Sorry, Adobe, you screwed yourself
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ZDNet 2001 (Dec 2001) Article is actually Adobe: OS X's new best friend? "Analysts and creative professionals say that Adobe's release of products for OS X could be the most significant turning point in the new operating system's adoption." "Developers privately complained of stability issues with the original release of OS X, saying that these problems hampered their efforts to move their products to the new operating system. That finally changed in September, when Apple issued the Mac OS X 10.1 update."
A slice from 2002 Article is from March '02: OSX 10.2.1 was established as default OS on Macs only 3 months prior!
What he left out: "Adobe is actively working to add support for the full version of Acrobat 5.0 running in OS X native mode." "Adobe currently plans to offer native support for OS X in the next major release of After Effects." etc.
CNet 2004 "At the same time, Apple has quietly pushed Adobe out of a few markets by selling its own applications or bundling them into its OS X operating system. "
John Nack, 2006 (Feb '06) No Intel OS X updated Adobe apps till 07 "Ever since Apple's Intel announcement last summer, they've told the industry (at least the consumer side) that Intel Macs would appear by summer 2006."
Wikipedia: "On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over 1 year sooner than announced."
Until about 2008, the last time I had even seen a Mac on this (Eastern) side of the Atlantic was about 1991 or so.
Like Mircosoft tried to with with ActiveX? I don't think so...
Yeah. Native code in a browser without the security implications.
In a few years people will be using HTML5 video, and fall back to flash where not available. A few more years after that, maybe things will be different.
The flash audience will be second class citizens. But with users needing only to change their browsers for a better experience, I think they will do so surprisingly quickly.
HTML5 may replace it for video purposes but that's only one (recent) thing that Flash is used for. If you have an iPhone 3GS right now, Apple will have long stopped providing updates before HTML has supplanted Flash for all things. Hell, HTML5 isn't even a standard yet.
But right now, there are no reason why limit the options to develop for the iPhone OS.
Adobe's history of failing to update their products to take advantage of OS X, of Intel processors, of Cocoa, or of the Mac platform entirely seems to give to lie your belief.
The switch to Intel was another big porting project. Now, if they want to switch to x64, they will be also forced to switch from Carbon to Cocoa.
So in few years, Adobe had to port their codebase several times to meet the OSX moving target. Actually, I'm suriprised they did it at all, considering the lack of transparency on Apple side.
If you are asking Adobe to throw away any frameworks used, that were later duplicated by Apple in OSX, and port to Apple provided frameworks, you have no idea how the project of the Creative Suite size is managed and developed. You may port your little OSX-only utility fast, but not CS.
Other big projects had similar problems - Microsoft Office? Alias|Wavefront (today Autodesk) Maya? They have similar pain points for the exactly same reason.
When they knew about an upcoming platform change a year or two in advance, and didn't bother to deal with it until a year or two after, I have to assume that they just never cared. That's why Apple doesn't want to deal with Flash - they don't want to rely on a company that doesn't care about Apple or its users, and they don't want to be beholden to Adobe's schedule of 'we'll support that next year when users are hurting for it'.
When Apple announced location support in iPhoneOS 2.0, for example, including GPS for the iPhone 3G, would Adobe have had it ready for launch day? From their history, Flash would have waited until the next 'major release'. Flash-based apps would have had a reduced feature set, and the App Store would have been full of applications that couldn't support the latest and greatest features, distracting from applications that properly supported 2.0 from the start.
Are there examples of this happening consistently in other cross platform development environments? My understanding is that cross platform frameworks cater to a lowest common denominator among platforms, perhaps occasionally supporting a custom feature here and there. Even then, the people developing the app need to spend the necessary effort to take advantage of platform specific features, as opposed to just deploying the identical app to all platforms.
Of course you do, developing with Flash on OS X is infeasible, the performance is laughable and the stability is worse (like the article says, Adobe's been neglecting Flash on OS X since forever).
You have to use Windows to get any work done, and that is just as "specific" as having to use OS X.
That stuff is good for Apple (who gets a cut), and the developer (who gets money), but it isn't good for users (who have to be annoyed with requests for their money).
So fuck Apple's special features.
There are obviously features beyond in-app buying and iAd that differentiate iPhone OS from the rest of the smartphone market.
But anyway, why not list some of these features? That will improve the quality of this discussion.
This is the level of maturity it's always had; as jrockway courteously points out, he's been foaming at the mouth in iPhone-related threads since before you signed up.
More importantly, though, I'd recommend you spend some time reading through Clay Shirky's writings on online communities; the "once upon a time it was wonderful, now all the new people are ruining it" myth is pervasive and can be a sign of deep trouble (see, in particular, "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy").
