Apple in shock public attack on Adobe Apple has issued a shock public attack on Adobe Flash. Of course, it's not the attack that's shocking - just the public bit. Typically, the MO of the Jobsian cult is to abuse Adobe Flash behind closed doors - or simply ban it from popular handheld devices. On Wednesday, Apple PR sent a - gasp! - statement to CNET regarding …
"Adobe's only chance is to move to open formats?"
They don't think so. Adobe CS5 can export to HTML5's Canvas, so Adobe sees which way the wind is blowing. But it's still hoping on Flash.
They quite clearly hope that, as it were, Google will save them. If you listen to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen's video, he specifically mentions Google.
Of course, Adobe still haven't got an acceptably working version of Flash (the full thing not Lite) for Android or for *any* mobile platform and have now put back their release date *again*.
We will release Flash Player 10.1 on Android devices in the first half of 2010, the schedule is unchanged as published 1 year ago.
http://www.webkitchen.be/2010/04/19/flash-player-10-1-for-android-still-on-track-for-h1-release/
Additionally, our CS5 products do not export to HTML5 Canvas. This was a futures demo and may not appear in products, although it makes sense for us to support HTML5. Check out our comparison of the two technologies here:
http://vimeo.com/10553088
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/stop_32.png
..I typed 'insecure' instead of 'unsecure' - apparently this sort of thing is quite common and was first described by the granddaddy of modern psychology in his 1901 book "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" as 'fehlleistungen' but has since entered the common parlance as a god-I-hate-my-life- everyone- else-is-an- utter-bastard slip
Of course h.264 is an Open Standard. Everyone can download the spec for free and build their own implementation. Distribution of your implementation is not always free and can incur some costs, depending on use type. However, price has nothing to do with being Open or not, Free as in beer has. H.264 is not always Free as in beer.
Download the h.264 spec at: http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-H.264-200305-S!!PDF-E&type=items
I've never understood the phrase "free as in beer".
Do you pay for your beer? Do you brew your own? Do you live somewhere where the drinkiing of beer is illegal? Do you have beer bought for you? Nope - I don't get it.
There is little point having a standard that you can openly get the spec for (like H264) but then you can't actually use because you need to pay someone a load of money to distribute it, or works developed to use it. That's not "free" in any useful way, whether it be as in beer (whatever that means) or otherwise.
"I've never understood the phrase "free as in beer"."
It's not a complicated concept. The entire phrase is something like 'Free as in free speech, not free as in free beer" (or vice versa.
The point is that when you say 'free' you have to define which type of free you're talking about.
Are you talking about freedom to do something? The example given is that you have free speech in some situations (not all and not all countries). But the phrase applies when you have the freedom to speak freely.
Or are you talking about 'free' as in not having to pay for something? In that case, the example is that you may see a party with a sign that says 'free beer'. That doesn't mean beer is always free or that you never have to pay for it. It's just an example that's quicker than saying 'free as in you don't have to pay anything to get it'.
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In countries where patents on software algorithms are upheld, vendors and commercial users of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use. There's a BIG difference between Open Standard and open source with regards to "use" rights, about much more than just development/maintenence.
I can download the specs for thousands of things at the patent office but, thanks to how anal companies like Apple are, can developers use what could be basic design idea's...No...Just visit http://gizmodo.com/5483689/the-apple-patents-cockpunching-all-smart-phones-an-illustrated-guide/gallery/ for a small dose of such matters.
... and why is it that if Microsoft simply distribute IE or Windows Media Player with Windows (i.e. Don't dictate what you can or can't have) they get anti trust lawsuits against them but if Apple ban apps from the App store they still seem come off as being better than old MS.
Maybe its because its only on a phone but now this restrictive eco-system exists on iPads surely they must be worse legally than Microsoft were.
Anyone care to explain?
