Adobe Open Screen, where the hell is Apple?
I am really excited about the announcement of the new Open Screen project from Adobe, but again there is no sign of Apple.
The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.
So, if the Flash Player is good enough for nearly every other cell phone manufacturer, what is Mr. Jobs problem? Your thoughts?
In a related post, I discussed the iPhone and Pandora.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:16 pm
To ensure that the iPhone remains the best (and most commercially successful) of the mobile device breeds, Apple needs to provide add-ons and features that are best of breed and must-haves (like Flash Player, which iPhone users currently crave). So instead of embracing this open licensing model, Steve Jobs publicly called out Flash Lite last March for being slow - which caused Adobe’s to recently announce development of Flash Lite for the iPhone, developed directly against the (also recently announced) iPhone SDK.
This means Apple will be able to sell FlashLite-for-the-iPhone from its store, and Adobe can get its footprint on the premier mobile device in the world. Apple and Adobe may not like each other from past dealings, but with MSFT and Silverlight (now being deployed to Nokia devices), they need each other at the moment. Adobe needs Flash to be as ubiquitous in the mobile world as it is in the desktop world; and Apple needs to offer the premiere RIA runtime on its premier devices.
To me the more interesting question is, how closely is Apple working with Adobe behind closed doors to optimize FlashLite for the iPhone? Because it’s possible that Apple would rather have Quicktime eventually surpass both Silverlight and Flash as the video delivery platform of choice (insanely optimized for iMac and iPhone performance by Apple developers, of course).
Adobe as a company is facing business relationship challenges on a level it hasn’t encountered before; for the future of Flex, I hope they’re up to the task.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Look at that list, a cavalcade of companies, many of whom went up against Apple and failed. Adobe, thoroughly beaten out of video editing by Final Cut, a bunch of phone makers who’ve been shown up for not having a clue about software or user experience design and some media companies with failed Microsoft & Flash based music & video services.
1. Has a lack of Flash harmed iPhone sales? No, not to any degree that matters. Many people view a lack of Flash as a plus, since almost everything Flash does from a functional standpoint can be done with existing web standards.
2. Will a lack of Java for example harm iPhone sales when “everyone else” has it, or will it harm the marketplace for 3rd party apps? No, noone wants Java, or Flash-based apps, they want native apps, running on their own hardware.
3. Did a lack of WMV / WMV&DRM support harm iPod sales when “everyone else” in the industry was doing it? No.
4. Did a lack of subscription services harm the iPod’s sales when “everyone else” in the industry was doing it? No.
The biggest format in purchased digital music is AAC, an open standards format created by Dolby.
Why? That’s what Apple sells for the iPod.
Apple can quite easily ignore these “all of the industry” initiatives, because *drumroll* noone in a million years will make a serious purchasing decision based solely on it. The user interaction and industrial design of Apple’s products are enough to get them the initial sale. This industry initiative is targeted to the needs / desires of Content producers, and phone manufacturers, in the same way that Microsoft’s music platform was designed to please music companies and online music stores - none of this stuff matters to the end user.
All the “the rest of the industry is doing it, and Apple should too in order to keep up” arguments seem to be desperately trying to ignore the fundamental lesson of Apple’s last few years…
Technology and media platforms succeed by being on Apple’s products, and wither through not being on Apple’s products -not the other way around. People don’t abandon the iTunes store because a network pulls their shows, they abandon the show, or torrent it.
You’re obviously very committed to Adobe products, but the simple fact is that Adobe and their formats don’t have leverage here. In the same way that music labels that refused to allow Apple to sell their music in AAC simply didn’t sell music, this is the fate awaiting Flash-only media in a world of Flash-less iPhones.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Apple is staring at the millions of crash reports they have from Safari, almost all of which implicate the Flash plugin, and laughing, laughing, laughing at Adobe.
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
One additional thing - YouTube - the biggest proponent of Flash based Video. What did they do about the iPhone? Tell apple to implement a Flash plugin so their FLV media would work? No, they redid their back end to offer H264 MPEG-4 encoding.
The Biggest FLV user on the web changed *their* platform to accommodate the iPhone.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I am with Matt and Shazbat on this. Adobe has a small group of great application that it has been trying to srew up for the last five years. Adobe is so focused on MS that it is becoming MS.
Flash is a pig and the only thing worse than Flash is Acrobat. Both of these are bloated and mostly worthless. Young guys I have worked with love Flash and try to use it for everything they can (it is fun for them). They don’t care that it mostly does nothing useful that does not need to be done to begin with.
