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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.'"
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It done been brought!
Living With a Nerd
Be able to open massive security holes in any device or platform! - Adobe
Adobe: We Bitch and Moan until we Get Our Way(TM)
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
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
Physicists get Hadrons!
But they still have to be dragged kicking and screaming to rewrite their products (Flash isnt their only product) to stop using APIs from two deprecations ago. They apparently love Microsoft even more than Apple.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
WHAT?! Tons of people complain about that. It's a fucking cell phone, it should be able to run J2ME apps, and the fact that it can't is solely due to Apple's need to make sure they get paid for every app their stupid devices can run.
Look, I don't care if Apple decides not to include Flash by default. Fine, whatever.
The fact that you can't CHOOSE to install Flash and you can't CHOOSE to use another, more powerful browser, on the other hand - that I care about. THAT'S an asshole, anti-competitive move. Apple deserves to be smacked down for that.
Imagine if, along with bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft FORBID anyone from running any other browser on their OS at all, and required EVERY app to be approved by Microsoft before it could be allowed to run. Apple's doing EXACTLY THAT.
It's a fucking computer. I should be able to use whatever language I want and whatever libraries I want to target it. As long as something can create code that the computer can run, who the fuck is Apple to say whether or not I'm allowed to write software using it?!
I'm so sorry that you won't be able to cross-compile ('cross contaminate' in Apple lingo) your app for Android and iPad/iPod/iPhone/iDontKnow. But that's OK because according to a recent news article Android is now a bigger market to shoot for anyway.
Flash spec
There you go. I guess they do have a right now, right?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Dear Adobe:
I recently read your open letter to Apple and let me just say that I cannot agree more. I particularly liked this bit:
"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. 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."
Since my platform of choice is [64 bit Linux, Solaris, Irix, HPUX, any of the Various BSDs...] I cannot wait for your forthcoming (very soon I expect) release of Flash for this platform! I realize that my platform of choice is not the most popular one out there, but your message gives me hope! Given your support of openness, and in full understanding that my platform is rather obscure, perhaps you could simply release most of the slient code as open source and allow me to port it myself. That would be even better.
Thanks
Users of various platforms that Adobe does not support.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I find it very disheartening that both companies are going to great lengths to show just how "OPEN" they are, when neither of them are even close to being "open" or really staunch supporters of all things "open." Both companies have jockeyed, in open and/or behind closed doors, to make standards their bi*ches and now they complain because their "industry standards" are being threatened.
This in turn has caused people to complain loudly about "freedom!!!" I want my freedom? I ask, freedom from what? You're now encountering what Stallman et al have been talking about for ages! You're only free as far as a company's whims says you are... Ohh, now I'm supposed to feel sad for those that hooked their toolset to Adobe? or to Apple for that matter? Why not focus on developing truly standards compliant applications with Open tools and let the companies come to us for a change rather than us bowing to them for the next release? We are all masters of our own domains, now "buck up" and act like it.
Terrible analogy. Adobe may not help you, but they certainly won't do anything to stop you. Very different to what Apple wants to do.
I don't think this is the type of freedom our founding father's had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights. I think the type of freedom they had in mind would be Apple having the freedom to not support Flash on their device and consumers having the freedom to not buy an Apple product if this design decision is not to their liking. It's not like Apple is locking out Adobe to push their own proprietary standard, there is no anti-trust issue here.
Adobe is the next Sun. They're going to keep faltering and faltering until they're bought out by some giant. Open source and open standards are going to kill them. Eventually Gimp will work well enough to replace Photoshop, Flash will be dead, an open source WYSIWYG will replace InDesign/Dreamweaver, and this trend will continue with all their products. I think the folks at Adobe realize the impact that open source will have. They know that keeping the web running on Flash is their only hope to survive as a company.
Adobe is like if Microsoft only had Office and IE. Look at what OpenOffice, Firefox, Chrome, and Google Docs are doing. Software as a product is a failing business model, software as a service is the future. IBM and Google know this, that's why they're so ahead of the curve.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Because blowing a gaping hole in their foot isn't going to help them either.
Sorry, but Adobe's reaction to this situation is making one thing absolutely crystal clear - they are shitting their pants right now. They are terrified. They know their major cash cow is in major trouble and they are going to fight with every trick in the book to avoid the inevitable. Because, that is what it is - inevitable. Flash is becoming old news and nothing Adobe can do is going to change that fact. Their tantrum-throwing flailing isn't going to change things. HTML5 is going to push Flash to the side. It may not stick in the long term (I think it will but I won't argue that fact because the industry is always changing) but it will certainly provide the catalyst for people to move on to something else.
