The geeks among you are more than likely already aware of the kerfluffle between Apple and Adobe over Apple’s refusal to allow Flash on any device running the iPhone operating system (iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad). This really hasn’t been an issue until now since Adobe didn’t have a Flash product that could run on the iPhone OS or any other mobile phone operating system (a fact Adobe is usually careful to leave out).
In fact, Adobe still doesn’t have it’s years-past-due mobile iteration of Flash ready yet. It’s supposed to be coming in a month or so, but we’ll see. And if the specs for it are accurate, it hogs so much processing power that almost no phone currently on the market — Apple-built or otherwise — will be able to take advantage of it. The Droid Nexus One and HTC Incredible are about the only phones available right now that have the horsepower to manage Flash.
So essentially Adobe is criticizing Apple for not supporting a product that does not yet exist.
Got that?
But there is another twist in this highly entertaining spectacle of two corporate behemoths duking it out in a very public manner.
Apple changed it’s software developer agreement to disallow the use of third-party compilers to create applications for the iPhone OS. What this means in English is that you have to use Apple’s tools — and only Apple’s tools — if you want to built apps for the iPhone OS.
Why this pissed off Adobe is that this announcement landed when they were a few months away from unveiling their new Creative Suite 5, a big selling point of which was a compiler that took applications created in Flash — which, as we remember, aren’t allowed on the iPhone OS — and cross-compiled them so that they would function and meet the requirements of Apple’s developer agreements, at least until Apple changed them.
Adobe cried foul.
Steve Job’s wrote a pretty widely read letter about why he thinks Flash is antiquated technology and why third-party compilers like CS-5 have been banned.
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. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. 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. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Pretty harsh, but there’s history to back up Jobs’s claims, and it’s an indisputable fact that Flash still isn’t available for mobile devices (only a piece-of-shit “Flash lite” that’s not even worth discussing at this point).
It’s understandable that Adobe would be pissed off. They’re about to release a new product with what they think is a cool selling feature (“You can build stuff in Flash and cross-compile it for sale to Apple’s app store!”) when Apple yanks the rug out from under them and lands them very hard and very publicly on their ass.
Being pissed is understandable. Complaining to the Justice Department about “anti-competitive practices” is absurd. Apple does not have a monopoly on the mobile phone market or the smart phone market. They have a highly successful suite of products and can make the rules under which third parties are allowed to access those products for the benefit of both. Complaining to the government because you don’t like the rules is stupid. It’s like Ford complaining to the government that they’re not allowed to sell their cars at Lexus dealerships.
And now there’s this: Adobe has launched an expensive ad campaign across the Internet to cry once more about how mean Apple is by not letting Adobe use it’s own tools to make applications it wants to sell for money on Apple’s store.
Here’s a choice excerpt from the steaming pile of self-serving bullshit ad:
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.
When markets are open, anyone with a great idea has a chance to drive innovation and find new customers. Adobe’s business philosophy is based on a premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end – and the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.
We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web – the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.
In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody – and everybody, but certainly not a single company.
Oh, puh-leeze. Adobe’s Flash isn’t open. It’s a proprietary format that belongs wholly to Adobe. Because it’s used on a lot of websites doesn’t make it open or a standard.
As for “open markets,” that’s exactly what’s going on here! Competition! Capitalism! Apple’s sold 70+ million iPhones/iPod Touches/iPads so far, and none of them can run Flash. But that’s Apple’s ecosystem. Flash is still available on the web on just about every desktop/laptop/netbook browser. If the mobile phone market decides it really needs Flash, then either Apple’s sales will decline accordingly or they will have to add Flash capability. But if it doesn’t … well, there are lots of other extinct technologies out there. That’s the name of the game.
The fact that Adobe is scrambling so hard to get Flash working on Android devices (and not having a lot of luck — it’s pretty bad when your Flash demo at FlashCamp crashes in front of an audience) means they’ll have a chance to let the markets decide if Flash is something that should continue on the mobile market … or not. But this bullshit about “controlling the World Wide Web” is just a smokescreen because Adobe is right now scared out of it’s brown-stained-breeches that one of its cash-cows is on its way to oblivion.