Now, I agree that I comment on way too many Apple-related articles, but since HN has recently become "iPad News" and I haven't found another site to read, I don't really have a choice.
I would love it if Apple was never mentioned here again. Who cares what they are up to?
Let's say Apple brings out a new iPad with a special graphics processor. What are the chances that all the Flash apps will run slow as shit on the new iPad? Will users complain that developer X is at fault because they used Flash? No, users will complain that the new iPad is slow.
Apple has no interest in being at Adobe's mercy like this again.
Or maybe it offers something that Apple doesn't?
That is not a criticism of Apple or Flash, just pointing out that it isn't win-win.
Microsoft has maintained 20 years of backwards compatibility and Apple's OS and hardware is constantly in flux. Why is it Adobe's fault? It's hard work developing these projects, they have huge code bases and large numbers of users. This position is not supported by logic.
> Let's say Apple brings out a new iPad with a special graphics processor. What are the chances that all the Flash apps will run slow as shit on the new iPad?
Assuming it requires a software change, every single iPad developer will need to update their software to take advantage of it. But Adobe any simply update their software once and every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it. Not everything about Adobe's Flash compiler is immediately a negative.
Well, the writing was on the wall as soon as Cocoa was released. While Apple maintained both Carbon and Cocoa as first-class citizens as far as the UI was concerned, it was obvious that Cocoa was the future of the Mac's API. Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated.
This forced Adobe to rewrite all of their Carbon apps, which is what took all of the time. Had Adobe gone with the blessed Cocoa kit and XCode tool chain from the beginning, they could have just recompiled Photoshop and had a Universal binary immediately. They chose not to.
> every single Flash application can be quickly and easily recompiled to support it
Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application.
If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast...
Cocoa came first but Apple couldn't convince anyone to port their applications from Mac classic to a completely new OS with no marketshare. So they had to develop the Carbon API to get developer support.
> Adobe chose to not use Cocoa and stick to Carbon even after it was obvious that it would be deprecated.
Which was a smart move for Adobe. They have a lot of Mac code and converting it all to Cocoa is essentially a complete rewrite. You expect Adobe to have perfect knowledge of the future or a time machine.
> They chose not to.
It wasn't much a choice. OS X was in no way a sure thing. In fact, the only thing that actually allowed OS X to survive was Adobe's support of the platform.
> Now, what are the chances of that happening? Not every developer will care to update their application.
Did you read what I said? Isn't the possibility of Flash developers hitting "recompile" a lot more likely than Objective-C developers actually having to make code changes to support this new feature?
> If all native apps are running fast with the hypothetical new hardware and Flash based apps were slow as hell, Flash based apps would start to get deleted very fast...
Adobe's Flash compiler is exactly that, a compiler, which converts Flash apps into native code. If Adobe has done their job right, it's unlikely you'd notice the difference. And if you did, you would just delete them. Just like you would delete a crappy Objective-C app -- those already exist in droves.
Yes, I can. Restricting developers' rights isn't a valid business decision. That's like saying Highway robbery is a respectable income source.
Why?
Developers aren't a constitutionally protected special class.
As for rights, he's referring the right of a developer to use whatever programming language he wishes to developer software on different systems. A closed system prevents a developer from exercising that right.
It's even worse when a system establishes itself with certain restrictions and freedoms, and then changes that later on. In fact, it's called Bait and Switch. Apple had certain rules and requirements, and certain people bought into that idea. Now they've changed that. You can argue with they are allowed to, but that doesn't diminish the criticism thrown at them. Just because they can do something doesn't mean they should do something. There are a million examples to demonstrate that.
For a long time, a lot of intelligent people were saying that Apple was inching closer and closer toward restricting rights of its users more and more. People disregarded us, and said "Hey, Apple can do this!" While they might be legally able to, this doesn't mean they should. They restrict the content. They restrict how you display that content. They restrict more and more. I have no pity for Apple supporters anymore. And when Apple restricts that thing you hold dear, you'll cry. Or you'll do what others have done: decide what you wanted was wrong, and you shouldn't have wanted it, and Apple was right.
Whether Apple's recent move is a good decision or not is totally up for debate. As is whether the change is distasteful or offensive. But whether it's a "valid business decision [because it violates some God-given right]" is not.
Probably because I can't think of a single time when this has been an issue. The argument isn't over what Apple can do. It's that Apple is dictating how developers are allowed to develop their applications. This isn't about writing Java apps that will run on the iPhone. It's about writing Objective-C apps using whatever tools we want that will run on the iPhone.