Why not push for ISO certification for Flash? It worked with the PDF.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Great! Now if they would be kind enough to adjust the European prices for their products so that they are not 2 times more expensive than in the US.
Observe:
http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Creative-Suite-Master-Collection/dp/B003B328TE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1273768517&sr=1-3 - $2,450.99
http://www.amazon.de/Adobe-Creative-Master-Collection-deutsch/dp/B003FSSL3M/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1273768468&sr=1-5 - EUR 3,688.00 = $4,683.39
And thanks to some european laws that Adobe strongly supports and enforces (with the help of BSA) it is illegal for an european company to use software bought in the US.
Yay for open markets.
Why doesn't Adobe just get really tough and drop all production of the Creative Suite for Macintosh? I bet that would get Steve's attention PDQ.
And watch Apple come out with their own competing product and lose a giant chunk of their user base? Apple does software very well. Look what happened to Adobe Premiere in the face of Final Cut. Look what happened to ProTools in the face of Logic. Apple has a knack for making professional creative tools. They're much better at it than Adobe and they also build the OS.
If Adobe cut support for Apple then they'd be out of business in two years.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Pfft! My COBOL.Net based app for the iPad contraption will pwn your feeble efforts! I have my COBOL to Ada to Lisp to LabView to FORTRAN to VHDL to C to Objective C/Cocoa workflow all ready to start chugging away. Throw the switch, Igor!
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.
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.
Don't discount the entertainment value of that for us end-users.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Android may be a bigger market, but the iPhone I'm targeting with my app resides in the deeper pockets of people demonstrably more easily parted with their money for less reward, my friend.
FTFY
and the fact that it can't is solely due to Apple's need to make sure they get paid for every app their stupid devices can run.
Except for the thousands of free (as in beer) ones. Oh, and the web apps. And the ones corporations can distribute internally with that special license thing. Except for those...
I think you're missing the real reasons Apple restricts development on the iPhone to web apps and it's "walled garden". First, puts a severe limit on the number of viruses and exploits that can be installed on the phone. Second, it allows them a pretty significant level of control of the UI (since people mostly have to use their UI libraries). Third it allows them to go to the carriers and say "Look, we can prevent the things you don't want on your network."
Making a few buck on App sales is at best a secondary consideration, as the extremely reasonable and inexpensive terms under which you can release free apps to the App Store show. $100 a year per developer probably doesn't even cover hosting costs for all the free apps out there. $200 year allows companies to set up their own app depositories that Apple hosts no matter how large or widely used.
None of which is going to make you hate Apple any less, but at least hate them for the right reason. Selling apps is at best a 4th or 5th teir reason for the lock down on iPhones. You probably don't like the real reasons, either, but that's fine too.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
If Adobe Flash (which Adobe did not even develop BTW) were an really usable product, e.g. open source, able to be enhanced by the end-user, GREEN(!) and secure they would have a case to stand on (in critiquing Apple).
But Apple has a very good point with respect to their two main products -- the iPhone and the iPad. These are *battery* based devices and power consumption is a major concern. Right now I've got a "single process" [1] chrome session with the libflashplayer.so sub-process running and playing *NOTHING* the Flash Process is sucking down 25+% of my CPU (Pentium IV Prescott) [2]. This isn't just chrome, one sees the same behavior in Firefox its just more difficult to see because it runs as a single process.
GREEN programs take steps to minimize their CPU consumption, recognize when they are doing nothing and adapt, allow the O.S. to go into various power saving modes (ACPI, P4-clockmod adjustments, suspend to ram, etc.) and as far as I can tell Flash is designed so as to prevent that. If one strace's the chrome flash plugin process one discovers that in 10 seconds it issues 56,000 system calls -- 53,000 (95%) of them are useless gettimeofday() calls. Maybe Flash hoping that someone has requested that it play something... Seems like Adobe doesn't know what a "poll()" call is useful for.
So I'll do my best to avoid Flash entirely on the basis of its CPU use and CO2 emissions footprint and not even bother to open the potential security problems can-o-worms.
