ActionScript 3.0 Developers Caught in the Middle
The Pincers
When two companies that are intertwined with my fate get into a spat, I get itchy. Because we are all linked to ActionScript 3.0 in one way or another, and Adobe is linked to ActionScript 3.0 through Flex and Flash this sad state of affairs may have consequences for us all. However, those of us who do our primary development using Apple computers (Macs), our fates are doubly impacted.
Until now, I’ve always considered ActionScript 3.0 to be a friend of the world. A large proportion of Apple’s success can be traced to the applications produced by Adobe, and yet this current parting of the ways seems to be more than a hiccup in a long symbiotic relationship between these two high technology giants.
Many of this group were primed to begin writing applications for the iPhone and iPad (and some may have), but now that seems out of the question. In a strongly worded broadside against Adobe, Steven Jobs, Apple’s Boss. Now, look what we’ve got…
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
So Adobe responded to Jobs rant.
Anyway, here are my comments, and we’d like to hear from you as well:
1. He rightfully acknowledges that Apple was one of Adobe’s initial customers. However, Apple needed Adobe’s fonts as well as the PostScript language that made their initial laser printer more than really good dot-matrix printer.
2. Also, while Jobs is probably correct in noting that about half of Adobe’s products are purchased by Apple owners; most of the Apple upgrades we purchase are because of the improvements Adobe makes in its CS5 suite. I’d still have my old iMac GooseNeck were it not for the fact that Adobe’s new products required new Apple hardware.
3. In looking at the apps in my Dock, the ones I use the most are by Adobe. Were it not for iTunes, I would not use Apple software (aside from the OS) all that often. The second most-used is Microsoft Office. It’s down the line when I find Apple software not related to iTunes that I find using a good deal. QT is sometimes used, but rarely anymore because Adobe Media Player is more responsive.
4. Several software developers have argued that, “It’s just not worth it to create Macintosh versions.” Adobe was always there for Apple when a lot of other software developers threw in with PCs only.
Being a fan of both camps, I truly hope that Apple and Adobe find a common ground. Even the Mafia knows it’s more profitable to cooperate than bicker.
What do you all think?
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Bill Sanders
I really think you nailed it on this one. As a graphic design student I see my self forced to using MACs, but there is really no point to it, since a windows machine can do the exact same thing. This only enforces point #2, if it wasn’t for adobe making the MAC the go-to computers for artists, apple would still be in the stone age of computers.
I fall in the same category as you. I use TextMate and its AS3 support along with the flex bundle to write and compile my flash apps.
My take is one of disappointment in both Steve Jobs for his immature “they started it” stance on the problem and Adobe for not having seen the mobile movement coming and being ready with a Flash virtual machine that caters to the hardware.
Do I feel pinched? No. I think mobile will outclass the laptop/desktop eventually, but that it won’t be anytime soon. When people need to GET STUFF DONE beyond short emails, sms, and personal media management, they will be sitting down to a laptop or a desktop. My personal take is that the size is right for laptops and desktops when it comes to screen real-estate and that no matter how elegant and well managed the “little screen” gets, there are going to be things you want to do on the BIG screen. Of those things, Flash shines when it comes to attractive interactive environments. Some people automatically relate flash as just a video platform since the advent of youtube and related sites. But, I see flash as the end-all realization of multi-platform media and gaming application programming and I’m obviously not alone.
There are things you’re going to be able to do with flash on mobile that will ultimately be transformative, no doubt, but I think the hardware (and its size,) itself is really the core of this problem.
As to Job’s claims that HTML5 will sweep every developer off of their feet, I remain highly skeptical that it will be capable of addressing the level of complexity possible with actionscript at this point.
I also find his words and actions pompous and arrogant. His company (not all that long ago,) was on the verge of collapse, only propped up by companies like Adobe willing to continue to code apps for the unpopular platform. After alot of Microsoft-like actions on Apples part (including adopting the BSD kernel (oh excuse me the “mach” kernel,) as the core of OSX,) and getting the jump on compressed audio technology, they barely escaped a doomed fate that Job’s couldn’t have tried harder to bring about had he tried with his repeatedly poor decisions.
To hear him rail against a technology that has brought him much success directly and indirectly, really angers me.. I’m finding myself alot more likely to be looking to Google for my next Mobile platform. Whoops already switched to Droid… Hurry up with Chromium OS Google
There is no going back. Flash devs have been the craziest most passionate community since flash 2 days. Actionscript is a modern language. Flash is a modern technology and objective-c is shit! I love what apple have done. They have created the dream and they are succeeding. Does this mean I have to change no way! Flash be outdone by javascript and html? Seriously! We as flash devs need to step up and it’s just the kind of thing flash devs like, a challenge! Smack it out the park, here comes flash player 10.1. Now the game is on. Any OS(except os4), any device. We have been waiting for this since flash 4, count me in. And Adobe, we need standards for ui and coding if we are going to compete.