When I go to sites with heavy Flash I have flash turned of and almost never really miss anything. I just load the site in a fraction of the time and go strait to the content. Adobe wants to build this pig and many of there other bad and bloated products into a “Platform”. Adobe no longer cares about applications, they only care about “Platform” that they can push off on huge corporations for big money. This is that same old MS crap.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
The lack of flash on the iPhone is an annoyance but I don’t miss it. On the Mac it’s a PIG! Anyone who tries to say other wise need only go to a web page and play something while watching the Activity viewer. You will see a HUGE spike in processor activity that you don’t see on a page with QT. Imagine how a Flash video will KILL your iPhone battery with activity like that. If Adobe can get that issue solved, and I’m sure they will, I’m fine with it and I suspect Apple will be too. But for now, it’s just not there.
As for this particular announcement, it reminds me of the old QT announcements of old and the listed players are a who’s who of firms afraid of an Apple (ala Microsoft) lock-in. It should be seen as good business not a slam on Apple or Apple’s offerings. Adobe is smart in that these content providers don’t trust Microsoft, are uneasy with Apple’s dominance, and need something to counter that. No brainer to me to offer support.
It’s just business!
May 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
As we all know, Flash is used for only two purposes:
Flashturbation and Flashvertising.
Take your pick. Neither will improve your web experience.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Wow, these are some excellent responses and I appreciate them all. Let me first say that I a a very happy user of Apple products. I have a MacBook and iPod on my desk now (although I prefer my XM Inno, this can be discussion for a different time).
I guess as a developer I want to be able to reach the iPhone audience and am simply frustrated that this is currently not possible with Flash. Even if Adobe is successful in implementing Flash Lite for the iPhone, it is still a stripped down version that is well behind current Flash technology.
While I also agree that Flash can be bulky and cause issues at times, this is usually related to poor development and not the player itself. Poor development within traditional client server web applications is usually suppressed because the content is only returned a page at a time. This will change as well as more and more poorly written AJAX enhanced web applications are written.
As far as the lack of the Flash player hurting iPhone sales, I can definitely say they have lost at least one sale so far.
Google did reformat their content for the iPhone but this was obviously a business decision and not a choice they would have made otherwise or they would have converted youtube.com to a different format as well.
To truly have a write once deploy anywhere model, I will eventually hope to see the AIR runtime on all devises and this would certainly include the iPhone so I hope that this will all work itself out.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
One sparrow don’t make a summer, one missed sale in millions is but a very tiny drop in the ocean. Do we need Flash? the answer is no, it is annoying and extremely irritating, and to those sites for not using Flash a big thank you.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I am amazed you think AIR will ever be on the iPhone.
If there is to be no Flash Player, why on earth have AIR? Its about 5 times bigger, includes a flash player and another port of a browser thats already on the phone.
In fact I would be very surprised if AIR ever makes it onto even other mobile devices in a big way.
As for the future of RIA, I cannot see Adobe changing anything. It appears only niche sites adopting pure Flash/Flex over HTML/AJAX.
The fact Adobe keeps their runtime’s closed source IMHO hinders large scale takeup.
If Adobe open sourced Flash Player and AIR runtimes and focused on creating and selling products that output swf’s/air files, perhaps only then would we see such a seismic shift.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
What matt said.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
AIR on devises is certainly in the future according to Adobe’s plans and even noted in today’s press release.
“In the future, Adobe AIR is expected to remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and devices, including phones, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes.”
Whether this will happen or not is anyone’s guess at this point but it is in their plans.
As far as adoption for full Flash based sites. There are many big name sites that have taken this approach. I was recently on Nike’s site looking for new running shoes found and they have gone to a full flash interface. And coincidently right before your comment I was checking to see if Taquitos were still on the menu at Taco Bell and noticed that their site is all flash as well. I wouldn’t say these are niche sites.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Apple is not going along with Adobe’s plans for trying to take over multimedia. Flash and AIR are trying to challenge QuickTime and Apple’s commitment to open standards - AAC audio, Mpeg4 video - both of which were designed for multi-platform (small to large). Just as Apple has fought Microsoft’s attempts with WMA/WMV (and now Silverlight), they won’t extend support for Adobe’s Flash and AIR. (Apple embedded basic support for Flash into the OS, Browser, QuickTime previously, but with Adobe’s grand plans to try to take over multimedia formats, Apple now backs away. Apple & Adobe used to be great partners, but Adobe is now solely a competitor.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
“There are many big name sites that have taken this approach.”
Only for rich portions of their sites. Hardly the greater picture. Thats why I say niche.
