Adobe Open Letter and Newspaper Adverts Over Flash and Apple

[engine]

Adobe Open Letter and Newspaper Adverts Over Flash and Apple [news.bbc.co.uk]

Adobe has launched its latest salvo in an ongoing dispute with Apple.

The co-founders of Adobe have published an open letter in which they say that Apple threatens to "undermine the next chapter of the web".

The software firm has also started an adverting blitz in newspapers and on popular technology news sites.

Some of the online adverts contain the tongue-in-cheek slogan "We heart Apple".

Adobe's Open Letter [adobe.com...]

[sgietz]

That's a pretty mild comeback after the scolding remarks Steve Jobs made.

[maximillianos]

Very tasteful, and very good points. Regardless of what Jobs thinks he is doing to save us consumers from aging technology, we as consumers should have the choice to use it or not on any computer. An iPhone is a computer, just as an iPad is a computer. I should be able to choose whether I want to run Flash apps.

[CritterNYC]

One bright spot is that consumers are increasingly choosing Android devices. In the US, Android just surpassed iPhone OS as the number 2 smartphone OS in sales (blackberry has a commanding lead). And with Android 2.2, Flash is looking very solid.

[Demaestro]

I am really pissed at Apple right now over the new iTunes.

As I am sure many of you know when you activate your iPhone, the computer you activate it on is the only computer iTunes will allow you to use your phone on.

I hate this as I can't use my work PC to add music to my iPhone, I have to go home to do that or not use iTunes, which means installing a third party application which sometimes messes up the music metadata, and often comes with spyware. I am sure Apple doesn't care they put us at risk like that.

But at least I was able to play music from my iPhone on my work computer using iTunes... NOT ANY MORE, I did an update, I admittedly skipped a few versions so not sure what version this happened in but I can no longer even play music from my iPhone at work anymore using iTunes.

I am totally floored by this, Apple is now blocking me from playing MY music from MY iPhone on MY office PC.

Where the hell do they get off pulling crap like this?

So now I had to research a non-spyware, won't mess up my metadata player just so I can listen to my iPhone music at work through my speakers.... until the next Iphone OS update which will obfuscate the iPod data again, causing this player to stop working, causing me to put myself at rish again finding a player that works.

ARG!

Open letter to Apple:
#*$!? Why can't I use iTunes to listen to my music?

Ian

And with Android 2.2, Flash is looking very solid

Same with the Nokia N8 which has the new symbian^3 OS

[J_RaD]

^ wow, sounds like you need to move away from apple hardware. I knew they were bad but that is over the top!

[maximillianos]

I've been looking at replacing my original iPhone 2G with the new Verizon Incredible (Android) phone from HTC.

Same issues as others with Apple. iTunes has cost me countless hours of re-loading music when their syncing system goes haywire and deletes everything on my phone. Just grow tired of it... and now that the competition is catching up, consumers have more choices.

[Demaestro]

wow, sounds like you need to move away from apple hardware.

I am in a unique position of having got the new iPhone for X-mas from my wife.

It is hard for me to return because she got it for me as a present, and I hate to complain about something she got me. She takes it personal.

She does use my phone for a lot of stuff so I have decided to try to get her attached to mine, then I will offer it to her and pick up a Nokia N8 or an Android Os'd phone for myself.

[incrediBILL]

Truth is Adobe should just abandon all Apple products and stop selling them immediately.

All those photographers, illustrators and graphics artists that use the Apple/Adobe platform for their day-to-day business would make a lot of noise in a hurry.

Better yet, they should subsidize Dell or someone to offer a $500 discount to switch from Apple.

Nothing like all out global thermonuclear war to make people pay attention :)

wow, sounds like you need to move away from apple hardware.

Move away from Apple hardware, software, press releases, news items, just avoid it all.

My wife has a couple of iPods that were gifts and she's used them but absolutely hates them because of iTunes.

iLive without iStuff and iCouldn't be iHappier.

My disdain with Apple products goes way back to the original Apple computers and how they even got a business owner I know killed, but that's a story for another thread ;)

[Demaestro]

but that's a story for another thread ;)

Oh do tell!

I used to love Apple, my first computer was an Apple 2E and I rocked that thing. I wrote my first program in Logo when I was in grade 3-4, then in Basic in grade 5-6.

That was the last time I loved Apple.

iLive without iStuff and iCouldn't be iHappier.

There is a very interesting marketing book that I read that drew lines of comparison between successful marketing campaigns and successful people programming methods used by cults.

A very interesting read. One thing cults do to make people feel "part of the group" and to make others seem like outsiders is to come up with their own language and terminology for things.

Bill your iSentence made me think of it, Starbucks does this too with their "Venti" sizes.

