Adobe Acknowledges That Apple's Flash Prohibition Could Harm Business

[SwiftLives]

Adobe won't cut development for Macs. In fact, we're getting to the point where they'll have no choice but to continue to support it, AND very likely develop an iPad version down the line, which would be interesting. It's certainly possible.

I agree - assuming that the Mac software makes up 20-30% of their install base, that would be a huge blow to their bottom line if they cut that off.

The problem is that Adobe no longer has any viable competition. They swallowed Macromedia (ironically...for Flash), and that left Quark. And Quark doesn't have any sort of photo editor or vector editor to compete with Photoshop or InDesign.

Competition drives innovation.

 

[badmac78]

Is this comment based on iPhone sales numbers, iPad sales numbers or iPod sales numbers? Just wondering ...

growth rates are what's important and Apple has that in spades (sales, profits, market share, market capitalization). Apple's differentiation isn't about lisentening to everyone and delivering everything they want. Apple's differentiation is the fact that they create an experience. Flash doesn't give the experience that Apple believes it's users should have. If they allowed
Flash then people would complain about their phone batteries die quickly and the OS crashes all the time. So Apple said no.

 

[John.B]

Even as an an Apple fan boy, I need to ask...what planet are you on? Apple only has roughly 8% marketshare, lets say 50% of all Mac people use The Adobe tools (Probably more), so Adobe loses 4% of all potential users, This would devastate the Mac community. Then if Adobe announce a free crossgrade to PC and really stuck it to Apple, that would be it......do you know how many people rely on Adobe's tools as an occupation? I think Adobe should play hardball......This would villainize Steve Jobs over night.

Mac OSX versions are probably half of Adobe revenues for the creative side (Photoshop and all the CS products). And trust me, Adobe knows this. Esp. with the new 64-bit CS5 versions to be announced next week.

It's a very different demographic from your everyday basic PC and the cash cow that is Acrobat licensing (for instance).

Besides, a pissed of Flash manager spewing vitriol in a blog post probably has a very different perspective than, say, the VP of Finance.

Still, I'm waiting for John Nack's comments on his blog with bated breath.

 

[PixelFactory]

Apple did Aperture and it's successful. Apple did FCP and it's successful. Apple came out of nowhere with FCP and in no time split the market with Avid 50/50.

Actually, Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia. It was originally called KeyGrip. It was programmed for Macromedia by Randy Ubillos who wrote the first three versions of Adobe Premiere.

 

[Trek2100]

Why didn't Adobe address consumers concern about Flash years ago? They knew their software was slow, old and buggy. I've used Adobe products for over 15 years and they have become lazy and expensive.

Apple is always about moving forward, making it a better Steve/users. Like it or not, this is how Apple been running for the past 20 years. If you don't like it, stay on the PC side. No body is putting a gun to your head and make you use Apple.

Sometimes when companies buy out other companies the product becomes stale. Example; Word Perfect at one time was the industry standard.

Flash was/is way overdue for an overhaul. My shop - over 100,000 windows PCs and we cannot install or have flash on them, period! My comment has nothing to do with Apple, its about keeping up with the times.

 

[*LTD*]

Actually, Apple bought Final Cut from Macromedia. It was originally called KeyGrip. It was programmed for Macromedia by Randy Ubillos who wrote the first three versions of Adobe Premiere.

My mistake. Same idea though. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[marksman]

Flash never crashes Firefox for me... if you're having issues with Safari and Flash, why not try a different browser?

I have had flash destroy safari, chrome and firefox. Firefox used to be the worst because it would bring down the whole browser. At least now when using chrome flash just crashes itself, a couple times a day.

All I see here are fanatical apple fans pissing on flash. Are you people stupid?

Flash is a thousand times more robust then html 5... It's no where near being able to take over the role of flash yet. Maybe in 6-10 years. But not even close right now. Have you even tried youtube's html video? It was garbage. I switched back immediately.

Yet here you all are, bad mouthing flash because it uses more cpu then a native solution. You do realize that it accomplishes more than any native solution can provide right? You don't want it? Don't install it. Yet, there it is, with an >90% penetration rate. Seems most people want it huh?

I don't know what kind of computers you guys are using, but on my core2duo, I have no problem running 1080 video in flash. I have no problem viewing full flash websites with video and animations. I don't care if my cpu usage goes up 30%. It's supposed to be used. And flash has a huge developer base. Of course there are poorly coded flash sites, why do you think firefox just announced that plugins will fail without crashing the whole browser? Also webkit announced the same thing. It's not like it's hard to close a window.