Microsoft got in trouble because they used their OS monopoly to give their other products an edge over the competition. Apple is (currently) not in as much trouble because the Jesus Phone (or the iPad, or iWhatever) is not in a dominant position over the Mobile market. - Someday they might be (2012 perhaps?...), at which time they will have to follow M$'s lead and start bribing judges left and right.
The fact is that Microsoft should have been made to split into several individual companies a long time ago. (See the US lawsuit that mysteriously vanished in the early 2000's for a rundown of that.)
Simple. MS says (with stickers of Trust): Our software will run on your machine like it says on the label. The OEM's and corporates: (with stickers of Trust): MS software (and apps certified by MS) will run on our machines like it says on the label: GUARANTEED!
Apple: Our software (and apps certified by Apple) will ONLY run on our machines: GUARANTEED! But, if you make OUR software (apps) run anywhere else, or if you make other software (apps) that was NOT certified by Apple run on OUR machines, that's your business: we don't care to know.
Wouldn't matter. Clang/LLVM is seemingly production ready and by most accounts better quality than the gcc.
One day, individuals like you will learn not to take the actions of a company personally. Both parties in this sorry affair are acting to protect their business interests. Neither are doing this to piss you off personally. I know it can be hard, but look at things rationally from both sides.
I can see why Adobe are concerned, they've had to radically rethink a product road map that until very recently looked certain. Had they been less arrogant and actually responded to the crtisism levied at them by actally producing a decent product instead of trying to skirt the real issue, then I imagine things would be different. Adobe have been dining out on Photoshop for a very long time, and have produced nothing but mediocre products since, save perhaps InDesign. They have been called to task on this by Apple and a large proportion of the web design and development community. Adobe have continually spat their dummy out, doing nothing to prove it's detractors wrong. Having senior management publicly state the same old shite makes them look foolish, especially the kind of FUD like "Flash is more open". Apple are merely responding to that. Both should know better.
The h.264 vs Therora debate adversly affects Adobe because whichever codec wins (so long as the <video> tag is fully implemented), one of the main selling points of Flash disappears. Hell, there is already overwhelming evidence that html5+css+JavaScript can do what Flash does using fewer resources--search for 'Quake 2 safari'.
Think about it. Apple are a big OSS contributer. They already have inplace a good enough (OSS) replacement for gcc. What good would banning them do, other than satisfy your own over inflated sence of entitlement and petty, and frankly pointless predjudice of something that you don't fully understand?
"Think about it. Apple are a big OSS contributer. They already have inplace a good enough (OSS) replacement for gcc. What good would banning them do, other than satisfy your own over inflated sence of entitlement and petty, and frankly pointless predjudice of something that you don't fully understand?"
It would simply be a reflection of Apple's own over-inflated, supercilious sense of entitlement and pointless predjudices. - Banning *binaries* because they have been written in a different source language - WTF? Mind you, I'll put the "Joke Alert" icon up next time for the hard-of-thinking and similarly disadvantaged.
What? Were you making a joke? Stick with the day job, there's a good chap.
The point is that deliberately excluding Apple from the GPL would achieve nothing, as well as completely flying in the face of what Open Source computing represents. Still, I wouldn't expect someone that has to resort to calling people stupid to inflate their own ego to understand such a simple premise. Attack my ideas by all means, but name calling just blunts your point. Big HUGE fail on your part.
Get off your high-horse, "Silly idealogue" isn't "name-calling"? - Apple started this spat by including a blanket clause in their T&C to *specifically* target Adobe NOT Flash! ( and not to mention making the future very uncertain for small, innovative companies like Unity, etc. ) and YOU started the name calling.
The point being that such a clause is just as much a ridiculous abuse as the GPL specifically including a clause to exclude Apple. Sorry if that was beyond you.
