Adobe’s Open Letter To Apple

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Adobe’s founders have posted an open letter to Apple titled “Our thoughts on open markets” today. In addition to the letter, Adobe has also started an ad campaign today that takes Apple to task for shunning Flash.

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time. In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody — and everybody, but certainly not a single company.
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This Apple vs Adobe (AvsA) thing makes me ponder a certain question if things got bad.

Who would it hurt more?

Apple losing Adobe's entire software line/support or Apple cutting off Adobe from developing on the Mac?


Maybe I just want to see blood....
 
martinmsj said:
Who would it hurt more?

Apple losing Adobe's entire software line/support or Apple cutting off Adobe from developing on the Mac?
.
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I would say Apple would feel the brunt more. Macs, while nice, still do not account for anywhere near a majority of computers sold or built worldwide. If Apple were to stop Adobe from developing for the Mac, the 90% of PC users would not see much of a hiccup. I know many Macphiles who use CS on a regular basis that splurge on the latest edition of whatever Adobe releases; being cut off from Adobe might cause them to look towards a PC platform instead.

The argument reminds me quite a bit of the arguments over the definition of freedom that seem to regularly occur between the US and Chine. Whose definition of freedom is the right one - Chinese/Apple freedom from choice, or American/Adobe freedom of choice? I prefer the latter.

I should also not attempt to post while hopped up on Benadryl. Thank goodness for FF spellcheck.
 
If Flash used fewer resources, this wouldn't be an issue. Well, at least Apple would lose its best argument against adopting Flash. In any event, Adobe's resources would be better spent on a lighter-weight Flash than a PR campaign.
 
Apple has always done what it wants regardless. This is typical, the normal, not the abnormal or atypical. I read Adobe's letter. Actions speak louder than words, and even if "flash" takes up resources compared to other formats it IS open. There are open source flash players. Do those use the same amount of resources I wonder compared to apple's flash player, hrm. Same for PDF. Adobe has done the right things with their format that a lot of other companies can't say.

Apple has always controlled everything and dictated what you can and cannot do. They will lose the battle, no way they will win, and flash apps will hurt their app store. Wah.
 
Adobe's business philosophy is based on a premise that, in an open market, the best products will win in the end — and the best way to compete is to create the best technology and innovate faster than your competitors.
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Well, then maybe you should start doing that, Adobe. You haven't "won" by out-innovating. Flash gained a significant install base foothold before you bought Macromedia and you've done the absolute bare minimum to keep Flash relevant. For the most part, you've been riding on the coattails of Macromedia's successes and allowing for your own technologies to fall by the wayside in terms of technological advancement. Then, when a company has the audacity to come along and say "no thanks", you bitch about it. (And then they bitch, and then you bitch back, and so on and so forth ad nauseum).

Apple may be thinking more about their bottom line than about their customers' interests, but you're doing no differently. It's not about an "open web" but about an "Adobe web", with web content produced and played back with Adobe products. And, frankly, I'm not interested in the "Adobe web" any longer — you can keep it.
 
"What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web." - Adobe

... and what you experience on the web ....

Anyone else here remember the web in the early 2000's? All the flash animations MARCHING across the page, covering up the article you wanted to read? The stupid auto-playing advertisements with sound? The fact that the controls Adobe gave the USER of the flash content were so lame and restricted, that people actually created and crafted Flash Blockers?

I call bullshit on Adobe. They're just pissed that they can no longer ram their content down our collective throats. Flash sucks. Period. The web/internet is an ever-changing medium.

Adapt or die. (And I sincerely hope Flash dies.)
 
From a technical standpoint, Apple is right. Flash is bloated, a resource hog... People don't want plugins in their browsers. That goes for Silverlight, too. I hate Flash with a passion, can't stand having to use it. However, places like YouTube do implement it quite well.

From a customer standpoint, Apple won't win. Like the above poster said, losing out on the 1% market share or whatever Apple has globally, won't hurt Adobe much. I also think the number of people that use Adobe products (Photoshop, etc) like using them on a Mac more. If Adobe were to drop Mac support, they'd kill Apple's Mac sales.
Apple is too smug to realize that side of it, though.
 
ProphetSix said:
Anyone else here remember the web in the early 2000's? All the flash animations MARCHING across the page, covering up the article you wanted to read? The stupid auto-playing advertisements with sound? The fact that the controls Adobe gave the USER of the flash content were so lame and restricted, that people actually created and crafted Flash Blockers?
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That still happens today.
While flash intro pages have finally seemed to have died (thankfully), the popup flash ads and whatnot are just as bad as what they've always been.

Flash allows webpages to do crap I can't control (like I can block popups since they're HTML... Flash popups can't be blocked).


