Posted on 04/29/2010 10:07:50 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
* Adobe shares fall 2 percent, Apple up 2.4 pct
SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Thursday called Adobe Systems (ADBE.O) Flash multimedia software a "closed system" that is ill-suited for the company's suite of mobile devices, escalating the war of words between the two companies.
Jobs said Flash's system is closed because it is a proprietary system from Adobe, which controls everything from its features to its pricing. Ironically, perhaps, similar charges have been lobbed at Apple's products and services, such as iTunes.
In a long, detailed letter posted on Apple's website, Jobs cited a number of problems with Flash, which is used to run video on many Internet sites but which is not compatible with Apple's iPhone and iPad."
"Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven - they say we want to protect our App Store - but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I just cited a case where Macs were a dismal and expensive failure in a business environment. Unless or until they can fully participate in delivering the functionality required by a business like the one I just mentioned, my statement stands.
And frankly I don’t care. I’ve cheerfully recommennded, installed and supported all sorts of systems other than Wintel types. As long as they can get the job done and not paint the customer into a corner. At the end of the day, they’re only tools. Not a cult. Not a religion. Not a way of life.
I leave that sort of thinking to the insecure, the irrationally smug and the conceptually handicapped.
Meanwhile, there’s work to do.
Did you actually comprehend the section you quoted?
Just asking.
Heh... I remember when Jobs announced TrueType at some kind of desktop publishing convention; Warnock (founder of Adobe, I think that’s his name) got up and condemned it as “mumbo jumbo” etc, and impulsively and angrily announced that Adobe would be publishing Postscript “hints” to enable OEM customers, users, and third party developers to work with it better. And that’s all the Jobs wanted in the first place. :’) One may also remember how Jobs referred to HP’s Interpress (which never really took off) as a “brain-damaged” idea. That was pee-the-pants funny.
You might have a hardware problem somewhere....every thing seems to come twice....
I can appreciate your basic consumer point of view. But what Jobs is trying to do is make it as seamless as you want it to be and that means remove as many middle men, between you and the web as possible.
Look at it like any utility that comes into your home. For example, the electrical grid in this country is constructed with standards. When you plug a device, any electrical devices into a socket, you expect it to work. That device counts on it’s power being supplied at 60Hz and 120 volts. It doesn’t matter how that power was generated, be it nuclear, coal, gas, or a diesel generator. It is expected to supply power to you and your device in a standard format. How your device utilizes that power is up to the device and it’s designed purpose.
Jobs is trying to get people and developers to look at much of the web in that same light.
There always is in your environment. You can count on it, just like I can always count on a PC bigot to tell the rest of the world how we should live and what we should buy.
The created standards and stuck to them and offer a superior user experience.
Hate 'em all you want; their sales tell the story...
You’re comparing Apples to oranges, pardon the pun.
Apple is an OS running on one hardware platform. Flash is an app trying to run across several incompatible software and hardware platforms. Flash tries to be compatible with the OS that Redmond puts out and an infinite amount of hacked together trash, which pretty much guarantees it’s going to suck equally for everyone.
Jobs basically said, “We don’t want it”.
If you think about it, set aside the hate, it’s a genius move. It’s like when Reagan called the USSR an Evil Empire. Everyone looked at it and said, “You know, they really ARE an Evil Empire”.
Jobs called out Adobe and said, out loud, what everyone knows, “Flash Sucks”.
It’s an inconvertible truth: it sucks.
Your 75% is irrelevant in the face of HTML 5; the new standard uses h.264, which is the codec that Apple hung its hat on for Quicktime
Flash is and was effective as a vector animation tool; it was invented at a time when a speedy connection was 56k.
The ridiculous layering on of video in Flash components was a nod to the fact that while Quicktime was a superior video delivery tool it didn’t have the market reach to put video onto the majority of computers. That’s no longer true.
You know, I am not quite certain what you are trying to say here... but I don't think I would have had a problem getting them up and running with their software and connecting to their banking sites with parallels and using their Macs... having done it for several businesses before.
Perhaps both their previous consultants and you simply don't know what they and you were doing? Using Windows with Internet Explorer from within Parallels should be completely transparent to those banking websites as it would be from any Windows computer... the Bank website would not know the difference. And the their mainline apps should work just fine as well.
Oh, yes - did I mention that the two Mac servers they had were’nt doing much more than acting as horribly insecure file servers? No? Well, I did now.
So two UNIX servers were acting as horribly insecure file servers??? That's interesting. How so. What was "insecure" about them.
I have seen all kinds of mixes and have seldom seen an issue that the Mac using Parallels or VMware Fusion could not handle transparently in a Windows environment... unless there was a hardware component that was totally incompatible that had to be installed inside the Mac. I do this for a living... and noumenomn, your horror story just does not ring true to me.
Could there have been some issues? Yes. Could it have been the total problem you describe attributed to the "Apple Store wankers"? No.
Heck, If they had Parallels installed why were you trying to connect to their banks with the 1983 version of Internet Explorer for Mac??? Why not just use the latest version of IE installed with whatever version of Windows they had installed with Parallels????
