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Adobe will argue that Apple's app store represents 90%+ of smartphone app sales and is therefore an effective monopoly.

And still, Adobe will lose because Apple has only 18% of the smartphone market. The Supreme Court will tell Adobe they can go write apps for the other 82% of smartphones on the market, Apple isn't stopping them from doing that in any way.

30% of patients. 18% of smartphones. If the patients get 10,000 times better treatment is irrelevant. If Apple has 10,000 times more apps is irrelevant.

The product is smartphones. That Section 3 thing was enacted because of a mimeograph company had a 100% monopoly (they had the patent) and were forcing owners to buy only their ink and paper for it in order to have a monopoly on the ink and paper market too (read Microsoft and Internet Explorer). Apple is doing no such thing as they only have 18% of the market. It's pretty straightforward.

Why does everyone seem to think that this has to do with mobile market share?

Because market share determines the monopoly or not. Why are you having difficulty seeing that? It's the people who own the smartphones buying the apps, not the number of apps. Only 18% of total smartphone owners are buying apps from the Apple store. That they buy a lot more than other brand smartphone owners do is irrelevant.

Microsoft's Windows had 95% of the PC market share. Windows *users*. Not Windows app developers. How many third party apps available for Windows, 10 or 10,000, is irrelevant to determine if Windows is a monoply or not.
 
The law suit is not about winning the suit...Adobe loses if it wins the suit...it's meant to bring Apple back to the table to discuss the issues. Adobe is hoping to "settle" with Apple so that Adobe does not lose many $$$ from Apple's decisions.
 
Ok. For everyone who thinks this is Flash. Adobe's compiler creates iPhone OS compatible machine code using the Flash programming language. It is Not Flash and will not run in a browser. You would NOT be able to tell the difference between an application developed in XCode and one created using Adobe's compiler. None. In fact some of you probably have even used apps created using tools created using Unity3D or possibly even Adobe's compiler.

It just allows Flash developers to create applications. And if you think creating certain games and graphicly oriented programs in Objective C is easier you have never developed in Flash.

SJ is making claims that it's hard for Apple to approve these for the new OS because of multitasking, stating that 3rd party compilers Might not adopt these features as quickly and the developer would be tied down more closely to say Adobe vs Apple.

And Apple has every right to not allow this middleware. Just like Sony and Nintendo do with their closed systems. If you don't use their tools, you don't get to build games for these systems. People seem to like to forget that the iPhone is a closed system.
 
Because there is absolutely no other choice out there! None not a one, not a single one??!!! Because if your are believing what you are writing, there would be no other competition because apple would have bought/smashed/done away with anything else that does not concede to them. There is only apple and apple only. Yeah ok.

Fascism is quit capable of operating unilaterally, in a vacuum. Doesn't make it a shred less fascist.

Steve Jobs' evolution running Apple from the 1970s until today is quite a contradiction.

If you compare the Steve Jobs who ran the "1984" commercial to introduce the Macintosh to today's Steve Jobs, it's like comparing 2 different people.

Steve Jobs has totally become what he ridiculed and lambasted and the people here who defend his every word always remind me of that Apple TV commercial of PC owners all walking off a cliff in a straight line. That's sad.

Happens to more than a few old hippies; just happens to some a lot quicker. A real pity. Money and power corrupt. Megalomania and idiot fan worship never helps either.

Apple is a publicly-owned company. NOT a philanthropic organization, and NOT a non-profit.

It has NO obligation to its customers. It's sole obligation is to increase shareholder wealth as is any company. Yeah, i'm grateful they make great products.

However, if they don't implement features\technology that I desire, my responsibility as a consumer is to either A) buy Apple's "inferior" products or B) take my money elsewhere.

no amount of complaining on here or any forum is going to make Steve Jobs change his mind. Also, as long as Apple remains profitable, he's not going anywhere.

No amount of complaining on here is going to make Der Fuhrer change his mind, to be sure; but it can sure open the eyes of a lot of people and help them make other choices than Apple.

Works for me!


Nope. You block your competition by all legal and financially sensible means. Business is war.

Inferior technologies occasionally win (for lots of different or seemly random reasons), and you need to reduce the risk of that accident from occurring and damaging the public welfare (and your market and your profits, coincidentally).

Really? What a nice defense of fascism. And the perfect explanation for why the entire capitalist business system is collapsing all over the planet, and will continue to collapse, despite desperate governments throwing good tax money after bad propping up markets and fascism.

