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Comment by irrelative | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why you're being downvoted, because you're right.

Adobe feels like that for the same reason: you get an annoying swagger when you own a monopoly.

Adobe owns "rich content" on the web. And just like Microsoft, they also know what a pain technology transitions are. No company wants to support a flash version and an HTML5 version of their site/product/app. And just like Microsoft, they'll start to advertise how all the fun stuff runs on their platform instead of building new stuff.

Realistically, flash is here to stay at least until IE supports HTML5 and achieves a critical mass. Until then, Adobe can give the finger to everyone and maintain control no matter how hard developers or competitors whine. Feels very familiar indeed.

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And that's why they can afford to be lazy. And they absolutely are, the laziest software company I can think of.

I hope they get the same kind of backlash Microsoft reaped from similar tactics, they are my least favourite company right now.

That said, the Google comment just seems to be so much hot air; "I know we're being pricks, but everyone is, and anyone who says different is simply lying". Yeah, thanks Steve.

The way you explained it, Apple seems to be just as "lazy"... and I agree. They control the iphone/pad/whatever app store and can approve something, or not. It won't matter for them and they can ignore anyone whining. They're so big, they don't have to care if your app ends up rejected and forgotten. Annoying swagger indeed.

Are you arguing that Apple has a monopoly on phones? Even narrowing the category to smart phones doesn't really make enough of a difference for your point to be valid. Sure, there are plenty of people out there that have iPhones, but there's also people out there with phones running Android and PalmOS. There's people with Blackberry's and WinMos. If you don't like Apple's walled garden, you can easily get a decent experience buying another phone. You want rich media on the web? Well, good luck getting away with that without using Flash.

I'm not arguing for or against the AppStore. I get why Apple is doing it, and I get why people don't like it, but comparing Apple to Adobe in this way is fruitless (no pun intended).

Also, Apple has reversed rejections when the blogosphere cried foul.

AFAIR they reversed rejections when influential enough blogosphere gave them bad PR. Cases that didn't make it into known bloggers' posts didn't matter (and we probably didn't hear about most of them). Just look at apprejections.com to see how silly the situation still is.

Comparing iPhone apps to Android and PalmOS? Sure - just like Flash can be compared to Java embedded/webstart and avi embedding through `<object ...>`. There's almost the same amount of real-world competition in those areas... If you want some app, it's probably already in Flash/AppStore - even if some people push it via other means (avi players/other app markets).

I'm not arguing they have monopoly on (smart)phones - just on real-world smartphone apps. And that allows them to be lazy - it's just strange that they call Adobe lazy for doing exactly the same. Apple: "just port it the way we want, or go away", Adobe: "just let us use what we have, or go away", both: "no" :(

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