Adobe CTO Weighs In On Apple, Flash and iPad

Leander Kahney ()

Adobe CTO Weighs In On Apple, Flash and iPad

Kevin Lynch, Adobe's CTO, says Flash on the iPad is essential to the "open" internet. Except Flash isn't open.

Adobe’s chief technology officer has finally weighed in on the great Flash debate, and is taking potshots at Apple for not supporting Flash on the iPad. Adobe’s head software honcho Kevin Lynch says Flash on the iPad is essential to the “open” internet. Except Flash isn’t open.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Lynch makes several points about Flash, the iPad and video on the web. Unfortunately, there’s no swearing or unbalanced ranting, and his references to Apple are sometimes oblique. His main points are:

1. Flash is being improved to work on everyone’s smartphones and tablets except Apple’s (Flash 10.1 for smartphones, coming shortly).

2. HTML 5 will not kill Flash, but return the Web to the “dark ages of video on the Web.”

3. Accuses Apple of being a walled garden — and that Flash is essential to the “open” internet:

This model of open access has proven to be more effective in the long term than a walled approach, where a manufacturer tries to determine what users are able to see or approves and disapproves individual content and applications. We strongly believe the Web should remain an open environment with consistent access to content and applications regardless of your viewing device.

CoM’s Take: The accusation that Apple is a walled garden is an old cliche that doesn’t apply. Flash is a proprietary format, wholly owned and developed by Adobe, and not an open internet standard (like HTML 5). Lynch is right that Flash enabled the web video revolution, but the “walled garden” is pure FUD. At an Apple employee meeting last week, Steve Jobs said Flash is buggy and excluded from Mobile Safari for stability reasons, according to a report by Wired.com.

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28 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, Apple Tablet, iPad, News, Software |

  • Charli

    yeah I would love to have been there to stand up and say “so since you believe that an open Internet is important, Adobe is going to release Flash to the public domain as of today, yes?”

    just to watch this guy falter.

    Like it or not Adobe, Apple has done more for the open internet than you or flash has. And your software is buggy, outdated crap. Fix it and then it will be time to talk.

  • Baltimora

    Maybe Flash Open Source project might be worth a consideration. If Adobe can’t fix it (for Mac/iPhone users)… then let others have a crack at improving it.

  • Alfred

    Adobe only makes money on the purchase and licensing of content-creation and authoring tools for Flash. They do not make money on the number of times it is used or deployed.

    Thus, they could embrace an open standard (HTML5) and sell HTML5 authoring tools and make their money from that instead of Flash. This would end their monopoly, but not their business model.

    That way:

    1) the Internet is MORE open, from using an open standard instead of a proprietary one.
    2) Content creators would benefit from the competition between Adobe’s HTML5 authoring tools and other those sold by competitors — something that does not exist at present.

    The death of Flash is *potentially* good for open standards, good for content creators (wider selection of authoring tools), good for consumers (no monopoly), and perhaps even good for Adobe (if it motivates them to bring out new, cool, things ahead of the competition).

    It’s time we moved on. Goodbye, Flash.

  • Giraldo

    Yes, pot calling the kettle black. Both seem to be “walled”, Only difference is that Adobe’s Flex SDK is free and can be compiled for free, whereas Apple’s iPhone SDK is free but costs $99/yr to actually put in use/maintain.

    Not going to even go into a debate of why you, the viewer, could benefit but why can’t I intall Flash on a machine I buy for $500. I do think there has to be another reason for Apple not to include Flash. It would not be unlike them to act this way. I’m actually surprised Apple still uses YouTube and Google Maps after the Nexus and the upcoming Chrome tablet.

    Apple… Let ME decide how to use my machine. The machine is not yours, Apple. I am not leasing the tablet from you. I feel like I just bought a brand new car and the dealership put the lease restrictions on it.

    One thing is for sure, if I do end up with the iPad, it will definitely be jailbroken.

  • eikonklast

    Ever since I uninstalled Flash, Safari has been running beautifully without hogging system resources. I hope Flash never makes it to the iPhone or iPad.

  • Muse

    “Apple… Let ME decide how to use my machine. The machine is not yours, Apple.”

    The product is theirs to design. Don’t like it? There are plenty of other non-Apple choices. You are crying like someone forced you to buy this Apple product.

    Your logic is about as faulty as telling Ford Motors, “Ford I just bought your car! But you forgot to put a Magellan GPS on this thing! Even tho I knew in advance it did not support Magellan GPS (it supported a different nav system), you should have listened to me anyways! Now it’s too late, I was stupid enough to buy it!”

  • nacra

    These comments are made from the perspective of a self-serving, profit-seeking corporate entity hell-bent on controlling the distribution of rich media. Insisting that Flash is essential to the “open internet” is utterly ridiculous. The world doesn’t need Adobe to ensure that rich media will work on all devices. Unbelievable lack of vision.