Work for Hitler much? Or just a wannabe?


I think the word you are looking for is fascists, not fascist (since you are referring to Apple and not just Jobs.)

Both apply to their various targets, and are accurate.


Wow, you are being pretty harsh dude. So by blocking technology, Apple Co. are fascists?

Well then by that token, wouldn't Adobe be fascists for blocking Canvas from being used in HTML5? Or even further, wouldn't Sony, Gateway, Microsoft, etc. be fascists for not selling Apple computers in their stores? Hmmmm?

Anti-competitive MAYBE, but fascist? Come on dude, take a chill-pill.

Fascism is a slippery slope. Few crawl out alive. It only takes one power-mad jerk, believing his own publicity, to start a war. The rest is reaction.


Steve Jobs reportedly hates TV from what I read. Go figure.

So that explains his TV failures completely, he just doesn't get it.

I hate FLASH, but HTML5 does not replace it right now as I type this.

Adobe will not win this suit, but I hope they embarrass Apple despite all the fanboy Flash hater responses here.

In the REAL WORLD, you just want the damn thing to WORK!
And the iPhone and iPad currently DON'T work properly on the internet because content is missing. It's just that simple.

It's NEVER that simple with those under the influence of the Jobs reality deflector.

You can't argue with him/her. They are anti-apple and any attempt at pointing out holes in the logic they presented will result in name calling such as "fanboy" or "kool aid drinker".....

My, that's quite an empty argument, and quite typical.

:apple:
 
Indeed, internet without flash is incomplete.

But since I have been using click2flash on my Mac Pro, I noticed how rarely I actually end up loading those flash windows. Maybe once every week or so. And I'm a person who spends 10 hours of his time every day to simply browse web. So that made me realize that how obsolete flash is for me at the moment, and it's only going to get even more so.

There have been couple of occasions when I was browsing the web on my iPhone and actually needed flash. (Some websites have their purchase sections running through flash so I remember not being able to order tickets to a movie because iPhone didn't have flash). But it's really rare. For the majority of the content out there, no flash is no big deal. What I don't get is why Apple just doesn't allow flash on the iphone in a way that click2flash works, it doesn't load unless you want to, hence it won't drain your battery with the countless flash advertisements appearing on every website.
 
But Adobe as the argument that Apple is abusing its market power in volume of apps downloaded. We are talking just about the app market and that area apple has huge market power that the other phones can not even touch.
I believe our resident Apple fanboy (*LTD*) posted an article a while back saying apple had 99.4% of the number of apps downloaded. 99.4% is a huge market power.

Not anymore, right?

After all, Android share is skyrocketing!!1!!1

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/comscore-android-market-share-continues-to-gain-on-the-iphone/

Android App Store:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_app_growth_on_the_rise_9000_new_apps_in_march_2010.php
 
Adobe will argue that Apple's app store represents 90%+ of smartphone app sales and is therefore an effective monopoly.
That means the App store has a monopoly, but that is not because the iPhone is the dominate system but because iPhone users buy more applications. Still I believe that Adobe is free to develop applications for the iPhone and iPad, just not on a development tools that cross-compile from a language that is not approved.

The App store argument is better made by the likes of Amazon or Wallmart than Adobe, who as far as I know other than their online store (for their own applications) does not have a retail marketplace.
 
I seriously don't believe that Apple could be found guilty of monopolistic practices without actually being declared a monopoly first. If you think otherwsie you need to get your head checked.
 
With Apple putting in the Opera web browser, the claim of "duplicated functionality" is now lost for that issue.

Meh, Apple knocked back that dashboard application for the iPad citing duplicate functionality just this week I believe. What this shows is that Apple isn't nearly as confident about it's European regulatory situation as some people in this thread seem to be, because Opera absolutely would have compained to the EC Competition Body about it. In a heartbeat.

Left unchecked we will just see Apple knocking back small companies it knows can't afford litigation while allowing big ones through.

I do notice that despite a lot of arguments in this thread about the Sherman Act, the original article itself doesn't actually say anything about Adobe's legal action being in the US. They'd have a much easier time in Europe, where lets not forget here Apple have already faced major regulatory issues over iTunes...

Phazer
 
I love how people yay or nay legal actions in a thread without referencing a single law or precedent :D

I really want to know about the dialogue between these two companies. Why are there not discussions between the two of them at an executive level? Is it arrogance that they aren't picking up the phone?