As for ideas, in the video arena you are probably correct in that html5 and friends can do everything that flash video can do, and Adobe have been idiotic in their response to the web community in general - with a bit of foresight they could have opened flash up completely years ago. ( Although I suspect that the codebase they inherited from Macromedia was a complete dog's dinner.) That however is very far from the point H264 is a patent-incumbered published standard, not an open one, and theora has major performance issues. So essentially very little, if anything is gained by replacing flash with either in the long run. Google may very well open VP8 in which case it would be a good candidate, but no-one will implement it for years until they are sure patent-trolls won't crawl out of the woodwork á là WMV9/VC-1.
Again very far from the point in this little Adobe-Apple spat, because it has nothing to do with "openness" or the future of internet video at all, just odious business practices.
"Apple started this spat by including a blanket clause in their T&C to *specifically* target Adobe NOT Flash!"
Which clause would that be then?
The one that says "no interpreted code". That's been there since day 1.
Now, if there was a clause that said "no buggy, crash-prone crap" then *that* might be the clause you meant. It doesn't exist though, sorry.
No not the one that says "no interpreted code" ( although that is stupid enough) But the one in the iPhone 4 SDK that says "no compiled code" unless *originally* written in C, C++ or Objective C, which was specifically designed to target the CS5 native-code implementation developed by Adobe to avoid falling foul of the original stupid "no interpereted code" clause.
Beyond the pale by a long way.
I'll stay up here, thanks. I'd urge you to consider this; arguably trying to hijack someone else's IP with your own closed, proprietary framework in that manner that Adobe would have undoubtedly done (personally, I think it's naive to think otherwise) is at least as odious. Apple are trying to protect *their* business and their IP, as is their right. Adobe haven't been stopped from creating content for the iPhone platform.
Please illustrate your argument for "Adobe hijacking Apples IP".
I'm the last person who would ever defend Adobe in general and flash in particular, so it isn't Adobe that directly concerns me. Apple are playing fast and loose with every developer who invests money and resources in making the platform viable. It seems like nearly every week on this site there is some story about Jobs pulling the rug out under someone's feet, if not by changing T & C at frequent intervals, then by the completely arbitrary way the existing T & C are interpreted. This is market manipulation by dictat, and Apple have a 100% monopoly on supply of iPhone apps. Anyone that finds this sort of behaviour acceptable is definitely a few cards short of a deck. El Reg is to be commended for keeping this sort of shenanigans in the spotlight - and it's quite clear what Apple think of them, for not being the fawning, obsequious inadequates that form the rest of the IT press.
Luckily I have not developed for the iPhone in Flash or otherwise (precisely because of this rubbish), or I would actually be pissed on my own behalf. Some of my stuff does target MacOS, though and if I get a whiff of anything similar approaching in that area, I'll drop the platform like a hot potato - except maybe bringing up the odd hackintosh hardware driver just for fun.
Anyone wanna help with an actionscript->Embedded C++/IOKit translator for a laugh? ;-)
And you know what? Apple is correct here. Adobe is a closed platform, albeit less closed than Apple itself. Imagine Adobe gone (bought by Apple, perished in an earthquake, ...) - no more flash on this planet. H.264 is license-entangled, yes, but imagine MPEG-LA (or what's the name?) perish, and all of a sudden it's available for everybody. So, yes, h.264 is more open than both iphone and flash.
What ever your argument, HTML5 + H.264 are still more open than flash.
Fed up with everyone talking about Apple's closed environment. It isn't so much that it is closed, more that they use a vertical integration to their advantage. They are much better at implementing standards and respecting them than many other companies.
It is particularly galling when people say they would never buy an apple product because of this but will buy a windows PC etc. Microsoft are renowned for producing products which purposely break compatibility and spurn standard.
Do not confuse ubiquitous with open chaps!
jc
The reason macs became popular was that photoshop and other adobe apps were optimized to run on them over windows so the 'creative types' prefered them. I'm no great lover of adobe and flash but if apples holding up 2 fingers to them id just stop making new apps or updates for apple versions of my products. Creative people no longer 'need' to buy there overpriced junk and stock drops until they see scence or go belly up.
