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Ex-Adobe engineers: We raised red flags that went unheeded; Adobe closed mobile department in ‘07

Sunday, May 2, 2010 · 9:44 am · 52 Comments

“In an open letter published Thursday, Steve Jobs outlined a half dozen reasons why Apple is not supporting Flash on its mobile platform,” Brian X. Chen reports for Wired.

“Carlos Icaza and Walter Luh, former Adobe mobile engineers, said they were raising flags at Adobe in 2007 about the same complaints that Jobs detailed Thursday,” Chen reports. “‘Walter and I, being the lead architects for Flash Lite, we were seeing the iPhone touch devices coming out, and we kept saying ‘Hey, this is coming along,” Icaza said in a phone interview. ‘You have this white elephant that everybody ignored. Half the [Adobe] mobile business unit was carrying iPhones, and yet the management team wasn’t doing anything about it.’”

Chen reports, “They said they left Adobe because executives did not take the iPhone seriously when Apple announced the touchscreen device in 2007. Instead, Adobe focused on feature phones (cellphones with lightweight web features, not smartphones) and invested in development of Flash Lite to play Flash videos on such devices. Subsequently, Adobe shut down the mobile business unit in 2007, and has suffered from a brain drain in the mobility space ever since, Icaza and Luh said.”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: Note to advertisers: (including those who advertise via third-party ad networks and become, in effect, our advertisers): Your Flash-based ads are no longer reaching the most well-heeled customers online: 50+ million iPhone owners. They’re also not hitting brand new iPad users or 35+ million iPod touch users. If you care about reaching people with discretionary income, you might want to consider dumping your flash-based ads and moving to a more open format that people with money and the will to spend it can actually see.

Help kill Adobe’s Flash:
• Ask MarketWatch to offer HTML5 video via the customer support web form here.
• Ask CNBC to offer HTML5 video via the customer support web form here.
• Contact Hulu and ask them to offer HTML5 video via email:
• Ask ESPN360 to offer HTML5 video instead Flash via their feedback page here.
• Join YouTube’s HTML5 beta here.
• On Vimeo, click the “Switch to HTML5 player” link below any video.

By the way, do not buy Adobe’s Photoshop Elements until you have tried Pixelmator’s free 30-day trial. We use Pixelmator daily.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "JJ Nash" for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

52 Comments

1 2 3 Next »

iQuack

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 9:52 am · Reply

Truth comes out.
deepdish

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 9:53 am · Reply

Adobe < Smart

Adobe zigged when they should have zagged.

Apple called them on it and now Adobe doesn’t want to take responsibility for their bad decisions.

I need Adobe to wake up and fix this mess they created. Yes, I need. I rely on Adobe pro apps to survive. And I am not buying a winblows box just so I can use CS in the future.
Hm...

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 9:55 am · Reply

Shocked! Shocked I am that management at Adobe remains clueless.

It’s not just the mobile space, either. It’s been years since the “case-sensitive” path-name bug was reported as a serious issue in Reader and Acrobat, but Adobe has done absolutely nothing to address the problem. Could it be because the bug only affects Macs or Linux and not Windoze. It’s sounding like the old adage — We could send half the Palm management team to Adobe and raise the average IQ in both places.
deepdish

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 9:57 am · Reply

But Ansca Mobile’s Corona is just another cross platform lowest common denominator SDK.

Will Corona take advantage of unique iPhone advantages as they are released?
almux

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 9:57 am · Reply

Adobe should get a little worried!
PR

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:01 am · Reply

People in management anywhere are very often out of touch for a number of reasons…
Number one?
Everyone lies to the boss either to curry favor or avoid punishment.
If you start at the bottom and carry that chain of lies up through middle management and add time eventually the boss has very little idea what is really happening on the street. The difference for Steve is that he actually USES this kind of gear, and has a low tolerance for bullshit. He like many brilliant people likes the new stuff to be well….brilliant…so I can only imagine the amazing stuff he’s seen that’s not quite ready but was built to “impress Steve”
TowerTone

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:14 am · Reply

Time for them to raise the white flag…..
Cubert

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:31 am · Reply

So, I thought that Adobe’s CEO was knowingly spewing falsehoods, but it looks like he’s just a clueless fool.

“What me worry?”
Gabriel

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:32 am · Reply

Sounds like what ChrissyOne said about her time at Adobe – raised red flags that went unheeded before leaving.
John

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:34 am · Reply

So there you have it folks. Adobe ignored the iPhone like Jobs said basically.
pastrychef

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:45 am · Reply

I can’t wait to hear more of Shantanu’s whining in reply to this article.
NHL

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:54 am · Reply

“Half the [Adobe] mobile business unit was carrying iPhones, and yet the management team wasn’t doing anything about it.’”

And then Adobe finally did do something about it.
They stopped giving Adobe employees iPhones.

“There.
See?!
Fixed!”

- Adobe Managemnet
Ubermac

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 10:55 am · Reply

Bingo!!!!

That’s otta sting…
KingMel

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:15 am · Reply

Hopefully, Apple hired the more enlightened and capable ex-Adobe employees. If you give a team of good folks a worthy goal and the freedom to pursue it, then the result will often be better than you ever anticipated.
An Optimist

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:30 am · Reply

Adobe needs a new CEO. Ditto for General motors.
AtomicBeetle

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:32 am · Reply

When Adobe acquired Macromedia I had a feeling that it just felt wrong. Freehand was up there with Quark in DTP and where my tools of my trade. Quark did the same to Mac users as Adobe is doing now and paid the ultimate price. Bloated software for the windows market and forgot who put them up there in the first place. Freehand has been killed off, Quark is in a dismal state and Adobe will soon feel the effect in not believing in Apple and wrath of Apple users. Revenge is best served cold. From South Africa.
GregoriusM

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:36 am · Reply

From a recent Macworld review of the HTC Incredible running Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI.

“The Droid Incredible also supports Flash Lite, but I had trouble playing Flash content. I also encountered this problem with the HTC Hero on Sprint.”

And we want Flash? Hmmmmmmm…… Latest OS. Latest UI “overlay” from HTC. Latest version of Flash Lite running on Android. 1 GHz processor. And it can’t run Flash video?

I think I’ll pass on Flash.
Panolo

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:37 am · Reply

Adobe investors should really question Shantanu’s ability to lead.
zmarc

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:55 am · Reply

@GregoriusM
Adobe and the cell companies don’t care if a feature actually works: they just want it on their feature checklist so they can “win” those table comparisons on the engizgadet blogs.

You watch: when Flash finally arrives on Android this fall (late, of course), it will suck dog’s balls, but Adobe and Google and a lot of idiot tech geeks will be raving about how it now supports “the full Internet” and the world is saved and everyone can go out and buy an Android phone. And once people do, they’ll be frustrated because it doesn’t actually work 90% of the time, and it kills their battery life. And Apple will laugh all the way to the bank!
Maeric

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 11:55 am · Reply

@AtomicBeetle

Well said. Quark’s hubris seriously damaged it’s reputation and it’s in the dismal state of having to hang on to the customers it has. Even though version 8.1 is decent to use, PDF output is sketchy and any bugs like that will keep designers away. Adobe has a LOT to learn from Quark and yet clearly is going the same downward direction they did back in 2000.

FreeHand’s mothballing by Adobe is tragic and how this passed through FTC regulation is beyond me. In 1994 when Adobe tried this same stunt with Aldus FreeHand, the FTC moved in quickly and stopped them. It leads me to believe some under-the-table dealings happened with Macromedia execs to divert FTC regulators during the acquisition.