Well you said it right there and as far as I recall, Apple wanted flash to be made FOR these devices. The problem was the fact that the un-watered down version causes problems but Adobe won't do the work and Steve called them lazy a while back. So it's either do the work like everyone else or go away pretty much. If I'm incorrect, in my statement, someone feel free to correct me.
 
No amount of complaining on here is going to make Der Fuhrer change his mind,

I wonder why people think that comparisons to Hitler and Fascism and Naziism makes for a rational argument. Don't they realize that it simply means that their post can be ignored - since it's clearly uninformed tripe?

Ok. For everyone who thinks this is Flash. Adobe's compiler creates iPhone OS compatible machine code using the Flash programming language. It is Not Flash and will not run in a browser. You would NOT be able to tell the difference between an application developed in XCode and one created using Adobe's compiler.

Actually, you can. The one that runs like crap is Adobe's runtime code.

I wish you'd stop with the 'you can't tell any difference' nonsense. It is calling non-Apple APIs which are forbidden. It creates a HUGE binary file which is simply all of the Flash libraries recompiled into an executable. For example, one developer showed a typical iPhone app which was 2% code and 98% data. The Flash to iPhone app was 99% code - so they simply recompiled all of their libraries to hide the fact that they're using non-approved APIs.

Every Apple fanboy poo-pooed me when I suggested that Adobe might just sue Apple using Section 3 of the Clayton Antitrust Act.

I believe that Adobe could file a suit as early as the end of this week, because the stipulations in the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK essentially forces you to use ONLY Apple's own programming tools, a potential violation of the tie-in and exclusivity rules that is part of Section 3 of the Clayton Antitrust Act.

The idea was 'poo-poed' because 'poo' is a good description. As you've been told by at least one attorney here, they're not close to violating the Antitrust acts. However, feel free to lay out specifically the requirements for enforcing a claim under Clayton and the evidence that they apply. Not your flaming opinions, real evidence.

I've seen this written a few other places, but this is pretty clearly incorrect. If it WERE the case, none of the existing iphone apps would work on OS4, and either way a quick change of the Adobe libraries would sort it out.

That is clear nonsense - and you obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. If an application is written properly and Apple upgrades the OS, chances are that the application will continue to work. Adding new APIs won't break anything. Even changing the usage of an API won't change anything if the developer is using it per SDK guidelines. AT WORST, the developer would simply have to recompile with Apple's newest libraries.

OTOH, using a compiled, runtime could cause problems. Not only would Adobe have to update their libraries, but the developer would have to recompile, AND it might require additional changes. And given that Adobe has had 3 years to fix Flash on the iPhone and haven't done a darned thing, why should Apple put themselves at Adobe's mercy to upgrade the OS?


He's 13 days too late for April Fools' Day.

Why does everyone seem to think that this has to do with mobile market share?

When the third largest U.S. company (Apple) seemingly singles out a relatively small company (Adobe) there is likely a lawsuit. When Adobe figures out the right law to stand on (they will or already have) they will sue. It's only a matter of time..

It really doesn't matter that Apple's big and Adobe is small. There are no laws being broken. But feel free to show any law that has been broken if you think I'm wrong.

The law suit is not about winning the suit...Adobe loses if it wins the suit...it's meant to bring Apple back to the table to discuss the issues. Adobe is hoping to "settle" with Apple so that Adobe does not lose many $$$ from Apple's decisions.

Why don't we defer discussing motives until there's some evidence that Adobe is even remotely considering a lawsuit? One click-bait blogger's anonymous accusations are not evidence.

From Adobe's Website (Source Link):

"Are applications for iPhone built with Flash Platform tools interpreted at runtime?
No. iPhone applications built with the Packager for iPhone are compiled into standard, native iPhone executables, just like any other iPhone application."

and

"Can applications load SWF files or other code at runtime, such as a module from a website?
No. iPhone applications built with the Packager for iPhone are compiled into standard, native iPhone executable packages and there is no runtime interpreter that could be used to run ActionScript bytecode within the application."

If the information provided on the above site is true and not committing any lies by omission, an application written using flash and compiled using their tool into an iPhone app is a native iphone app. No runtime. No interpretation. No intermediary layer. Just native code in the end result that links up to official apple blessed APIs.

