Reading the war Adobe is conducting through the media against Apple, I am thinking of two things.
One, this is not a war against Apple; this is Adobe fighting against the future irrelevance of Flash. Adobe is picking on Apple, because Apple is proving through iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad that Flash-free Web access is possible.
Adobe's management is concerned about Flash's diminishment for revenue reasons. For while Flash remains a kind-of de facto standard for Web pages, Adobe can expect a de facto ongoing revenue stream from many Web hosts paying expensive licensing fees for the Flash server software.
Much to Adobe's horror, Apple is proving to be a prototype for other Web sites to go Flash-free, in order to be compatible with the iTrifecta of mobile Internet devices.
Two, Adobe went to a similar war nearly 20 years ago, and lost. That time it was over font technology. PostScript fonts were beautiful, but expensive. Apple and Microsoft created the free alternative, TrueType. (Today, nearly all fonts displayed on your screen and printed on paper are TrueType fonts.)
TrueType won, because (a) it was good enough for most computer users; and (2) it was included free with the operating systems. PostScript fonts are still around for high-end use and for those who want to pay.
PS: I would be glad to see Flash go, because of its serious shortcomings: text in Flash cannot be searched; Flash limits documents to screen-size chunks; and it prevents us from accessing chunks easily, like images from within the Flash presentation.
One, this is not a war against Apple; this is Adobe fighting against the future irrelevance of Flash. Adobe is picking on Apple, because Apple is proving through iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad that Flash-free Web access is possible.
Adobe's management is concerned about Flash's diminishment for revenue reasons. For while Flash remains a kind-of de facto standard for Web pages, Adobe can expect a de facto ongoing revenue stream from many Web hosts paying expensive licensing fees for the Flash server software.
Much to Adobe's horror, Apple is proving to be a prototype for other Web sites to go Flash-free, in order to be compatible with the iTrifecta of mobile Internet devices.
Two, Adobe went to a similar war nearly 20 years ago, and lost. That time it was over font technology. PostScript fonts were beautiful, but expensive. Apple and Microsoft created the free alternative, TrueType. (Today, nearly all fonts displayed on your screen and printed on paper are TrueType fonts.)
TrueType won, because (a) it was good enough for most computer users; and (2) it was included free with the operating systems. PostScript fonts are still around for high-end use and for those who want to pay.
PS: I would be glad to see Flash go, because of its serious shortcomings: text in Flash cannot be searched; Flash limits documents to screen-size chunks; and it prevents us from accessing chunks easily, like images from within the Flash presentation.
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