So, there are a couple things here that jump to my mind.
1. Adobe isn't completely innocent. They're pretty close to a monopoly on their type of software and charge dearly for it (their Creative Suite costs as much as a MacBook Pro). They've done a lot to make sure there are no non-Adobe Flash players even when that's just hurting customers and not costing them money since they don't sell the player. They're not exactly "open" and "free".
2. Apple could be said to have an interest in not supporting intermediaries. Intermediaries are likely to create less efficient code and I'm sure they don't want to deal with developers using up their support time over things that are the fault of Adobe's Flash SDK or Novell's C# one.
3. It's also in Apple's interest to get people using Objective-C and their toolkit. It brings developers to the Mac by forcing them to buy one. That will have positive externalities in more software for the Mac. It gets developers into the Obj-C camp which means more people with Mac development skills. It means that apps can't be re-compiled for iPhone, Android, and webOS - and that's huge for customer lock-in. We all know how users get attached to their apps and I think it's easy to imagine Adobe building an Android compiler right after the iPhone one got finished.
Do I like Apple's stance? No. As a user and a developer, it's bad for me. However, Apple's the market leader and getting people to use their API gives them control and means that app developers will always be ready to use the latest new features they add while building a wall of incompatibility against Android and webOS that will keep users buying iPhones for apps in the way that users bought Windows computers for their apps for ages.
Jobs wanted web apps. Developers balked. Web apps would have been cross-platform (at least with Android and webOS). Apple responded to developers and now they've seen their chance to lock users and developers to their system.
Adobe isn't known for being open. Given the chance, Adobe seems to wall itself off as much as Apple. Companies tend to go for openness insofar as it's in their interests.
Who cares about a company being "innocent" ? What does that even mean ?
>(their Creative Suite costs as much as a MacBook Pro)
Do you have a serious study saying that Creative Suite is overpriced ? Because it doesn't look that way to me. And what does that even have to do with anything ?
>I'm sure they don't want to deal with developers using up their support time over things that are the fault of Adobe's Flash SDK or Novell's C# one.
So they could have added a clause to the dev agreement saying they won't support the dev choosing to go with other SDK's or languages. That would have been a TOTALLY different story no ?
> 3. It's also in Apple's interest to [...]
Of course it's in Apple's interest. The way they're ready to alienate a non negligible part of their partner's base (because that's what devs should be, partners) for their short term interrest is kind of scary though. I even really doubt it's a clever strategy if you consider Apple's interest alone.
>Do I like Apple's stance? No. As a user and a developer, it's bad for me. However, Apple's the market leader and getting people to use their API gives them control
However what ? You know the problem isn't even the fact that the platform is closed to others languages. If it has been like that from the beginning of the IPhone/Ipad, it wouldn't be the same problem at all. The real problem in this story is that Apple is ready to screw other peoples businesses. It reminds me of the Playstation3/Linux story, in some ways. People have invested time and money in this platform, and yet Apple decides to change the terms of the game and screw them over completely. The fact that they have the right to do it doesn't make it right. It's immoral and wrong.
> Adobe isn't known for being open. Given the chance, Adobe seems to wall itself off as much as Apple.
Examples please. I may have forgotten some things, but on the top of my mind, i can't find anything even remotely similar to this.
Companies tend to go for openness insofar as it's in their interests.
I've been developing this metaphor while reading and posting to other threads:
- Companies are like states.
- Ownership is like sovereignty
- Open Source licenses are like constitutions and the rule of law
- Community processes are like democracy
Totalitarian states can also discover that being open to commerce can be in their interest, but still act coercively when doing so suits them more. Constitutional democracies can be considered safer for business, since it disallows arbitrary actions and ensures due process. By analogy, Open Source platforms can be considered safer for business.
(This doesn't mean that I won't publish on the App Store. But it does mean that I'm going to look at platform diversification as a safety measure! I guess this move by Apple has had the opposite from desired effect in my case.)
The Flex SDK is free, you can develop and compile Flash apps and web apps without buying any of their software. And they don't require a $99 fee just to have the opportunity to sell your work, or take 30% of the cut.