At the end of the day, all these sites have to and must supply content that can be rendered on as many browsers and devices as possible. Flash player and AIR are closed source and this hinders up take.
For exactly the same reasons why companies like Apple dont /need/ flash player and AIR. As Matt has pointed out r.e. youtube.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
why doesnt apple (or google) want flash shiite on their mobiles? …
simple; cuz Flash has a slow (codec) and buggy (scripting)
bigger picture is that flash is not an organic part of the internet (it is not a w3c standard) so flash content is not indexable or searchable — it is private not public.
that is bad for the web.
apple & google are committed to open standards for the web.
it is noteworthy that flash is being obsoleted in the long run by standards based technologies like SVG & html5 (not to mention ccs/xhtml2).
so it is better for apple & google to make a clean break with a junky, legacy platform (Flash et al) so that proper standards for mobiles become the de facto user experience.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 am
zahadum apparently is the only one of you all who didn’t miss the *other* significant omission here. Namely, Google. What’s really going on here is that now we have an openly positioned three way battle for domination of the mobile experience:
1. Apple: OS X + Cocoa Touch + WebKit (HTML 5, CSS 3, SVG, SMIL)
2. Google: Linux + Java + WebKit (ditto)
3. Adobe + a bunch of losers: + Flash, er, sorry, “OpenScreen”
Pick your side, people! In case you wonder whom I’m betting my career on, just take a look:
http://www.alexcurylo.com/blog/
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:35 am
“To truly have a write once deploy anywhere model, I will eventually hope to see the AIR runtime on all devises and this would certainly include the iPhone so I hope that this will all work itself out.”
See, the problem with this whole AIR thing is that it’s an answer to a question that noone asked.
The iPhone has created the market for apps solely through its own basic strength as a product. The DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS mantra of Ballmer was necessary for Windows, because Windows in all its guises is a fundamentally mediocre product, so bending over backwards for developers is necessary, cause noone will buy Windows for Windows itself (see Vista’s sales failure).
Write once run everywhere is a gimmick that only matters to developers. For an end user, this gimmick actually translates to “all the weaknesses of every platform, and none of their strengths”. Or, as Homer Simpson put it, “The loyalty of a cat, and the cleanliness of a dog”.
I don’t want run-anywhere applications. I want lean optimised apps that look and feel like they’re just an extension of the system itself. Look at the apps on a modern mac, and the ones that offer the poorest user experience are IMHO the Adobe CS suite, the old Macromedia suite (aside from Director), MS Office, and Firefox. It’s not surprising given that these are all apps by companies that believe their products constitute a platform in of themselves, and are produced in as platform neutral / cross-platform a way as possible (to ease development costs). Well that’s not what users want, especially on a consumer device like a phone.
Cocoa Touch is going to be such a massively successful platform, that noone with an iPhone is going to want your flash based apps, and, no disrespect intended, but you must have your head in the sand not to see that. Take a look at Apple’s dashboard widgets site, the staggering number of available widgets - that’s what the market for native iPhone apps is going to be like, only much, much bigger. For any task you can imagine, you can bet in short order there’ll be half a dozen apps at least, that have all the necessary functionality, full native speed, full native UI, and won’t require the overhead of loading an entire additional runtime environment just to function.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:08 am
As someone who’s day job involves Java and Flex development, but who started programming on a 1k machine, I can understand entirely why Apple don’t want developers using Java or ActionScript for iPhone development - and indeed looking at the performance of many AIR and Flash apps on my desktop, I would not want to use them on a battery powered machines.
But even the best mobile CPU are way behind the power of desktop machines.
I’d LIKE Flash on the iPhone/iPod Touch, to have full real web access, but I sure as hell don’t want people mistaking it for a tool to write applications. What makes that device slick is that you have good native applications running a system where the company that built it has been able to tune the operating system and SDK to perform as best it can. Not building games on top of an SDK from another third party that abstracts you from the underlying machine.
And yes, write once, run anywhere is something that developers want - to save them money / expand their audience - but as a consumer I would prefer native, fast, use OS specific features to the max, etc.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am
@matt: Actually, I disagree with you about AIR. I think it may be, indeed, the final answer to the question people have been asking seriously at least since Windows 3.1 came out: namely, “How do I deploy an application that looks the same on Mac and Windows?” and these days, maybe add “and Linux and the Web?” to that.
See, AIR doesn’t require Flash, you can deploy any WebKit-savvy site with it. Once it’s got a version of WebKit that fully supports SVG, SMIL, and HTML 5’s SQLite, I figure you’ve got a tool that can build a very large proportion of currently native applications, and do it not only cross-platform but using a UI layout engine that doesn’t require a programmer or even a compile cycle to produce.