Of course that could be why the moved into the executive toy market to balance sales if adobe did do that.
"The reason macs became popular was that photoshop and other adobe apps were optimized to run on them over windows ..."
I strongly doubt Adobe deliberately "optimizes" for any platform over another -- except insofar as they don't bother much with any platform that doesn't seem so important to them. (And that, BTW, is why Flash is so grotty on everything other than Windows.)
In truth they don't do Apple any favours. Apple came up with the Carbon toolkit to persuade vendors like Adobe that wouldn't write for OS X to port old "Mac OS" apps. Adobe still took its own sweet time doing so. It also expected its customers on the Mac platform to run PowerPC apps in an emulation layer on Intel chipsets for a darn good stretch.
Nowadays it always brings out new versions on Windows first. It also dropped Framemaker and Premiere on the Mac. Photoshop was into 64-bit on Windows before the Mac. And Adobe is only now, kicking and screaming, moving to 64-bit and the modern Cocoa frameworks on the Mac.
So that was a false assertion.
As for "why don't Adobe stop writing for OS X?" -- that should be obvious enough. As well ask "Why don't Adobe cut off their nose to spite their face?" It brings in a lot of money. That's why.
"The reason macs became popular was that photoshop and other adobe apps were optimized to run on them over windows"
That stopped a LONG time ago - these days, you get better performance on a Mac by running PS on Windows - in fact when Apple launched Bootcamp, one PC magazine did a grouptest of machines running PS and found the best performance came from a MacBook Pro doing exactly that.
I think you're overestimating that importance of the creative professional to Apple - it's nothing like what it was ten years, for example - and by that token, overestimating Adobe's power.
I think you'll find it was the other way around.
Apple licensed Postscript, that arguably was what boosted Adobe. Adobe then developed several products for the Macs called illustrator then latterly Photoshop.
Odd that Creative people still buy "that overpriced junk" either they are stupid as you suggest or perhaps there is something about Mac's that are good.
I'm using 2 mac's without Photoshop and I'm managing just fine without their "over priced shit" on my machines. Aperture does an excellent job for me tks.
Yes, actually. When Apple contractually locked Adobe into only releasing their products on the Apple platform for a number of years in the beginning, it did seriously affect the uptake of Mac systems. If Adobe had been free to develop their software for both platforms at that point, do you really believe that Macs would have had as much market share as they did over the past 20 years (particularly over the earlier 10 of those)? It's only recently (last 5 years) that Macs have really started to see major upswings (basically, when they moved over to OS X + Intel was the major shift in market).
Also, you're now referencing consumer grade programs which have only been available for perhaps 2 years to professional industry standard applications which have been around for decades.... Well played :S
Adobe have been f*cking up their Apple software releases—never mind their overseas pricing—for *years* already. It took them forever to create a native OS X version of their suite, and they've only just caught up with the 64-bit revolution too. A revolution OS X had over *five effing years ago*. (No, there is no explicit "64-bit version" of OS X, nor will there be: you can mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit apps at will.)
Adobe canned the Mac version of Premiere, removing all Mac support, for some years, only deciding to bring it back with their CS4 suite in the form of the rewritten "Premiere Pro". (And even so, some of their other video production apps remain Windows-only.)
I've been using RapidWeaver, Coda and Pixelmator for years now instead of Adobe software, with a couple of other shareware tools standing in for Illustrator's vector art support. (All together, my entire suite adds up to less than the cost of just *one* Adobe app!)
Adobe's kit isn't *required* for graphic design; it's just popular. Like Flash. And "Pop Idol". There are many alternatives to Adobe's apps today. And—after years of Adobe treating Mac users as third-class citizens—those alternatives are pretty damned good now.
I've looked at CS5's specs. I'd like it. I certainly wouldn't say no if someone offered me CS5 for free. But I sure as hell don't *need* it.