> Jobs wanted web apps. Developers balked. Web apps would have been cross-platform (at least with Android and webOS). Apple responded to developers and now they've seen their chance to lock users and developers to their system.
Jobs didn't want web apps, he wanted no apps. Web apps would have been more than useful given the right js APIs. It wouldn't have done a thing for games, but there's a great deal of stuff you could technically build in html + js if it were a true first class development environment.
I continue to be impressed with the license Adobe gives their official representative. This is not the first unprofessional reaction I've seen on this blog. Yes, it is understandable. Is it wise? Maybe a better worded response could inflame the minds of the abused more effectively and not sound like a temper tantrum.
Let me clarify -- theflashblog.com is not produced by Adobe, the company. It is written by an official representative of Adobe, but it is not the official response of Adobe the company, and the site is not an official Adobe site.
The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent
because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging,
posting to social networks, or other things that we at
companies with an open culture take for granted.
Not really. It's his website, his soapbox. In his position, I wouldn't want to deal with all the unintelligible Apple fanboy posters either -- even at the expense of the likely-few reasonable, well thought-out posts.
Publishing on teh intarwebs is cheap and easy. If some potential commenters want their own soapbox, they can easily get one. I honestly don't understand why it's become "required" that readers of any site should be able to comment on what's written on that site. Let the content stand for itself. If you have an opposing viewpoint, use your own channel to promote that viewpoint; don't leech off of someone else's.
Honestly, I still think people writing native code and using the native APIs for a platform like the iPhone is something worth enforcing. On the desktop multiplatform development toolkits consistently fail to deliver a user experience that is seamless and on par with apps built with the native APIs (especially on a platform with different interface conventions and guidelines, ie Mac OS) and for a platform such as the iPhone where resources are not infinite, and the interface is especially important, it just makes sense to enforce people doing things 'properly'. If that knocks out a few decent applications along with all the lazy, rubbish ports then I think that's acceptable. If they're really that amazing, then they probably justify being rewritten natively.
One place where I do have issue with this policy is in the case of game engines/middleware (ie. Unity). Due to the complexity and development requirements of game middleware I think an exception, or a more refined policy, is required to allow middleware to give the required 'leg-up' to game developers. Additionally, while Apple has provided an awful lot of what developers need to create great View-based applications for the iPhone with Cocoa Touch (within the constraints what third-party apps are allowed to do, at least), they haven't done so for games. This is understandable, again due to the aforementioned complexity of game engines, but it makes games a special case.
Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this.
I hate such broad-sweeping statements.
What is clear is that Apple most definitely would [abuse their loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company].
Apple has always been about the experience of using their products, and I think a lot of what they're doing with their mobile devices still stems from that focus. Maybe they're being too heavy handed, but, then again, they're not allowing grandma's phone to be overrun with software that affects the perception of the device itself.
Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.
> they're not allowing grandma's phone to be overrun with software that affects the perception of the device itself.
That may be fine if you're 'just producing devices,' but Apple presents the iPhone and the iPad as the 'future of computing' with a vision of all computing being done on devices like this in the future. Therefore the way they treat their devices' ecosystem now should be a predictor of how they see their role in the ecosystem in the future, a future where their devices are the only devices.
I think some people are alluding to the fact that he was knocking on death's door as little as a year ago. Probably most people don't wish him dead, but some certainly wish for the _effects_ of him dead, some of which might be the loosening of tyrannical grip on developers and a decrease in the number of purely emotional decisions (this, banning Google Voice, etc.).
We've been down this road before with the HTML5 vs Flash iPad post that Lee Brimelow made. The title is wrong, this is not Adobe's official response this is from an Adobe evangelist.
Many posters are missing the point here. Apple is heading Adobe off at the pass, so that Flash is not a viable development platform. The fact that the agreement term can be interpreted to prevent umpteen different other cross-platform development environments is only relevant to the extent Apple's agenda includes enforcing the terms against the makers of those environments.
