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Apple's Hiring of Kevin Lynch Questioned Amid Concerns Over His Staunch Defense of Flash

Gruber is getting crazy ...

I'm a big fan of Gruber. I follow his site and podcast regularly and generally think he is a cool and balanced guy.

This type of personal attack, not separating the person from the company, is very strange.

In my opinion Gruber knows something about the guy, if not, he would post things like we posted recently.

Very unlike Gruber IMHO ...
 
Yvan256 said:
From what we've read, Steve Jobs was also terrible to work with. But the guy knew where he was going and he was the boss.

Trying to push the blame for bad data on a programmer like Scott Forstall is just insane. The guy seemed to know his stuff, the only problem was his leadership, as far as we know. Just pushing him back to a lower position could have been enough. Maps was rushed to remove Google Maps from iOS, too.
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What bad data are you referring to? Are you saying the underlying mapping data Apple is using is bad? I'm sure Tom Tom, Waze, openstreetmap, etc. would disagree. Also how do we know that Forstall wasn't behind or in agreement with getting Google maps off iOS sooner rather than later.

None of the reports and profiles on Forstall suggest he would be willing to take a demotion. I mean Adam Lashinsky's profile on Forstall referred to him as Apple's "CEO-in-waiting".
 
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Mic'sBook said:
I truly hope Tim would indeed lead the company in the right direction.

If Apple does need to hire one guy, I prefer bringing back Scott Forstall instead of this Chief Flash Officer. (At least Scott is an A player.)
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Sadly that's a bad idea. I actually liked watching Scott at the Keynotes but he wasn't a team player at Apple. He had his own way of thinking and butted heads with too many people. Seemed nice on stage and but off stage he was impossible to create with.
 
I'm going to call B.S. on this criticism. It was his job to defend Flash publicly, but take a look at what actually happened at Adobe since that issue. These are all decisions the CTO had direct control over:

  • Adobe moved from Flash based output in many of their design tools, to HTML5 output.
  • The entire Adobe Edge platform exists to produce HTML5 content and applications.
  • The Creative Cloud platform allows a pay-as-you-go annual subscription to all of Adobe's tools. This should bring many people in as purchasers that may have been tempted to pirate before.
  • The Creative Cloud platform has exclusive features over the traditional DVD based versions, indicating a true PREFERENCE for the cloud-based service.
  • He oversaw the introduction of many new, specialized tools as part of the Creative Cloud. This allows Adobe to innovate quickly in specific functionality envelopes, then copy back successful features into their core offerings when they are ready. It also allows them to be quicker to market and either success or fail quickly with new ideas (risk management at it's best.)
  • He oversaw the release of several touch-capable pieces of software at a time where they are truly leading the industry in that regard.

Frankly, of all the traditional software companies out there that seem to "Get" where technology is going, Adobe seems to completely understand. We don't think that has anything to do with the CTO?
 
Those suggesting that it was just his job to support Flash, I would suggest you look at how Jobs handled antenna-gate. Jobs didn't claim that the new iPhone was perfect. He accepted that it had flaws. And he said, "If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you bought one and don't like it, return it."

Kevin Lynch could have done the same thing and said, "If you don't like Flash, don't use it. If you downloaded it and don't like it, uninstall it."

Of course, things would have turned out differently as it was the vocal minority making a big poopoo over antenna-gate whereas Flash actually just sucks.
 
Everybody is piling on about how Flash sucks. Well, I remember when there was basically no interactive content on the web. Then there was Flash player, and suddenly you could play a game or view animations on the web. It allowed so much more to be done on the web than was possible previously. It was really, really great for its time. Its time has past, because there are other ways to do things that previously were only possible with Flash.

Remember, Lynch was a Macromedia guy, and worked there during the advent of Flash - how could he NOT want to defend it? He was a big player at Macromedia at the time of its creation.

This is a Mac guy too, and he's been a Mac guy since the 80s. He has history with Apple, and I'm sure that they know a lot about each other. I'm going to trust Tim Cook on this hire. He could be a great addition. Heck, he helped wrote Dreamweaver, which I love - maybe he can champion a new version of iWeb?!?
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Those suggesting that it was just his job to support Flash, I would suggest you look at how Jobs handled antenna-gate. Jobs didn't claim that the new iPhone was perfect. He accepted that it had flaws. And he said, "If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you bought one and don't like it, return it."
Click to expand...

