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Adobe attacks iPad over Flash, ePub book standard

updated 04:25 pm EST, Thu January 28, 2010

Tablet locks iBooks to Apple hardware, Adobe says

Adobe has taken to criticizing the iPad through one of its blog entries, calling the device's standards support inadequate. The company notes that two standards it has been involved with -- PDF and ePub -- were prominently displayed in Wednesday's iPad publicity event. Apple uses a form of ePub in iBooks, a combination e-reader and online bookstore. The app may theoretically support e-books bought from other stores.

Following an embarrassing moment during the iPad announcement, however, when Flash objects did not display on the New York Times website, Adobe has decided to resume its criticism of Apple. Flash has never been supported on devices with the iPhone OS, mainly because of Apple concerns that it could rapidly drain battery life. In rejecting any version of the technology, Adobe suggests that Apple is preventing people from accessing "70 percent of games," as well as "75 percent of video." Sites such as Hulu, ESPN and JibJab are crippled on an iPad.

Regarding ePub, Adobe charges that books bought on an iPad will be inaccessible to other e-readers. While ePub is technically an open standard, Apple is said to have adopted provisions in the format for DRM. Even if competing e-books can be loaded into iBooks, the reverse may not be true. Adobe produces a Mac and Windows e-reader called Digital Editions.

The iBooks criticism is similar to now-defunct complaints about music from the iTunes Store. Although iPods and iPhones have always been able to play unprotected MP3 files, tracks bought through iTunes were for years unplayable on non-Apple hardware. All albums were made DRM-free as of April 2009.

by MacNN Staff

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industry, Graphics/Web Design, Adobe, Flash, e-books, iPad

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G4_Kessel
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2003

+44

01/28, 04:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Adobe can suck it!

Adobe needs to get a clue. Apple is pissed off at them. Adobe, how about you make Flash use less CPU power on the Mac like the Windows version... then maybe Apple will stop being pissed off at you (like the rest of us are).

Comment buried. Show

Constable Odo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2007

-11

01/28, 04:48pm | report spam | (2 replies) close Reply |
Why would Adobe even care...

that the iPad doesn't support Flash? Every other computing platform in the world supports Flash so how does it affect Adobe in any way? Apple is likely to be the big loser in this fight because it doesn't seem to have any backers. Flash doesn't look like it's going away. Nearly everyone wants Flash and uses Flash except Apple users, so what is Adobe squawking about. Adobe is angry because Apple users are missing out on Flash goodies. Shouldn't Apple mobile users be the one's complaining? It's Apple users that are losing out, not Adobe.

I don't know anything about ePub, but I still like using .pdf files. I usually look at them using Preview, though, and not Adobe's reader.

Geobunny
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 2000

+37

01/28, 04:50pm | report spam | (2 replies) close Reply |
Standards?

"Adobe has taken to [...] calling the device's standards support inadequate."

Sorry Adobe, but Flash is NOT a standard. You may wish it to be so, but it ain't. You're not even in the running for the decision on the HTML5 video codec - that's between H.264 and Ogg Theora.

It's an interesting tack though - build sh1te, inefficient software and then moan when people decide not to use it. Either fix it or STFU.

Comment buried. Show

smoak5
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2001

-17

01/28, 04:51pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
it's all about money

if we have flash access, we can enjoy more web content that is free, such as hulu, play flash games, etc, which will probably impact sales in the itunes, app store, etc.

flash can run fine on less powerful smart phones.

it appears to be all about money and control which apple care most.

ipad, magical? please.

Geobunny
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 2000

+36

01/28, 04:53pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
Quite happy

I meant to add that I'm actually quite happy without flash on my iPhone at the moment - the fewer silly animated banner ads I see, the better!

dogzilla
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Sep 1999

+16

01/28, 05:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
Also quite happy

I would suggest that anyone who truly thinks Flash is worth it try surfing on a Mac, once normally and then once with ClickToFlash enabled. I suspect most people asking for Flash either don't realize how much it slows down a mac or have only used Windows. I rely on flash video to deliver a live webcast twice a week, but I disable it everywhere else - it's miserable.

Comment buried. Show

cartoonspin
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2003

-11

01/28, 05:09pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
Flash

Most online gaming and top 50 web sites use flash. Is everyone saying they don't need it? Well that is the great minority. I would be buying 2 iPads for the kids if it used flash. Since it doesn't I will stick to our old Macbooks that do everything.

Seriously, Apple should move on and add Flash. As far as the battery issue, no one complained when we all download a truck load of apps accessing the web thereby draining our battery quickly. We just plug it in.

How hard is that?

qazwart
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Joined: Apr 2001

+25

01/28, 05:09pm | report spam | (3 replies) close Reply |
The problems with Flash

Flash is one of the reasons why Apple re-architected Safari to play plugins as a separate process. Flash is a 32bit application, and Apple didn't want to run Safari as a 32bit application due to Flash.

Flash is a memory hog and doesn't work with Apple's H.264 decoding standards and is one of the main reasons why applications on Apple crashed. Apple has the crash logs to prove it too.

Flash is a proprietary application, and if Apple used it, they'd be dependent upon Adobe to produce Flash clients for each piece of Apple hardware. Personally, I hope Flash dies and HTML5 and H.264 standards can take over.