Now, assuming Apple is using this language to defeat the expectation that Flash is viable on the iPhone OS, who really loses? I would argue that elimination of Flash is win for everyone but Adobe, but that's my opinion. Even if you like Flash a lot, you can't fault Apple for not accommodating Adobe given the belligerent history between them.
I guess I just have a hard time mustering sympathy for Flash developers after years of frustrating, shoddy, inconsistent web experiences with Flash. There are a few exceptions (artists like http://yugop.com/ come to mind, as well as the acceleration of online video) but, overall, Flash has been a nightmare for opinionated web users like myself. Good riddance.
Someone should edit the title for this post -- theflashblog.com is not an offical Adobe blog, and the post is simply the reaction of one Adobe employee. This is not the 'official Adobe response'.
There's a few things you can do in Obj-C that would be pretty hard to do in Java, but...
It's not the language, it's the framework. UIKit and friends really are very good; they're the secret sauce of the iPhone OS and I'm not sure Android has anything comparable.
"What is clear is that Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5"
As many other commenters pointed out here, theflashblog.com is not an official Adobe blog.This is definitely not "Adobe's reaction" as the title suggests.
It's not an "official Adobe blog", but what he writes depends upon what Adobe chooses to redact or not. That sounds like a very passive aggressive way for Adobe to tell Apple to screw themselves.
I find it slightly amusing that these two statements are in adjoining paragraphs:
The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted
[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe].
I'm sorry, but I really don't give a damn. There's a lot of speculation here (and elsewhere), and until I hear anything official from Apple I refuse to get too wound up.
As far as I know, the last time Apple formally responding to the internet debates was when the FCC forced a statement about Google Voice: "HTML5 is open and free enough for anything you want. Google is more than free to create an HTML5 app." We might see something like the rare Phil Schiller emailing John Gruber at Daring Fireball, but I'd highly doubt that.
Unless it highly affects sales (which I doubt the average consumer cares about developers), or a very well known App developer pulls their apps completely (and by well known, I mean well known by the public like Facebook or EA), there'll be no formal or informal response.
You seriously think that if this were just a misunderstanding, they would let all of this Apple hate grow and grow for over 24 hours? They would have issued a statement clarifying things by the end of business hours yesterday if this "speculation" were wrong.
I think this person will regret writing this post tomorrow, if not sooner. This is akin to having an emotional reaction to someone's email and returning an immediate flame email, later feeling like a complete jerk. But this is on a much grander scale, writing a blog post as an official representative of an entire company. Very poor taste.
sheesh... while one half of Adobe's brain (the flash-obsessed Macromedia one) is still screaming and flinging mud, the other half already used some of the perfectly Apple-endorsed C/C++ code they've got lying around and build a useful iPad App: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-ideas-1-0-for-ipad/id36... - It's not like they're all about Flash; although it's obviously this guy's job to make it look like it - hence the title of evangelist.
I find it ironic that while Brimelow claims: "Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted." it seems unlikely that he's actually able to take his "open culture" much for granted when they've openly censored several parts of his post, as he freely admits.
[+] [-] mdasen|16 years ago|reply
1. Adobe isn't completely innocent. They're pretty close to a monopoly on their type of software and charge dearly for it (their Creative Suite costs as much as a MacBook Pro). They've done a lot to make sure there are no non-Adobe Flash players even when that's just hurting customers and not costing them money since they don't sell the player. They're not exactly "open" and "free".
2. Apple could be said to have an interest in not supporting intermediaries. Intermediaries are likely to create less efficient code and I'm sure they don't want to deal with developers using up their support time over things that are the fault of Adobe's Flash SDK or Novell's C# one.
3. It's also in Apple's interest to get people using Objective-C and their toolkit. It brings developers to the Mac by forcing them to buy one. That will have positive externalities in more software for the Mac. It gets developers into the Obj-C camp which means more people with Mac development skills. It means that apps can't be re-compiled for iPhone, Android, and webOS - and that's huge for customer lock-in. We all know how users get attached to their apps and I think it's easy to imagine Adobe building an Android compiler right after the iPhone one got finished.