@Alexis. The more I think about how strong the ties are between artists and Macs, the more I realize that it’s really between Artists and Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and on and on. Sheeeeze! It’s like our parents going through a divorce!
@Joel. Spoken like a true programmer. Ever since Jobs returned to Apple, he’s been hitting them out of the park. During his Part I Apple days, he was batting .500 — more or less. The Mac was a game changer as was the iMac. Then came iTunes, iPhone, iPad. Tic, tic, tic. However, Jobs has had his dogs as well. Remember the Apple ///? How about Newton? Lisa? Most do not remember those because they bombed. Chromium OS Google–come on!! I’m with you.
@Brendan. I cannot tell you how many times that Flash has saved my sanity in the great Browser Wars. The one thing that I knew would work the same on all browsers and all platforms was Flash. Unless you’re pretty agile (and lucky) formatting with CSS can be tricky and you pray the browser is going to work right. Working hard to get up to speed on Flex 4.
@All. In all of this I am not anti-Apple. I like the Mac OS sitting on top of Unix and tons of other stuff about having a Mac. Without Apple, there’d be no motivation for Microsoft to do anything, and the advancement of OS has been because Apple competed with Microsoft. Windows 7 is a very nice OS; however, would I still be stuck with Windows Vista had it not been for Mac OS? With Google developing its OS; maybe the boxes will be based on Linux and the topside with Chromium OS and we can move ahead with ActionScript–and more design patterns.
Unfortunately, throwing developers under the bus is not something Jobs loses sleep over. ‘If you sell it, they will come’ seems to be the mantra and developers will always follow the money.
Total control is the Job’s idiom and it is playing out magnificently.
Hi Neil,
You can only throw so many before there aren’t any left to bail out companies that have no products left. Of course they’ll argue that they’re not in the business of keeping developers fully employed; by the same token they seem to think we’re in the business of keeping their coffers full.
Apple always represented a force to keep Microsoft from producing crap OS systems. Now Jobs is blaming Adobe for its OS problems. Jobs has become Steve Balmer!
Courage,
Bill
Really good comment, I am still working on a windows pc despite me wanting to switch for a while now especially to get into iphone stuff. But whenever I testride an apple there are some restrictions with apple that hold me back. All the software I am using is either open source and not available for macs (think eclipse and then the horrible svn managers for mac) or from adobe – so they should be a bit nicer to them because adobe is indeed the biggest software distributer who supports apple, if they stop there would be no point having one. I guess I’ll just end up with a switch having both machines on the same screens…
And talking about html5 and css3 which is all very well but it isn’t really a viable option at the moment that works throughout all magical devices…he seems to forget about all the old browsers in the real world out there. So if you develop something in html5 for the iphone its still a piece of extra work, standards are all a nice idea but the reality is they will never really work for everyone. And thats the niche flash has always filled and I guess will continue to do so in the future. So give me an ipad and iphone with a unix box and windows on top to run all the software on and go and smoke a pipe of peace or something…
This has been a tough story to follow. I know your not suppose to be a one trick programmer, but it’s hard not to take it personally, when you spend years studying a ActionScript only to have some ego maniac tell you it’s crap. My concern is that this has turned into a ‘political’ issue, in that Apple is trying to win public support for killing Flash and Apple walled garden approach. Just yesterday a non-technical colleague at work sent out an email to the management staff warning about the future of Flash and our e-learning platform. I respect this persons opinion but for the most part Apple arguments are taken at face value, without any scrutiny. Adobe’s response has been sheepish. The only person with any chutzpah is Lee Brimelow a Flash evangelist who has been calling Apple out. Adobe is losing the PR war and that sadly in the end is what matters.
Hi Rita,
The “standards” issue will always be with us. Lest we go back to the “Bad Old Days” when you had to have unique software for a half a dozen machines (e.g. Apple, IBM, Atari, Commodore, TI, Radio Shack) each with a different OS. Since Adobe does not make an OS, they emerged as a standard by the simple expedient of a plug-in that would run things made with ActionScript 3.0. They even adhered to the ECMA standards (before ECMA gave up.) If I didn’t have so many Macs, I wouldn’t run out and buy one now, either.