So, did you fix all these problems using their Macs? Or did you re-introduce Windows machines?
Please pardon my senior moment... that should have read:
Heck, If they had Parallels installed why were you trying to connect to their banks with the 1983 2003 version of Internet Explorer for Mac???
Microsoft created accepted standards (ODBC, standardized menus, look and feel) as well as DOS in combination with the IBM PC standardizing the chaos of OS and hardware that dominated the 80s. Those many systems came about because of user dissatisfaction with Apple’s closed and proprietary hardware and software practices as well as their pricing. Those are the same reasons that the PC and DOS followed by Windows took off and left Jobs and Apple in the dust.
Their standards are mostly proprietary and as for superior user experience; not really any more than any other system.
If they are so superior why did Microsoft have to bail them out when they first got rid of Jobs. They have long been known for their overpriced and overpriced electronic bling. If you’re into that, go for it.
Their arrogance will now likely repeat history as they try to dictate to the user public what is good for them and what is not. It sounds much like what so many rip Microsoft over.
It does not matter if Jobs restricts Flash from Apple products, he’ll just turn those who use those sites and apps from Apple products. Consumers will buy and use the products they like and that serve them the best, not what Jobs tells them is best. You can tell he is a democrat in the obama mold. He is arrogant and believes that he and Apple are so big and popular that they can dictate standards for the rest of the internet users. Good luck with that.
I never said anybody made me do anything. Simply said I found their products generally unpleasant to work with and given the feature comparison with competing products needlessly more expensive. And no sorry no one ever made you buy a PC.
It’s perfectly fair to hit him. He was in charge of Apple when they made Macs a completely closed system. And while Macs might be opening up now the iGadgets (again all coming to market while he’s in charge) are all closed, specifically closed to Flash which he’s criticizing for being closed.
Sorry but you are wrong, not only purchase but had to use.
So I'm a liar? Get stuffed, pal. Aside from not properly managing user access rights on the two X Servers they sold this hapless company, these Apple store incomptents also sold and installed two - count 'em: two - Cisco 1841 routers - one for each T1 circuit the company had. If you don't understand what's wrong with that, then please stop reading right now: because you surely won't understand the rest of this. At this point, I leave it for an exercise for the reader as to whether this was either malice and greed or simple stupidity. The same Mac store doofuses also mis-installed a Airport Extereme multi-zone WLAN for the new office that, when activated, completely took down their network.
As for Parallels, in 2007, it wasn't getting the job done. There were problems with printer settings when transitioning back to the Mac environment, among other things.
The line-of-business application that had been by then heavily customized to fit the company business environment and compliance and regulatory environment wouldn't finction correclty in the Paralles of the day. The prior attempt at using Citrix to deliver a fully windows compliant desktop environment had not been well-installed, optimized or properly managed. End of story. It took an upgrade to Presentation Server 4.0, a better server environment to support it, and some careful optimization to put it on a sound footing.
Then there was the case of a Silicon Valley company whose CIO was another Mac-for-all head. Trouble was, the Macs of the day used in the office environment couldn't play in the same world as the labs and the R&D department. To whit: the CIO spent Lord knows ho much on a four unit Mac setup dedicated to finite stress analysis for the case design group. The fact thaey actually found FS software for them was amazing. What was even more amazing was the time it took to perform the work. Product roll-out was a couple of months behind schedule due to long render times and aborted runs when the Macs couldn't handle the complexity. On my recommendation, and against the CIO's, the company bought and installed a set of four SGI workstations and an IRIX-based server to host the FS analysis app. What the Macs either took days to do - or couldn't do at all, the SGI gear typically performed overnight. Another case of the right tool for the job. And it wasn't a Mac. Don't even get me started on data-acqiusition and good old RS-488 stuff.
The Mac-vs-anything else war at DHL is another long story of failure and wasted time and money that I won't get into here. Let's just say that FileMaker Pro on a Mac wasn't getting the job done for them, either. Neither did R:Base. Clue: Oracle HQ was almost literally across the street from DHL.
To sum up, my objection to Macs stems from two main sources: those for whom a Mac is the answer to every business need. It isn't. And those for whom their buy-in to the Mac-as-superior-to-everything cult think it confers upon them an entirely unwarranted sense of superiority. It doesn't. I've seen too many cases where that attitude has cost companies time, money and lost business opportunities.
Having said that, I have also moved no few of my smaller customers from PCs to Macs simply because the platform better fit their needs. PC bigot? Hardly. Again, it's the right tool for the job. Sometimes it IS a Mac. For larger busineses, and most of the time, it's not.
Sorry not buying it. Had to use I can see, you have to use tools at work, had to buy no, where your dollars go is your choice still in this country. You might have had to change a life path or something in order to avoid it, but you still had the choice.
Gee, Steve, don't you think that should be the free choice of developers to use or not to use Flash to create apps? Let the market decide if the apps suck or not?We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
Mr. Jobs continues:This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.Mr. Jobs has a point. IMHO.
I read the last part as stating apple does not worry about downward compatability.
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