You need to go rewatch that press conference. Steve Jobs took very little to no culpability for the Antenna issue. In fact - he stated quite clearly there was no issue with the iPhone - that all phones have such an "issue."

That's very different than what you're implying and what people are arguing for/against Lynch and Flash.

I have no issue with watch Lynch said or did as an employee of Adobe. He served THEIR best interest. That was his job. Now his job is with Apple and I suspect he will be just as much the company man.
 
KikoPT said:
I'm a big fan of Gruber. I follow his site and podcast regularly and generally think he is a cool and balanced guy.

This type of personal attack, not separating the person from the company, is very strange.

In my opinion Gruber knows something about the guy, if not, he would post things like we posted recently.

Very unlike Gruber IMHO ...
Click to expand...

It seems oddly petty to me too. How often, with Jobs in charge, did any Apple execs criticise Apple products? I can't remember too many instances - they toed the party line.

Honesty is admirable, but I wouldn't infer ANYTHING about an employee's personal capabilities based on them backing their company's products. That's what they're paid to do.
 
Apple eradicates Flash by leaving everyone to believe it's evil, then brings it back in a surprise move under a new name and their total control as a new web standard, moves on to complete world domination :D
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Those suggesting that it was just his job to support Flash, I would suggest you look at how Jobs handled antenna-gate. Jobs didn't claim that the new iPhone was perfect. He accepted that it had flaws. And he said, "If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you bought one and don't like it, return it."

Kevin Lynch could have done the same thing and said, "If you don't like Flash, don't use it. If you downloaded it and don't like it, uninstall it."

Of course, things would have turned out differently as it was the vocal minority making a big poopoo over antenna-gate whereas Flash actually just sucks.
Click to expand...

You are wrong. Kevin Lynch wasn't the CEO, so he couldn't do that. And Adobe's CEO wasn't Steve Jobs (proof: I don't know his name), so he couldn't do that either. Very, very few people in the world could afford to say what Steve Jobs could say.
 
japanime said:
Gruber doesn't sound insightful; he sounds jealous.
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It's a very strange tone for him to take. But from what I've read, a lot of people "in the know", so to speak, seem to have a problem with this guy. I'm not sure what it is because I'd consider them all very intelligent people, so I'm left with just one conclusion: There's something about him which we (I) don't know.

Having said that, Flash as a platform (performance issues aside) is actually pretty good. It's been around and maintained for years - probably longer than OS X has been around, and as a replacement for the lead iOS/OS X developer, I think this guy can pull it off.

So what don't I know?

Mactendo said:
Scott and his team created iOS in the first place. If not him we'd probably using something like click wheel iPods right now.
Click to expand...

Hey I loved my jog wheel iPod!
 
Having worked with Kevin prior to Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia, I can say without a doubt that he is definite A list hire. Kevin's first product was Dreamweaver, a revolution in web design tools. He is approachable, flexible and though put in a tough position of not only defending flash's revenue but an advocate for the flash users who were frustrated that the iphone broke their websites (remember even Adobe's CEO got in on the flash action.) I think this assessment of him is without merit and fundamentally flawed.

Once at Apple, Kevin will do what he has always done. Be an advocate for his customers. This is good news for Apple.
 
I'm beret glad to see him come to Apple. Just even thinking about getting Flash on iOS has drained me of energy at an alarming rate, I feel like I need to go crash somewhere.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Those suggesting that it was just his job to support Flash, I would suggest you look at how Jobs handled antenna-gate. Jobs didn't claim that the new iPhone was perfect. He accepted that it had flaws. And he said, "If you don't want it, don't buy it. If you bought one and don't like it, return it."

Kevin Lynch could have done the same thing and said, "If you don't like Flash, don't use it. If you downloaded it and don't like it, uninstall it."

Of course, things would have turned out differently as it was the vocal minority making a big poopoo over antenna-gate whereas Flash actually just sucks.
Click to expand...

Ok, he's not a PR genius. But that's not what he's hired for. He has proven to be great at managing software projects and has recently done a great job with cloud services with Creative cloud. Two areas of crucial importance for Apple where it seems he can excel. Yes, perhaps Apple shouldn't put him as chief defender of Apple maps but I can imagine he could do a fine job managing some of Apple's software and services. And that's something Apple is in more need of than PR and marketing excellence.
 
Mic'sBook said:
I think we can't say Scott Forstall is the only culprit of the Maps fiasco. It was the time when Apple was removing all things related with Google (Maps, YouTube… even Safari in OS X now doesn't even include the Google bookmark by default). Launching the half-baked Maps may not (or may) be his decision.

All I mean is, it seems that this Flash guy isn't as good as Scott if Apple had to choose one.
Click to expand...

The YouTube removal had nothing to do with trying to remove Google's services. The license just expired.
 
2nd Rate Technology CTO to 1st Rate Company?

Look beyond Flash, folks. Any long time deep user of Adobe products knows that the pace of technological innovation and integration there is extremely slow in products which have bugs that never seem to be fixed and UI's that are still not consistent across the suite.

How can the guy who oversaw this portfolio possibly be an Apple "A-class" employee much less manager?
 
Frobozz said:
I'm going to call B.S. on this criticism. It was his job to defend Flash publicly, but take a look at what actually happened at Adobe since that issue. These are all decisions the CTO had direct control over:

  • Adobe moved from Flash based output in many of their design tools, to HTML5 output.
  • The entire Adobe Edge platform exists to produce HTML5 content and applications.
  • The Creative Cloud platform allows a pay-as-you-go annual subscription to all of Adobe's tools. This should bring many people in as purchasers that may have been tempted to pirate before.
  • The Creative Cloud platform has exclusive features over the traditional DVD based versions, indicating a true PREFERENCE for the cloud-based service.
  • He oversaw the introduction of many new, specialized tools as part of the Creative Cloud. This allows Adobe to innovate quickly in specific functionality envelopes, then copy back successful features into their core offerings when they are ready. It also allows them to be quicker to market and either success or fail quickly with new ideas (risk management at it's best.)
  • He oversaw the release of several touch-capable pieces of software at a time where they are truly leading the industry in that regard.

Frankly, of all the traditional software companies out there that seem to "Get" where technology is going, Adobe seems to completely understand. We don't think that has anything to do with the CTO?
Click to expand...

Great post. It's clear he wasn't blind to the lackings of Flash and that he has managed the hard task of keeping a company deeply rooted in the desktop universe relevant in a world shifting to mobile.
 
micros said:
As if defending Flash makes someone unsuitable... There is still today a lot of stuff that is much better and smoother in Flash than in Objective-C. Of course also the other way. But people that have worked in both fields will usually agree that XCode for example is a subpar development environment.
Just saying: it's not as if Apple did everything right that Flash got wrong.
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I don't know about you, but I actually really lie Xcode. There's just a few things that it needs, otherwise the UI, the environment, and few of the features are nice IMO

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Rogifan said:
What bad data are you referring to? Are you saying the underlying mapping data Apple is using is bad? I'm sure Tom Tom, Waze, openstreetmap, etc. would disagree. Also how do we know that Forstall wasn't behind or in agreement with getting Google maps off iOS sooner rather than later.

None of the reports and profiles on Forstall suggest he would be willing to take a demotion. I mean Adam Lashinsky's profile on Forstall referred to him as Apple's "CEO-in-waiting".
Click to expand...

You always seem to defend Apple, but you always have a point and you never spew out idiocy.

Are you Jonathan Ive?
 
chrmjenkins said:
He was an advocate for his company and his brand. Doesn't mean he loved flash as a product. He's an adult, he can separate professional decisions from personal ones.
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His role at the company was CTO. Which means he chose to support a technology everyone knew was lacking because his company "told" him to do so. Hardly someone Apple would hire under Steve Jobs....

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Ryth said:
How do you know it's a mistake? Do you know what he's doing at Apple? Do you know what he's worked on yet or will work on? I guess you can see into the future and tell already that he failed at something that will tank Apple.

Stop posting ridiculous comments.
Click to expand...

Stop posting blindless support of anything Apple does... they have done nothing but fumble since SJ.
 
saintforlife said:
One quick way to check where his loyalties lie: Check his company issue MacBook Air/Pro to see if he took the trouble of installing Flash on it. Easy...
Click to expand...

Um I hate Adobe and I hate Flash, but it's still installed on my MacBook Pro because without it, well you can't see certain web sites.
 
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