You hit it right - lies by omission. Notice that they don't deny using non-Apple APIs. They do not deny that it is simply a runtime of Flash (all they claim is that it's not an interpreter - which would mean interpreted at run time).

If Adobe were doing what you are claiming, they would have said "we only use Apple APIs and do not use any third party APIs. All of our code is generated in Objective C or C as required by Apple guidelines." Do you wonder why they won't/can't say that?

Adobe sells a $399 piece of software called Dreamweaver that can be used to develop on the iphone instead of flash. Adobe here has the choice. Also, Adobe currently has a monopoly on Flash (90%+ content). So not clear on any anti-competitiveness laws that are being broken. Especially if Apple can prove that it has requested Adobe improve their product by using the API's that Apple requires them to use.

That's the interesting thing here. There are a lot of crazy people who are arguing that Adobe should stop selling CS5 for Macs. Other than the obvious suicide implications, that would create a major antitrust problem - since they also have an effective monopoly on professional graphics software. You can not use a monopoly in one market to leverage your position in another market.

But you can play any CDs you want in the car. Not so much on iPhone :D

You can also play any CDs (after ripping them to MP3) that you want on your iPhone. What's your point?

Oh, I see. You're confused about the difference between software and music? You need more help than this forum can offer.

I'm actually eager to see if using Optimus is going to bite Apple in the @$$. nVidia doesn't have a good track record with Hybrid Graphics or Laptop Technology.

It's not quite clear how using Optimus is going to bite Apple - since they aren't using Optimus. Is it too much trouble for people to post only about things they understand?

Actually, I've read them all, and it's all just bunk. It's bullsh*t, and I'm tired of the Adobe astroturfers clogging up the internet (nice April 2010 account creation date).

I agree completely. The amount of press this subject is getting and the response to forums is way out of line with what you'd expect. I wonder how much being an Adobe shill pays.
 
Let's look at Adobe's history of OS X support. First release of the server is 1999, public beta of the consumer OS X in 2000, first release of OS X in 2001. Apple clearly stated the roadmap for development was to port everything to Cocoa, but gave the developers Rosetta and Carbon to ease their transition. About 10 years later Adobe is finally finishing porting Photoshop to Cocoa and fully taking advantage of the OS's features to bring in up to speed with their Windows version.

Is it any wonder that Apple doesn't want to rely on them for a development environment for the iPhone/iPad that has the potential to overtake their own dev kit? This could potentially hamstring Apple's development of the OS if Adobe decided to favor (as they have with Windows over OS X for the past decade) the other operating systems over Apple's. This could potentially destroy the brand that Apple has invested a lot of time, money, and energy to develop.

And since Apple has been on roughly a 12 month dev cycle for the iPhone OS, while Adobe has about an 18 month dev cycle for their products Adobe would likely be consistently behind in supporting new features in their development environment.
 
It is not about phones. I limited my argument to just the apps market. Apple has 99.4% of that market locked up.

Apple CREATED the app market for mobile devices, so of course every one is going to be behind because they were late getting into the game.

Everyone is just trying to copy-cat Apple's success. (As per usual)
 
Well you said it right there and as far as I recall, Apple wanted flash to be made FOR these devices. The problem was the fact that the un-watered down version causes problems but Adobe won't do the work and Steve called them lazy a while back. So it's either do the work like everyone else or go away pretty much. If I'm incorrect, in my statement, someone feel free to correct me.

Steve did not say he wanted Flash made for these devices. That would cut into sales in the App Store. He did say that the Lite version of Flash was crap (no arguments on that!). He did say that the full version was as well. When Flash 10.1 is released on Nexus One, Palm Pre, etc. the world will see that Flash runs and runs well on mobile devices.
 
That is clear nonsense - and you obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. If an application is written properly and Apple upgrades the OS, chances are that the application will continue to work. Adding new APIs won't break anything. Even changing the usage of an API won't change anything if the developer is using it per SDK guidelines. AT WORST, the developer would simply have to recompile with Apple's newest libraries.

OTOH, using a compiled, runtime could cause problems. Not only would Adobe have to update their libraries, but the developer would have to recompile, AND it might require additional changes.

if you think that's nonsense, then it's pretty clear you're not a developer.

i haven't seen it reported anywhere that the adobe tools use undocumented apple functions or anything weird in there. there is certainly nothing off the top of my head i can think of that they'd need that for, anyway.

if you can provide evidence to the contrary from somewhere i'll be happy to retract my statement though.