Apple just spit in the face of open development, again. Do you honestly believe that even the complex apps recompiled in flash CS5 for the iphone wouldn't run well? Have you never downloaded an app from the app store that didn't run well? I sure have. Some never even open. You know what I do, I delete them. It's MY choice.

Not to mention, I've seen, and used apps created in flash, and converted for the iphone. They worked fine.. I don't understand this move at all. Apple has always hindered flash on the mac. And now it's gone above and beyond.

I know flash in an old technology, but for apple to choose for their customers, and then block out adobe in any way, is both childish and tyrannical. Not to mention the fact that they announce this days before CS5 launches?! WTF.. are they trying to attack adobe? This is ridiculous.

I thought the big idea here was to allow creators to easily make their content for as many systems as possible. And share it widely and freely. But apple seems to think differently.

flash sucks.

 

[PixelFactory]

My mistake. Same idea though. Thanks for clarifying.

No prob. I could see Apple buying up a few companies to replace Adobe products.

 

[Stridder44]

Stupid Apple..



Why would that be funny? It would be another example of Apple's corporate douchery... Adobe's a decent company run by decent people.. Apple isn't.

A decent company that can't support their products worth a crap. I'm sure they people that work there are great, but the truth of the matter is that their products are buggy, slow, and we all rely on them. People have been complaining to Adobe for YEARS to fix Flash, Shockwave, Reader, and their creative suite, and yet they've done nothing. The shot themselves in the foot a long time ago and are now suddenly trying to make up for it. The only "stupid" here is Adobe's leaders.

And please explain Apple's "corporate douchery".

This.

And how is flash "bad"? It's actually really, REALLY good. A very good thing.

It's bad because one single company (Adobe) is in control of a "standard" that a vast majority of the web uses, and Adobe couldn't be bothered with improving the standard.

 

[AidenShaw]

Adobe seems to be really angry, ahaha http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888

Love this line:

Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.​

People wearing tin-foil hats everywhere!

 

[PeterQVenkman]

2) On mobile, only Flash Lite has ever been shown. Full Flash is so slow and bad that I think the Pre is the only thing that has it and nobody I know uses it on the Pre because of how bad it is.

I think you're mistaken.

Flash 10.1 on android:

http://www.androidauthority.com/index.php/2010/03/22/video-flash-10-1-on-android/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/flash-nexus-one-demo/

 

[AtlasBoy]

If I were Adobe I'd announce that CS5 will be the last Mac release. I'm betting Apple might be persuaded to change the stance on Flash.

Personally I think Flash blows on any platform, but Apple's stance on this seems extreme at times.

There stocks would plummet like a turd if they did something that stupid.

And because of the stupid move, instead of changing their stance, they would have a BIG party in the street.

 

[Havas]

This is sickening,

It makes me really sad to see so many ignorant people who are probably neither developers and don't have a clue about what is really happening.

Here are some pointers from myself (A developer for over 15 years and well versed in Flex, Flash, C++, Objective C, .net, HTML, Python, Pearl, C#)

1: HTML can not touch flash when it comes to user interfaces and if it tried to do any 3D as per the examples floating around the web it fails miserably at it.

2: There is still no standard on HTML video playback and each company is pushing for a different player and most of the players are NOT open standard or Open source.

3: 60% of the banking industry are currently building massive scale applications using Flex.

4: More and more AIR and Flex applications are popping up all over the place.

5: Flex is lets say about 10X easier and more efficient to work with than HTML and looks/behaves the same on every platform.

6: Flash 10.1 Solves CPU issues and brings some hardware acceleration including H.264 and a future revision will bring more support.

7: Flash works very well on other mobile platforms and Flash compiled for IPhone works very well too (I was in beta and we were building stuff but now it's all on hold).

8: Many people are going to loose their jobs.

9: Many great open source projects will have to shut down.

10: Many companies are going to have to restart projects.

11: We are in a ****ing recession and everyone should be helping out.

12: I dare anyone here to build anything like the AIR app I am working on now that will work on every OS + Android and look and feel as cool as what I'm doing in any other language, those of you working in agencies will hear about it very soon

13: Crap developers = Crap Flash apps = Crap CPU usage = Bad Rep but this is not the case for all sites and all adds etc.

14: CPU usage on windows is way lower than on MAC this is because Apple restrict access to low level API's required by Adobe to optimize Flash for the Mac correctly and they have been trying to sort it out but Apple wants no part of it, they prefer performance to be **** on Mac so everyone who has a mac would end up hating Flash. There isn't even hardware acceleration on Mac

Now if anyone is interested in a mac book pro and a new 32GB white Iphone please PM me as I'm in the market for the new Sony Android + Sony SZ laptop.

