The following article was originally posted on April 9, 2010 at 5:27pm ET. By overwhelming request, and in honor of the Adobe’s killing of mobile Flash, we repost it here:
“By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms,” Lee Brimelow, Adobe Flash Platform Evangelist, blogs for The Flash Blog.
“Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion,” Brimelow writes.
MacDailyNews Take: Brimelow then inexplicably proceeds to comment further. This marks just the first of his many lies. Of course, in order to evangelize Adobe’s Flash, you have to be a liar.
Brimelow continues, “What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.”
MacDailyNews Take: Whiners whine and liars lie and sometimes they’re one and same. We already explained this quite clearly earlier today: “Flash is a proprietary, resource-hogging, browser-crashing abomination and we don’t want ported software on our iPhones, iPads, iPods or Macs; software designed for the lowest common denominator is inferior to software designed to take advantage of individual platforms’ strengths.”
As John Gruber writes over on Daring Fireball, “My opinion is that iPhone users will be well-served by this rule. The App Store is not lacking for quantity of titles. Consider, for one example, Amazon’s Kindle clients for iPhone OS and Mac OS X. The iPhone OS Kindle app is excellent, a worthy rival in terms of experience to Apple’s own iBooks. The Mac Kindle app is a turd that doesn’t look, feel, or behave like a real Mac app. The iPhone OS Kindle app is a native iPhone app, written in Cocoa Touch. The Mac Kindle app was produced using the cross-platform Qt toolkit.” Full article here.
Adobe should understand programming for lowest common denominator implicitly because they long ago turned their backs on the very platform that made their company in order to design their apps for Windows, the lowest common denominator. That is why Mac users suffer with inferior Adobe software today. Adobe should have focused more on Apple’s Mac instead of foolishly waiting for the platform to die and then, when it didn’t drop dead as they hoped, treating Mac users as second-class citizens while pimping inferior Windows PCs.
In addition, “The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple’s plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can’t do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn’t behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider. Full article here.
Brimelow continues, “The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, Adobe doesn’t want to own the proprietary toolset to generate profits by controlling the Web’s multimedia platform. The charitable angels at Adobe just want to provide creative professionals with blah, blah, blah. Well then, Adobe should drop Flash into the dumpster where it belongs, and embrace the creation of cross-platform tools that enable people to deploy open standards, such as HTML5, that actually will work on as many devices as possible, including 85+ million iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.
Brimelow continues, “Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.”
MacDailyNews Take: Adobe won’t do that because they’d go under. Real creative professionals use Macs. Adobe can’t live off Windows sufferers trying to use pirated copies of Photoshop or mangling amateur video with Adobe’s craptastic Premiere.
Brimelow continues, “Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.”
MacDailyNews Take: Adobe’s Platform Evangelist relegates himself to second-rate media services and that’s supposed to be some big statement? A big joke is more like it; we’re certainly laughing.
Brimelow continues, “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: Pure class and absolutely nothing new: “Go screw yourself” is exactly what Adobe’s been saying to Apple Mac users for the last several years.
One of these two companies is screwed and it’s not Apple.
Now, somebody over there in lazytown had better give widdle baby Lee his bottle, he sounds desperate.
MacDailyNews Note: Ever launch Photoshop? The length of time it takes for that mess of spaghetti code to launch is one reason why we find ourselves using Pixelmator pretty much exclusively nowadays. The [US$29.99] Pixelmator is really nice and it’s built expressly for Mac OS X, not released as an afterthought that fails take advantage of many of Mac OS X’s core strengths.
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 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.
Related articles:
Beleaguered Adobe pulls plug on Flash; axes 750 jobs; shares drop – November 9, 2011
Adobe ceases development on Flash Player for mobile, refocuses efforts on HTML5 – November 9, 2011
@BiteMe,
“…Apple is doing something much worse. They are banning the use of Adobe in their products outright. Where are the “open development” people now to cry fowl?”
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, heard it all before. Get a clue yourself. Read your own quote: “…in their [Apple’s] products outright.” Get it? MS was doing the “bundling” on everyone else’s products (Dell, HP, IBM, Gateway, Sony, etc.). Not only that, the “bundling” is the least of it (heck, IE was “bundled” on the Mac desktop for a time).
The “much worse” part is what was going on in the back rooms. MS was threatening the PC makers and keeping them from putting any other browser on the desktop (or anywhere). They were witholding deals and threatening repercussions for any one who got out of line. If you can’t see the difference, you need to get a clue.
PC manufacturers couldn’t put Linux or other browsers on THEIR own products if they wanted to, despite having customers for it. This was dictated by another company.
Here we have Apple saying, “if you want to develop for our platform which runs on our hardware, and have your app supported and put in front of the end user, this is how you will develop for it.”
Really, what is it that you are not getting here? Is Apple interfering with what Nokia or RIM put on their hardware and platforms? Should Adobe be able to act like MS and dictate that their platform gets full consideration on all hardware that could conceivably be made to run it? I don’t think so. Get a clue or shut up.
@ Sefu,
“I really hope Apple is making the right call here, remains to be seen.”
