Adobe!

[zeroshade]

According to that article, Android, on all devices, is barely beating out iPhone OS on one device. iPhone OS is sold on three distinct devices (iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad), of which the latter two were not included in the numbers. Android has a long way to go.

Actually, the study involved smartphone market share in the US. The iPod touch and iPad are not smart phones, which explains why they weren't included. As far as Android having a long time to go, quadrupling market share in only 6 months is a damn long way it's already come. =)

Re:Right on Adobe!

[recoiledsnake]

Very true. Look at how Apple fleeces the iPhone users:

1) Profit on selling the device itself (either unlocked to consumer or to AT&T)

2) A nice MONTHLY cut of around $18 from AT&T from the subscribers min. of $70/month. (This is the real reason iPhone is exclusive to AT&T inspite of shitty service all around, notice how this isn't mentioned much here on /.?).

3) A FORCED 30% cut of all third party software sales for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.

No wonder Apple is wallowing in money, they found an almost perfect way to part fools with their money.