The two titans in the web need no introduction – Apple and Adobe. Apple owns the smart phone industry with its iPhone and Adobe has set the standard on Internet streaming content.
Sounds like a perfect match?? Not likely so, because what’s brewing is the perfect clash between the giants of the web world. And Adobe doesn’t seem very happy with the way things are going.
The first model of the iPhone did not offer support for flash applications and this did not change with any subsequent iPhone model release or iPhone OS software update. Popular sites and applications such as Disney, Farmville and miniclip were not available to the iPhone/iPad users. But Adobe was quick to come out with a work around- its own cross-compiler system- Adobe Flash CS5. It allowed developers to develop content with flash tools which could then be converted to an iPhone native code which was no different from the titles available at Apple’s App store.
Now everything seemed to be in place, until Apple released a new draft of their iPhone developer program license. The revised clause in sections 3.3.1 aimed at being a blow on the face of Adobe from Apple. It states in its entirety,
“3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)”
This, in effect, restricted applications built with Flash CS5 along with a few others. Or in other words, if you developed your application in Flash and then compiled it as a native iPhone app, you still wouldn’t be able to use it with Apple’s products.
Lee Brimelow (Platform Evangelist at Adobe) responded in his blog as follows,
“What is clear is that Apple has timed that purposely to hurt sales of CS5. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them.”
“The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between the two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for 3rd-party editors like FDT to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn’t even think or consider something like that.
Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.”
The second blow came from Apple Inc CEO Steve Jobs himself. In April 2010, Jobs published a letter on his “Thoughts on Flash”. Jobs intended on giving an explanation as to why Apple do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads, stating that Apple had few joint interests with Flash. He also quoted the performance, security and reliability of Flash applications in mobile phones as an added concern. To read more, follow this link…
After this blog appeared on the Apple’s site Santhanu Narayen (CEO of Adobe Systems) replied to Steve in an interview.
Let see a few excerpts from the interview,
Mr. Narayen responded to a question about Mr. Jobs’ assertion that Adobe is a closed platform as, "I find it amusing, honestly. Flash is an open specification," he says.
The technology problems that Mr. Jobs mentions in his essay are "really a smokescreen," Mr. Narayen says. He says more than 100 applications that used Adobe's software was accepted in the App Store. "When you resort to licensing language" to restrict this sort of development, he says, it has "nothing to do with technology."
Speaking about Mr. Jobs's assertion that Adobe is the No. 1 cause of Mac crashes, Mr. Narayen says if Adobe crashes Apple that actually has something "to do with the Apple operating system."
To conclude, Mr. Narayen says he's for "letting customers decide," but that the multi-platform world will "eventually prevail."
Kevin Lynch, CTO, Adobe had his say on the Adobe Conversations blog, where he implied that the ban on flash was clearly a decision solely from Apple and that the users will be provided with a choice of other major participants in the mobile ecosystem. Read more..
There has also been a rumour that the public spat between Apple and Adobe may lead to an investigation on Apple over Antitrust Concerns.
Apple may not welcome Flash with open hands, but as it turns out Apple is not the only house in the block.
The battle has just begun. Follow the two giants closely to see how the battle unfolds.
Flash Team
Software Associates
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