Apple vs. Adobe War

[miker71]

I believe we are witnessing the bloody battles that will lead to the commoditisation of the HD video codec.

Long term, I think this is good news. History will be written by the victors (Apple).

Short term, I still believe the iTunes ecosystem is an interim solution to "computer in my pocket" which personally I am more in alignment with Google/Android on that.

Right now, my Nexus One is a fine replacement for my battered old iPhone 3G which I eBayed after 14 months of usage and app impulse buys.

It strikes me that Google and Apple are positioning themselves in the market, knowingly or unknowingly:

Google: aimed at adults who exercise responsibility (reinforced by Job's quips about porn stores and such)

Apple: aimed at kids and people who value security over freedom (reinforced by Rubin's quips likening Apple's walled garden to North Korea)

Be interesting to see how this plays out over the next 30 years as kids always want to "be" adults and adults often want the zero-responsibility of being a kid.

We are definitely seeing increased irrelevance of desktop computing outside of specialist interests, and therefore irrelevance of Microsoft - who will have to re-invent themselves as IBM did before them.

History will be written by the victors (Open Handset Alliance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance )

[cmgoodin]

And now Adobe has fired back at this link:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/

Boy, is he pissed.

Other reports on the net indicate that Flash use has been dropping over the past few months. It's only gonna escalate now.

Boy, I remember when Flash was really cool and innovative. Now, I'm just annoyed by pop-up ads that won't go away, especially the ones that move all over the screen. And this is on a Mac, with a browser that's supposed to block pop-ups. You can't block 'em if they're done in a certain way with Flash.

--Marc W.

Be careful of the Cool Aid.  These reports that have popped up on the web concerning Flash's decline and H.264s domination stemming from a single Tech Crunch Chart are quite flawed.

See the flawed chart here:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/05/02/apple-vs-adobe-is-flash-dying/

If you read the fine print in the article you see that this chart is based on one company's business over the last 4 quarters.  That company is a third party encoding company who takes in freelance video encoding for sites that can't handle the volume necessary in to feed their sites.  While I don't doubt  that one company may be doing more H.264 encoding jobs now over the last few months than they did a year ago, you have to look at the reasons for this.  One big reason is Steve Jobs failure to support(now banning of) Flash on the iPhone/ iTourch / iPad and his muscling many big online providers to acquiesce and provide a second (usually subset) tier of their already flash encoded video for iPhone and iPad users.  Of course this creates a need for a lot of new H.264 encoding  to create this second tier of video which is largely a duplicate and subset of all that flash encoded video that YouTube and others already had up and online.  So drawing a conclusion that Flash is rapidly declining and H.264 (or HTML5) is taking over based on this single chart from a single company is completely bogus.

This is precicely how Apple always distorts reality to favor their own business plan.  Remember those Demos by Steve Jobs showing how the Power PC "Blows the Doors Off" the inferior Intel based PCs.  Those were demos stacked with the lots of repetitions of the one or two operations optimized for the Motorola chips (like color space conversion) that the Intel machines had not yet been optimized for.  In reality people who had both types of machines could see the true story in real world usage.  That is why Apple finally had to give up on their highly touted Power PC and move to Intel since they found it hard to keep up even when stacking the demos in their own favor.

Will HTML5 be more popular in the future, sure.  Is it a popular standard now, no.

I personally like my current devices to work with what is available now not necessarily what might be the the standard 2 years from now.  2 years from now I'm sure my phone will be obsolete anyway because of hardware network issues not because of artificial firmware limitations imposed by a control freak company.

----Courtney

[Marc Wielage]

This is precicely how Apple always distorts reality to favor their own business plan.  Remember those Demos by Steve Jobs showing how the Power PC "Blows the Doors Off" the inferior Intel based PCs.

Absolutely. You know I'm a realist about this crap, Courtney. Jobs can be so whacked-out, he very much believes his own Reality Distortion Field a lot of the times.

Still, I spent the afternoon with a web developer/friend of mine today, and we touched on this "Anti-Flash" thing Apple is promoting. My friend went on a rant for about 20 minutes about all the issues that Flash causes him, how difficult it makes updating websites, all the issues it causes with different browsers.

But he did agree with my point that maybe Flash is problematic, but Apple pulls stunts like this because it's good for Apple, not necessarily because it's good for users. Having said that: I think Apple is gonna win this one.

--Marc W.

P.S. I'm still non-plussed by the iPad, but can't wait for the new iPhone.