I agree, I wish Flash would die. Like I said, from a technical standpoint, Apple is right.

But from a customer base point, if Apple pisses Adobe off too bad, I think Adobe is a reason Apple sells so many Macs. But with Apple seemingly losing interest in the Mac lineup, maybe they don't care so much anymore.
 
Adobe still hasn't released a version of Flash that works on a 64bit system...in the year 2010...As much as Apple is irritating, using Adobe's software is like knowingly bending over to pick up the soap.
 
AshleyG said:
I would say Apple would feel the brunt more. Macs, while nice, still do not account for anywhere near a majority of computers sold or built worldwide. If Apple were to stop Adobe from developing for the Mac, the 90% of PC users would not see much of a hiccup. I know many Macphiles who use CS on a regular basis that splurge on the latest edition of whatever Adobe releases; being cut off from Adobe might cause them to look towards a PC platform instead.

The argument reminds me quite a bit of the arguments over the definition of freedom that seem to regularly occur between the US and Chine. Whose definition of freedom is the right one - Chinese/Apple freedom from choice, or American/Adobe freedom of choice? I prefer the latter.

I should also not attempt to post while hopped up on Benadryl. Thank goodness for FF spellcheck.
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I disagree. Adobe would definitely be hurt more because over 50% of their design software are sold to Apple users.

Apple can easily survive without Adobe due to other design software sources and it's ability to be a Windows computer. Their many devices such as the iPhone and iPad is also a good indication that Apple does just fine without Adobe's help.
 
etihtsarom said:
Adobe still hasn't released a version of Flash that works on a 64bit system...in the year 2010...As much as Apple is irritating, using Adobe's software is like knowingly bending over to pick up the soap.
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Even Microsoft is finally releasing Office 2010 with a x64 version. And most everyone thought that was long overdue.
 
Azhar said:
I disagree. Adobe would definitely be hurt more because over 50% of their design software are sold to Apple users.
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No, they wouldn't.

That argument would only hold true if there were alternatives to CS5 that Mac users could switch to... There's not really a viable alternative to Photoshop, or really the CS in total.
Therefore, the people that rely upon those apps, will stick with the systems that support them. That would then become Windows.
Apple would be the one hurt here, not Adobe.
 
AshleyG said:
I would say Apple would feel the brunt more. Macs, while nice, still do not account for anywhere near a majority of computers sold or built worldwide. If Apple were to stop Adobe from developing for the Mac, the 90% of PC users would not see much of a hiccup. I know many Macphiles who use CS on a regular basis that splurge on the latest edition of whatever Adobe releases; being cut off from Adobe might cause them to look towards a PC platform instead.
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On the contrary, most of Apple's most recently successful products (iPod, iPhone, and now iPad) do not rely on Adobe tech and would be unaffected.

If Adobe pulls highly successful products like CS from Mac they would arguably lose most of their install base. If the Mac dies from it, Apple still has everything else. If Mac users find alternatives, creative types on all platforms would eventually use them.

Adobe needs this campaign to succeed. It won't. We're stuck with Flash for now, but HTML 5 is coming...

[Scooped by Azhar, as usual. :)]
 
etihtsarom said:
Adobe still hasn't released a version of Flash that works on a 64bit system...in the year 2010...As much as Apple is irritating, using Adobe's software is like knowingly bending over to pick up the soap.
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I've been going without it for a couple weeks now. I haven't missed out on that much, actually.

You become pretty reliant on Vimeo seeing as how YouTube's HTML5 player completely sucks testicles (Vimeo's is really solid), but it's really not that big a deal. There are ways to access YouTube content without Flash or HTML5 anyway. And I've never felt more secure when surfing than I feel with Flash disabled.
 
TexUs said:
No, they wouldn't.

That argument would only hold true if there were alternatives to CS5 that Mac users could switch to... There's not really a viable alternative to Photoshop, or really the CS in total.
Therefore, the people that rely upon those apps, will stick with the systems that support them. That would then become Windows.
Apple would be the one hurt here, not Adobe.
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There are alternatives. The question is whether they are good enough for hardcore users to stay with Mac or to jump ship. I expect that people in specialized disciplines (like animation) would stick with OS X because they prefer the platform for other software they use daily (like RenderMan) even though there might be PC versions.
 
TexUs said:
No, they wouldn't.

That argument would only hold true if there were alternatives to CS5 that Mac users could switch to... There's not really a viable alternative to Photoshop, or really the CS in total.
Therefore, the people that rely upon those apps, will stick with the systems that support them. That would then become Windows.
Apple would be the one hurt here, not Adobe.
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http://www.pixelmator.com/
http://seashore.sourceforge.net//
http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/
http://www.gimpshop.com/

There's a lot of alternatives and those above are more geared towards the average users who also uses Photoshop, to say nothing of professional grade software out there for professionals.
 
