Now the fight gets a little more interesting.
In the red corner we have Apple. Champions of industrial design. Noted control freaks. And, frankly, one of the few companies pushing the boundaries in consumer technology at the moment.
In the blue corner we have Adobe. The people who brought you Photoshop, Illustrator and, of course, Flash.
It’s no secret that the iPhone operating system doesn’t run Flash; it’s one of the reasons Apple had to stop promoting the iPhone (in the UK at least) as running the “entire” web when some wags argued that not using Flash meant this wasn’t strictly true (we could argue the semantics of what constitutes the “web” until the cows come home and life’s too short).
Adobe has never been happy about the iPhone operating system’s lack of Flash and who could blame them? There are 85m plus devices in the world running iPhone OS (iPhones, iPod touches and, now, iPads), Mobile Safari (the iPhone OS’s web browser) is the most-widely used mobile browser in the world and in its first five days of existence Apple sold 500,000 iPads. Not being on this platform is hurting Abobe.
Apple’s argument – which carries a lot of weight in geek circles – is that Flash is a relic of a bygone era, the vast majority of its ‘jobs’ can be carried out in HTML, CSS and Javascript which, unlike Flash, are open technologies that anybody can play with and, to some degree, it’s “our damn system so we’ll do what we like with it.”
That’s the public argument anyway; in private (and occasionally in semi-public utterances), Apple has said what all geeks know to be true – Flash is a resource hog (it eats computing power), flakey as hell (the vast majority of web broswer crashes are Flash-related) and its continued use is stifling progress in web development. (Those that can do, those that can’t use Flash).
So… no Flash on the iPhone then… well…
Adobe got clever and invented a ‘wrapper’ that would turn applications developed in Flash into ‘proper’ iPhone applications. Yes, underneath the surface the application would be Flash through and through but all of this would be hidden from the user behind a thin veneer of iPhone OS acceptability.
“Huzzah” sang a thousand Flash developers. “That’s just saved us a lot of work.”
In principle, this kind of stuff isn’t unusual. A lot of computer/video games are produced in the same way: the developer builds the game and then ‘wraps’ it in some way to allow the game to run across different computing and gaming platforms.
The difference is that Apple don’t want them to do it. And, well, someone at Adobe should have known the first universal truth of working with Apple: if they don’t like what you’re doing, they will stop you. If you don’t like the rules, don’t play the game.
Thursday was the day when Adobe’s little scheme came crashing down round its ears, with the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0, which will be rolled-out to the world and his iPhone sometime during the summer (the iPad will follow in the autumn).
Alongside all the nice new stuff – some degree of multitasking (whoop!), improved email, application folders and iBooks being the biggies – there’s a change to the user agreement for the new SDK (software development kit) which all developers must agree to. To be clear, if you’re going to develop applications for the iPhone you have to play by Apple’s rules if you want your application to appear in the iTunes Store and this change has Adobe foaming at the mouth.
“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).”
In English? “Adobe you can no longer wrap Flash up and have it run on iPhone OS.”
Angry? ANGRY? They’re not happy let’s put it that way. Next week is the launch of Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 – the ‘box set’ which includes the latest version of Photoshop, Illustrator etc… and, yes, Flash. This new version of Flash is (or maybe now was) going to include the “Export to iPhone app” ability built-in. Not much point now is there? Yes, you can still ‘create’ the applications but, er, you can’t submit them to the iTunes Store. Which leaves only those people who have hacked their iPhones (the term is ‘jailbreak’) to allow them to run any/all application they chose, not just the Apple-approved ones.
At a conservative estimate, that’s about 14 people.
So why have Apple done this?
(just because I’m listing an argument below doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with it!)
Control? One of the big selling points for many people of the iPhone is that there is some degree of quality control – only applications that work as they should and won’t turn your phone into a paperweight are allowed on to the iTunes Store. For Apple this quality control also covers how the application is built.
Open standards? For all the people that talk of Apple being control freaks, they’re probably one of the few tech companies to truly-embrace open standards – admittedly when it suits them. If you want to create your own ‘version’ of the Safari browser, you can download the code and play with it. Much of the fundamentals that form the basis of OS X are also free for anybody to play with. Apple spent too long in the ‘dark years’ beholden to the whims of others and my guess is that they don’t want to go back there again. So HTML 5 and not Flash it is then…
Shopping? Does Apple want to buy Adobe? Apple has got, give or take, $24bn in the bank accruing interest but doing little else. Adobe is worth, again give or take, $17bn. Buying Adobe would give Apple, if it wanted, exclusivity for the Creative Suite packages (what design pro worth their salt is going to use a PC?), as well as PDF – the virtual lingua franca for document exchange today – and would potentially put another nail into Windows’ coffin.
And what’s the best way of reducing the price of a company? Reduce the ability for that company to sell its wares.
As for all those people who think that Apple needs Adobe: if you don’t think that Apple has got Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign replacements sat in its development lab ready to be unleashed if needs be then you really don’t know the way Apple thinks.
This one is going to run and run…
