Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab

Was Steve Jobs trying to send an unofficial message to Adobe Systems? Something on the order of "get it in gear, guys, if you want to stay on my VIP list"?

As my colleague Tom Krazit reported Tuesday afternoon, Jobs used the Apple shareholders' meeting to publicly dismiss the the full-blown PC Flash version as "too slow to be useful" on the iPhone. He then went on to describe the mobile version--Flash Lite--as "not capable of being used with the Web."

That's an unusual--albeit refreshingly frank--way to talk in public about a business partner. Give Jobs credit for speaking his mind, although I very much doubt Adobe appreciated his candor.

I tried to get a comment from Adobe, which has worked closely with Apple over the years. Will Flash be supported on the iPhone or not? Here's the official non-response, response to my query:

""Flash and Flash Lite are a huge success. All major handset manufacturers worldwide license Flash today delivering a broad range of mobile devices ranging from feature phones to smartphones and consumer electronic devices. With more than 450 million Flash-enabled mobile devices shipped worldwide and 150 percent year-over-year growth we are on track to see 1 billion Flash enabled devices by 2010. Consumers demand a rich Web experience on any device and platform and Flash delivers just that. We look forward to our continued relationship with industry leaders to deliver engaging experiences to consumers worldwide."

Thin gruel. Hopefully, I can get a fuller answer later on.

[lmasanti]

Long ago... it seems...

quote:
"...Adobe, which has worked closely with Apple over the years."

Adobe was "almost" born (at least "to success") by the support of Steve Jobs for PostScript in 1984.
But in last decade, Adobe almost abandoned Apple: Intel versions took more than a year!
So, like old anecdotes as "Macs are pricey" do not continue spreading the voice that "Adobe works closed to Apple".

[FrankForum]

Adobe almost abandoned Apple? I guess MS almost abandoned Apple too then. Just because they did not release their apps when the first Intel Macs were shipped does not mean they considered abandoning Apple. So don't go spreading the voice that Adobe almost abandoned Apple.

[cagerattler]

Adobe born from Postscript? Not so. Adobe was born from Picture Maker (or something close to that name) which eventually evolved into Photoshop.

Apple grew tired of 'heavy and slow' applications on the Mac and knew the Mac could be so much more. Apple's always done this, remember Claris? I'm sure Adobe didn't like Apple publishing Final Cut, but at the time (maybe the time hasn't passed) Premiere lagged.

You would be surprised at how closely large companies can work together, even in seemingly competitive channels.

[john55440]

Steve Jobs always "hoses" his business partners, one way or another.

[randomthot2]

slight corrective...Apple preys on you if you're weak, only respects strong, innovative partners who don't allow themselves to get taken, and REALLY hoses ppl that ditch Apple.
BTW, there are many companies out there that would love to crush Apple; I'm glad they're scrappy because I like their products. We wouldn't have them if they didn't fight back.

[M C]

Yes, and Cheetos are delicious. No idea what either has to do with this story though.

[shunchu]

And other CEOs never do?

[alenjadrom]

Flash on iPhone? My concern is the rapidly growing list of companies and cities that are flat out blocking the Flash player from playing when their users visit a website due to security issues. Anywhere Websense is used it appears Flash websites are blank. Blocking YouTube as a whole is likely a smart IT policy, but blocking all Flash videos and palyers? That's a huge problem for me when customers cannot view materials. Whatever the security problem is or whatever the problem Websense is concerned with should be a higher priority for Adobe over the tiny number of iPhone users.

[CR8VDO]

I would buy a product that uses anything adobe!

[chrisfrary]

Remember that if you are going to play the Apple invented Adobe game, then Macromedia was the company that developed flash. The company only acquired Macromedia a year before intel Macs. Acquisitions take time to integrate into your business plan. I'm not saying it couldn't be done but you have to give some time.

[bcolflesh]

FutureWave is the company that developed Flash and was subsequently purchased by Macromedia.

[cagerattler]

Macromedia "developed" Flash off of Silicon Beach's "SmartSketch" product.

[moyphee]

FutureSplash Animator is the original app that became Macromedia Flash as bcolflesh pointed out. Infact several Macromedia product were acquired from smaller companies including RoboHelp and Captivate.

[lmasanti]

You are right. But I'm not speaking only of the last couple of years.

[contentcreator--2008]

Is this Steve's way of opening the door for an Apple-produced Flash replacement, to compete with Microsoft's Silverlight? Apple could jam theirs down in one of their daily iTunes updates and hit a huge penetration instantly.

[deepeshg]

yes. I believe this is a hint at what's next out of the Apple closet.

[lmasanti]

To Apple to success in this competition it should just integrate standards (not sure if possible), not introducing "another propietary plugin". Apple is doing this with H.264, AAC... thing of SVG (scalar vector graphics) and the other standards from W3C.
A new plug-in --IMO-- will be a losser.

[berry_lthird]

Flash already works on the iPhone via QuickTime parser: How else do you think it's able to play YouTube content?