  • http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~flowney Frank Lowney

    Apple is all about the user experience so reasonably asks why put H.264 into a Flash container when doing so 1) isn’t necessary and 2) will make the user experience significantly less pleasant. That’s video.

    Interactivity and animation is a totally different kettle of fish. While the potential for HTML 5, CSS 3, SVG and all of those open standards is significant and could equal or exceed what Flash can do today, that isn’t being actualized quickly enough to make a difference in the near term.

    To compete with Adobe in the areas of interactive rich media, Apple will need to make authoring tools that enable easy and rapid development using advanced HTML, Javascript, CSS and SVG. The RapidWeaver and SandVox applications for web site development might serve as vehicles or models for these objectives.

    This isn’t going to be like spontaneous combustion, Apple will have to take affirmative steps to get this going.

  • Eric

    @Charli- The only thing buggy about Flash is developers using bad practices. Also, what has Apple one for the open Internet? Adobe released SDK for Flex for free.

    @Baltimora- “Adobe can’t fix it (for Mac/iPhone users)…” This is not Adobe’s problem to fix Apple could very easily add Flash support to their product.

    @Alfred- Adobe has an HTML authoring tool it’s called Dreamweaver. Adobe brings things out ahead of the competition already- pretty much why they do not have competition. Also, a lot HTML authoring tools are free, pretty much all you need is a text editor. (Why are we even talking about HTML5 anyways? As long as MS refuses to support it It won’t even be useful for years.)

    @nacra- “These comments are made from the perspective of a self-serving, profit-seeking corporate entity hell-bent on controlling the distribution of (all) media.” Sounds like Apple! Apple is also about the most closed off tech co. there is.

  • nixtr

    Flash open source would be even more of a pariah to Apple, since it would be fodder in the hands of every tweaker/hacker wannabe out there.

    HTML5 will be fine for running video and script, and existing Flash scripts will be something that has to be converted to HTML5. Maybe they have a new market there.

    They can kill Flash and promote a new product to facilitate the same step by step process for the webbies in HTML5. HEck, they didn’t even build Flash, the late Macromedia was the original coder of Flash.

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    @ Eric

    “The only thing buggy about Flash is developers using bad practices. Also, what has Apple one for the open Internet? Adobe released SDK for Flex for free.”

    Flash hogs up system resources and is, generally, useless. Apple has contributed greatly to the development of the OPEN HTML standard. Are you kidding? Adobe releases some SDK and all of a sudden Adobe is amazing? Seriously? Give me a break.

    “This is not Adobe’s problem to fix Apple could very easily add Flash support to their product.”

    It is well known that Adobe’s implementation of Flash on the Mac platform has been lacking at best. Given that why would Apple go out of their way to include some crippled version of Flash for iPad/iPhone? And Apple has no hate for Adobe, they still actively support .PDF and have included it in the base of their graphics core for their OS.

    “Why are we even talking about HTML5 anyways? As long as MS refuses to support it It won’t even be useful for years.”

    If we waited for MS to support things nothing would ever be open, it would ALL be proprietary, owned my MS, and we’d all be paying licensing fees for the great privilege of getting to see it. Once the world moves on MS will slowly follow along like the dinosaur they are.

    “Sounds like Apple! Apple is also about the most closed off tech co. there is.”

    That is because they were crushed (almost out of existence) by MS who took advantage of a business arrangement and a poorly worded patent filing to steal the GUI developed by Macintosh and create it’s proprietary Windows OS on the decaying corpses of all the IT companies Apple had sued out of existence. So, yeah. If that happened to you, you’d be careful too! And in spite of it all OS X is built on a OPEN Unix foundation just like Windows… right?

  • Giraldo

    @Muse

    Not exactly… With the iPad/iPhone/iPod you cannot install Flash even if you wanted to. So its more like saying, you buy a Ford, you cannot use a GPS… but we have these handy Randy McNally maps for you to use intsead.

    Crying? No. Just been loyal to Apple for so long. But Yes, it is looking like I am going to have to go with an alternative.

    On another note. Since Flash is greedy with the resources. Maybe that may be the reason Apple has left it out. To keep their “amazing” 10 hours of battery life.

  • http://lugaresdemexico.com Ernesto Durand

    Flash is a proprietary format, wholly owned and developed by Adobe, and not an open internet standard (like HTML 5)

    Flash is dead, long live to HTML5!!!!!!

  • mlahero

    Hmm it’s hard to tell where the truth is and the lies start…. but you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that Flash working on an iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone would cripple app sales for Apple. Why buy a game app if you can just go play something on newgrounds? etc. etc.

    As for Flash not working well on OSX and being buggy…. that comes down to shoddy Flash Developers and no quality control process between those Flash Developer and your browser. And Apple not providing public API control over hardware acceleration hence choppy laggy performance in OSX when compared to GPU enhanced Windows Flash Player.