Azhar said:
Apple can easily survive without Adobe due to other design software sources and it's ability to be a Windows computer.
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Also for its ability to be an OS X machine that runs Windows software within OS X, with the right tools. You lose some performance, naturally, and every now and then there'll be something that doesn't quite work as expected, but it's a totally functional and reasonable way to work.

I've never really needed to do it myself, but if I had to, there are certainly ways to do it.
 
Azhar said:
http://www.pixelmator.com/
http://seashore.sourceforge.net//
http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/
http://www.gimpshop.com/

There's a lot of alternatives and those above are more geared towards the average users who also uses Photoshop, to say nothing of professional grade software out there for professionals.
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None of those are REAL alternatives.
That's like saying Open Office is an alternative for Office 2010... For your tinkering-around users, sure. For the folks that actually work with it and use it heavily? No.

phide said:
Also for its ability to be an OS X machine that runs Windows software within OS X, with the right tools. You lose some performance, naturally, and every now and then there'll be something that doesn't quite work as expected, but it's a totally functional and reasonable way to work.
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I sure wouldn't want to run Photoshop like that.
 
I don't give a damn whether Flash runs good or not. I don't want some bitch like Steve Jobs deciding what I can and can't run on my computer. If he wants to have a little hissy fit he can do it on his personal time or get the fuck out of Apple.
 
TexUs said:
None of those are REAL alternatives. That's like saying Open Office is an alternative for Office 2010... For your tinkering-around users, sure. For the folks that actually work with it and use it heavily? No.
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We use OpenOffice exclusively here. It's slow and riddled with annoyances, but free and at least pretty workable, though we aren't exactly hardcore document authors. The alternatives are sometimes quite feasible. GIMPshop, for instance, is pretty decent and would probably work well enough for my needs.

TexUs said:
I sure wouldn't want to run Photoshop like that.
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http://www.designtalkboard.com/reviews/virtual_photoshop.php
It is easy to forget that designers used to run Photoshop on far slower computers than the virtual ones simulated in these tests. Both Parallels and VMware ran our performance tests at perfectly usable speeds, if simply using Adobe Photoshop to create web graphics. The speeds might even be acceptable for occasional use with high resolution graphics files. We suspect that this would unlikely to have been the case with Virtual PC on a PowerPC enabled Mac.
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This was on a MacBook Pro with a mobile C2D at 2.33 GHz, according to the article. I'd expect the experience on i5 and i7 machines to be at least marginally better.
 
etihtsarom said:
Adobe still hasn't released a version of Flash that works on a 64bit system...in the year 2010...As much as Apple is irritating, using Adobe's software is like knowingly bending over to pick up the soap.
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Sure they have, there's a Linux amd64 release on adobe labs. And people say Linux isn't useful on the desktop! ;)
 
Why are we even discussing the random thought of Adobe pulling the Creative Suite from Mac OSX? It won't happen. Apple does NOT control what ends up running on it.

This whole thing is about Flash on the iPhone/iPad OS, which Apple does control.
 
^ Conversely, Apple won't prevent Adobe from creating software for Mac OSX.
 
Monkey God said:
Flash sucks and the sooner it dies the better.
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Steve is that you? LOL....anyways Flash doesn't suck it's just an excuse to the Apple Fanboys why their Macs crash. I am not saying Flash doesn't have its problems, but Steve Jobs is arrogant in this and I hope in 1-2 years Macs still crash. Who will he blame next? I do think Flash has to develop the software for the mobile market better, such as adapting touch screen capabilities (although I don't know what CS5 has to offer).
 
It seems like just yesterday I was commenting about how much of a douche Jobs is...

Oh wait, it WAS yesterday.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035705701&postcount=11

Foxconn employees committing suicide, journalists getting their door kicked in by the cops without a supoena, explicitly forbidding extremely pervasive software (flash) from running on their devices.

Its been a long time since Jobs was the young hippy embracing free thinking and sticking it to the man. These days he is more akin to an iron fisted corporate juggernaut.
 
rflcptr said:
^ Conversely, Apple won't prevent Adobe from creating software for Mac OSX.
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Do you really put that below them?

They prevented Google Voice from doing it until the Feds actually stepped up and started investigating it... I think Apple learned Google was one force that wouldn't be screwed around with.