"As is whether the change is distasteful or offensive."
One could argue it's both. Either is fine by me.
Exactly. And that's not a natural right. And Apple not allowing it is a valid business decision (whether it's a good one for Apple's bottom line or a good one morally—or whether it even is a moral question—is up for debate). That's all I'm saying. Let's use reasonable terms so our debate is sensible and valid.
I disagree. To me, assuming that the situation really is as described in this article, Apple's response come across as petty vengeance. Holding grudges. Childish and spiteful.
That kind of behaviour is of very limited use in business.
Apple on the other hand did take a measure that is not only detrimental to Adobe, but to any developpers on the planet working on Iphone/Ipad apps. That it is the right business decision, like you're saying without any justification, is less than clear. The only thing you can say for sure, is that it's gonna fuck up with the competition, and make them a lot of ennemies.
You can also predict that this measure is just gonna drive innovation off the iPhone/iPad onto other platforms. This is less than certain, but it is just as much of a possibility.
For me we're into "cold hearted common sense business decision" VS. "agressive revenge nebulous business decision that _may_ pay off". The tone of the article shows that very well in itself.
Note: Apple is doing the windows thing: Everyone developed for windows because that was the #1 platform. Then when people complain "oh there are no mac apps" guess why. Now the exact same thing is about the iPhone. The only difference is that Apple at some point decided that Microsoft was not evil enough and one-upped then with the app-approvals and the new TOS.
Anyway, though, a critique on grammar and style is hardly the best way to evaluate its message... which I think was a good one. The cheap shot at the end was unfortunate, but the rest was reasonable, I think.
People are analyzing the shit out of Steve Job's decisions as of late, but when you look at it from a business perspective, objectively, it all makes great sense.
Furthermore, Steve Jobs does not answer to the tech community, at the end of the day he answers to only one group of people: the shareholders.
*Note: I know that he is a major shareholder himself, but the point is still valid.
Adobe isn't perfect by any means, but their business decision to focus on one platform rather than another is no more selfish than any other software company I've seen.
Apple having a "quality control" platform that keeps their proprietary technology from being effected by other proprietary technology is all this is about.
And I'm not the only person: http://dearadobe.com/top_rated.php
Suppose instead of Apple, it was the government deciding which apps get approved, and which don't.
Would you support the government to make the correct decisions, by fiat? Or would you rather a free market see opportunities in crappy applications, and produce better alternatives?
Except it's often not that simple. People can be locked in in lots of different ways, and suffer at the hands of a dictator, one way or another.
Hahahah.
Apple is not the government, silly.
But think, for a moment, what if the HN readers downvoting you were not HN readers… but the government? What then?
I don't 100% agree with Apple's decision to ban non-native language apps, nor do I 100% disdain Adobe (Lightroom is a phenomenal product IMHO). But my dislike of Flash, the now comical number of bloggers jumping on the "Apple is evil, look at their SDK" bandwagon, and this statement all together made me laugh.
I don't LIKE it.
But I have a better understanding for it now.
Adobe, obviously, always wants to target windows first. Companies like Unity and MonoTouch obviously are more in the C# and even .Net camp. These guys are targeting iPhone as an afterthought. And while we know their products do not run well on macs at the moment, I used to think that they would run well on macs in the future.
I'm not so sure anymore.
Maybe Apple does need to go it alone with respect to middleware. Even better, some enterprising start up could make an Objective-C game engine.
I'm not trying to defend the restriction or anything. It's Jobs' right to pull this shit and its everyone else's right to move to Android. I just think it's less about innovation in tools and frameworks and more about keeping the platform isolated for business reasons. This is just an extension of the "no interpreters" rule, which more severely (IMO) hampers language and tool innovation.
Of course its Apple's right. I don't think anyone's advocating lawsuits. But it's our right to bitch, moan, complain, and try to convince everyone in the world that if Apple doesn't reverse course in due time, they should be attacked with an avalanche of internet mudslinging that will make Microsoft look like Ghandi in comparison.
Apple of all companies knows the value of the tech and online community to their bottom line. I think its worth utilizing that to respond to their decisions and somehow influence them to move in the right direction.
An innovative person could make an Objective-C game engine, or a C++ game engine or what have you. The language does not disallow innovation in frameworks or third party tools, it opens up a new avenue for that innovation.
Now mind you I don't agree with the path they have taken. But I do think it is important right now for cooler heads to prevail. Making statements like 'Apple is outlawing innovation...' is not contributing in a constructive fashion to the solution search.
What are Apple's concerns?
Are they legitimate?
