backtop

Print 59 comment(s) - last by UrbanBard.. on May 9 at 2:31 PM

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch
So long, farewell! Adobe cuts its losses and moves on to other mobile platforms

Well, it looks like it's the end of the road for any hopes of Adobe Flash on Apple's iPhone OS-based devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad). Although Steve Jobs has long since put his foot down regarding the matter, Adobe still held out hope that Jobs would change his mind.

However, those hopes were dashed earlier this month when Apple's iPhone OS 4.0 SDK banned the use of unapproved programming languages (including Adobe Flash). The move by Apple prompted some rather colorful language from Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow.

Steve Jobs poured more salt on the wounds yesterday with an open letter that basically said that Adobe Flash's time has come and gone. "Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs," said Jobs "But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short."

It appears that Adobe has gotten the hint, and is now officially dropping its plans to push Flash Player onto the iPhone OS platform. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch posted a response to Steve Jobs' rant -- Adobe's President and CEO made comments as well -- and still feels that Adobe could provide a "terrific experience" on the iPhone and iPad. However, the writing is on the wall and Lynch says that Adobe is shifting its energies to other mobile platforms.

“We have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR," said Lynch. "We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.”

Lynch also said that there will be a public preview of Flash Player 10.1 for Android devices in May and that a full release will come the following month.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
He'll be Back.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/30/2010 8:49:19 AM , Rating: 1
This is just like when Job's insisted on doing things "his way" with Motorola CPU's instead of Intels or AMD's. Sometimes his vision just doesn't meet reality.

In this case, he'll come crawling back to Adobe once he realizes HTML5 literally cannot deliver the same end user experience or developer environment that Flash can.

Remember how Quicktime was going to "dramatically change" the game?? Yeah how did that work out for you, Stevie?

This is a great move by Adobe, because let's be honest, they don't NEED Apple




RE: He'll be Back.
By Anoxanmore on 4/30/2010 9:57:16 AM , Rating: 2
It did, for about a single year.

I made an awesome quicktime movie back in highschool for a multimedia project using Maya and Bryce.

sighs

Of course that was in Macs had the upperhand in processors.


RE: He'll be Back.
By 67STANG on 4/30/2010 10:50:58 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Of course that was in Macs had the upperhand in processors.
When might that have been?


RE: He'll be Back.
By Anoxanmore on 4/30/2010 11:18:25 AM , Rating: 2
You don't remember the PowerPC days?

G3/G4/G5s

They gave them the edge in video, music, graphic design processing.


RE: He'll be Back.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/30/2010 11:26:44 AM , Rating: 2
You mean those five THOUSAND dollar (without monitor) dual CPU machines that only came ahead in the benchmarks with handpicked software optimized for them? Those??


RE: He'll be Back.
By Anoxanmore on 4/30/2010 11:32:07 AM , Rating: 2
Even the basic one(s) out performed PCs in the use of video/audio processing and usually graphic design.

Hand picked software? You don't remember how they couldn't run most PC software so of course it was going to be optimized for their OS.

Come on relcaimer, even for you that is a stretch.


RE: He'll be Back.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/30/2010 3:17:14 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Come on relcaimer, even for you that is a stretch.


lol and you claiming Apple has ever held a performance crown isn't??


RE: He'll be Back.
By Anoxanmore on 4/30/2010 3:43:40 PM , Rating: 2
No it isn't, Apple did hold the performance crown in video/audio processing and graphic design.

There is a reason Pixar originally used Apples to render their movies *cough*Toy Story*cough*

You are being uber dense. You also need to remember this was prior to AMD Athlon 1800+ and Pentium 4 1.8ghz.


RE: He'll be Back.
By Reclaimer77 on 4/30/2010 5:41:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
No it isn't, Apple did hold the performance crown in video/audio processing and graphic design.


You are being a *little* minimalist in your argument, aren't you? I think if you dug up some benchmarks something would catch your eye.

quote:
There is a reason Pixar originally used Apples to render their movies *cough*Toy Story*cough*


LOL now you are trying to sneak something by me. Sorry, nice try. Steve Jobs BOUGHT Pixar and became their CEO. Gee, I wonder why they picked Mac's to use !!?? Are you kidding me, get the hell out of here.

quote:
You are being uber dense. You also need to remember this was prior to AMD Athlon 1800+ and Pentium 4 1.8ghz.


And you are bringing up ancient history!!!

So basically the premise of your argument is that Mac's were some kind of power machines in two very selective categories in a tiny window in time. And your supporting evidence is that the man who FOUNDED Apple, chose to use Mac's when he became CEO of Pixar. Maybe you should have posted impartial benchmarks instead.

Brilliant man, just brilliant.


RE: He'll be Back.
By sprockkets on 5/1/2010 12:54:25 AM , Rating: 2
If you have ever considered CPU architecture you would know that the PowerPC platform was always superior to x86, from day 1. The only reason why IBM went with Intel was due to their platform being ready sooner.

The fact that all x86 processors today take the x86 CISC code and make it into RISC code confirms PowerPC processors had it right all along.