Bill
Hi Alex,
I agree that Jobs’ remarks came on like Pearl Harbor, but Adobe doesn’t live or die by initial salvos. The “future” that Jobs is talking about is with Apple’s mobile apps. People do get real work done using mobiles but the bulk is still with lap/desk tops. Also, surfing the web is still done with a big screen. I have an iPhone and I love it it, but if the competition comes along with the ability to read Flash sites, I’ll switch.
ActionScript 3.0 isn’t going anywhere expect perhaps to ActionScript 4.0 where we’ll have real abstract and private classes.
Cheers,
Bill
I am only worried that Adobe is behaving like a brachiosaurus staring into the headlights with no plan ‘b’.
My hope is that Jobs has started his operation Barbarosa* too soon. Apple is no longer about studio developers. Apple is now about being the chief architect of a massive global revolution in new media. Something that needs a plugin might as well take a shovel to itself.
*I hope I haven’t invoked Godwin’s rule!
I was hoping not to have to learn ‘another’ API, but here we go again – maybe!
Hi Neil,
Plugins are versatile.
Bill
One thing that makes it very easy for Jobs to sell this whole thing as a technological issue is the lack of bulletproof-ness of flash apps throughout the web. And that is not even Adobe’s fault. There are tons of different approaches towards deploying flash content and that is a blessing on one hand and a curse on the other. A graphics designer who creates his neat little portfolio with tweens and all probably doesn’t even know the meaning of the word “memory leak”. Still, he’s able to publish content that, for the user, seems to be just of the same kind as my heavyweight, overprogrammed, -profiled and -tested ria’s. So when selling a flash solution to a customer I happen to have to carefully explain why his future product is not to be connected with those crappy ads which are crashing his bloody macbook. And its not an easy one. So Jobs being Jobs does what he’s best at: business and hype selling. But this time he did some hard damage to the reputation of the technology we’re working with. And we made it too easy for him.
Hi Lukas,
Your points are all valid, but I suppose what irks me about Jobs is that Apple has laid more than an egg or two, and no one ever came out and claimed their problems were all due to Apple’s OS. When none of the browsers were compatible save for the Flash plugin; there was plenty of time for them to 1) agree on a standard, and/or 2) work with Adobe to resolve any problems they had with Flash. That hasn’t happened, and I doubt that anyone thinks that HTML5 is going to save the day.
I’m all for HTML5, and I fully expect Adobe to make a compatible plugin for it. However, I’ll bet that between Google, Apple, MS, Mozilla and Opera, there won’t be a compatible browser. Already there’s a debate over H.264 and VP8, and the browsers that have implemented some aspect of HTML5 show conflicting implementations.
None of us are naïve enough to think that all of the technology companies are going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya; but it is mutually advantageous for them to at least have a semblance of cooperation. I cannot think of one time where Adobe’s CEO ranted about Apple’s or Microsoft’s OS like Jobs did in a way that was harmful and largely imaginary. Sure, Flash content has memory leaks and they should fix it. Likewise, Apple’s Snow Leopard OS has problems as does Windows 7—but Adobe doesn’t blame everything that goes wrong with their software on other people’s OS.
Too many Apple computers owe their existence to products created by Adobe, and Adobe supported Apple at its lowest ebb. While Jobs’ comments may have hurt Adobe he may have shot himself in the foot at the same time.
So yeah, Adobe didn’t pay attention to some of its own problems, and we’re all going mobile to some extent. This is a good time for Adobe to tweak ActionScript, and then we’ll have a better tool to develop apps for whatever comes next. With Design Patterns, we’re pretty agile.
Cheers,
Bill
Hi Bill,
I totally agree with you. Jobs going at Adobe on this level is like hardcore nasty and very very unprofessional. It is that because especially Adobve is linked to Apple in a special way but what what bites me more is that he speaks of HTML5 and all and all of a sudden everybody thinks of Apple as the torch bearer of open standards. This is highly ridiculous coming from a company which allows its OS’s only on their own machines.
The main achievement of Jobs and Apple is to create a new type of customer in the computer world. One that is not that interested in RAM, CPU or graphic cards, but one that likes to have the fanciest gadget. Which comes no doubt from Apple. For those people the eggs you mentioned above don’t count.
And still, I agree, he may have shot himself in the foot. This speech may have cheered up all the Apple fanatics around the world who obviously wouldn’t think of Apple blaming for anything not even for their price politics (which is because of intel, of course) but the average customer doesn’t want to miss flash content on the web (mobile or not) and the average dev will at least for another while depend on Adobe’s formidable toolset. So I’m upset and kind of hurt even as is the reputation of my technology of choice but I’m not pessimistic on this. Like Narayen said: Let the customers decide.
