MacDailyNews Take: Go for it, Adobe.
The Beeb continues, “Mr Jobs used the open letter to defend Apple’s decision not to allow Flash on many of the firm’s products. In it he criticised Flash, saying it was not fit for an era of smartphones and touchscreen devices.”
“Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s chief technology officer, wrote in a blog posting: ‘We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.'”
MacDailyNews Take: We feel confident that certain people at Adobe have tin ears, no common sense, are lazy, or, most likely, some combination of all three handicaps.
The Beeb continues, “Adobe will concentrate on Android and other devices. Currently, none of these products can run the Flash technology which is used on many websites to power media players, games and other animations. However, added Mr Lynch, Adobe has decided to shift its focus to get Flash working well on gadgets made by Google, RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and others. He said Adobe expected to release Flash Player 10.1 on Google’s Android operating system in May and then for it to be on general release in June.”
MacDailyNews Take: Moron. And, now for someone who gets it:
Daniel Eran Dilger writes for RoughlyDrafted, “Jobs’ six reasons for not supporting Flash in the iPhone OS also serve as six reasons why Jobs will absolutely love to see Apple’s mobile competitors rushing to support Flash as a competitive talking point in their desperate, last ditch efforts to compete with the iPhone.”
“Google has not explained how its support for Flash will mesh with its support for open web standards; nor mentioned the security problems, performance issues, and instability of Flash as a platform, nor its battery life impact, nor the fact that most existing Flash content does not work well in a multitouch environment, nor the reality that having Flash on Android will impede the development of native, Android-specific apps, in addition to harming the development of sophisticated, cross platform HTML5 applications that could possibly be used to share common ground with the iPhone and leverage its success,” Dilger writes.
“Microsoft has similarly announced that Windows Phone 7 will support Flash when (or if) it arrives at the end of the year,” Dilger writes. “And like Google, Microsoft is similarly ignoring the problems of Flash in a mobile environment. Palm’s webOS, Symbian, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS are also all set to incorporate Flash, bringing upon themselves the series of problems for their users as outlined by Jobs.”
Dilger writes, “What better curse could one wish upon one’s mobile platform competitors than a bunch of performance and security problems, poor battery life, a mess of user interface inconsistencies, and a malignant boil upon their efforts to develop their own third party development platforms? Jobs didn’t express such schadenfreude himself, but he can’t possibly not be ecstatic that his competitors are all rushing to wrap themselves around the neck with the dead albatross that is Adobe’s Flash.”
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs is a chess master in a world of checkers-fumbling dolts.
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.
“Adobe has decided to shift its focus to get Flash working well on gadgets made by Google, RIM, Palm, Microsoft, Nokia and others.”
WORKING WELL?!? So, they’re admitting it currently sucks? I guess Steve was right after all.
I find it rather amusing that Adobe is just now saying that, if Apple would work with Adobe, they could get something done.
Uh, were the past three years not enough time?
Don’t forget, Adobe bought Flash when it bought Macromedia. Adobe has sat on its laurels for years while the market for Flash expanded, and Adobe has done little to really improve Flash beyond add “features” (read, ads) to Flash.
Frankly, Adobe was going to lose out to HTML5 regardless, Apple is just speeding it along.You can’t sit on your product, especially in technology, these days and think you’ll remain the big dog.
GlimmerBlocker does away with most ads.
Who is going to be cast as the HTML5 guy and the Flash guy in the new Apple ads?
bug, meet windshield
@TommyBoy
WTF, you’re not using the Mac one-two punch?
Safari AdBlocker and ClickToFlash, that is.
I’m on team apple. I’m no programmer, however If Job’s reasons for keeping flash off the ipad and iPhone are based in reality, then the competition having flash on their phones should be welcomed by apple and prove Job’s points. If having flash off the ipad and iPhone is for personal reasons and flash performs well on android and windows phones then that’s not going to fly too well.
has flash EVER worked on smartphones? I honestly don’t know – but getting it to work on it’s way out the door, with html5 on it’s way – doesn’t sound smart in any way.
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Sounds like digging up old turds if you ask me.
Dear God,
Please make the following headlines happen:
“Apple Buys Adobe, Kills Flash with Fire”
“Apple Photoshop Lite to be Included in iLife 2011”
Is Adobe serious when they say they’re “moving away from Apple?” Since when were they close to Apple? Waiting nearly ten years for native OSX apps doesn’t suggest that they were ever close to Apple.
Besides, if they piss Apple off bad enough, Apple could just as easily buy them up, scrap all of their “junky” software and keep only the necessary good stuff.
The new mobile web economy will leave Adobe and their way of thinking in the dust as it has shown signs of doing already for many other major players. Good Luck, Adobe!
Adobe will be happy to sell CS5 to millions of Mac owners.
We’ve found that Pixelmator is a wonderful substitute for Photoshop for the work that we do and we’re delighting in cutting the cord from Adobe’s crash-prone, overloaded, and CPU hungry monstrosity. I’m sure many people really need PS, but it was always overkill for us. This seems the perfect time to cut that tie, as we did some time ago with Office.
