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Clashes between Adobe and Apple deepens
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 01:11 IST
Bangalore: Who owns the internet? The answer which would come at the spur of the moment is-nobody. It is no doubt a revolution which has facilitated communication across several borders and with time, it is evolving into newer forms, making it more compatible and portable with both new and obsolete networks.
Since the ownership is not bestowed upon any one key market player, there has been conflict among them. One such conflict which has come up recently is the tiff between Adobe and Apple, wherein Apple has snubbed support for Flash, which is a technology central to much of the Web's video and multimedia content.
Steve Jobs makes his comments on the subject, portraying Adobe's Flash technology as '100 percent proprietary', unreliable, insecure, and a drain on battery life in mobile devices. Jobs says, "Flash was created during the PC era - for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards - all areas where Flash falls short."
Retaliating to this statement, the co founders of Adobe, Chuck Geschke and John Warnock, issued an open letter stating the importance of open markets in the domain of the web. Geschke and Warnock said, "What we learned as we launched PostScript and PDF, two early and powerful software solutions that work across platforms. We openly published the specifications for both, thus inviting both use and competition. In the early days, PostScript attracted 72 clone makers, but we held onto our market leadership by out-innovating the pack. More recently, we've done the same thing with Adobe Flash technology. We publish the specifications for Flash-meaning anyone can make their own Flash player. Yet, Adobe Flash technology remains the market leader because of the constant creativity and technical innovation of our employees."
Analysts criticize this move by Adobe. They say, Adobe is using such tactics to win popularity among various users by waging a wrong campaign. On the other hand, the co founders of Adobe feel that, Apple does not want to facilitate compatibility among the users by showing reluctance to their idea.
The war of words does not seem to end over here. Since the iPad has been announced without Flash, things have worsen between the competitors. Jobs has blamed Flash for most Mac crashes and now Adobe is back to its Flash blog by Flash Marketing Manager Adrian Ludwig, where he addresses and attempts to debunk the various reasons Apple has for ostracizing Flash.
There are many applications and technologies like Java,Python, Ruby, Perl and browsers such as Firefox, Opera IE , which Apple does not allow to access. Ludwig blogs that, "Developers on this new platform aren't able to innovate there either. At best, developers targeting the iPad are subject to a 30 percent Apple Tax in the App Store. And at worst, developers invest time and money building a product that can never be brought to market, because the only channel is one that is centrally controlled and entirely opaque. In every case, Apple is a gatekeeper on how developers are able to deliver content to their consumers."
Adobe might point out Apple to be overconfident by treating all other players as an outcast but the victory seems to incline to their side. According to a survey conducted by video aggregator MeFeedia, 26 per cent of all web video is now available for playback with the HTML5 tag and the H.264 codec. That means that 26 per cent of web video can be now viewed on the iPhone/Pod/Pad. And, of course, Steve Jobs asserts that it's the most important 26 per cent, which includes the broadcast of Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion, plus music videos from Vevo and MTV, and news from AP, ABC, CBS, and CNN.
Adobe might come to the conclusion that their Flash glass is a whopping 74 per cent , but the trend line is not in their favor. When MeFeedia conducted the same analysis at the beginning of this year, only 10 per cent of the video they analyzed was HTML5/H.264.
Though this verdict fails to bring out either of the players as a clear winner. There have been stories about Apple developing its own competitor to Flash. Now, the only thing we have to witness is who would be successful in professing their point of view? Will it be Apple which targets Adobe's Flash for its obsolescence or will it be Adobe which sternly criticizes Apple's business model?
