back to article Adobe appoints former Reg man as open-source chief mobile lead

Adobe, maker of such renowned proprietary products as Flash Player and Creative Suite, has hired a career open-sourcer to lead mobile marketing. Matt Asay has quietly been appointed Adobe’s vice president of mobile for the firm’s digital marketing business, The Reg has learned. He left his post as vice president of community …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Nice advert for Adobe El Reg.

    Fucking Hell, what is going on here?

    Fucking bundled Ask Toolbar, massive attack surface Adobe crap and you're biggin' it up.

    For shame El Reg, for shame.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Nice advert for Adobe El Reg.

      Calm down, I think we all know El Reg never knowingly passes up the chance to tootle its own horn, or indeed someone else's should the occasion demand, no matter how tenuous the link.

  2. Hans 1
    Mushroom

    Adobe, like Microsoft and Apple ... purveyors of bloat.

    Good luck to Asay ... but what Adobe really needs is to OPTIMIZE its software.

    Oh, and the subscription model only works if you can improve the software every year, which adobe is not very well known for ... same with Office360 and MS, mind ... if you really think you need ms office, you should stick to 2010 until security updates end ...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "the subscription model only works if you can improve the software every year"

      Surely it's the other way round. If you want to keep selling upgrades you have to have upgrades to sell. You can collect a yearly rent for the same old stuff on a subscription model.

  3. Whitter
    Trollface

    The shame. The shame.

    "... help future out new mobile strategies ..."

    On the bright side: anyone win today's jargon Bingo on that?

    1. bill 36

      Re: The shame. The shame.

      I did. Four corners and a line across.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The shame. The shame.

      I doubt anyone would win the bullshit bingo on that phrase, it's just not, erm, I don't know what it is or what it isn't

      .

      I'm stumped trying to think of way of putting my disgust in to words, something my colleagues tell me I'm quite good at.

      My best guess, I reckon it was words drawn out of a hat and that was the least shit combination.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The shame. The shame.

      Damn. I needed "synergy" for a line.

    4. dogged

      Re: The shame. The shame.

      That looks like exactly the type of Steve Bong! bullshit that Matt Asay used to write here.

      Honestly, it was buzzword bingo with every article, opinions gathered from breathless press releases and a level of information-free baseless enthusiasm usually reserved for fat people blogging about Zumba and for televangelists.

      Adobe and Matt Asay deserve each other.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The shame. The shame.

      I didn't have exactly, but I did have "verb any noun" FTW.

  4. Ted Treen
    Pirate

    Yes, but...

    ...if Asay has served out his sentence at El Reg, and is duly penitent for whatever heinous crime saw him incarcerated there, then surely he has earned the right to rejoin normal society...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yes, but...

      He's not rejoined normal society, he's joined Adobe.

      That's his choice and I don't have a problem with it.

      I do have a problem with the tone of the article, I might already have mentioned this.

      The key between 'D' and 'G' on my keyboard seems to have broken so I am unable to complete this post.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yes, but...

        > The key between 'D' and 'G' on my keyboard seems to have broken so I am unable to complete this post.

        Not an emacs user, I see. You'd have been able to reconfigure your way out of any keyboard malfunctions if you were. Down to Morse coding with the SysRq key if need be.

  5. Steve Todd

    Target the platform the paying users are on

    That's why Photoshop et al were provided for OS X/MacOS for so long and not just Windows. There were lots of Mac users who were prepared to pay Adobe money for the product.

    Winging about Android outnumbering iOS devices ignores the absolute number of users on each platform who may be prepared to spend money on Adobe products. There are demonstrably more PAYING users on the iOS platform (many of the Android devices are cheap throwaway things that either won't run their software or the owners wouldn't consider using it), and it takes less work to develop for so it gets preferential treatment.

  6. Turtle

    Maybe...

    "Adobe appoints former Reg man as open-source chief mobile lead"

    Maybe they didn't know.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Flash: misleading statements and overall low journalism standards

    "Flash ran up against Steve Jobs, who declared war on the player"

    False. Flash, and Adobe in general, ran against itself. A few years ago, Flash was the king of the hill, with some banks saying that they were thinking of implementing complete banking apps entirely in Flash. There are still a few web applications out there that are dual headed hydras with some content on the page being provided by Flash and some other delivered via standard HTML.

    But Flash used a closed file format, proprietary video codecs, had miserable performance on anything lower spec than a powerful laptop, had poor browser integration and a host of security vulnerabilities. Add to that the uber-cookie privacy concerns and you have not exactly the hallmarks of a successful technology, no matter how many developers, usability and user interface designers you replace with marketing types.

    (notice the past tense in the previous paragraph. For all intents and purposes, Adobe included, Flash is fortunately dead)

    Neither Jobs nor Apple declared war on the player. In fact, the Flash tooling runs very well on a Mac and the Adobe app portfolio was, and still is, one of the long standing Mac market niches.

    ", barring it from Apple’s devices"

    False. S. Jobs banned Flash from iOS devices only, not from all of Apple's devices.

    The truth is, Apple banned Flash from iOS for a single reason: Flash's bad performance on an iOS device was so bad as to make for a very poor user experience. And judging from Flash performance on Android devices, he was right.

    The Adobe market target is made up of non-technology types. Ones that don't see a problem in storing their content in a paid subscription cloud. Like with Flash, they need a few years and a few reality checks to realize how bad that idea was.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Flash: misleading statements and overall low journalism standards

      For all intents and purposes, Adobe included, Flash is fortunately dead

      Tell that to the Homestuck fans - ibf you dare.

      Indeed, Flash is still widely used for electronic literature, and it was the most popular electronic-literature medium for years, as well as being prominent in related areas such as interactive fiction. It'll be important for archival purposes pretty much forever.

      So no, not "all intents and purposes". Your experience is not universal.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    With a name like Asay...

    I could make a Foghorn Leghorn joke....but I wont.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > Indeed, Flash is still widely used for electronic literature

    May I inquire as to what the hell "electronic literature" may be?

  10. Yorkshen

    Adobe's "killing" of mobile Flash player were THE MOST STUPID THING WHICH ADOBE EVER MADE!

    I strongly believe that Adobe lost a net gain about double of it's current. Aswell they lost probably the bigest part of the advertisement share they could have if their strategy was better.

    I believe that Adobe should review their actions and focus mainly on Flash for Mobiles.

    It is not anymore the "birth of the Android" ages, where a phone with 256 MB of RAM were something like "Cutting edge hardware". Pluss Microsoft is going to bring a clean Windows on the mobile devices, which means that a good union between Adobe and Microsoft , enforced with advertisement sharer trough Flash inside Microsoft products and media presenting can be mutual benefit for Microsoft, Adobe and the users of their products.

    I am really voting for "Flash to rule on the Web media kingdom"!

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