Take my word for it Sefu, Adobe has virtually ignored Apple products for over 10 years. Adobe coders make shitty Mac OS X products. With over 100,000 developers already, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users aren’t going to miss a thing.
Adobe also killed off Framemaker for OSX. That was inexcusable. It was the premier application for generating technical documentation. Apple even use it to create their own manuals. There was nowhere left to go except to a PC (virtual or otherwise).
Adobe has no friends here.
So, Apple writes a language that is the standard development language for it’s apps….
Urm, excuse me… Don’t EVERY software developer do that???
Go back under your rock and stop drinking the adobe coolaid!
And regarding flash, firstly flash was invented as an animation tool NOT a tool for creating websites!!
Using flash to make a website is like treading in tar. It’s a pain in the ass to update a flash site as you almost have to recreate the site again!
What adobe SHOULD be doung is writing a piece of software that is designed from the ground up to create rich media websites.
They should have stopped flash years ago – it’s crap.
Also, it’s a proprietry system that relies on the user to manually update the flash player.
This don’t work in this age of open standards.
Adobe, stop development of flash and create a piece of software that is easy to use and designed for it’s purpose.
I find all of this amusing. I like Apple products and as long as I do, I’ll use them. I like Adobe CS, it may be bloated but they’re great tools. Don’t care about their battle at all.
Adobe has everything to lose from Apple’s AppStore ecosystem and they’re hurting. And lack of Flash is a business decision first. It may be crap technology, but being able to build customer Flash apps in mobile Safari would be bad for apps… and that’s the reason Apple has not enabled it.
U mac fanboys are so ignorant it’s scary. Let me state some facts:
Flash is a application platform and cannot be replaced by HTML5, ever. Any developer like myself that has worked with Flash would (or should!) know this. HTML5 is just a (unfinished) mark up spec with limited functionality. Flash and it’s coding language are far more advanced.
Action Script 3.0 which Flash uses is more like a C language. The software itself is also by far the best for web animation and vector based graphics, as it’s animation and drawing tools are excellent, you can even use Flash solely for drawing or creating images, as it’s tools are almost as good as Adobe Illustrator for this. In the latest Flash you even have bone tool, which makes creating and animating characters a lot easier. Again, HTML5 is just a markup spec, it has no animation features and tools for such things, you can write a HTML5 website in notepad.
The whole point that everyone is getting upset about is the way Apple is going about all of this. They are using bullying tactics to get rid of a competing product this type of sh$t does not fly any more. If Apple truely feels that flash is bad & HTML5 is better why not let the consumer decide give the choice to the consumer if HTML5 is that much better then it should win hands down. But Apple just took that choice away form the end user because it is afraid that it will lose control of things like the app store if flash was to catch on in things like the iphone. Wouldn’t you like the choice when you first turn on your shiny new iphone or ipad to say hell no Adobe flash I don’t want you on my hardware frack off I like HTML5 better. But no you don’t get that choice it was made for you by Apple so that $500 hardware is not really yours I guess you just are renting it from Apple so what they says goes.
@Chrissyone,
What I meant to say is that they have never optimized their code for Mac on Intel. They are still doing fat binaries.
In addition, there has been little or no effort to modernize the UI.
@ Brimstone
“But no you don’t get that choice it was made for you by Apple so that $500 hardware is not really yours I guess you just are renting it from Apple so what they says goes.”
Right. Just like your car, TV, DVD player, lawnmower, dishwasher, blender, washer & dryer, vacuum cleaner, clock radio, walkman, wristwatch, surround sound system, refrigerator, and toaster you’ve even bought. These things are not yours, you only rent them from the people who built them.
What’s the difference? You want complete control of a device…? Linux awaits you in many fine products. You can go buy them right now.
But the iPad isn’t for you. It’s for people who don’t care about development tools, or runtimes, or clock cycles. And there are orders of magnitude more of those people in the world than there are of you. And most of those people don’t have a computer yet. Apple is interested in selling computers to new people, and their primary goal for those people is to give them a seamless user experience. That’s it.
In doing that, Apple evidently does not want to fall into the same trap that Windows is still stuck in – slavish devotion to backward compatibility that limits how a platform can grow and change. MS can’t cut the cord and start over, because they have a whole economy based on their current architecture. If they want to make big changes, it causes all sort of problems and breaks those runtimes. It’s hard to start over, but Apple have done it several times, like when they jettisoned their entire OS and built one on top of UNIX, or when they changed processors.
So the question is – do you really think Apple hasn’t done the math on this? Why should Apple allow a runtime environment (that was not designed for a touch device) that they will be then responsible for staying compatible with? The answer that so many folks are trying to make me believe is that there is this vast, rich community of Flash developers that will then migrate to another platform and hurt the App store.
But it seems to me that with all the tens of thousands of App store apps, and the level of quality that even the crummy ones have, and the incredible creativity and variation that’s found in the best of them, that the App store is doing just fine without Flash. Or Java or Silverlight. And I tend to think that Apple knows what it is talking about when it comes to performance and power management, and if this is how they need to operate to build the best system for all those millions of people who don’t give a shit about Flash, then so be it.