There was a bunch of really interesting things and it wasn't talking bad about the companies doing it, it was simply pointing out the effective methods of programming people to think as you want them and Apple seems to implement a lot of the things they talked about. Another example is explaining to people why ordinary things are somehow bad for you and that "they" can protect you from dangers you don't even know about. (Flash)

[Hugene]

I am totally floored by this, Apple is now blocking me from playing MY music from MY iPhone on MY office PC.

This, and just iTunes in general, made me drop my iPod 2 years ago now.

[piatkow]

iLive without iStuff and iCouldn't be iHappier.

I can't do without iPlayer but Apple failed to trademark that name.

[hugh]

I'm equally frustrated by apple. Don't get me wrong having exchange email and calendar as well as a VPN client built in is great but I dispair of iTunes. The windows version as stated above will only sync with one pc, sync-ing is an arcane art with no transparency or flexibility and managing several devices on the same doesn't work where a ctr + should open a choice of profiles, but only does so erratically. Not to mention not being able to download more than 30Mb over 3G...

[claus]

Adobe is not the web. Adobe is an annoyance. They should never have been allowed to gain that monopoly Flash position they occupy.

Besides, they earn heaps on extremely overpriced desktop publishing and image handling software. Yet another monopoly position.

IMHO, Adobe is worse than Microsoft, and they will get no sympathy for their bad cause from here.

As for Apple, they too are worse than Microsoft. No sympathy for them either.

[httpwebwitch]

Ditto on hating iTunes. It's the most annoying file system ever invented. For someone who runs multiple computers in multiple locations, their hard&software is laughably inept.

And their "membership" system makes me irate, because my "account name" is an email address I haven't used in over 5 years.

If I wasn't already carrying an iPod touch for work purposes, I would switch back to carrying a Sony Walkman full of MP3s.

I'm not a crazy Adobe fan either. Their whole "flex" platform gives me the willies. I love PhotoShop and Acrobat, I tolerate Flash, and that's about it.

Now if any company were to get my blessing to take over the internet, who would it be?
None of the above.

[incrediBILL]

Adobe is not the web. Adobe is an annoyance. They should never have been allowed to gain that monopoly Flash position they occupy.

Previously Flash came from Macromedia, where my wife worked, which already had a dominant Flash position before Adobe purchased the company. Adobe was always a decent company as people I know that work there seem to love it.

Check out the history of Flash, it's hardly been Adobe until recently:
[en.wikipedia.org...]

Besides, SWF is a published file format, just like PDF, so there's nothing stopping anyone else from building tools to create or play those formats.

Read all about it, you can build your own:
[en.wikipedia.org...]

FYI Microsoft is trying to unseat them with ActiveX, Silverlight and XPS so it's hardly a dominant position, it's actively under attack. It's just that the Adobe products were just first, best of show, and have the home team advantage on the web at the moment.

Besides, they earn heaps on extremely overpriced desktop publishing and image handling software. Yet another monopoly position.

Since when is hard work, success and making a profit a problem?

I use Gimp and Paint.net, both free, both good quality, so I'm not seeing the "monopoly" here unless you insist on feeding them money, which I don't.

[blend27]

Adobe is not the web. Adobe is an annoyance. They should never have been allowed to gain that monopoly Flash position they occupy.

Ohh my Friend, have you ever heard of ColdFusion, AIR, Flex, Action Scripting, etc.....?

[graeme_p]

@webwitch, what is so good about Acrobat? Just curious as I do not use it myself.

[iambic9]

So anyone that has a vested interest in a tecnology that requires an app / plugin to run, and has a large user base gets to stamp their feet and demand that player be included in a closed OS? Screaming freedom and openess is typical, what about the freedom to build your own company / platform / device how you see fit? Obviously standard rules do not apply when you're "big" but how big is big? At what point are you considered to be in league with the devil for not jumping to your customers demands? What's good for end users in the short term (1-5 years) can have a detrimental effect on a company in the long term, skipping flash to speed up adoption of HTML5 is obviously better for Apple, they don't lose ANY control over their platform. Obviously. So how can you blame Jobs for doing what's best for the company? Customers are fickle buggers, if I did a tenth of what our customers suggested I'd be out of business pretty quick, some of the products / ideas and idealisms I had when I worked on a small scale just simply do not work on a larger scale, and it was hard for me to come to terms with making long term descisions vs short term descisions. Anyway, principles aside, flash websites are bloody horrible, flash on the iPhone would be horrible too, it won't getter better on a smaller screen without a mouse and short battery life, I can't prove this of course..

[graeme_p]

@iambic, Adobe is not demanding that Flash is included in Apple's OS.

Adobe is objecting to Apple's TOS which bans developers from using non-apple development tools. Would you think it OK if MS only allowed Windows to run software developed by approved developers who were only allowed to use MS tools and programming languages - so no ports from other OSes, no gcc, no Python, no Java etc.