    “But let’s talk more about the Flash Player on the Mac. If it is not 100% on par with the Windows player people assume that it is all our fault. The facts show that this is simply not the case. Let’s take for example the question of hardware acceleration for H.264 video that we released with Flash Player 10.1. Here you can see some published results for how much the situation has improved on Windows. Unfortunately we could not add this acceleration to the Mac player because Apple does not provide a public API to make this happen. You can easily verify that by asking Apple. I’m happy to say that we still made some improvements for the Mac player when it comes to video playback, but we simply could not implement the hardware acceleration. This is but one example of stumbling blocks we face when it comes to Apple.”
    - Lee Brimelow

  • DGF

    Anyone want to guess the odds that Giraldo actually owns a single Apple product?

    DGF

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    @Giraldo

    “Crying? No. Just been loyal to Apple for so long. But Yes, it is looking like I am going to have to go with an alternative.”

    What alternative? What are you talking about? You’re going to go buy some vaporware? Please.

  • nacra

    @Eric

    “Sounds like Apple! Apple is also about the most closed off tech co. there is.”

    Wrong context. One has nothing to do with the other.

    Apple, (or any other company), has a right to design, market and sell a closed product (hardware, software or an integration of both) to their customers if they want. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and in many cases, is the superior approach.

    The difference with Flash is that the internet is (in practice) an open, public network, independent of any single manufacturer. The internet is not a “product” and content delivery should not be dependent on proprietary, closed standards.

  • http://www.kazzmedia.com Kevin Cassidy

    Adobe is lazy, Flash is obsolete

  • Poppa

    The web does not revovle around just Flash, The iPad does not need Flash. Some people are just obsessed with having Flash..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4

  • Muse

    @ Frank Lowney:

    Frank said: “This isn’t going to be like spontaneous combustion, Apple will have to take affirmative steps to get this going.”

    And did Adobe take affirmative steps to address Apple’s concerns in the past? Apple’s concern has been publicly known for a long time prior to things boiling over this month. And Apple’s concern is pretty much the same as the concern of its customers: Flash has been a primary source of crashes, instability and misery on Apple hardware. Why has Adobe been silent on this until now?

    I interpret it that Adobe likely dismissed Apple’s complaints/rants for the longest time, and ONLY NOW are they taking it seriously because Apple/Jobs has taken the issue to public, with Jobs publicly chastising Adobe in recent days ever since the iPad debut, and Jobs now publicly making Flash/Adobe a “persona non grata” in the Apple ecosystem. Now that the “fight” has become tabloid material for the tech journalists and pundits, only now Adobe feels the need to respond and defend itself. It’s called damage control.

  • nabil2199

    whoever thinks that h264 is open is a moron

  • Scott

    I think Adobe should spend less time writing blogs, and more time fixing it’s buggy software. And maybe they should update Photoshop from using 32- bit Carbon to 64-bit Cocoa. It’s not like they haven’t had like half a decade to see this coming or anything. Jobs was right when he called Adobe “lazy.”

    It’s clear from the cesspool that is Flash on OS X, that Adobe can’t be trusted to maintain their code. They need to open-source it so they have more time to fix their other software.

  • http://www.metrokids.ca Conrad

    @nabil2199

    It’s not about h.264 being open. That’s redirection, sir. The point is that h.264 is a readily licensable standard (note the use of the word “standard”). As opposed to Flash’s proprietary flie-types and containers. Adobe is no better than Microsoft trying to muscle people into using it’s various Windows Media codecs.

  • mlahero

    Why does everyone seem to think that the only thing that Flash offers is video playback? The fact is Flash is the only rich multimedia web delivery format that works well, i.e. FWA award winning websites, interesting UI design, interaction and an environment that a designer can understand etc. New html standards, css3, jquery all offer great alternatives to Flash but they will (not for a good long time) offer the creative flexibility that Flash currently offers.

    Seems a lot of people just jump on the “Flash is a load of crap” bandwagon without a moments thought. Kill off Flash and kill the fun.

    It’s all about profit margins, thats what this comes down to.

  • Montana Bob

    “It’s all about profit margins, thats what this comes down to.”

    Adobe is concerned about profit and sales, for sure. That’s why they are terrified and defensive in being left out by Apple’s ecosystem. Apple and its customers are more concerned with an improved user experience. Something that Flash is not delivering.

  • hoot

    Giraldo:

    The device does belong to you, the tablet is in fact your property, however the software running on it is most likely only /LICENSED TO/ you and not /OWNED BY/ you.

    There is a very important distinction to be made there.

  • guest

    “At an Apple employee meeting last week, Steve Jobs said Flash is buggy and excluded from Mobile Safari for stability reasons”

    Steve said it, I believe it. Case closed.

  • Silverpenny4u

    I hate not having flash access. Another reason for looking elsewhere for real technologies. Be real and give us flash for our iPads.