Granted, that's the iPhone. But you know they'd love to do the same with the Mac. Maybe this is why they've turned so much attention to the iPod lineup, because they DO control that... Apple master plan? Release iCompute (new name for Mac), uses app store for control, and slowly phase the (more open) Mac out. IMO


Pepster64 said:
Steve is that you? LOL....anyways Flash doesn't suck it's just an excuse to the Apple Fanboys why their Macs crash. I am not saying Flash doesn't have its problems, but Steve Jobs is arrogant in this and I hope in 1-2 years Macs still crash. Who will he blame next? I do think Flash has to develop the software for the mobile market better, such as adapting touch screen capabilities (although I don't know what CS5 has to offer).
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Flash will die with HTML5... That's all there is to it. It's welcome to me. It means no plugins needed. But until that day (which might be a couple years out before mass integration), the whole Flash thing is here to stay.
 
For those of you who can live without Flash, how do you stream video from Hulu or Youtube, without resorting to Linux? I'd love to know.
 
TexUs said:
Do you really put that below them?
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Yes.
They prevented Google Voice from doing it until the Feds actually stepped up and started investigating it... I think Apple learned Google was one force that wouldn't be screwed around with.
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Hmm, no, that would be the iPhone.
But you know they'd love to do the same with the Mac. Maybe this is why they've turned so much attention to the iPod lineup, because they DO control that... Apple master plan? Release iCompute (new name for Mac), uses app store for control, and slowly phase the (more open) Mac out. IMO
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Incoherent rambling like yours just can't be taken seriously. :D
 
phide said:
We use OpenOffice exclusively here. It's slow and riddled with annoyances, but free and at least pretty workable, though we aren't exactly hardcore document authors. The alternatives are sometimes quite feasible. GIMPshop, for instance, is pretty decent and would probably work well enough for my needs.
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We tried using OpenOffice here and were originally quite enthusiastic about it's performance in the enterprise environment.

Simply put its not ready to be a replacement for office. Office still reigns supreme in terms of usability and compatibility. we had to shell out and are now volume licensed, way less problems.

not that this is completely apples to apples with adobe..but ms has their shit together.
 
etihtsarom said:
For those of you who can live without Flash, how do you stream video from Hulu or Youtube, without resorting to Linux? I'd love to know.
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I don't watch Hulu, so I wouldn't know. As for YouTube, some videos can be played with the HTML5 player. If not, then you can use something like Miro (which is pretty slick on OS X, actually) to download the video and then play it.

Frankly, Vimeo is so much better than YouTube in every conceivable way that I genuinely don't understand why anyone would upload videos to YouTube exclusively anymore. Their HTML5 player is a little rough, but nowhere near YouTube's.

Living without Flash takes some adjustment. It makes simple things complicated. But, as of this moment's, I'd say it's totally doable.
 
phide said:
Well, then maybe you should start doing that, Adobe. You haven't "won" by out-innovating. Flash gained a significant install base foothold before you bought Macromedia and you've done the absolute bare minimum to keep Flash relevant. For the most part, you've been riding on the coattails of Macromedia's successes and allowing for your own technologies to fall by the wayside in terms of technological advancement. Then, when a company has the audacity to come along and say "no thanks", you bitch about it. (And then they bitch, and then you bitch back, and so on and so forth ad nauseum).

Apple may be thinking more about their bottom line than about their customers' interests, but you're doing no differently. It's not about an "open web" but about an "Adobe web", with web content produced and played back with Adobe products. And, frankly, I'm not interested in the "Adobe web" any longer — you can keep it.
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I agree - hell the PDF software has gotten bloated and slow.... always trying to "update" my software every damn week..... hell it's a PDF viewer what the hell needs updading every week on a PDF viewer ???
 
Unit44 said:
I agree - hell the PDF software has gotten bloated and slow.... always trying to "update" my software every damn week..... hell it's a PDF viewer what the hell needs updading every week on a PDF viewer ???
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Because every week they find a new super critical security flaw....
 
As for the open letter, I'm confused about the guy's definition of open software. It seems to me he's confusing open market (capitalism) to open source. Freedom to create and publish is not the same as open source.

As for this remark:

We publish the specifications for Flash — meaning anyone can make their own Flash player
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Player? Well gee whiz, genius, of course you'd let us make players (read: web browser for the most part) to publish your proprietary software. It's almost as if you're implying that people invent web codes and don't want web browser makers to implement them. Open Source would be to go much further than just make players.

Players indeed.
 
phide said:
I don't watch Hulu, so I wouldn't know. As for YouTube, some videos can be played with the HTML5 player. If not, then you can use something like Miro (which is pretty slick on OS X, actually) to download the video and then play it.

Frankly, Vimeo is so much better than YouTube in every conceivable way that I genuinely don't understand why anyone would upload videos to YouTube exclusively anymore. Their HTML5 player is a little rough, but nowhere near YouTube's.

Living without Flash takes some adjustment. It makes simple things complicated. But, as of this moment's, I'd say it's totally doable.
Click to expand...

And people become vegetarians..
 
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