[iambic9]

Sorry, figured this was part of the whole "no flash on the iPhone" saga. I just can't be sure what my opinion is about preventing developers using third party tools... On the surface it's not right, but when talking in terms of long term control and stability I'd have to support the descision. I'm not in the tech industry but I am in an aggressively competitive industry, and I massively value control at every level to acheive the standard I am seeking for my company. As Apple grow and become more dominant a lot of people are going to hate them for some of the descisions they are going to have to make. I've been using macs for the last 15 years and I am in a creative industry, I do not like much of what I am seeing from apple over the last couple of years, but I understand why they making some of their choices. I'll continue to support apple until the drop in attitude impacts us negatively, looks like developers might be the first to go.

[Demaestro]

Customers are fickle buggers, if I did a tenth of what our customers suggested I'd be out of business pretty quick

I get that customers are fickle. Nevertheless I would suggest using caution when ignoring customers' requests.

flash websites are bloody horrible,

How so? Why are they horrible?

flash on the iPhone would be horrible too, it won't getter better on a smaller screen without a mouse and (with) short battery life

Seems to work fine in Android Phones as well as the new Nokia phones.

I don't understand how/why a mouse is required, and the iPhone battery life has problems all on it's own, even without flash, there are some "flash" games you can get from the app store that do the same thing to the battery as what flash itself does.

If Apple really cared about the battery life they would make the battery removable and allow people to carry an extra charged battery on them so when the battery dies they can grab the spare charged one and pop it on... instead they just keep talking about how they are protecting battery life by avoiding flash.... ya right.

If usability and battery life were the real reason for stopping flash then they wouldn't have stopped Adobe's plan for a dev kit that would allow websites to convert their flash into something that would work on iPhone.

But they stopped that too... why?

[edited by: lawman at 7:33 pm (utc) on May 14, 2010]

[ByronM]

My kids love pbskids.org, fantastic representation of flash done right. They also love yo gabba gabba's website, which does a fine job of semlessly integrating everything so a kid can click through it. Flash doesn't suck ;)

Even hulu spoke up about functionality they have in flash that adds value over what they can do in html5

glad to see adobe playing it nice though.. easier to win hearts and minds that way

[iambic9]

Demaestro, I completely agree, ignoring customers requests can be very dangerous, understanding what to take on board and what to ignore and how to go about dealing with what your customers want verses what you can / should give them is terribly difficult to balance at times. I'm not saying Apple are right in their descision to block developers, but I do understand their motivation.

If Apple really cared about the battery life they would make the battery removable and allow people to carry an extra charged battery on them

It's better for them if the battery just dies and you have to buy a new phone.*

If usability and battery life were the real reason for stopping flash then they wouldn't have stopped Adobe's plan for a dev kit that would allow websites to convert their flash into something that would work on iPhone.

But they stopped that too... why?

Control.*

* Like I say, I don't like much of Apple's attitude these days, (see above) strangling developers is not something they should be doing, it was developers that made the transition from OS9 to X the success that it was, they built apps that brought people to the platform, I also seem to remember Adobe being very supportive at that time. It's a very risky play, ignore customers request for flash, burn Adobe and wind up developers, all in the name of control and dominance over a market, if it pays off then maybe they'll be able to justify some of this to themselves, if it doesn't they're in big trouble.

Regarding Flash websites... it's just my opinion.

[incrediBILL]

It's better for them if the battery just dies and you have to buy a new phone

Actually that's not the case because when pressured to either a) send in the phone for "repair" just to put in a new battery or b) buy a new phone to avoid being without a phone while the battery is replaced, many may opt to simply switch phones to a reasonable brand that won't force them to be in such a bad situation in the future.

You can only burn consumers so many times before they shop elsewhere.

[phranque]

the battery situation has always made the iphone a non-starter for me.
the connection/reception issue seals the deal.
the "flash problem" is minor compared to it's function as a phone.

every iphone user i know that relies on a phone for business also carries a BB.
it's a toy.

[incrediBILL]

every iphone user i know that relies on a phone for business also carries a BB.

Um, Phranque, I use the android for business, i rely on it, no iPhone and no BB.

:)

[ChocolateDimple]

iLive without iStuff and iCouldn't be iHappier.

This really made me laugh.. thanks bill.

I don't use any iStuff either although i am seriously considering future versions of the iPad. I'm just curious how long Apple is going to prolong their final decision and Adobe products because I like Adobe.

Might be worth the wait for another company to produce an iPad type product or Adobe type products that work on iPad.

[phranque]

I use the android for business

my point exactly!
i don't know any android users that carry another phone...

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], ChocolateDimple!