Do I like Apple's stance? No. As a user and a developer, it's bad for me. However, Apple's the market leader and getting people to use their API gives them control and means that app developers will always be ready to use the latest new features they add while building a wall of incompatibility against Android and webOS that will keep users buying iPhones for apps in the way that users bought Windows computers for their apps for ages.
Jobs wanted web apps. Developers balked. Web apps would have been cross-platform (at least with Android and webOS). Apple responded to developers and now they've seen their chance to lock users and developers to their system.
Adobe isn't known for being open. Given the chance, Adobe seems to wall itself off as much as Apple. Companies tend to go for openness insofar as it's in their interests.
[+] [-] Raphael_Amiard|16 years ago|reply
Who cares about a company being "innocent" ? What does that even mean ?
>(their Creative Suite costs as much as a MacBook Pro)
Do you have a serious study saying that Creative Suite is overpriced ? Because it doesn't look that way to me. And what does that even have to do with anything ?
>I'm sure they don't want to deal with developers using up their support time over things that are the fault of Adobe's Flash SDK or Novell's C# one.
So they could have added a clause to the dev agreement saying they won't support the dev choosing to go with other SDK's or languages. That would have been a TOTALLY different story no ?
> 3. It's also in Apple's interest to [...]
Of course it's in Apple's interest. The way they're ready to alienate a non negligible part of their partner's base (because that's what devs should be, partners) for their short term interrest is kind of scary though. I even really doubt it's a clever strategy if you consider Apple's interest alone.
>Do I like Apple's stance? No. As a user and a developer, it's bad for me. However, Apple's the market leader and getting people to use their API gives them control
However what ? You know the problem isn't even the fact that the platform is closed to others languages. If it has been like that from the beginning of the IPhone/Ipad, it wouldn't be the same problem at all. The real problem in this story is that Apple is ready to screw other peoples businesses. It reminds me of the Playstation3/Linux story, in some ways. People have invested time and money in this platform, and yet Apple decides to change the terms of the game and screw them over completely. The fact that they have the right to do it doesn't make it right. It's immoral and wrong.
> Adobe isn't known for being open. Given the chance, Adobe seems to wall itself off as much as Apple.
Examples please. I may have forgotten some things, but on the top of my mind, i can't find anything even remotely similar to this.
[+] [-] ilike|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abstractbill|16 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced Apple is trying to force developers to buy Macs, and I'm far from convinced that such a strategy would actually work.
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
I've been developing this metaphor while reading and posting to other threads:
Totalitarian states can also discover that being open to commerce can be in their interest, but still act coercively when doing so suits them more. Constitutional democracies can be considered safer for business, since it disallows arbitrary actions and ensures due process. By analogy, Open Source platforms can be considered safer for business.(This doesn't mean that I won't publish on the App Store. But it does mean that I'm going to look at platform diversification as a safety measure! I guess this move by Apple has had the opposite from desired effect in my case.)
[+] [-] Qz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkurt|16 years ago|reply
Jobs didn't want web apps, he wanted no apps. Web apps would have been more than useful given the right js APIs. It wouldn't have done a thing for games, but there's a great deal of stuff you could technically build in html + js if it were a true first class development environment.
[+] [-] rbanffy|16 years ago|reply
No. Thanks. I have no urge to develop for iPhone, iPod or iPad, much less in Objective C.
I think I am gonna pass this one. ;-)
[+] [-] houseabsolute|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smackfu|16 years ago|reply
Which is worse?
[+] [-] Qz|16 years ago|reply
Let me clarify -- theflashblog.com is not produced by Adobe, the company. It is written by an official representative of Adobe, but it is not the official response of Adobe the company, and the site is not an official Adobe site.
[+] [-] csytan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeiting|16 years ago|reply
Please do not reply to this. Especially if you do not agree.
[+] [-] kelnos|16 years ago|reply
Publishing on teh intarwebs is cheap and easy. If some potential commenters want their own soapbox, they can easily get one. I honestly don't understand why it's become "required" that readers of any site should be able to comment on what's written on that site. Let the content stand for itself. If you have an opposing viewpoint, use your own channel to promote that viewpoint; don't leech off of someone else's.