1. A "single process" chrome session is more often a 4-5 process session (given extensions, plugins, etc.) but it is far better (from a memory use standpoint) than the typical 35-process sessions one gets under Linux once one has exceeded the Google/Chrome "imposed" process limit.
2. Fortunately one can either "kill -s STOP" or entirely kill the libflashplayer.so plugin and chrome will keep right on functioning (with the possible informational messages in certain tabs/windows that there was a problem with Flash. Often times it isn't even clear that those tabs/windows were using Flash.
Indeed. If the gestapo has a gun to my head and I start railing about how such practices are unfair, it's very much self-serving, but the argument itself is also very much correct.
And before anyone chimes in, no I'm not comparing Apple to Nazi Germany. I'm just magnifying the scale of something to make it easier to see.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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. =)
... If that statement were applied to your desktop you'd be seeing red and you know it. Let's change it a little:
"Microsoft is only trying to 'stop' you when you use their OS. They aren't trying to stop you from using Firefox or Chrome or whatever on some other OS"...
If the above were the case instead of "limited" device like an ipad or iphone, far more people would have an issue with it.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
And it shouldn't, that would be the job of Sonsoren Media who have licensed the technologies to both Apple and Adobe. Same thing goes for On2, since it's a On2 Technologies technology and not Adobe. This is not Adobe's fault, it's not like there was "better" technologies at the time they licensed these technologies.
True. On the other hand, your original post did not care about that, only "open up the Flash spec", which Adobe did. However, now I just consider you to be purposely changing your argument because it's convenient for you to keep your stance rather than legitimate reasons.
For the same reason new PDF specs aren't supported in most applications - Developers haven't simply done it yet or have no interest in doing so.
With FFMPEG working with these codecs which is essentially part of almost every FOSS media player out there, do you really think projects like Gnash couldn't use it?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Last time this happened, when they dropped Adobe Premiere, Apple bought Final Cut Pro and turned it into a good replacement with version 3 vs Premiere 6 and with Final Cut Pro 4 blew Premiere out of the water for a good number of years. Even though Premiere is back on Mac, I don't know anyone in the industry that uses it on Mac. They all still use FCP.
My guess would be Apple's response would be to fork or support programs like GIMP and Inkscape and throw developers at them and overhaul their UI's to Apple's standards. What better way to spite Adobe than create free tools to replace their cash cow. Adobe already bought out and killed the only competition in professional web & graphics tools (Macromedia).
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
It's a fucking computer.
That's where you've got it wrong. The world has moved beyond the point where everything with a CPU is a computer. The iPhone is an appliance. It does all the things it was designed to do. No manufacturer is obligated to make their appliance do anything other than what they claimed it would do when they sold it to you. If you want a different appliance, feel free to vote with your wallet. If there is nothing that does what you want and you can convince some venture capitalists you're right, make a competing product. But Apple doesn't owe it to you to design appliances that work the way you wished they did.
I'm curious how Adobe can claim "consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content" just after they implemented support for Selective Output Control in their proprietary DRM.
You do realize that by far the majority of Flash content on the Web is videos and video-based ads, right? But whatever. Keep chasing Adobe's incomplete and inconsistent publication of specs on each new iteration of Flash (which usually lags by at least a year) and tie yourself to a spec that can be disappeared at any moment.
At least Microsoft had the courtesy to put OOXML in the hands of Ecma and offer the Covenant Not to Sue. With the Flash spec you don't have either of those things.
I couldn't view every page in every browser on every device before the iPhone or iPad, so how am I limited?
This isn't about freedom, it's about a market choice. People have bought the iPhone and iPad in droves and have said, more or less, that the devices are compelling enough to buy even without Flash support.
Apple doesn't have anywhere close to a monopoly in the mobile device space, so I don't understand the problem.
Someone enlighten me please.
I'm not sure what iPhone sales have to do with how many iPod Touches and iPads are out there, especially given that iPod Touches now outsell the iPhone. And outselling during one quarter doesn't make a bigger market, especially when there were many more iPhones than Androids sold before that period that are still in use. Perhaps you're confusing the smartphone market with the app market? Few, if any, app devs are actually selling phones.
Explain the fact that Apple will be happy to host and serve your free app on their store and how it fits into your logic bomb here.
You can choose. It takes effort but they can't and won't stop you from jailbreaking and installing any app you want. They will stop supporting you however, which is perfectly acceptable.