And given that Adobe has had 3 years to fix Flash on the iPhone and haven't done a darned thing, why should Apple put themselves at Adobe's mercy to upgrade the OS?

what the hell are you talking about? that doesn't make any sense at all.

fwiw, i don't really care what happens to adobe. i haven't written any flash code in years, i'm all embedded C and Java these days. i just think it's a total jerk move on apple's part, and i'm interested to see how it turns out. apple's products are good enough that they shouldn't be engaging in this childish crap.
 
Apple CREATED the app market for mobile devices, so of course every one is going to be behind because they were late getting into the game.

Everyone is just trying to copy-cat Apple's success. (As per usual)

you could also possibly make a (terrible & flawed) argument that Microsoft created the home desktop market with MS-DOS, and turned that into their Windows monopoly. even if that's the case, that doesn't make it okay.

the other thing that people are missing here is that even if Apple think they're gonna win, they may still work out a settlement just to stop it going any further. if it goes to court, there's going to be a lot of Apple internal memos showing up in discovery, and I suspect it could get ugly if that happens. and as another poster put it - if Adobe wins, they lose. what Adobe really wants here is to work out some arrangement with Apple where Apple stop talking smack about Adobe and creating roadblocks for them.

the whole thing still spins me out a bit. OSX's rendering layer (Quartz) is a direct descendant of Adobe's PostScript language/runtime. the two companies have had close links for decades. i wonder what happened behind the scenes?
 
When Flash 10.1 is released on Nexus One, Palm Pre, etc. the world will see that Flash runs and runs well on mobile devices.

ROTFLMAO.

Adobe says that Flash 10.1 requires a Cortex A8. So, even according to Adobe, it's not capable of running on any iPhones (or 99.9% of other mobile devices, for that matter).

And that even assumes that Adobe actually gets it out the door some day. And, it assumes that it works well even on Cortex A8 - which doesn't appear to be the case based on existing reports.

So, let's restate your post with the facts:

"Adobe is publicly saying that Flash 10.1 which is not yet available should eventually run acceptably well on those mobile devices with Cortex A8 or higher".

Quite a bit different than your shill comments.
 
Quite a bit different than your shill comments.

Obviously you have no experience in the matter, so you can stuff your shill comments. If Nexus One and Palm Pre can run Flash, then a Whiz Bang iPhone ought to be up to the task, especially as they become more powerful over time. Or will Apple simply stick with old processors forever?
 
...the whole thing still spins me out a bit. OSX's rendering layer (Quartz) is a direct descendant of Adobe's PostScript language/runtime. the two companies have had close links for decades. i wonder what happened behind the scenes?
I think that what happened behind the scenes is that with the transition to OS X over a decade ago Adobe started concentrating on Windows development over Mac development. Apple gave them transition tools like Rosetta and Carbon but wanted them to rework the code in Cocoa so that it would fully support the OS features, but Adobe was slow to move their code base to Cocoa. As I understand it they are just now getting all their code ported over with CS5 to bring it up to par with 64 bit support that has been available for Windows for a while.

As I recall there was also a bit of a flap between the two companies about Quartz, with Adobe wanting licensing fees from every version of OS X from Apple. As I recall that was one reasons why they scrapped, or updated depending on how you look at it, the original idea of using the same display postscript engine that came from Next. Instead they moved to the open source version PDF code that Adobe put out, which at the time was a version behind the latest release of PDF.
 
So, what about HTML5. When will THAT be ready, huh?

Today. You can write code in html 5 if you wish - and people have been doing it for some time.

Obviously you have no experience in the matter, so you can stuff your shill comments. If Nexus One and Palm Pre can run Flash, then a Whiz Bang iPhone ought to be up to the task, especially as they become more powerful over time. Or will Apple simply stick with old processors forever?

The issue isn't about what happens in 2 years. It would be rather pointless to debate that. The issue is whether Apple is right to block Flash from current iPhones. Since even Adobe's most optimistic projections are that Flash 10.1 will require a more powerful processor than any iPhone in existence (and 99.9% of all mobile devices), Apple's refusal to allow Flash isn't a problem.

Since you (or whoever's paying you to shill for Adobe) think that's incorrect, please explain how Apple is supposed to make Flash work on a 600 MHz or slower iPhone when Adobe says it requires an 800 MHz or above Cortex A8.
 
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