Apple Versus Adobe: The “Can’t We Just Get Along?” Argument
May 10th, 2010So tech pundits continue to weigh in on the world war between Apple and Adobe. While some suggest that Flash has long since outlived its usefulness, others either favor Adobe, or want to find some middle ground. When it comes to deciding between the disparate interests of two countries, serious compromise is essential. But when it comes to a corporate conflict that has a simple yes or no answer, the gray area approach is destined to fail.
Infoworld’s Galen Gruman is a typical example of a compromise advocate. Perhaps in the tradition of former President Jimmy Carter, he is advancing “The Infoworld peace plan,” where he first defines the arguments and then suggests the two companies sit down, discuss their concerns, and, in the tradition of all those DAs on TV’s “Law and Order,” make a deal.
The question is, of course, just what is it that these two companies need to talk about? Steve Jobs has already defined the problems with Flash and, unfortunately, Gruman glosses over some of the concerns and fails to address what may be the most serious issue of all.
Yes, Gruman is very upfront about Flash’s well-known stability problems and doesn’t dispute the fact that there are security concerns as well. Unfortunately his credibility begins to sink when he asserts that “Apple has had its share of security issues on the Mac OS,” forgetting that none of those alleged issues have resulted in widespread malware outbreaks. The most serious security issues impacting the Mac are caused by social engineering. You download a bogus file such as a pirated application from a torrent site, launch it, and it performs its mischief.
When it comes to the question of hogging resources, Gruman admits the existence of the problem, but doesn’t really define the “battery power” complaint beyond that single phrase. According to Steve Jobs, battery life on a smartphone is cut in half by Flash. That threatens to be a far more serious issue than just causing the OS to slow down somewhat because of resource hogging.
Gruman’s solution is for Apple to allow Adobe to create an iPhone plugin. Period. The rest of his suggestions are simply logical consequences of the first. However, he ignores the thrust of Jobs’ complaint that “Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?”
If you believe what Jobs says there, and there’s no reason to assume it’s not true, Apple has already delivered their “show me” argument to Adobe without success. If it’s possible to build a Flash player that satisfies all or most of Apple’s concerns, it would be a trivial matter for Adobe to stage a special media event and demonstrate a working product.
So where is it?
If Apple is lying that Flash is the biggest cause of crashes on Mac OS X as Adobe claims, surely they can produce crash logs that reveal the real offender.
So where are those logs?
Adobe’s initial reaction to Apple’s complaint is that it’s all a “smokescreen,” but it appears to me that the smoke is actually spewing forth from Adobe’s side. They have had lots of time to prove that Apple is wrong. Instead they are busy encouraging their media partners to echo their unproven statements, when they’re not crying crocodile tears to the U.S. government.
In the end I expect the authorities will run a routine inquiry and conclude there’s no evidence to pursue the matter any further. I would be very surprised if they chose to investigate why a private corporation that doesn’t hold anything near a dominant position in a market segment should be subject to antitrust action.
Yes, the App Store is dominant, but since it only caters to users of the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, it doesn’t impact any other company. If you’re using an Android-based phone, you go to Google’s own marketplace, assuming you can find anything worthwhile beyond a task killer. Is that Apple’s fault?
Yes, I grant that Adobe might suffer, at least when it comes to control over the way sites are coded. That wouldn’t be so bad if all or most of Flash’s known shortcomings were fixed. Certainly Adobe has the resources to get the job done, but it does seem they are still having problems. Just the other day, there was a published report that so-called “smartbooks,” which are essentially netbooks that use an ARM processor, have been delayed since 2008 because of Adobe’s failure to deliver a satisfactory version of Flash. So I’m not confident that Adobe will do any better for smartphones that, in large part, use the very same processor family.
While I’m sure Gruman’s heart is in the right place, it’s up to Adobe to produce something to demonstrate at a sit-down session. I see little reason to be optimistic that’s going to happen anytime soon, as more and more sites continue to transition away from Flash.
