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10 Apr 2010
The ongoing battle of wills between Apple and the Flash community has turned ugly, after an Adobe evangelist made a number of scathing personal remarks about the blocking of Flash on Apple hardware.
Apple has been engaged in a long-running tussle with Adobe over Flash. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has described Flash as "buggy and a CPU hog", but developers and users are split over the future of the platform.
Lee Brimelow, a platform evangelist at Adobe, has now raised the stakes with a personal rant against Apple.
"Speaking purely for myself, I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple," he wrote in a blog post.
Brimelow claimed that the new iPhone 4.0 SDK appears to consider non-Apple approved languages as a violation of terms and conditions, and said that the company is exerting a "tyrannical control over developers".
"The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies," he said.
Apple and Adobe formerly had a close relationship since combining to introduce laser printing and desktop publishing with the LaserWriter.
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Do you agree?
I'll say this and then I'll end mine...
Brimelow is correct in saying that Apple is tyrannical regarding their developer policy. This is precisely why I've chosen not to ever develop software for any of their platforms. In an age of FOSS, where it's common to even see OpenSource software available on Microsoft's platforms, it makes no sense what-so-ever to restrict "owners" of Apple hardware from altering the systems in any manner they see fit. Where does *any company* get off telling someone who has purchased hardware that they have to only use it as prescribed by the manufacturer? Speaking as an embedded hardware hacker (I wear many titles, having been in computing since 1985), I view vendor lockout in two ways... (1) as a challenge to be defeated, and (2) as very nazi-like way of being. For 25 years now, I had avoided buying anything made by Apple, primarily because I've held disdain for hypocrisy in any form. Remember the Apple commercial that was based on George Orwell's 1984? Funny how it now seems that Apple is the company responsible for digital repression, and their target in that ad (Microsoft) has become more open, even directly contributing to the Linux Kernel & Samba. The iPhone 3GS is the first and last Apple device I will ever purchase. I had originally picked mine up with the intention of jailbreaking it (something that shouldn't even be necessary, but is) so that I could run apps like nmap, and be able to SSH from my phone over VPN into my Virtual server farm (running on top of VMWare ESXi). I can still use my iPhone for remote administration of my servers, but thanks to their 'release another firmware just to thwart the hackers' moves, I'm now stuck with a 3.1.3 firmware that has crippled the phone again, effectively reverting it into the exact object of the reason why I didn't want one in the first place, as really, I would have preferred to buy a Maemo or Android based smartphone, but thanks to AT&T... that's not happening... and that's another company that I really don't get... AT&T created Unix, so what gives? Why don't they support more vendors involved in Linux based phones? Afterall, they came forward (albeit very late) during the SCO-vs-Redhat/IBM/Novell case with the $echo report that detailed their sale of the Unix source code base to Novell... so why are they now jumping on a closed source bandwagon, when the rest of the *nix world is moving more in the direction of Linux, BSD, and other more open platforms? It just serves to remind me that we are totally screwed, and that hopefully 2012 will wipe away all of this mess and give the survivors a chance to build a better Earth...without Apple.
Posted by: StygianAgenda 16 Apr 2010
Apple is abusing its power in the market place
Clearly Apple has learned nothing when it comes to abusing power from its rival Microsoft. I am looking forward to the day someone kicks apple to the curb. Obviously someone from apple has already commented. Flash is a great development platform..maybe a little CPU intensive, however the issue at stake here is profits from iTunes and selling media content.
Posted by: The Licensing King 16 Apr 2010
Apple are RIGHT!
Totally agree with Apple on this. Flash IS buggy and a CPU hog. Try running anything else while a flash movie or game is loading. No chance! And now that a lot of adverts are Flash, this makes the internet an awful place to be (unless you Chrome and it's ad-blocker!). Adobe need to re-code Flash from the ground up, or abandon it altogether and wait for HTML5. Silverlight is NO BETTER either! I haven't missed Flash on my iPhone, and tend to block it on my MacBook. I have plug-ins that rip embedded Flash videos to mp4 format if I want to watch something online.
Posted by: FC 12 Apr 2010
Tyrannical?
And Adobe is not just as tyrannical as Apple? Has he never looked at the restrictions created by Adobe over the years on it's products. Get real!
Posted by: Nate 10 Apr 2010