How can the developer community address Apple's concerns?
If Apple sees not only real effort, but real progress towards addressing those concerns, perhaps it might be willing to loosen up on the reigns.
As it stands though, the concerns Apple has are legitimate. Now that we know what they are, can we move towards addressing them.
I just think that staking out these strident positions makes for good blog reading, but it is not going to solve anything.
If we put our 'crowdsourced' heads together we can come up with a solution that could allow the situation to develop with positive impact with respect to everyone's interests.
They have a review process which is used for quality control yet they allow 60+ fart apps in the store! Why don't they tighten the review process on ALL apps (including non Objective-C apps)?
I guess you could say it would cost more to hire reviewers but the money made on the new app sales would certainly cover that (and much more). To me it's just a huge slap in the face to end users who will miss out on much app potential (assuming the reviewers did their job) and to developers who have dedicated time in learning a 3rd party framework - yet so many people here and other places seem to love it.
Apps should be judged on their own merits, not based on the original language they were coded in.
Therefore, it is in everyone's collective best interest to have as many free and open platforms as possible. What Apple is doing is attempting to leverage their current success into future success by cutting off an avenue for cross platform authoring. This isn't about users. It's not about quality. It's about savvy developers (that's us) looking for ways to support multiple mobile platforms as painlessly (and profitably) as possible.
That's not in Apple's best interest, but it sure as hell is in mine. This isn't a legal question (yet), but as a developer this pisses me off. It should piss you off too.
Forget about the legal and moral issues. Which argument makes more sense?
http://www.alwaysontechnologies.com/blog/2010/04/09/section-...
Titanium targets both the iPhone OS and Android, but it's pretty clearly aimed primarily at the iPhone.
The Lua stuff Tapulous uses in their games is targeted only at the iPhone OS.
Nintendo of all people is happy to let game devs build stuff with Unity.
The trend continues, really. I have no idea how crappy the apps are that the Adobe stuff produces, but I do know that these other toolkits are (a) extremely useful and (b) now off limits if I want to do anything on the iPhone. I suspect that if you dug through what's there, the Unity/MonoTouch stuff would prove to be of a higher average quality than the straight ObjC apps. People who look around and choose toolkits like this are generally pretty smart.
Isn't a game engine a bit like some sort of interpreter (which are banned on the iPhone)?...
And as for losing out on innovation because developers can't make their own tools, I'm sure Apple isn't worried about that at all. They seem to have enough in-house innovation to run circles around what the competition has to offer, for the past ten years.
But is that really the main issue? If you think about it, the controversial section of the agreement affects much more important issues that Adobe and flash.
For those who think Apple is in War with Adobe, I highly doubt it. Adobe can shut down their CS suit for Mac. So I just think it's a track and a culture, Apple is taking and working on. If you like it, work with them. If you don't, there are other options in the market; if you don't find anything that suits you in this world, so build a nice world of your own.
If you want to see an example of a vendor closing ranks to the detriment of users, look no further than Adobe.
I was using Macs primarily for graphics work in the late 90's and early 00's. The close relationship between Adobe and Apple was the reason to be on the platform then. Graphic designers and creatives were one of the few markets that Apple had left. Believe it or not, but Apple owes a large part of it's existence through the 90's to Adobe's support of their platform. In fact, Apple and Adobe signed an exclusive deal to only ship Photoshop on Mac's in the early years.
Steve Jobs left, the company floundered and almost went belly up. They sued Microsoft for patent infringement, and Microsoft settled by investing $150 million in Apple, and becoming one of Apple's largest shareholders at the time. That helped Apple survive, and it gave Microsoft a reasonable competitor, so it wouldn't have to fight as many charges of being monopolistic. Ever wonder why so much Apple advertising punches Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't really punch back?
So, with the second coming of Steve Jobs and a fresh infusion of cash from Microsoft. Apple decided to completely rewite their code base from scratch based on what he had been doing at Next. OS9 died, and OSX was born.
And, while those were great moves for Apple as a company, Adobe was faced with a very difficult choice: whether or not to port millions of lines of code over to a new OS that represented less than 3% of the computing market. Apple was making a "bet the farm" move, and expected Adobe to come along for the ride. Then Apple was pissed because Adobe didn't jump on the band wagon immediately and pony up the millions of dollars it would have cost to port their entire suite of apps to the new OS.
Three years after the launch of OSX, Apple made another "Bet the farm" move, and decided to migrate OSX from PowerPC chips to Intel processors.
Again, not only did Apple expect Adobe and the rest of their developer ecosystem to port their applications to a new OS, but 3 years after the new OS launched, they expected another dramatic round of rewrites to accommodate Apple's business and technical decisions.
