3cPlatform

Adobe Vs. Apple: Whose Side Are You On?

Adobe: We Love Apple, But They're Taking Away Freedom< p>

We used to play a game when I was a kid and it was called “BullSpit”. The basis of the card game was if someone was lying about what we in their hand you called “Bullspit!” Adobe I am calling “Bullspit!”

Chris Crum recently published an article on Webpronews.com posing the question Do you think Flash will continue to play an important role moving forward? He quotes the Adobe co-founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock ("Our thoughts on open markets") as saying

“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.”

I won’t presuppose to speak for Apple, and certainly not Steve Jobs (I wouldn’t want that phone call or email, rumor has it, it’s not very pleasant), but I think you guys missed the point. When Apple said that Adobe was LAZY ( and he is right), he wasn’t trying to limit the user, he was trying to advocate for them, and kick Adobe in the seat of the pants like the average consumer never can. Instead of whining and moaning and spending money on ad campaigns to try and not to make some changes – you could as an alternative listen and spend your money fixing the problem.

I am one of those developers that can’t wait for HTML5 to be proliferated enough that we as a company can punt Flash all together. It has nothing to do with me wanting to control the web or my customers and client’s creative streak to have animations and video on their website. From my point of view it is a technology issue.

Flash implements the equivalent of an ActiveX, they call it a plug-in and it gets out of date on the end user’s computer, not the website I am developing, the prospective customer who is visiting the website for the first time. They are the ones that must download something else before they can view the creative, gee whiz, and expensive content we have created for the site. Anyone want to take bets on what the abandonment rate is when that happens?

Flash lives in its own world, and in technology terms it is in a separate session, and it is a bratty four year old that doesn’t play well with the rest of the work we do. We can make some really cool looking animations or stream video but what’s inside the Flash plug-in doesn’t get or receive information easily with the rest of the site.

The underlying scripting language that has tried to become a programming language Action Script is painful to work with. It is more of “we wish we were javascript” but ohh wait we need to be this.. something bright and shiny.. ohh wait we need to be this now. Seriously? Developers need to be able to separate the code from the interface, the code needs to be object oriented and we need a debugger that we can debug and evaluate code, variables, break points etc. I have been a software developer for a little more than 15 years now, and I cringe every time a customer asks for Flash. I work hard to persuade the customer to choose any alternative if it is not going to be a simple animation. Don’t get me wrong, we always get the job done, and we have done some very complex things using Flash and Flex (the Adobe concept of a Flash Application Development tool), but it is a slower, and more difficult process. Imagine what could happen to Flash if it were easier?

For years, earlier in my career, Microsoft trailed as one of my favorite development tool vendors. They made great tools but they weren’t focused on developers. Borland on the other hand was a developer’s tool company at the time, and produced a product called Delphi. It may not have been the number one product on the market but it was definitely at the top of the list, and Microsoft saw it, learned from what they had been doing and bought the guy that was running point. Whether Anders is responsible for the shift in focus for the Visual Studio tools or not, since he moved to Microsoft the change has been undeniable, and I along with many other developer enjoy developing with their tools now. Adobe could learn from what they have done with Visual Studio. Not only have they built tools that really make the development cycle enjoyable for the entire development team, but in the process they have converted a lot of programmers to C# and Visual Basic. I won’t go as far as saying developers drive the market place, but we do have an impact on it, because if we like it, guess what our customers are getting when we have the option?

Of course Adobe we love your Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and many of your other products that don’t involve programming, so I guess if you hired the right guys and changed the developer experience, shore up your QA, and really dig in, and tackle some of the tough problems with Flash you could win us back. You have your work cut out for you, and you better start before HTML5 gets strong enough that it is just a better option.