Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab
Was Steve Jobs trying to send an unofficial message to Adobe Systems? Something on the order of "get it in gear, guys, if you want to stay on my VIP list"?
As my colleague Tom Krazit reported Tuesday afternoon, Jobs used the Apple shareholders' meeting to publicly dismiss the the full-blown PC Flash version as "too slow to be useful" on the iPhone. He then went on to describe the mobile version--Flash Lite--as "not capable of being used with the Web."
That's an unusual--albeit refreshingly frank--way to talk in public about a business partner. Give Jobs credit for speaking his mind, although I very much doubt Adobe appreciated his candor.
I tried to get a comment from Adobe, which has worked closely with Apple over the years. Will Flash be supported on the iPhone or not? Here's the official non-response, response to my query:
""Flash and Flash Lite are a huge success. All major handset manufacturers worldwide license Flash today delivering a broad range of mobile devices ranging from feature phones to smartphones and consumer electronic devices. With more than 450 million Flash-enabled mobile devices shipped worldwide and 150 percent year-over-year growth we are on track to see 1 billion Flash enabled devices by 2010. Consumers demand a rich Web experience on any device and platform and Flash delivers just that. We look forward to our continued relationship with industry leaders to deliver engaging experiences to consumers worldwide."
Thin gruel. Hopefully, I can get a fuller answer later on.
Charles is an executive editor with CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. A graduate of Queens College and Columbia University, Cooper began his career in journalism at the Associated Press before moving to technology coverage. Before joining CNET News, he worked at Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. He received the Excellence in Journalism award from the Northern California branch of the Society for Professional Journalists for column writing. In addition to his blogging and podcast appearances, he is a co-host of the CNET News Daily Debrief. E-mail Charlie.
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"...Adobe, which has worked closely with Apple over the years."
Adobe was "almost" born (at least "to success") by the support of Steve Jobs for PostScript in 1984.
But in last decade, Adobe almost abandoned Apple: Intel versions took more than a year!
So, like old anecdotes as "Macs are pricey" do not continue spreading the voice that "Adobe works closed to Apple".
Apple grew tired of 'heavy and slow' applications on the Mac and knew the Mac could be so much more. Apple's always done this, remember Claris? I'm sure Adobe didn't like Apple publishing Final Cut, but at the time (maybe the time hasn't passed) Premiere lagged.
You would be surprised at how closely large companies can work together, even in seemingly competitive channels.
BTW, there are many companies out there that would love to crush Apple; I'm glad they're scrappy because I like their products. We wouldn't have them if they didn't fight back.
A new plug-in --IMO-- will be a losser.
I think that the iPhone needs to have some version of flash, however, this is definatly not an iPhone problem. The iPhone decodes MPEG4 and H.264 video at full bitrate (my old Pentium II can't do that). Clearly Adobe still needs to do some more code optimisation.
> How else do you think it's able to play YouTube content?
Flash does not work on the iPhone via QuickTime or by any other means. It was world news that Google re-encoded millions of videos in h264 format for QuickTime in order to support the iPhone.
Nothing remains related to Flash in the iPhone viewing.
Adobe will get it on the iPhone eventually. The thing is, they may not be running with acceptable performance right now. Maybe it's a memory hog, or spins out of control, or barf, or whatever. Adobe has to do what they need to do to get performance and stability up to acceptable levels - and those requirements are far higher than its performance on the desktop. So...
I doubt it. Flash Lite (which, as they mentioned, is on 450M devices) is a stable, lightweight, and useful plugin, but it is NOT flash. Having authored for both, there's a pretty big difference.
That aside, I really think Apple is getting sick of Adobe treating them like a second-class platform. And I think Adobe is getting sick of Apple making development resource demands when they really account for very little of Adobe's business. I can guarantee you that (especially outside the US) Adobe Acrobat Pro outsells Photoshop at least 200 to 1.
I wouldn't be surprised if this business relationship had run its course.
In the less powerfull iPhone, the bar for optimization is higher than before.
I have an old version on one of my PCs that is so old it won't play a lot of the content out there. I actually considor that a bonus. Since I don't like watching videos online, must of the stuff I miss out on for many web sites are stupid and pointless animations in the first place.
Code run in the Flash player is now 'just-in-time' compiled into native machine code before it is executed. The speed increases have been so incredible in the last few versions of flash, that the player can now happily support real-time 3D.
> And it's plagued by installation problems.
Really? Maybe that's how it became the most ubiquitous software on earth. I have been using Flash on PC's, Mac's and Linux for many years and have never had an issue with installation. Nor has anyone I work with.
> And why am I prompted to download and install a new
> version several times a year?
Because Adobe keep releasing newer, faster and more fully featured versions. On of the new versions you installed brought a ten fold increase in execution speed. Another brought ultra-high quality h264 high definition video.
> Since I don't like watching videos online, must of the stuff I miss out on
> for many web sites are stupid and pointless animations in the first place.
If you don't like it, uninstall it.
Not true. YouTube converted and continues to convert large portions of content to the .h264 video codec that is supported by Quicktime. You can view the same content via Apple TV which also does not support Flash in any way.
I can get along without it... and certainly don't want it on my phone.
It's Apple's loss if Flash does not play on IPods, IPhones and the ITunes store jailhouse monopoly.
Steve is as bad a con-artist as Bill Gates, the only difference is that he is not as smart as Gates.
Gates, on the other hand, since the beginning, copies good ideas badly sticks them in a box and sells, sells, sells...
On the other hand, Quicktime looks great, sounds great, and generally waits till it's downloaded enough to play the entire video.
But... as the alternative platform to horrible and evil HTML for developing cool sites, animations, games, and powerful databased web applications, it's completely awesome and could have killed XHTML, AJAX, CSS, etc if it were not for SEO. No developer would ever have wasted their time in anything but the completely cross platform Flex, Flash, and Cold Fusion, no matter how bloated and horrible the software got, cross-platform HTML/CSS/Javascript/MySQL/PHPorASPorJSP being so completely painful to do the easiest things.
But because of the SEO history, Flash is now stuck as a permanent plugin in a bigger Web 2.0 world... and Adobe will have to get its act together, or we'll just have to wait till the iPhone has multi-core processors (one dedicated for each Flash instance on a web page).
"has multi-core processors (one dedicated for each Flash instance on a web page)."
The best technical solution to the Flash problem! Thanks. I will upgrade to a 16 core chip.
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by DumbMacUser1
March 5, 2008 12:38 PM PST
- Apple has always been jealous of Adobe. I remeber in one meeting a couple of apple's retarded morons couldn't contain their rage when talking about Adobe's developers...it was pure jealousy because they can't compete with adobe (they are all dropouts, liars, neo-con artists, racists and various other retards with serious emotional and mental issues)
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