But, Adobe did begin porting their software, and in the middle of all those changes, Apple chose to start competing directly with Adobe by launching Final Cut Pro at roughly the same time that Adobe was launching Premiere Pro. A year or two following that, Apple purchased Shake a video compositing app that directly competed with After Effects.
Needless to say, relations have been a bit strained between the companies for the last 10 years.
As far as I've been able to tell, Apple makes decisions that help Apple. They tend to have a "love us or leave us" approach to their developer ecosystem.
Microsoft used to play hardball like that all the time with their developers and with companies that ran on their platform. But they got slapped with anti-trust lawsuits. They play much nicer with other kids than Apple does these days. The only reason that Apple can get away with this, is because they are still seen as the "under dog" by many. I suspect that perception might be changing.
It's been so strange to hear a lot of arguments coming from Apple fans that Microsoft advocates used to use when defending it's platform decisions. "Why shouldn't Microsoft bundle Internet Explorer with their OS. It's their platform. Screw Netscape. Microsoft can do what they want. It makes for a much better experience"
People often ask me why I use Windows 7 as a development platform instead of OSX. My response is usually a joke and a quip "someone beat me with a Mac when I was young". Frankly, it was seeing the history of Apple's treatment of it's developers. Yes, they have great products if want to tow the line and follow Apple's rules. But, beware. When Apple decides to change the rules on you mid stream, you're not going to have much recourse.
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple especially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple#The_Microsoft_...
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/history/timeline/
edit: clarity and spelling.
1. The Apple v. Microsoft suits began in the 1980's well before Apple ran into trouble. They finished in 1994, 3 years before the Microsoft deal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso...) The dispute settled in the Microsoft deal had to do with Microsoft stealing the source code to QuickTime. (http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DD...)
2. The history of Final Cut is tied into the history of Macromedia and the Quicktime dispute--Macromedia focused on developing web tools like Flash and Dreamweaver, and Final Cut was held up by demands by Microsoft not to ship Quicktime-based video editing software on Windows, so Final Cut was shopped around until Apple bought it, mostly to bolster Quicktime. Apple released Final Cut Pro in 1999, four years before Premiere Pro and two years before Mac OS X. At the time, Final Cut was intended to compete with Avid instead of Premiere.
3. Apple did not "flounder" continuously from the moment Steve Jobs left in 1985 to the moment he returned in 1997. The early success of the Mac platform came with models like the Mac SE and Mac II, which had fans, hard drives, and even expansion slots--features Jobs had personally opposed. It was relegated to a minority market share due to early decisions made by Sculley to keep prices high and not license out the operating system, but Apple was still a very successful company until the early-to-mid 90's.
4. Mac OS X was released in 2001. In 2005, Apple announced the transition to Intel. That's four years, not three--and four years in which Apple had gone from simply profitable to astounding levels of growth. Whether or not Adobe was smart to bet on Apple failing to survive the OS transition (or to bet on graphic designers leaving the Mac en masse), it was monumentally stupid to bet against Apple in 2005. It's also important to point out that Apple didn't switch processors just to switch processors--Motorola failed for years to keep PPC performance competitive with Intel, and IBM failed dramatically as well.
re: 1. You're correct about the details, but the event that I was referring to was Microsoft and Apple ending legal hostilities in '97 and signing the 5 year office/Internet Explorer/$150 million armstice. My point was that Apple had been on the ropes, and that Microsoft's money helped get back into the ring. My point was also, that had it not been for Adobe and a core contingent of dedicated artists/designers that made a living off of Adobe's software running on Apple. Apple would have been dead in the 90's.
2. You're correct on the release dates of Final Cut and Premiere Pro. The Adobe release that I was thinking about was the transition between Premiere 5.1 to 6.0. Final Cut did indeed compete with Avid. Adobe until then had ruled the pro-sumer video editing market at the time. Apple's decision to compete in that market essentially knocked them both out of that market.
3. I didn't mean to suggest that Apple floundered the entire time Jobs left. Those events were in succession, but not immediate. Apple was getting beat up pretty bad in the 90's, and had it not been for Adobe's products running on their hardware, I dare say Apple wouldn't be here today.
4. You're right, it was four years, not three.
Regardless. My point wasn't that Adobe made a bet against Apple. Adobe did have software running on Apple hardware most of that time.
I still think my main point still stands, however. That is, that Apple has a history of screwing developers, especially Adobe on their platform. Caveat Emptor.
Maybe is Apple retargeting its line of computers just as development platforms for the portable devices?
Please.