[+] [-] mambodog|16 years ago|reply
One place where I do have issue with this policy is in the case of game engines/middleware (ie. Unity). Due to the complexity and development requirements of game middleware I think an exception, or a more refined policy, is required to allow middleware to give the required 'leg-up' to game developers. Additionally, while Apple has provided an awful lot of what developers need to create great View-based applications for the iPhone with Cocoa Touch (within the constraints what third-party apps are allowed to do, at least), they haven't done so for games. This is understandable, again due to the aforementioned complexity of game engines, but it makes games a special case.
[+] [-] mambodog|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nopal|16 years ago|reply
I hate such broad-sweeping statements.
What is clear is that Apple most definitely would [abuse their loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company].
Apple has always been about the experience of using their products, and I think a lot of what they're doing with their mobile devices still stems from that focus. Maybe they're being too heavy handed, but, then again, they're not allowing grandma's phone to be overrun with software that affects the perception of the device itself.
Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.
I also find this highly patronizing.
[+] [-] pyre|16 years ago|reply
That may be fine if you're 'just producing devices,' but Apple presents the iPhone and the iPad as the 'future of computing' with a vision of all computing being done on devices like this in the future. Therefore the way they treat their devices' ecosystem now should be a predictor of how they see their role in the ecosystem in the future, a future where their devices are the only devices.
[+] [-] rbanffy|16 years ago|reply
> I hate such broad-sweeping statements.
I know no "real developer" who really likes Flash either, so, I find all this "oh no we want Flash" thing rather amusing.
[+] [-] bilbo0s|16 years ago|reply
Uhhh
What?
The Apple Board?
Fire Steve Jobs?
Yeah, good luck with that buddy.
[+] [-] smackfu|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] houseabsolute|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sosuke|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonk|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tvon|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunchild|16 years ago|reply
Now, assuming Apple is using this language to defeat the expectation that Flash is viable on the iPhone OS, who really loses? I would argue that elimination of Flash is win for everyone but Adobe, but that's my opinion. Even if you like Flash a lot, you can't fault Apple for not accommodating Adobe given the belligerent history between them.
I guess I just have a hard time mustering sympathy for Flash developers after years of frustrating, shoddy, inconsistent web experiences with Flash. There are a few exceptions (artists like http://yugop.com/ come to mind, as well as the acceleration of online video) but, overall, Flash has been a nightmare for opinionated web users like myself. Good riddance.
[+] [-] Qz|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cubicle67|16 years ago|reply
It's not the language, it's the framework. UIKit and friends really are very good; they're the secret sauce of the iPhone OS and I'm not sure Android has anything comparable.
[+] [-] jluxenberg|16 years ago|reply
did anyone read this before the post was edited?
[+] [-] ilike|16 years ago|reply
As many other commenters pointed out here, theflashblog.com is not an official Adobe blog.This is definitely not "Adobe's reaction" as the title suggests.
[+] [-] philwelch|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] furyg3|16 years ago|reply
The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted
[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe].
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] oscardelben|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apike|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j79|16 years ago|reply
Of course, they stick pretty much on topic so I'm not sure if they occasionally inject personal opinion...
[+] [-] jherdman|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamache|16 years ago|reply
No matter what Apple says in the next few days, nothing short of removing the new clause can prevent Apple from enforcing it at will.
[+] [-] ROFISH|16 years ago|reply
Unless it highly affects sales (which I doubt the average consumer cares about developers), or a very well known App developer pulls their apps completely (and by well known, I mean well known by the public like Facebook or EA), there'll be no formal or informal response.
[+] [-] jackowayed|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkuo|16 years ago|reply
Though I'm enjoying the show quite a lot!!!
[+] [-] raganwald|16 years ago|reply
Oh? Raganwald seems to be ok with this, especially since he does his iPhone development on the web platform and doesn't need Apple's permission.
"Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
[+] [-] anon95110|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jongraehl|16 years ago|reply
So this is merely offensive and insulting to programmers, and can't create any lasting competitive advantage.
[+] [-] cmeranda|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ROFISH|16 years ago|reply
How professional.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
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