Really people stop talking rubbish, what apple is doing is very bad, if there was no more competition tomorrow apple would be able to raise it's prices and control every aspect of your gadgets giving you no choice or freedom and that my friends is a very very sad thing.

I for one hope Adobe wins an antitrust for the sake of all the cool open source projects out there or Apple takes a long hard look and cooperates.

Anyway just my 2 cents and lets hope one of your loved ones or children are not dedicated Flash/Flex/Air developers as you are putting their futures at risk too.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

A decent company that can't support their products worth a crap. I'm sure they people that work there are great, but the truth of the matter is that their products are buggy, slow, and we all rely on them. People have been complaining to Adobe for YEARS to fix Flash, Shockwave, Reader, and their creative suite, and yet they've done nothing. The shot themselves in the foot a long time ago and are now suddenly trying to make up for it. The only "stupid" here is Adobe's leaders.

Every software company is full of these types of examples. I'm still waiting for Apple to create 64-bit FCS, use Grand Central in anything useful, generally take the pro market seriously anymore, create a workable version of quicktime on other platforms, offer powerful graphics cards, and fix this ear damaging bug in soundtrack pro:

 

[lilo777]

This is sickening,

It makes me really sad to see so many ignorant people who are probably neither developers and don't have a clue about what is really happening.

Here are some pointers from myself (A developer for over 15 years and well versed in Flex, Flash, C++, Objective C, .net, HTML, Python, Pearl, C#)

1: HTML can not touch flash when it comes to user interfaces and if it tried to do any 3D as per the examples floating around the web it fails miserably at it.

2: There is still no standard on HTML video playback and each company is pushing for a different player and most of the players are NOT open standard or Open source.

3: 60% of the banking industry are currently building massive scale applications using Flex.

4: More and more AIR and Flex applications are popping up all over the place.

5: Flex is lets say about 10X easier and more efficient to work with than HTML and looks/behaves the same on every platform.

6: Flash 10.1 Solves CPU issues and brings some hardware acceleration including H.264 and a future revision will bring more support.

7: Flash works very well on other mobile platforms and Flash compiled for IPhone works very well too (I was in beta and we were building stuff but now it's all on hold).

8: Many people are going to loose their jobs.

9: Many great open source projects will have to shut down.

10: Many companies are going to have to restart projects.

11: We are in a ****ing recession and everyone should be helping out.

12: I dare anyone here to build anything like the AIR app I am working on now that will work on every OS + Android and look and feel as cool as what I'm doing in any other language, those of you working in agencies will hear about it very soon

13: Crap developers = Crap Flash apps = Crap CPU usage = Bad Rep but this is not the case for all sites and all adds etc.

14: CPU usage on windows is way lower than on MAC this is because Apple restrict access to low level API's required by Adobe to optimize Flash for the Mac correctly and they have been trying to sort it out but Apple wants no part of it, they prefer performance to be **** on Mac so everyone who has a mac would end up hating Flash. There isn't even hardware acceleration on Mac

Now if anyone is interested in a mac book pro and a new 32GB white Iphone please PM me as I'm in the market for the new Sony Android + Sony SZ laptop.

Really people stop talking rubbish, what apple is doing is very bad, if there was no more competition tomorrow apple would be able to raise it's prices and control every aspect of your gadgets giving you no choice or freedom and that my friends is a very very sad thing.

I for one hope Adobe wins an antitrust for the sake of all the cool open source projects out there or Apple takes a long hard look and cooperates.

Anyway just my 2 cents and lets hope one of your loved ones or children are not dedicated Flash/Flex/Air developers as you are putting their futures at risk too.

I agree with you and I could add some more arguments but what's the point? You can not argue with religion. If Steve said something it's bigger than the truth. In the end though Apple will loose one way or another. They are simply too ignorant to succeed.

 

[Yamcha]

I have to agree, I don't really like Apple's attitude towards the Flash situation, now I know they claim that the main crashes revolving around Safari are due to Flash, but I mean I use other browsers (Firefox, Opera) on my Mac and haven't had any issues...

 

[jragosta]

I think you're mistaken.

Flash 10.1 on android:

http://www.androidauthority.com/index.php/2010/03/22/video-flash-10-1-on-android/

http://mashable.com/2010/03/03/flash-nexus-one-demo/

Except for one thing - Flash 10.1 isn't out yet -- even on Android. So the other poster was correct. Flash still doesn't run on ANY mobile platform except for the horribly crippled Flash lite - which won't run most Flash web sites, anyway.