[storyworks]

Actually the YouTube content on the iPhone has been re-compressed as h264 video (mp4) and is not flash based. You can go to http://m.youtube.com/ if you want to play these non-flash videos on your desktop

[simelane]

YouTube content on the iPhone does not play via flash. YouTube had to transcode most of their content to H.264 for Apple. That is why it play so well via QuickTime.

I think that the iPhone needs to have some version of flash, however, this is definatly not an iPhone problem. The iPhone decodes MPEG4 and H.264 video at full bitrate (my old Pentium II can't do that). Clearly Adobe still needs to do some more code optimisation.

[Olu070]

YouTube has been converting videos to MP4 encoded using h.264.

[moonunit01]

> Flash already works on the iPhone via QuickTime parser:
> How else do you think it's able to play YouTube content?

Flash does not work on the iPhone via QuickTime or by any other means. It was world news that Google re-encoded millions of videos in h264 format for QuickTime in order to support the iPhone.

[lmasanti]

Apple announced that Google recoded --almost-- all YouTube videos to H.264.
Nothing remains related to Flash in the iPhone viewing.

[usario clave]

Flash on the iPhone is inevitable. It's so much a part of a web that it's absolutely required for any serious web browsing.

Adobe will get it on the iPhone eventually. The thing is, they may not be running with acceptable performance right now. Maybe it's a memory hog, or spins out of control, or barf, or whatever. Adobe has to do what they need to do to get performance and stability up to acceptable levels - and those requirements are far higher than its performance on the desktop. So...

[calciphus]

Really, I don't think Apple wants flash on the mobile platform. Be it ego or legitimate concern, Apple is still pretty disappointed that Flash has become the default video player online. Apple was pushing hard with Quicktime (back before it was part of a 55mb install), and lost out to Adobe in the desktop market. Do you really think they want to turn over enriched media control on their pride and joy to Adobe now?

I doubt it. Flash Lite (which, as they mentioned, is on 450M devices) is a stable, lightweight, and useful plugin, but it is NOT flash. Having authored for both, there's a pretty big difference.

That aside, I really think Apple is getting sick of Adobe treating them like a second-class platform. And I think Adobe is getting sick of Apple making development resource demands when they really account for very little of Adobe's business. I can guarantee you that (especially outside the US) Adobe Acrobat Pro outsells Photoshop at least 200 to 1.

I wouldn't be surprised if this business relationship had run its course.

[lmasanti]

If it is possible to get better... why on hell did they not do that?
In the less powerfull iPhone, the bar for optimization is higher than before.

[Mad Dog - Chi]

Steve is right. Flash player is exceedingly slow and unstable - it crashes frequently. And it's plagued by installation problems. And why am I prompted to download and install a new version several times a year?

I have an old version on one of my PCs that is so old it won't play a lot of the content out there. I actually considor that a bonus. Since I don't like watching videos online, must of the stuff I miss out on for many web sites are stupid and pointless animations in the first place.

[trevogre]

I appears to me that the main issue with any version of Flash and the iPhone may be the zooming capabilities of the iphone. If the safari zoom is closely tied to the safari engine for performance when zooming, the rendering in any plugin area most likely would need special optimizations so that it can perform on cell phone hardware. I suppose this could be as simple as pauseing flash playback during scaling but it seems that it would require some work regardless. It appears that, rightly so, Steve Jobs also wants a "full" version of flash so that the web browser on the iPhone doesn't provide any halfassed mobile features but access to the real web. I would agree with this, so if that requires a newly optimized flash or a more powerful iPhone. I think that is a better solutions than just trying to shove something in the phone that doesn't work properly. Flash aside, I would like to see silverlight on the iPhone. That would something I could get excited about.

[moonunit01]

> Flash player is exceedingly slow

Code run in the Flash player is now 'just-in-time' compiled into native machine code before it is executed. The speed increases have been so incredible in the last few versions of flash, that the player can now happily support real-time 3D.

> And it's plagued by installation problems.

Really? Maybe that's how it became the most ubiquitous software on earth. I have been using Flash on PC's, Mac's and Linux for many years and have never had an issue with installation. Nor has anyone I work with.

> And why am I prompted to download and install a new
> version several times a year?

Because Adobe keep releasing newer, faster and more fully featured versions. On of the new versions you installed brought a ten fold increase in execution speed. Another brought ultra-high quality h264 high definition video.

> Since I don't like watching videos online, must of the stuff I miss out on
> for many web sites are stupid and pointless animations in the first place.

If you don't like it, uninstall it.

[edgedesign]

"Flash already works on the iPhone via QuickTime parser: How else do you think it's able to play YouTube content?"

Not true. YouTube converted and continues to convert large portions of content to the .h264 video codec that is supported by Quicktime. You can view the same content via Apple TV which also does not support Flash in any way.

[alegr]

I wish I could ditch Flash from my machine. Unfortunately many sites require it.

[lmasanti]

Ditch the sites!

[chrismurphy1]

Flash and Flash Lite are not lightweight. They're very CPU and memory intensive. People should be using CSS and AJAX rather than relying on Flash, especially for mobile content. And still no intel native Shockwave for Mac OS.