H.264 is an open standard. There are even open source implementations of both encoders and decoders. This does not mean that it is free from patents and therefore licensing costs. However even patents are published so in that sense open.
If you object to paying campaign to change the laws on patents. I would support real change in this area.
Flash also includes H.264 so if you were distributing a client or non free video you may also have to take the very same patent licenses or take the same risks.
This is a common misconception, so please pay attention.
Open Source has become very popular in the last decade. Some governments are very keen on it as it helps them avoid vendor lock-in. Many standards (a previous government wheeze to avoid vender lock-in) like, for example, H.264 have RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) licence fees enforced to avoid abuse of the market power provided by standards. This made sense in the old days of hardware and proprietary software, but these fees are no longer Reasonable when many products are provided for free and in particular they Discriminate against Open Source products.
To label Standards that were complaint with Open Source they came up with a brand: "Open Standard" (see what they did there). Now there's many elements to this brand, just like there is to the definition of Open Source itself, but the basic, fundamental one is "no patent fees".
Have a look at the definitions of Open Standards on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standards). There are 14 definitions given by various governmental and standards bodies. 12 say (basically) "no patent fees". 1, from the IETF, is a historical artefact just someone randomly stringing the words open and standard together over a decade ago. The final remaining one, is a stroppy tantrum from the patent lawyers that work for the creators of the H.264 standard arguing that their standards are "open", a blatant two fingers up to the governments trying to encourage Open Standards and save some taxpayers money.
Don't encourage them. Once again Open Standard = no patent fees.
title says it all - HTML5 et al, will be implemented (even a naff, none standard version for ie elevenity seven - but at least it will be related) on all platforms. Flash is just a PITA and requires downloads, and uses far too much CPU if the problem has no idea what they are doing.
"HTML5 et al, will be implemented (even a naff, none standard version for ie elevenity seven - but at least it will be related) on all platforms."
No, HTML5 etc MAY be implemented on all platforms and it MAY be implemented in the same way on all platforms - but I wouldn't rely on it before say 2014.
Lets start now.
You can build a little Flash app. and, provided you write it to do so it will work on say 80% of PCs and smartphones.
You could also write is in HTML5 with H.264 video and it will work on..well just people with Google Chrome and Apple Safari (6.5% of market according to Wikipedia). It won't work with IE as no HTML5 support till IE9, and who knows how standard it will be and it won't work in Firefox because they only support (the actually open and free) Ogg Vorbis video format.
So, write once in Flash that can (be written to) work across 80% of the market or write 3 times - once in HTML5+v.264 for Apple/Google, once in HTML5+Ogg Vorbis for Firefox and once in Flash for IE+older browsers.
Try selling doing 3x the work you need to to a client...and watch them walk to the next digital agency and who quote less than a third your quote to just build it in Flash.
You've got it right but...
>You can build a little Flash app. and, provided you write it to do so it will work on say 80% of PCs and smartphones.
Only smartphone that won't be supporting it by the end of this year is iPhone - maybe you count iPad as a PC - but otherwise I don't see browsers with plans to drop Flash - so we're still looking at 75% of smartphones and 98% of desktops supporting it. Sure video content is inherently portable, but the massive amount of Flash games, almost all elearning content etc isn't going to get rewritten - that alone guarantees more that a couple of years of future life for Flash even if development ceases.
Only thing that's guaranteed in respect of Flashlack is that iPhone and iPad has a discrete standard for Apps and advertising. Presumably this suits Apple since they are gatekeeper for both - elsewhere and for the bulk of Web content there aren't any compelling reasons for developers/designers to change any time soon
Will be interesting to see how many sites take the 'iPad Ready' route, pretty much all iPad owners will have access to a (mostly Windows) desktop which supports Flash, Java etc so the arguments for developing additional content to avoid excluding users aren't the same as last time Mac browsing was out of sync with Windows - and even then an awful lot, if not most, sites didn't support Macs.
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