Even Flash 10.1 is crippled and limited in what it will do - and it's still slow and buggy. AND, even when it comes out, it will run on less than 20% of mobile phones, so it's STILL not the mobile standard.

This is sickening,

It makes me really sad to see so many ignorant people who are probably neither developers and don't have a clue about what is really happening.

Here are some pointers from myself (A developer for over 15 years and well versed in Flex, Flash, C++, Objective C, .net, HTML, Python, Pearl, C#)

1: HTML can not touch flash when it comes to user interfaces and if it tried to do any 3D as per the examples floating around the web it fails miserably at it.

Did you see the Toy Story iAd demo? That shows that html 5 is capable of just about everything Flash will do (and of the tiny number of things html 5 won't do, few of them are of any use).

The rest of your post was no more accurate, so there's no point in going into it. You're clearly not aware of what html 5 will do. If it's not capable of doing what's necessary, why are Youtube, Hulu, CBS, NYT, and so many other places now using it?

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Amen Mr.Havas

 

[Lailoken]

Adobe CS / Adobe Flash

Firstly, Yay! I look forward to a web without flash... it's been the single reason my machines run hot when they are supposed to have idle webpages open in background tabs. I can only imagine my iPhone suffering. Finally I can remove my flash-block add-on on my PC as well.

Secondly, perhaps Apple is hitting back because Adobe's CS suite sucks so badly on Mac OS X compared to the PC versions?

I like both OS X and Windows 7 but I detest Apple's walled gardens and I dislike Flash. So it's not as if I have clear favorites here.

 

[Peace]

snip

Here are some pointers from myself (A developer for over 15 years and well versed in Flex, Flash, C++, Objective C, .net, HTML, Python, Pearl, C#)

I notice you are "well versed" in C++ and HTML. Why can't you simply write apps for the iPhone using that ? And it might be a good idea to add Java to your skills since it's used all over the web.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Adobe seems unable to compete or effectively promote its product in the face of a competing standard, and now they're whining.

Oh well. They still have their entire Creative Suite, which everyone and their dog seem to rely on.

Apple is snubbing Flash, not Photoshop.

You do know apple has already made it clear that they could care less about developing pro level apps since they fired their entire final cut staff and programmers. So why the hell would we want to trust apple to make a pro level app like photoshop when they already dump the video apps.

 

[mike1450]

Creative Suite is not what we're talking about.

What does CS4,5,6,7,8, a billion have to do with this? This is a mobile flash issue. It would be like if someone banned IChat. Would apple **** itself? No. Flash is a tiny tiny part of adobe. The only reason flash is still around is because its ability to play video pulled its busted ass out of the fire a few years ago. The irony is, video is Flash's death rattle. It was Adobe's way of turning flash into more than just software that made annoying site intros and games. It was on its way out long before any of this started...

Creative Suite will chug along. Flash, for example is valuable to Adobe as a piece of software that people use to make cartoon for TV!

I use CS4 every day to make a living. After Effects and Photoshop mostly. I'm making a film with it. But it's buggy, and bloated but at the end of the day it does what I need, but it's a real pain in the ass to work with. The only real "pro" software in the suite is Photoshop and Illustrator. Sure After Effects is everywhere, but when you compare it to actual pro software, it's really a mess. Adobe needs to sort itself out, because motion isn't far behind After Effects...

Even I'm doing it... this has nothing to do with Creative Suite. It's a mobile flash issue.

 

[Speedtoy]

I'll buy my music from the store that offers the lowest price. If iTunes isn't the lowest price, then it isn't better IMO. I can copy the music to iTunes.

And don't put words into my mouth. thank you.

I didnt.

You said stranglehold..I asked for evidence of Apple preventing competition as a 'stranglehold'.


You've still presented non. Dont use words you cant backup in facts.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Except for one thing - Flash 10.1 isn't out yet -- even on Android. So the other poster was correct. Flash still doesn't run on ANY mobile platform except for the horribly crippled Flash lite - which won't run most Flash web sites, anyway.

Nope. He said full Flash never been shown, and it has. Semantics, my dear Watson!

 

[*LTD*]

This is sickening,

1: HTML can not touch flash when it comes to user interfaces and if it tried to do any 3D as per the examples floating around the web it fails miserably at it.

Do you assume HTML development will stop or freeze?

LOL

It won't take long for HTML to catch up *and* leave Flash behind. All you need are developers, and with Apple and Google promoting HTML5, there is no shortage of them. Content providers are already accommodating Apple devices, which is a wise course of action.