So what then, is Apple’s incentive? Just to placate you? Or all those amazingly talented Flash developers that gave us “Get a Free iPhone” banners or Sorority Life? You really think they’d put the whole platform on the line for that?
All Steve is saying is “Write an app for *my* system, plz”. Not for Adobe’s system so it can perform like a port on every platform.
And no, Apple is not BANNING ADOBE FROM THE SYSTEM OUTRIGHT. Adobe is free to use the same tools everyone else does, even if those tools don’t directly enrich Adobe. They make a couple of fine iPhone apps already, and they have a new iPad app called Ideas for making quick sketches, and there’s no reason they can’t make more.
But stop thinking that Flash or any other runtime on the iPhone OS is ever going to happen. It’s *not* going to happen. At least not any time soon or in any form that’s currently out there. There are a few good reason to include it, but there are millions more reasons NOT to.
@MDN: Pixelmator is a nice little program, but I hope you’re not suggesting that it is a full-fledged replacement for Photoshop. Because it isn’t and will never be. Only a very silly person would think that. With all its faults, Photoshop is still the big dog in the image editing universe.
@ Digital Mercenary
“In addition, there has been little or no effort to modernize the UI.”
No, actually there has been a tremendous ‘effort’, it’s just that not everyone likes what the effort has produced. But that said, I agree that the UI doesn’t demonstrate any real forward thinking, it just tries to organize all the same old buttons and switches in a pleasing manner. (using Flash!) I find it increasingly difficult to use because Adobe ignores the conventions of both platforms. In fact I really don’t use CS apps much at all any more, aside from the occasional layered PS project. I except Lightroom from this because LR was built outside the CS suite and has it’s own (beautiful, in my opinion) UI that would lend itself well to multitouch. If that ever happens now…
You two are the only ones who get it.
People think you can just replace Flash with HTML 5, but like you said, HTML5 has no development tools. It’s just a mark-up.
Many websites don’t have the staffing, resources, or expertise to publish using HTML 5 and Adobe has filled a need with relatively straight-forward developer tools.
The other point is exactly how Apple is going about this; using bullying tactics to force Adobe out of the equation. Even Woz doesn’t like the way Apple is going – but of course MDN and the rabid idiot fanboys on this website tore him down for going against Jesus, I mean Jobs.
It’s a losing battle on here, like arguing with a brick wall.
And to the idiot who thinks that “Mac OS has readily available Adobe blocking software” are you $ucking serious?
If Apple banned Flash from Mac OS, people would burn down Apple headquarters. You can get away from limiting people to 25% of online animation/video content on an iPhone or iPad, but if you tried pulling that $hit on their desktop environment, people would just go back to windows.
Nothing is as revolutionary as getting a broken flash box while trying to read a website.
It is with great pleasure to see Apple screwing so many partners! In the end, Apple will lose out when all these companies work against Apple…
In the end consumers will have more variety with other companies and Apple will be limited because companies will start to move away from partnering with Apple.
Keep it up Apple! I want to see this all unfold. It will hit you in the ass in the future.
And Adobe sees no puck, where next?
That’s innovation and progress.
You’re tooooo slow and snobbishly ad-ob-atic.
Adobe, learn to skate, eh?
Apple is.
@ Just lovely…
“It will hit you in the ass in the future.”
You’ve got it back to front ol’ chap. *This* is the ass whoopin’.
@Rike
“Aldus Pagemaker 4.0 was a great product. It was totally screwed up once Adobe bought it.”
Aldus Freehand was great too. Freehand under Macromedia was good also. It’s a shame that Adobe just killed it, ‘cuz I always liked it better than Illustrator.
@botoncandy
I agree with you. I love Freehand and still use it everyday alongside with Illustrator.
Time for Apple to splash some money buy Pixelmator, pump serious resources into it & replace Photoshop as the Pro choice.
Nothing could better show how worried and desperate this company is becoming and all down to their own stupidity.
Is it a self-threading screw?
Self-defeating, maybe.
Here in AZ the Ipad has a fatal flaw. 95 degree Fahrenheit operating limitation. So much for reading outside or using it as a laptop replacement. If I leave it in the car while I run into a restaurant it will be to hot to start up for at least 30 minutes.
Second, most of the really good stock market sites use (Java, Silverlight and Flash). Without these technologies most of the sites become useless.
I applaud Apple for most of their design decisions but temperature ceiling issues and applications issues will force me to demure on an Ipad at this time.
demur
Adobe could not organise a piss-up in a brewery.
The ABC (and more recently the BBC) have enabled a check on their RTMP streams known as SWF Verification. This requires that, approximately every 60 seconds, an application streaming from their servers respond in a particular way to a ‘ping’. Unfortunately for everyone, Adobe have decided to take the legal option of sending cease and desist letters to open source projects who implement this ‘feature’. Disturbing don’t you think?
You know how you can tell Adobe is really scared?
Because they’re sending paid shills to come defend them on MDN.
@Brimstone
You make your parents proud!
Bless them for raising such a superior child that seems to know it all and not allow his judgement be cloud by their experience. My parents also passed on their experience, their knowledge and a warning of what to expect from “learning the hard way”.
Parenting skills has a place in development.