We Heart Apple (for an open future?)
Spotted doing the rounds in some business newspapers the other day was a series of ads placed by software giant Adobe saying how much they love standards, but how they also believe that businesses should be free to compete on an open market. Whilst possibly targeting the wrong people with their ad placement, this was the latest round in an increasingly messy public argument to have come around in recent times between Adobe and Apple.
Adobe have for some years been responsible for Flash (since taking it over from Macromedia); Flash being the technology which allows for rich animation and games such as that scattered quite heavily around the Ahoy website, as well as being the main way video is streamed via online websites like Youtube. Whilst Flash has opened up a lot of avenues for rich content, the software behind it has been traditionally slow and poorly optimised, which is why we generally use it sparingly.
Enter Apple. Whilst mainstream Mac OS has run Flash for some years, in recent times they've decided to respond by effectively blocking Flash from their iphone and ipad lines of products until such times as Adobe can make the software more stable and less resource hungry. Adobe responded to the decision by rewriting their CS5 software to bypass the need for Flash on the iphone completely. Apple responded by changing their developer Ts&Cs to block it right before CS5's launch. The end result has been a barrage of back and forth complaints the last few months with both parties shouting about how they support open standards on the net (there are alternatives to Flash, but they're still far from perfect too), and investigations of abuse of market position by governments.
Whether either company is in the right or the wrong is no easy question and is something everyone can take a position on, but one thing's for sure; we're in for a messy few months now unless they can work it out. As a design firm, we'll continue to use whatever technology gets the job done to the best quality here, whilst remaining as accessible as possible to all. Oh, and remain hopeful Adobe won't respond by removing the whole of the CS software suite from Mac OS!
Posted By: Terence
18 May 2010