Apple Versus Adobe: The Pinnacle Of Hypocracy
Two things particularly stuck out in my mind when reviewing last Friday morning’s Apple press briefing on the iPhone 4’s ‘Antennagate‘ reception problems, which one Twitter user neatly summarized:
So, in sum: there is no problem, all phones have this no problem, a case fixes this no problem, free case to fix your no problem. Got it!
along with the liveblogs of the event, which encompassed the post-briefing Q&A session that Apple chose to omit from the video archive.
The first tangible tidbit: in the past, whenever Apple (rarely) mentioned the competition at all, it did so only to claim how superior its products were. This time, however, the company’s messaging was notably different; the iPhone 4 was no worse than the competition. Specifically, Steve Jobs and his underlings called out RIM’s BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC’s Droid Eris (the worst of the lot, so Apple claims…wonder if the dueling lawsuits have anything to do with that bit of ‘data’?), and Samsung’s Omnia II are also prone to reception attenuation when held in-hand in certain orientations. And an area of Apple’s website dedicated to the topic, which went live immediately post-briefing, Apple added its own iPhone 3GS and, more recently, Nokia’s N97 mini to the mix.
You could, and you should, be appropriately skeptical of testing that isn’t independent in nature, such as from Consumer Reports (which still isn’t giving the iPhone 4 its blessing). HTC, Nokia, RIM and Samsung are predictably disputing Apple’s claims, too, and I wonder if a defamation lawsuit (or few) is brewing. And I had to laugh at Apple’s statistic sleigh of hand, amid all the other classic quotes, when Steve Jobs claimed that AT&T’s data suggested that the iPhone 4G dropped less than 1 incremental call per hundred versus its iPhone 3GS predecessor. Given that AT&T’s data also suggests the overall pre-iPhone 4 dropped-call rate was around 1%, another way of stating Jobs’ pitch would be something along the lines of:
The iPhone 4 drops approximately 2x the number of calls of the iPhone 3GS
But that doesn’t sound as benign, now does it? I’m with John Siracusa when he points out that Apple’s competitive stance conveniently ignores the fact that the iPhone 4 is the only handset showcased that employs an external antenna suite. And I concur with John Gruber that the whole situation got somewhat overblown. After all, if you put the handset in a case, you won’t encounter the bridged-antenna aspect of the attenuation issue. AnandTech has a great writeup on why this is the case, pun intended, complete with hands-on testing and published subsequent to the release of the ‘revised bars’ firmware upgrade but prior to the press briefing).
Nor will you have a problem if you slip the handset in a pocket and use a Bluetooth headset instead. However, had Apple pitched the antenna design as a trade off upfront versus ignoring the issue, or if it’d just agreed to give away Bumpers to any and all complainers from the get-go, it could have easily dodged this whole mess. It’ll be curious to see if Jobs evolves his pitch shtick going forward in reaction to this situation.
Now, in getting to the subject line of this particular post, here’s the second thing about last Friday’s briefing that particularly caught my eye. In responding to one attendee’s question, and as captured by Engadget, here’s how Steve Jobs began his response:
Well let me say something about Apple. We didn’t want to get into any business where we didn’t own or control the primary tech, because if you don’t the people who do own it will beat you.
What a concise summary of not only Apple’s strategy towards its own products but also its attitude toward potential partners, I concluded as I read the Engadget liveblog entry. Specifically, I thought about Apple’s attitude towards former best friend Adobe, which I’ve written about several times before. Longstanding and growing animosity between the two companies came to the public forefront on April 29th when Apple published Steve Jobs’ ‘Thoughts on Flash‘ missive. Later that same day, Adobe’s CEO gave the initial response in what quickly turned out to be a public sentiment battle, complete with full-page newspaper ads and website portals.
In analyzing Apple’s attitude towards Adobe’s Flash, along with decoding what the company’s true motivation is, I’ll offer section-by-section comments on Jobs’ prose:
Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.
People in glass houses should not throw stones. To wit; “Apple’s Mac OS and iOS products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Apple, and Apple has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Apple’s OS X and iOS products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Apple and available only from Apple. By almost any definition, OS X and iOS are closed systems.”
We strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.
Adobe Flash is open, too; Steve Jobs apparently ‘forgot’ about the Open Screen Project. Earlier this morning, in fact, I saw mention of a new release of the Lightspark Open Source Adobe Flash Player. And as I’ve said before, HTML5 has one notable omission which Apple is clearly counting on; DRM. No content provider in his or her right mind is going to provide material for which monetary compensation is expected using a DRM-less media such as HTML5. Bottom line: Apple’s in favor of two sets of standards; open-source DRM-less HTML5 material and closed-source content coming from the iTunes Store. Handing over DRM control to Adobe is anathema, especially since Adobe’s tools enable developers to easily craft content for a multitude of hardware and software platforms, not just Apple’s.
Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.
Tell that to Hulu, Steve. Or to Google, who hopes to monetize at least some of its YouTube material. No DRM = no chance for HTML5 to usurp Adobe Flash with direct-revenue-generating content.
Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.
Notice that iTunes plug?
Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.
A valid point, though I’ll note that Apple regularly releases plenty of patches, too.
In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?
Native Adobe Flash 10.1 support is shipping in Google Android v2.2, with support in other mobile O/Ss (save for Apple’s iOS) on the way. It seems to perform pretty well, all things considered.
To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 - an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies. Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.
It took Apple until late April to finally provide Adobe with the means of tapping into hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding support built into Macs, iPhones and the iPod touch and already leveraged by Apple software for years. By the end of that month, Adobe had released a beta version of the Flash 10.1 Player that leveraged that very same hardware acceleration. Who’s dragging their feet here, Adobe or Apple? And the ‘older generation decoder’ Jobs is referring to is the combination of the Sorenson Spark and VP6 video codecs, which aren’t in wide use any longer and run no better on Apple’s software than they would on Adobe’s, since in no case does hardware acceleration support exist.
Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript? Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.
Again, tell this to Google. Or to Microsoft. Nokia. Palm (now HP). RIM. Or any other mobile O/S or application developer who is already supporting or is planning to support Adobe Flash. Or to touchscreen controller manufacturers who plan to implement capacitive-based ‘hover’ support. They seem to have figured out workarounds. Why can’t Apple do the same thing? It’s not that Apple can’t. It’s that Apple won’t.
The most important reason.
We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices. 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. 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. Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X. Our motivation is simple - we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins - we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
Last but not least, we finally get to Apple’s real motivation for turning its back on Adobe and Flash. It’s all about control. Apple wants to own the entire ecosystem, both so that it can advance that ecosystem at its own pace and so that it can extract maximum possible revenue and profit from that ecosystem. For better and for worse, this has always been Jobs’ preferred approach; look, for example, at how quickly he shut down the Mac clone business after returning to the company. Or look more generally at the Mac OS versus Windows battle and how it’s played out over the years.
Wrapping up, content yourself with the satirical video Apple played at the beginning of last Friday’s briefing:
And here’s another view of the situation, which I’m confident you’ll grok even if you don’t speak Taiwanese aka Chinese:
A month ago, I told you how much I enjoyed analyzing business strategies, in the context of a piece comparing and contrasting the four major U.S. cellular carriers’ approaches to dealing with customers’ burgeoning data usage demands. I admired, for example, T-Mobile’s pragmatic strategy, given that it’s the smallest of the four, to leverage and extend its 3G infrastructure instead of pouring funds too early into LTE or WiMAX. A smart, shrewd strategy…and an honest one, too.
That’s the crux of the beef I have with Apple regarding Flash. It’s fine for the company to want to have ultimate control over its fortunes; the market (both customers and developers) will appropriately respond with a thumbs-up or -down, especially if they’re not already DRM- or otherwise-locked into the ‘Apple Tax’. But Steve Jobs is blatantly lying about Flash in attempting to alternatively advance the iTunes Store, trashing another company (and a publicly traded one, at that) in attempting to boost his own company’s fortunes. For that, Steve, you get absolutely no respect from me.