Hi Lukas,
I’ve been a big Apple fan since 1980 when I got my first Apple II+ — used a tape drive waiting for the “new” Apple DOS to be available on a floppy. (That’s in the days when there were 2 Steves: Wozniack and Jobs—we all liked Woz better because he was a programmer’s programmer.) However, I’ve never been a fanatic. It’s the same with Adobe—or more accurately Macromedia -> Adobe. I like them, but that’s only because of their products. I’m sure that some at Adobe think that I hate them because I’ve been critical of some of the things they’ve done and have told them so. However, I keep it all in the dysfunctional family and don’t use a public forum to air laundry. It just doesn’t help.
A recent comment on Jobs’ comment (http://bit.ly/9YNf58) pretty well sums up what I think. Both Apple and Adobe have a great deal at stake in keeping the peace. Ask any non-programmer artist which they’d give up first—their Mac or Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop? Without Adobe, Apple boxes could be used for doorstops. Other than FinalCut Pro (which has been upstaged by Adobe Premier), there’s not a lot of software that doesn’t come packaged with Macs that is a game changer–unless you count Microsoft Office; which isn’t an Apple product anyway!
Much to its regret, IBM learned that it’s the software; not the hardware where the money is made. If Jobs and Apple keep up their attacks, Michael Dell will be a very happy man.
Kindest regards,
Bill
Hi there.
As a AS3 programmer, I really don’t care that much if my code runs in the Flash Player plugin, AIR, Java or natively within the browser with HTML5 (CSS, Javascript,..), as long as it runs the best way possible. Really, all I want is to use my development environment (Flash IDE, Flex, FlashDevelop, etc) to write cool stuff in AS3 and deploy it for any platform,. If I have to choose which way to compile my code in a combobox by selecting “Flash Player”, “AIR”, HTML5″, “Apple devices” or whatever…that does not bother me at all. In fact, if Adobe releases a CS6 version of Flash that compiles for HTML5 (we’re talking theoretically), they would only be doing the same they tried to do by allowing Flash creators to compile stuff for iPhone/iTouch. Anyway, all this fuss is about defending companies’ interests and market control. For now, I’ll just keep doing my stuff – that is, coding.
Hi Edd,
That’s what most of us want to do, but to play the compiled code, some kind of plugin is required that will handle the SWF file. Apple and Adobe never reached an accord about the mobile devices; and then Jobs throws a tizzy fit which more or less ended the discussion. I got no indication that Apple or Microsoft were going to ban the plugin from their browsers; however, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, I can run SWF files on all the main browsers, including Safari which I run on my Mac.
For mobile devices…let’s see what Google does. Maybe the browser will become the OS.
Cheers,
Bill
Hi Lukas,
Your points are all valid, but I suppose what irks me about Jobs is that Apple has laid more than an egg or two, and no one ever came out and claimed their problems were all due to Apple’s OS. When none of the browsers were compatible save for the Flash plugin; there was plenty of time for them to 1) agree on a standard, and/or 2) work with Adobe to resolve any problems they had with Flash. That hasn’t happened, and I doubt that anyone thinks that HTML5 is going to save the day.
I’m all for HTML5, and I fully expect Adobe to make a compatible plugin for it. However, I’ll bet that between Google, Apple, MS, Mozilla and Opera, there won’t be a compatible browser. Already there’s a debate over H.264 and VP8, and the browsers that have implemented some aspect of HTML5 show conflicting implementations.
None of us are naïve enough to think that all of the technology companies are going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya; but it is mutually advantageous for them to at least have a semblance of cooperation. I cannot think of one time where Adobe’s CEO ranted about Apple’s or Microsoft’s OS like Jobs did in a way that was harmful and largely imaginary. Sure, Flash content has memory leaks and they should fix it. Likewise, Apple’s Snow Leopard OS has problems as does Windows 7—but Adobe doesn’t blame everything that goes wrong with their software on other people’s OS.
Too many Apple computers owe their existence to products created by Adobe, and Adobe supported Apple at its lowest ebb. While Jobs’ comments may have hurt Adobe he may have shot himself in the foot at the same time.
So yeah, Adobe didn’t pay attention to some of its own problems, and we’re all going mobile to some extent. This is a good time for Adobe to tweak ActionScript, and then we’ll have a better tool to develop apps for whatever comes next. With Design Patterns, we’re pretty agile.
Cheers,
Bill