Certainly, as a close second to focusing on learning native iPhone APIs, I am also intending to get up to speed on all the bleeding edge WebKit technologies, since those can be deployed not only in Safari on the iPhone/Mac/Windows, but also on whatever Google calls their WebKit-based components in Android, and as a native application anywhere AIR runs to boot. That’s pretty damn cool. WebKit FTW!
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
An entire site w/ blog focusing on Flex and most everything else Adobe, there sure are a bunch of non- Flex/Adobe “lurkers” on here who decide to pipe up about iPhone and negativity toward Adobe. Are you all so pissed off that you got ripped off by purchasing the very first iPhone that you have to bash anything not pro Apple? Do the research prior to purchasing “the latest and greates”. Apple didn’t get another sale of the iPhone as it doesn’t fit my needs. Medical and Pharmaceutical are doing more and more with smaller wireless devices as to keep everything centralized for patients. Besides the oil business, what is the biggest $$ and need of RIA? Medical. Fast data transfer on a small device for real time data with more than two concurrent connections (leaves out AJAX), life and death decisions are easier made due to this technology and for Apple to possibly loose out on this type of innovation and large spending, leaves the door wide open for the others to move in and pick it up. Everyone eventually needs to go to the DR.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 pm
@GMurnock:
“a bunch of non-Flex/Adobe “lurkers” on here who decide to pipe up about iPhone and negativity toward Adobe”
Well, if you’re talking about me here, let me apprise you that I’m not completely inexperienced with Flex. For an example of a Flex application I’ve architected, see here:
http://www.videoclix.tv/
I’d say that comfortably extracts me from the “non-Flex” category, wouldn’t you? Nope, my iPhone boosting and Flash bashing is on the basis of direct substantial experience with both, thank you very much!
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
“An entire site w/ blog focusing on Flex and most everything else Adobe, there sure are a bunch of non- Flex/Adobe “lurkers” on here who decide to pipe up about iPhone and negativity toward Adobe.”
It’s probably more due to Rich getting a link at macsurfer.com yesterday… here’s a cache:
http://tinyurl.com/3ocs85
(As for “Where’s Apple?” it’s “Who knows?”… they don’t have much outreach, but have a high secrecy level. They’ll announce whatever they’ll announce, whenever they announce it.)
jd/adobe
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
@ John, thanks for the link to the future. If AT&T drops the price of the iPhone and the disk size bigger, I will purchase one.
@ Alex - nice site so far! You are not in the list of “Lurkers”
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Not that I believe it but it is pretty ironic that this reemerged today:
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/05/02/would-apple-buy-adobe-i-doubt-it
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
@ GMurnock
“a bunch of non-Flex/Adobe “lurkers” on here who decide to pipe up about iPhone and negativity toward Adobe”
Quite the contrary, I think we all are, or have been, flex/flash developers and so keep an eye on Adobe’s goings on.
I dont even own an iPhone (prefer the N95), but the discussion is still relevant.
Open Screen (sic) is perhaps the most sensible Adobe move in a ages. But, and its a big but, I just dont think it goes far enough. They just wont get wide adoption of closed runtimes. I think in the end Adobe will realise this and fully open the fp and air runtimes, and only then will they see the massive adoption they crave.
They are on the right track by opening up the formats, but they need to do the same with the runtimes.
I cant see the benefit of offering free (compiled) runtimes and not open sourcing. Odd. Before I understood, they made mobile operators PAY to have the runtime.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Why single out Apple? Where’s Microsoft? Where’s Google? Answer: If you can write your own Flash substitute without compromising your user’s experience, you don’t really care for Adobe.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 am
I singled out Apple because they are a mobile hardware manufacturer and this is not true of Microsoft or Google. Every other mobile manufacturer is on board (Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, et).
May 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Who cares about Apple or their sheep fanboys say one way or another, for the vast majority of people flash enriches their web experience, brings an extra level of expression and artistry to the web that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
I’m sick of flash hater whingers, standards fascists and plain joyless curmudgeons who believe their bile and spite should dictate and restrict the masses freedom to use whatever technology they like. The masses choose flash, so get over it already.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:36 am
@Anderson:
Actually, with CSS transforms/gradients, SVG, and SMIL, not only is “an extra level of expression and artistry” possible otherwise, it’s quicker, cleaner, smaller, better, and standards-compliant to boot. WebKit FTW!
May 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am
[…] This is a folllow up to last weeks post on Open Screen and the lack of interest from Apple. […]