The thing about Flash and iOS, etc. the most telling part of Jobs’ open letter is the one that seems to be glossed over the most. It’s Jobs’ Point 6:
quote: “We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.”
“The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features.”
(Even Microsoft is smart enough to see this and came out supporting HTML5 over Flash!)
This REALLY IS the bottom line. Adobe proved their inability and unwillingness to FULLY support Mac OS X until more than NINE YEARS after the official release! That doesn’t include 6 to 9 months of the Public Beta, plus at least a YEAR of build-up BEFORE that. So, we’re really looking at 11 or 12 years of Adobe ignoring full Mac OS X support.
And Adobe expects Apple to TRUST them on this?
If Adobe had come out back in 1998 or 1999 and said: Gee, Apple, you guys are struggling, but you’re bringing out some great new products (iMac, PowerBooks) and this new, rock-solid OS. You’ve been behind us all the way from our beginning, so what can we do to help?
Time to buy AutoDesk, develop native OS X versions and crush Adobe like a bug. If they want to be Micro$oftopoly’s Beeyitch, go ahead.
good riddance
i use photoshop elements 6 sometimes
it’s the most buggy crash prone pile of junk on my mac
why don’t apple bring out their own image editor and destroy adobe once and for all !!!?
@ Macromancer,
You’re wrong to both points in your post. Sad.
Autodesk market cap @ posting is 7.8 Billion.
“Comment from: NCG598
This really highlights the difference between the other’s in the mobile and desktop industry and that of Apple. Where Apple is looking at product function and future development. The other’s are looking at market share or a line item on a description page. The customers over all benefit is ignored.
This is largely the same with Microsoft now. The customer is important only as a number of unit sales and not the quality of customer experience.”
This is absolutely DEAD SPOT ON. Apple is focused on customer experience, their competitors are focused on marketshare.
What kind of a threat is Adobe making exactly? Flash doesn’t currently work on ANY of these other mobile devices does it? This just looks like turd polishing and doesn’t change what’s being delivered. If any of these other so-called “competitors” manage to squeeze out another zune with this… so what? The time they’ve wasted with this will only put them further behind Apple.
Apple is already kicking the crap out of them in the marketplace and that’s BEFORE they hamstring their products with flash. Do they really think this is going to help them??? By the time Adobe gets something working and they get it running on products, Apple will have their next generation devices out with 4 times the battery life, 10 times the performance and they’ll all be talking about how they’re developing the “whatever Apple is doing” killer that never kills anything but their own futures.
@coolfactor
I laughed at what you wrote. Audibly.
This article is incredibly biased against Adobe and is full of bs. And as for many of these comments, Flash is still very much alive and not going anywhere soon thank you. It’s obvious none of these posters have much technical knowledge. HTML5 may be able to run videos but that’s about it – it’s no substitute for the many abilities of Flash including the development of rich and robust applications. Try developing an entire online course with HTML5, or even a little game. Flash animation is vector based and most Flash programs actually carry a small footprint, the reason some are memory intensive is because they tend to be loaded with multimedia. Some of the most sophisticated sites are built with Flash and for good reason. Upcoming tablets are going to have a big advantage over the iPad with their inclusion of Flash. As for Flash not being on mobile devices, who cares – that screen isn’t big enough for the diddliest little web page anyhow. And btw I love my Mac and iPod Touch so it’s not like I’m against Apple other than regarding this Flash issue.
For you InDesign whiners, there is an industry standard replacement out there. You are not locked in. It’s not perfect, but it’s powerful and has massive features and is totally professional. You know what it is. You’re too lazy to get off your Adobe-user asses and learn, or relearn, to use it. It’s not an inferior product. It’s your attitude that’s inferior.
Relearn Quark, and you are free of InDesign! It’s that simple.
And if you complain that your printer won’t let you submit Quark files, then your printer has a problem and even so, there are other solutions. Output to PDF. Make a transfer, etc. There are also other design and print apps on the Mac that are simpler yet still pro, and give you similar control too. Wake up.
Adobe could always open up flash like they did PDF.
For everyone talking of MDN trying to push Pixelmator as a replacement for Photoshop: MDN is talking about Photoshop Elements — a far cry from Photoshop proper.
I would suggest that Adobe should come out with their own mobile OS based on Flash. If they believe in Flash so much, they can have a Flash layer which can run on any hardware and any flash apps can be run on any mobile phone running Flash OS. I can be structured like WebOS.
I can see the Flash supporters buying phone running Flash OS along with two batteries in suitcases to give them all day battery life.
Let the Adobe Death Ride begin.
Quark must be laughing their heads off at this display of petulance. Despite the CS suite being cross platform why is it that Apple only has a small percentage (up to 10%) of overall market share yet is said to be responsible for half of Adobe’s income? Most of the PC market either doesn’t buy it or has it as a knocked off pirated copy. Says a lot for the shrinking PC world.
For all the fuss being made at the moment, who needs Photoshop, or Lightroom at the moment? Not me, I have Aperture 3 for my digital images, and though its had an unfortunate launch has shedloads more capability than me for a quarter of the price of PS. Compared to LR its so much easier to use.
Add some of the other apps coming out, Pixelmator etc, Adobe had better watch out otherwise it will end up just like Palm….?