Wow, I guess you don't know enough about windows to realize its been going that direction for a while now eh? Load an unsigned driver in Windows Vista/2008/7 without switching to test mode ...
So is my wrist watch and my old dumb nokia phone, but I can't install random apps on either of them. Fuck nokia and casio too!
What you want, is the world to fit your whim, and thats simply never going to happen regardless of how loud you scream, what temper tantrums you throw or what lame arguments you make in an attempt to get your way.
You don't always get your way, get the hell over it. Don't buy the product if it doesn't satisfy you, its that simple. Welcome to the free market. Don't like it? Tough shit, the rest of us are perfectly fine with it and the majority wins.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I remember back during the megahertz wars how Adobe came out telling its customers that, based on benchmarks, they could no longer recommend Apple products. (This was back in early 2003)
Of course, that was when Adobe was pretty much the killer app that kept Apple breathing. If Apple lost Adobe during late OS9/early OS X, they lost everything. Furthermore, if the G5 flopped (which has been argued both ways), Apple would have to do something drastic. I believe the move to Intel is their response, and Adobe was very likely the catalyst.
So Steve Jobs, having a good memory and being somewhat egotistical, seems to me to be getting some revenge here by taking on one of Adobe's flagship product, now that Apple doesn't need Adobe anymore. It's hard to say that Adobe's creative suite is the bedrock of Apple profits these days, so there's not much to lose from his perspective.
That is indeed the reason. There was nothing wrong with the study, only the implications people are taking from it. iPhone OS authors collect from the very same app versions running on all three devices. Android developers have to release different versions of their app for different Android phones.
And of course it's international sales that matter.
Also it's obviously wrong because the size of the market for apps is: "apps sold", not "devices sold". Developers are dojng far better on iPhone than Android for versions of the same app. Orders of magnitude better.
Thus it's wrong to say that Android sales topping iPhone sales on that study means it's a bigger market. Wrong in several different ways.
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.
This space for rent.
when neither of them are even close to being "open" or really staunch supporters of all things "open."
That discounts the entire backing of Webkit from Apple (used in almost every mobile device today) and also the strong HTML5 support they have given.
Not to mention the support for other projects, like CLANG/LLVM, GCC, ZeroConf, etc. etc.
Or the fact that without Apple, we'd still be buying DRM laden music online.
To claim Apple does nothing to support open standards is to ignore some very real good they have done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, fragmentation is what the Android platform has (And Symbian and MS Mobile too). What you describe there is called "backward compatibility" - as seen and welcomed on Windows, Macs and sometimes consoles (GameCube->Wii, PSI to PSII).
Additionally what you are missing is that app developers can indeed create and sell a single app which runs on an iPad in full screen with all the iPad widgets, and also runs on an iPhone or iPod Touch. It's called a Universal Application.
I've no idea what you mean. It sounds like bluster. I've only ever used worldwide market share, and whenever US market share is brought up I point out it's worldwide market share that counts. ALL sales that a company makes matters, not just the ones that happen to be in America. It's even more important here because we are talking about how big a market there is for developers of software on the platforms. Developers (at least for the Apple App Store) sell their apps internationally, not just to the US.
In part you didn't comprehend what I wrote, and in part you are just plain wrong. The size of the market for iPhone apps is the total number of apps sold by all app developers. It;s not the number sold by a singe developer, nor is it the number of devices sold.
I don't need a hint. I'm an iPhone developer. I know full well the reasons for the success of iPhone Apps and the relative failure of Android apps. Yes, a major part of it is how easy Apple makes it for users to find, buy and install apps from their App Store. But there's also plenty of other factors, including the point that people purchasing iPhones mostly do so because they WANT to run apps. Many of those Android sales are cheap or free generic phones bought by people who just want a phone.
Although I think Apple can truly be a-holes...
'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.
I can't play Flash in the Lynx browser. I can't play Flash on the Atari Lynx either, but that doesn't even have internet connectivity, let alone a web browser. Sorry Adobe, what's you point again?
'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.'
Adobe, just so we're clear on this, you are dumb-asses. Your own Flash 10.0 EULA excludes Apple from including Flash on their iPod/iPhone/iPad platform:
3.1 Adobe Runtime Restrictions. You will not use any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtime for use on such systems please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/licensing.
In other words, you're launching a public humiliation campaign against Apple in an effort to extort licensing fees from them. Way to go.