[graxspoo]

I've got nothing against Adobe or Flash, but I just de-installed Flash from my Mac. It was crashing FireFox about once a day. Their "trouble shooting" tips basically boil down to "try reinstalling." Yuck.
I can get along without it... and certainly don't want it on my phone.

[sinpolines]

Steve Jobs should stop being so egotiscally arrogant and embrace other people's technology. Flash is great and plays everywhere. Period.

It's Apple's loss if Flash does not play on IPods, IPhones and the ITunes store jailhouse monopoly.

[snakesonaplanemustdie]

Adobe hasn't made an application worth p*ss*ng on in nearly a decade. They went from my absolute favorite application developer to my most hated. It seems as though every "upgrade" comes with worse performance, more bugs and a sloppier interface than ever before. It's all Bloatware. For an application developer who built its business on the Mac, every program feels like a broken port from Windows. Ironically, Microsoft has enough pride and business sense to have their programmers develop their Mac Office products from the ground up. Sadly, Adobe has its share of kool-aid drinkers who think the products are perfectly fine as-is in their bloated form. A shame their brainwashing doesn't permit them to remember how cool these products used to be.

[ishming]

I would think you'd want to pi** on the software once again if Adobe just get rid of all the developers I'm assuming they've been hiring out from under Microsoft in at attempt to make their software as bloated as Vista?

[jbowk]

This is just PR because Flash will allow cool interfaces on other phones to. There are current companies that are trying to use flash as a UI to allow for cool effects... which the iPhone has. By declaring that in public, he's trying limit the competition on the iphone and wants his phone to be the only "exclusive kewl fone." But from a designers stand point we are all AWED by sites that are created in flash because it's the user experience that we AWE at. If other companies provide that AWE feeling in other phones, then the iphone just becomes another phone in the market. Simple inexpensive PR and marketing. :)

[pdxflint]

Well, in my personal experiences, I have never, ever... AWED (?) at any flash user experiences. I doubt we "all are AWED by sites that are created in flash..." The truth is, I once thought Flash sites were interesting, and had a lot of potential, but after awhile found them to be slow, slow and slower, as well as boring after the initial surprise of the animation wore off. Lots of reasons for me I don't like what Flash on the web has become, so screw flash. Now that Adobe owns it, it won't advance much, I'm afraid.

[DumbMacUser1]

BS. The reason Steve Jobs wants to keep Adobe Flash player out of iCrap (and all other apple's obsolete-out-of-the-box JUNK) is that he wants to give Apple's clunky Quicktime software an unfair advantage on iCrap as well as macs, so that it's free of competition from superior produdcts Adobe and Microsoft.

Steve is as bad a con-artist as Bill Gates, the only difference is that he is not as smart as Gates.

[alansky]

@Asdf Sdfa: If you believe the crap you just wrote, I feel sorry for you.

[ishming]

Jobs is at the head of a great movement. Apple should change it's tagline to "Think Clearly".

Gates, on the other hand, since the beginning, copies good ideas badly sticks them in a box and sells, sells, sells...

[alansky]

So basically Adobe is saying what Microsoft always says: A zillion people are using our product even if it is crap. If all those users were smart enough to read between the lines, they'd be mightily offended.

[ishming]

Watching Flash on a webpage these days is basically impossible on a computer that should be able to handle it just fine. With processor and memory hogging Flash advertisements populating the margins and headers of every single web page, flickering and flashing, what was once cool is now stilted, stuttering, ex-streamly annoying, choppy video and sound that requires babysitting and mouseclicks just to watch! In this way we're going backwards. Yes, Flash is a hog, killing productivity and processors.

On the other hand, Quicktime looks great, sounds great, and generally waits till it's downloaded enough to play the entire video.

But... as the alternative platform to horrible and evil HTML for developing cool sites, animations, games, and powerful databased web applications, it's completely awesome and could have killed XHTML, AJAX, CSS, etc if it were not for SEO. No developer would ever have wasted their time in anything but the completely cross platform Flex, Flash, and Cold Fusion, no matter how bloated and horrible the software got, cross-platform HTML/CSS/Javascript/MySQL/PHPorASPorJSP being so completely painful to do the easiest things.

But because of the SEO history, Flash is now stuck as a permanent plugin in a bigger Web 2.0 world... and Adobe will have to get its act together, or we'll just have to wait till the iPhone has multi-core processors (one dedicated for each Flash instance on a web page).

[DumbMacUser1]

you must be using a mac...I have not had any problems with flash.

[lmasanti]

quote:
"has multi-core processors (one dedicated for each Flash instance on a web page)."

The best technical solution to the Flash problem! Thanks. I will upgrade to a 16 core chip.

[DumbMacUser1]

Apple has always been jealous of Adobe. I remeber in one meeting a couple of apple's retarded morons couldn't contain their rage when talking about Adobe's developers...it was pure jealousy because they can't compete with adobe (they are all dropouts, liars, neo-con artists, racists and various other retards with serious emotional and mental issues)