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Adobe could do a simple thing. Acknowledge that Flash needs to be more efficient and touch-friendly for acceptable use in the mobile platform and then shut up.
Apple has a track record of encounters with backstabber.
1) Microsoft co-opted Mac OS
2) Adobe dragged its feet on Mac OS X
3) Google
I have great empathy with Apple to do unto others what they have done unto you.
Galen seems oblivious to the reasons why Apple doesn’t want Flash on their mobile devices despite Jobs laying it out succinctly. How hard headed to you really have to be. Apple also doesn’t want a meta-platform sitting above their development tools. The Apple of 2010 isn’t the Apple of the late 90’s that made every mistake in the book (cloning, overpriced/underperforming hardware, no control over development tools) and that’s why they haven’t bungled the platform like the idiots did back in the late 90’s. Gruman’s “compromise” plea has no merit. Summary Judgment for Apple. Flash …get outta here.
Oh yeah CBS is going HTML5 and Scribd just bailed on Flash. The dam is breaking quicker than even I had imagined it would.
Interesting article. I had a look at the one you referred to. It reminds me of real ‘peace processes’ which usually involves someone giving up. Basically he’s not taking any notice of why Apple doesn’t want Adobe’s stuff on their equipment.
When dealing with small children, sometimes it is best not to tell them why you’ve decided something, as it is just taken as an invitation to argue.
I think most of this fuss Adobe is making is to cover up the fact that they don’t have a product. It seems to be working as well.
No matter what Adobe does, what they are foisting on people is always going to be a runtime/VM type thing. I don’t want those. I bought a machine and an OS. Developers should code for that OS and not demand that I cripple the machine I bought by running another OS on top of it just to save them some time. It’s a ludicrous proposition to anyone except the developers. Cross-platform development tools are similar. They offer no benefit to Apple’s platform and make a sub-standard experience for the end user.
Big Dull companies have seriously retarded progress, not just in Personal Computing but in everything they have touched over the last 50 years. If Apple are going to start some innovation off here, they have to stop the dead weight from hanging on to them, or they won’t get off the ground with it at all.
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“… it’s up to Adobe to produce something to demonstrate….”
Sure. Now that Apple has given a clear public stance, we’ve indeed moved on, and you’re starting to see how every other manufacturer takes advantage of high-performance interfaces with common authoring workflows.
Seems like no problem…?
(That ARM statement was blown out of context for lurid technoblogging pleasure. Every day it’s a new rationale…. 😉
jd/adobe
@John Dowdell, OK, so where’s the iPhone compatible version of Flash — at least a demo? Inquiring minds want to know.
Peace,
Gene
“OK, so where’s the iPhone compatible version of Flash”
?? I think that might be predicated upon the Flash-compatible version of iPhone…. 😉
jd/adobe
@John Dowdell, You can certainly run a demo version on an iPhone even if you have to jailbreak it. As they say in Missouri, show me.
Peace,
Gene
What you say is really true. Some of the portrayal that Adobe and the mainstream tech media reports is as if Apple was interested in preventing Flash from being on i-devices, regardless of how well future versions work. That is obviously (to us, I guess) not the case. If Adobe is able to produce a Flash player that doesn’t hog CPU and doesn’t reduce battery life significantly, then I’m sure Apple will not mind having Flash. But, year after year, Adobe has been unable to deliver. So, instead of waiting for Adobe, Apple has decided to move on with supporting HTML5. Makes sense to me. That would make sense to almost anyone.
What you say is really true. Some of the portrayal that Adobe and the mainstream tech media reports is as if Apple was interested in preventing Flash from being on i-devices, regardless of how well future versions work. That is obviously (to us, I guess) not the case. If Adobe is able to produce a Flash player that doesn’t hog CPU and doesn’t reduce battery life significantly, then I’m sure Apple will not mind having Flash. But, year after year, Adobe has been unable to deliver. So, instead of waiting for Adobe, Apple has decided to move on with supporting HTML5. Makes sense to me. That would make sense to almost anyone.