[RadoStefanov]

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!

[quote author=cmgoodin link=topic=5956.msg46145#msg46145

Will HTML5 be more popular in the future, sure.  Is it a popular standard now, no.

I personally like my current devices to work with what is available now not necessarily what might be the the standard 2 years from now.  2 years from now I'm sure my phone will be obsolete anyway because of hardware network issues not because of artificial firmware limitations imposed by a control freak company.

----Courtney

[RadoStefanov]

The biggest issue I have with Jobs is the notion that blu ray is useless since you can download High Def from Itunes.

I just got Avatar Blu Ray and watched on ps3 and TC-P54V10

http://www2.panasonic.com/consumer-electronics/shop/Televisions/All-VIERA-Flat-Panel-HDTVs/model.TC-P54V10_11002_7000000000000005702

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW

MATCH 40 gb M2ts with a download Jobs.

You know today I put InsomiaX on this chick's macbookpro and she could not believe it!

[RadoStefanov]

Good article

http://www.infoworld.com/t/rich-internet-application-development-tools/stop-bashing-flash-496

[RadoStefanov]

It was only logical.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-04/apple-policy-said-to-prompt-u-s-antitrust-allegation-by-adobe.html

[Jeff Wexler]

Interesting article about anti-trust investigation of Apple

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Defends Apple on Antitrust Issues

Wednesday May 05,

Written by Eric Slivka

In a widely-publicized blog post today, Robert Reich, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, offers his thoughts on the rumored antitrust inquiry being considered by federal regulators over Apple's exclusion of cross-compilers for creation of applications running on its iPhone OS devices. Reich argues that the Federal Trade Commission's efforts targeting Apple could be better spent on investigating Wall Street banks, but federal law excludes the financial industry from the FTC's purview.

Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.

Reich's position is that Apple's move is not anti-competitive, with many other companies rapidly innovating in the sector, and if Apple's decision results in less competition on the iPhone platform, Apple itself will be the one to suffer.

Apple's supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe's Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google's Android phones and RIM's BlackBerrys.

What's wrong with that? Apple says it's necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world's #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn't exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple's decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

While Reich is not the first to make this argument, his public statement comes with the perspective of an academic and political insider who has spent considerable time in the upper reaches of government.

[RadoStefanov]

It sucks when politicians take stands on issues they clearly do not understand.the world should be run by engineers and scientists.

Flash is not just a video codec! It is a multiOS platform. Beats Java and any other platform.

Not to mention there are a lot of problems with html5 and video.

What sucks about flash is that is unusable for google/bing searches.

Here is a very good UNBIASED article.

http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/05/who-needs-flash/

That is way

Interesting article about anti-trust investigation of Apple

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Defends Apple on Antitrust Issues

Wednesday May 05,

Written by Eric Slivka

In a widely-publicized blog post today, Robert Reich, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, offers his thoughts on the rumored antitrust inquiry being considered by federal regulators over Apple's exclusion of cross-compilers for creation of applications running on its iPhone OS devices. Reich argues that the Federal Trade Commission's efforts targeting Apple could be better spent on investigating Wall Street banks, but federal law excludes the financial industry from the FTC's purview.

Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.

Reich's position is that Apple's move is not anti-competitive, with many other companies rapidly innovating in the sector, and if Apple's decision results in less competition on the iPhone platform, Apple itself will be the one to suffer.

Apple's supposed sin was to tell software developers that if they want to make apps for iPhones and iPads they have to use Apple programming tools. No more outside tools (like Adobe's Flash format) that can run on rival devices like Google's Android phones and RIM's BlackBerrys.

What's wrong with that? Apple says it's necessary to maintain quality. If consumers disagree they can buy platforms elsewhere. Apple was the world's #3 smartphone supplier in 2009, with 16.2 percent of worldwide market share. RIM was #2, with 18.8 percent. Google isn't exactly a wallflower. These and other firms are innovating like mad, as are tens of thousands of independent developers. If Apple's decision reduces the number of future apps that can run on its products, Apple will suffer and presumably change its mind.

While Reich is not the first to make this argument, his public statement comes with the perspective of an academic and political insider who has spent considerable time in the upper reaches of government.

[RadoStefanov]

I do not understand the hatred against flash?

It revolutionized WEB and serves us well.

Microsoft have been fighting it. Apple is fighting it now.

Here is the fumiest thing of the whole story:

JOBS AND MICROSOFT ARE ENDORSING GNU ??????????????