Today it is only with Intel's billions made in the past that they've cleverly overcome all of x86 deficiencies and surpassed PowerPC with the C2D CPU.

You bring back many memories of my high school days in 1995 when they were using a Blossom workstation computer with dual Pentium processors trying to record video taken on VHS. They had to run it several times to get it to capture video without dropouts. And the saddest part was it was trying to do this all on Win95. Anyone who remembers that OS will find it hard to imagine doing any form of work on it without crashing or needing to reboot multiple times in a day.

Sure, today the whole PowerPC vs. x86 situation is gone, and thus it is between OSX and the current iteration of NT.

quote:
LOL now you are trying to sneak something by me. Sorry, nice try. Steve Jobs BOUGHT Pixar and became their CEO. Gee, I wonder why they picked Mac's to use !!?? Are you kidding me, get the hell out of here.


That doesn't make any sense as Steve Job's computers at the time would have been NeXTStep workstations, not Macs.

quote:
So basically the premise of your argument is that Mac's were some kind of power machines in two very selective categories in a tiny window in time.


It only took Microsoft 10 years to clone the Mac desktop. That isn't a tiny window of time, especially in the computer market.


RE: He'll be Back.
By Anoxanmore on 5/1/2010 4:02:23 AM , Rating: 2
*cough* Read the guy above me Reclaimer and grow up a bit.


RE: He'll be Back.
By luseferous on 5/2/2010 4:12:40 PM , Rating: 2
"There is a reason Pixar originally used Apples to render their movies *cough*Toy Story*cough*"

Sorry but the 'Pc' has always been ahead of the Mac in 3d rendering and design. Software like Maya,3D Max, Softimage, Lightwave... all grew up on the pc and on the whole only got ported over to the Mac much later on. For 2D stuff Mac's have been the choice of the industry but how much cpu power does it take to rotate a bitmap as opposed rotating a complex textured 3d model.

BTW those apple benchmarks claiming the G5 to be the faster than competition I'm pretty sure were proved to be bogus,misleading and were dropped very quickly by Apple.

In a nutshell Mac's have always had the edge in 2d image processing/design due to the software not the hardware.


RE: He'll be Back.
By luseferous on 5/2/2010 4:17:06 PM , Rating: 2
As a side note at least one of the programs I listed above started life on the Amiga which at the time crapped on both Pc and Mac in terms audio/video processing abilities.


RE: He'll be Back.
By beerhound on 5/3/2010 9:40:43 PM , Rating: 2
That would be lightwave, back when it came bundled with the VideoToaster. Those things were so far ahead of other PCs at the time, they were used to render Babylon 5 for the first couple of seasons. Too bad the corporate weasels at Commode-odore were such a bunch of screwups, the engineers actually had a lot going for them.


RE: He'll be Back.
By Drag0nFire on 4/30/2010 4:07:45 PM , Rating: 2
Well they currently have the crown for notebook temps...

Unfortunately temperature != performance...


RE: He'll be Back.
By UrbanBard on 4/30/2010 1:31:35 PM , Rating: 2
Not a chance.

What Steve Jobs is doing is flexing his muscles. Back in 1997, Apple was the weak one; it was close to going out of business. Steve had to obey Adobe and Microsoft. Apple had develop the Carbon API's to move them to Mac OSX.

Apple is in the driver seat now. Both Adobe and Microsoft are in the doldrums. Steve Jobs has decided that the move to HTML 5 is necessary. This will happen in the next year.

All I see Adobe doing is whining and moaning; it has no power or juice. Adobe is acting pathetic; It won't win. Flash has been missing on the iPhone for three years without any effect on sales.

Why should Steve Jobs care what Adobe does? Adobe won't pull its CS5 from the Macintosh desktop; that would cut its own throat.


RE: He'll be Back.
By adiposity on 4/30/2010 1:50:28 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
All I see Adobe doing is whining and moaning; it has no power or juice. Adobe is acting pathetic; It won't win. Flash has been missing on the iPhone for three years without any effect on sales.


There was no competition that had flash. To really see an effect on sales you'd have to have another platform with flash...which is coming.


RE: He'll be Back.
By UrbanBard on 4/30/2010 2:09:10 PM , Rating: 2
That's wonderful; I love competition. It brings out the best for the customers.

If Android with Flash is what the customers want, then great. If not, it will join all the other iPhone killers.

Of course, there is nothing to prevent running Flash as a Web application, just not on the iPhone itself as a plugin.

Meanwhile, the Internet will continue migrating to HTML 5. HTML 5 will improve with time. We will look back at this controversy and laugh, just like we do with all the hubbub over the floppy disk missing on the original iMac.

PS. My iMac only crashes in Safari when I have Flash running -- usually at the end of a Video. I use Click2Flash to avoid all the distracting Flash advertisements. I just hated it before when a video would start running without my permission. The Websites always hid the ads so it was difficult to find. My life is much better without Flash being in control of my user experience.


"You can bet that Sony built a long-term business plan about being successful in Japan and that business plan is crumbling." -- Peter Moore, 24 hours before his Microsoft resignation











botimage
Copyright 2013 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki