What many buffoons who defend Apple cannot seem to understand (and don't know the first thing about programming, so their opinion shouldn't really count anyways), is that the effect of this is far beyond just flash. Phonegap, Unity, eg....are also all gone.
Adobe should "accidentally" release a jailbroken flash and pull ALL mac products off the shelf and restrict support.
Then laugh as Apple sales plummet.
No, buffoons are those who bemoan the marginalization of their proudly held esoteric and arcane arts as though the average joe should not dare to participate in media creation industries.
All my jobs over the years have involved communication and content and media creation. Adobe is not a deal breaker for me, and I suspect that is so for many other creatives.
l used Flash a couple of times about 12 years ago to create interactive CD-ROMs. I used Adobe Premiere and After Effects a few times for video production about 10 years ago. Now, I love FCP, Keynote, and Aperture: they get the job done. I grew up on Aldus PageMaker, then used Adobe PageMaker, then InDesign. But now I'm fine with Pages, since I dabble in all kinds of creative media and corporate communications processes and no longer do DTP alone (I've diversified). I do have an old copy of PS4, or maybe even CS1, hanging around, which I do dust off from time to time; but for layered art, there are all kinds of solutions coming out all the time: Pixelmator, Gimp, etc.
Here's the thing: everyone goes on about Apple's arrogance and proprietary platforms and how they are elitest...etc. But Apple really does make the platforms for the rest of us, and these are platforms that people of all abilities love to use. End of story. Apple made the DTP revolution possible. Apple made the Desktop Video revolution possible (until FCP you had to invest in 100,000 dollar turnkey Avid seats). Apple is now revolutionizing mobile computing.
The
platform needs to be robust and useable -- let the best platform creator or creators win. Hey, if others can step up to the plate, the more the merrier. HOWEVER, the media products and files and formats and exchange protocols need to be
open and standard for everyone. Adobe and MS want to present it all backwards, revealing that they are indeed tyrants. Really, I don't know why all these buffoons out there can't see that.
These self-proclaimed media creation gurus who live and breathe Flash can get off their high horses and join the rest of us in the 21st Century. Apple is continuing to be true to its common-man, revolutionary roots and making great tools for everyone -- from my 10 year-old daughter to my grandma. Just as I picked up Aldus PageMaker as a whippersnapper and whipped up professional quality stuff to the chagrin of the razor-blade wielding strippers, so my creative daughter can produce good stuff using a few share-ware, open-source and app store tools.
Incidentally, many Apple users may not understand all the ins and outs of programming. But who really considers Flash content creation or interactive media file scripting real programming anyway? (let alone taking that interactive media file and running it through some recompiling gizmo and calling that an iApp worthy of the name). What's that all about?
Apple is criticized for making loads of great APIs to enable developers to get closer to the core OS processes and the hardware? While something like Flash or .net etc. is one huge abstracted proprietary runtime la la land? Get a grip. Hello, we don't want what that produces! Your bamboozled clients may think that is what they want or need. But most of us don't really like this "cross-platform" plugin thingy that is supposed to do all the work (but really doesn't). We want open web standards and file formats. I may just prefer creating and consuming the web and media on Apple's useable platforms, because Apple gets it.
So, I hope Adobe DOES pull all Mac products off the shelf. Adobe have failed to move forward and improve their products. They have sat on their laurels far too long, and they expect to reap unending and exorbitant license fees for their bloated and unusable products, just like MS do. If MS can get marginalized in today's world (as they most definitely are right now in mobile computing), then Adobe better sit up, take notice, stop laughing and get their a$$es back to work. Let's see a little whip-cracking like they have over there at Cupertino.
