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Maybe Steve Jobs was right about Adobe

February 10, 2010 — 8:31am ET | By Ron Miller


Last week, after reading about Steve Jobs' stinging criticism of Adobe, I wrote a spirited defense of Adobe Flash in my DaniWeb blog. I'm here today to say I was wrong. I should probably have known better than to challenge the wisdom of Sir Steve, but after getting comments from several knowledgeable people and reading some follow-up posts, I'm convinced that Flash is dying a slow death and HTML 5 and other technologies could finally drive a stake through its heart.

The original comment from Jobs about Adobe being lazy and uncreative around Flash seemed overly harsh to me and not completely accurate--at least from some of the ways I've seen Adobe use the Flash platform, such as Adobe AIR for instance. But a post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, a publication I have a great deal of respect for, made me rethink my position once and for all.

The bug won't die

The TUAW reported about a bug that one programmer, Matthew Dempsky, has been complaining about for 16 months. In spite of Adobe's assertions that the Flash Player was bug free, this programmer insisted there was a bug. The TUAW post even included a link that crashes Firefox (it really does, so you have been forewarned, if you try it). Turns out, that Dempsky was right, and after all this time, Adobe finally fessed up to the issue. Seems like, instead of publicly denying it for all those months maybe they should have in the words of the Oscar Rogers character on SNL, just FIXED IT!

 

What can save flash?

Kaz Thomas, a CMS Watch analyst, suggests a radical solution on his assertTrue() blog: Make Flash totally open source. Thomas says that will solve a pair of large problems for Adobe:

"Flash finds itself at a crossroads now: It has two huge hurdles to overcome if it is to survive as a mainstream platform. One is Apple: Steve Jobs has made it quite apparent that he doesn't want Flash on the iPlatform. The other challenge is HTML itself (specifically HTML 5)."

Thomas also suggests that Google may create its own video format, but he points out that it will take 90 percent adoption to declare anyone a winner. I will point out that Flash currently boasts 98.9 percent penetration on a billion computers worldwide. It's hard to unseat that, and it won't happen over night, but open sourcing Flash opens up a whole new opportunity for Adobe, one they would be wise to consider.

Open source worked for PDF

I like the open source idea. It will allow the community to clean up after Adobe (and it won't take 16 months to FIX IT) and will ensure that Adobe stays relevant for years to come. If you look at what Adobe did with the PDF, this approach makes a lot of sense. Anyone can use the PDF format and there are tons of low-cost and free uses making it a standard for moving documents. Adobe continues to make money by developing a more sophisticated Acrobat product than most of the rest of the market.

Flash could work the same way and if Adobe's smart, I think they should start listening very carefully to this idea. Otherwise, they might not like Steve Jobs' decisions about Flash, but they will have to live with the fall out if they try to take him on. - Ron

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Comments

By John Dowdell | Posted 1:40pm | February 10, 2010

Hi, Kevin said that the reason so many use Flash is because it works, and if it did ship "riddled with bugs" that would not have been the case. The Dempsky case was publicized heavily in an attempt to disprove this simple truth. See Emmy Huang's blogpost for how this came about.

Bottom line is that Flash does work well for the majority of the world today, regardless of one way to give it a bad file. It's like how today's real web does overwhelmingly use Flash, regardless of a single "porno" site. (iow, the talking-points don't replace reality.)

For "open Flash", we have, over the decade. But the goalposts keep changing. Dave McAllister has the single-screen explanation, and I've got some of the historical background:
http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/07/opening_the_flash_file_format.html

For general context, the hype and media-manipulation are very high right now... I suspect it's a frantic reaction to the upcoming technology & business changes. In a multi-device world, you want all your devices to work together, regardless of who makes them. Those walled-garden restrictions can survive for a bit, but not in the long run. Keep an eye on the hype, but keep an eye on the underlying technical realities, too. ;-)

jd/adobe

By rmiller | Posted 2:19pm | February 10, 2010

All that aside, JD, bugs or no bugs, what does Adobe think of the idea making Flash open source? It would provide a community to deal with these issues, and as I stated, there is a precedent for it.

I appreciate you defending the platform, but I think there are larger issues at play here that really need to be addressed and seem to have been ignored.

Thanks for the comment.
Ron

By John Dowdell | Posted 3:03pm | February 10, 2010

"what does Adobe think of the idea making Flash open source?"

I'm not sure... have you read the two links above yet? Just as Mozilla can't make H.264 free for redistribution, neither can Adobe. The Tamarin history did not work as well as the Flex history. Customizing your own distribution is tangential to improving the general distribution. I'm not sure what the question intends...?

jd/adobe

By Anonymous | Posted 3:06pm | February 10, 2010

As a former flash lover on Mac, Windows and Linux I have to say that Adobe needs to quit defending flash and start making it better. I LOVE what flash can do. I HATE what it does to my computer. I now avoid it at all costs. I have non flash replacements for most everything that used to use flash. Why ? because I got tired of rebooting, restarting my browser or missing some important live streaming event. Its not Steve Jobs that you have to worry about. Its people like me (as in us the users).

By Anonymous | Posted 3:16pm | February 10, 2010

Hmm - The HTML5 editors are from Google and Apple. Wonder what incentive they have in killing Flash :)

By Anonymous | Posted 5:41pm | February 10, 2010

HTML 5 is a standard supported by Microsoft, Mozilla group, Apple, Google and among others also Adobe.

Flash content is valuable, but Adobe seems to be with each upgrade to introduce more issues impacting performance, security and stability. Flash will not go away quickly, but HTML 5 will surely and significantly take user (market) share.

I guess it's a good thing for us consumers :-).

By notboss | Posted 8:08am | February 24, 2010

"HTML 5 is a standard supported by Microsoft, Mozilla group, Apple, Google and among others also Adobe."

No, HTML 5 is not a standard yet. It is a draft document that is being evaluated by Microsoft. They have not said they will support the current draft.

It's worth noting that HTML 5 includes the Object tag. To fully support HTML 5 you have to implement the Object tag. In other words you have to support plugins. Apple's refusal to support plugins means they are refusing to fully support HTML 5.

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