Google is moving YouTube away from Flash for the same reasons. By the way, Hulu is Silverlight and not Flash. Silverlight is Microsoft's incompatible proprietary standard.

slapppy
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Joined: Mar 2008

+20

01/28, 05:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
Adobe can kiss my

If your Flash is so awesome, why is it whenever that POS loads on any of my Macs, the CPU scales to ridiculous cycles, fans starts run at maximum to try and cool off the CPU. All because of one little flash content on the web page. Yeah, that POS is the most useless cpu sucking POS on the interwebs. WE DON"T NEED IT!

dliup
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2006

+27

01/28, 05:25pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
HTML5 FTW

HTML5 > Flash
Mp4 > Flash
No annoying flashing ad > Flash

Get the point Adobe? No?

vasic
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Joined: May 2005

+15

01/28, 05:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
Power Play

This is the most brazen power play on behalf of Apple. Most people are totally ignorant about web technologies (HTML5, AJAX, Flash, Silverlight...). They know that big blue 'E' means internet. They will buy the iPad and shift most of their web surfing to it.

Very soon, web site operators will begin noticing a major shift in the visitors' platform towards iPad (and iPhone/iPod). As soon as the cumulative total between the three becomes a serious number, it will be clear that offering flash-only (or flash-dominant) content will mean ignoring these visitors and turning them away. The next step will obviously be re-building those sites to deliver same content without flash. And this is where Apple wins and Adobe (and Microsoft) lose.

How high does that percentage have to become until all major players begin abandoning Flash? I would say, about 15% of their visitors. And it shouldn't take more than another year or so until that happens.

As far as Flash as a technology is concerned, 95% of the web sites that use flash could easily deliver exactly the same functionality and content by using HTML5, AJAX and other common standards. They are just lazy, since flash is so easy to create, any idiot can figure out how to create an animated banner in a day. And they do. So we have this glut of unnecessary flash c*** clogging the web. Let us hope iPad contributes in a major way in cleaning all that c*** up.

Feathers
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Oct 1999

+14

01/28, 05:40pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
Macromedia

Ten or more years ago I loved Flash, but it was a different creature back then, a Macromedia creature! Adobe have made thorough-going sh*t of every single piece of software they have ever acquired. Period.

martini
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Joined: Jan 2010

+18

01/28, 05:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Open Access?

How ironic that Adobe's "Open Screen Project" is based on its proprietary software. I don't miss flash on my phone and I use ClickToFlash in Safari. Hurry up HTML5.

And who was embarrassed during that "embarrassing moment"? Not Jobs, he knew exactly what he was doing when he went to that NYT page. I don't think you can say "Adobe, kiss my butt" any clearer than that.

George3
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Joined: Jul 2008

+7

01/28, 05:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
Keep it up Adobe

Stop bitching a rewrite your terrible software so it runs better on the Mac. I know you have the cash to spend on that project.

Adobe, your software is c***. I'm constantly looking for an alternative, so keep on doing what you are doing and you will find yourself obsolete and replaced.

HTML5 is going to wipe Flash video off of the internet.

Good riddance Flash.

ff11
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Joined: Apr 2004

+8

01/28, 06:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Instead of attacking

They should turn flash into a less buggy entry point for exploits, or ... dare I dream? ... take out the bugs AND make it secure. But that's crazy talk, attacking is much easier.

cbojanower
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Joined: Sep 2000

+10

01/28, 06:21pm | report spam | close Reply |
No Flash for the Air Force

I work at an Air Force base, the Air Force banned flash a few years ago as a security problem. If we go to a website that has flash on it, it is blocked. I have learned to live without it quite well.

Sure I would like to have it. but it sure is not needed.

beb
Mac Elite

Joined: Jan 2002

+5

01/28, 06:34pm | report spam | close Reply |
Adobe's mess

I think Adobe brings up a legitimate point. However, that being said, all technologies are improved upon eventually. I’m hoping the overuse of it on the web does phase it out a lot with the adoption of HTML 5. I have a wonderful HP/Intel quad powered setup and I can often see it struggle to load Flash-based content. I think a big problem lies with the average user. Most people who use their PCs just notice that the system gets slower when I load this webpage. They see it as something wrong with the browser or the computer. They don’t equate it to a Flash application taking away resources elsewhere from the system. This also affects Windows users. So while the Mac implementation of Flash probably isn’t the greatest, neither is the Windows version. I think Adobe should probably spend more time providing a better implementation of their technology versus complaining about companies who do not want to clean up somebody else’s mess.

Woode
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Joined: Oct 2007

+7

01/28, 06:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Macromedia

I hate Adobe for the steaming pile of fail that Flash has become, and for killing Freehand.

The Flash plug-in crashes frequently and usually Safari just kicks the plug-in, but sometimes it crashes the whole browser, especially if I have several tabs and they're all trying to play crappy (you know I want to use a strong word) Flash banner ads.

Adobe, at this point, maybe you should go back to page layout and fonts, and get out of the web technology business. Because you are seriously sucking at it.

Bobfozz
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Joined: Jul 2008

+9

01/28, 06:39pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
Wasted Energy

Two times in the past 2 years I needed to install Flash on my G4. In one time (maybe both) it was a poorly designed website (and admitted to by the owner).

I must be visiting all the wrong web sites. Don't look at games, don't want to see blinking banners.

It sounds to me the if Flash players better on Windows then it is Adobe who needs to look into this. Adobe's biggest fear is that one of these days Apple will introduce software to replace Photoshop, etc. (Apple is probably working on it.) Adobe no longer publishes Premier for the Mac, but that wasn't such a bad thing was it?

russellb
Junior Member

Joined: Sep 2001

+6

01/28, 06:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
Ha HA

Remember one thing, Adobe is only complaining as they feel it will negatively impact THEM. They know the Ipad will be a runaway success and it wont support their PRODUCT "FLASH" and so flash becomes less relevant to other companies who will look for other solutions.

If it was the reverse and Apple NEEDED flash it would be apple stooping to Adobes needs

jnicholas
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Joined: Sep 2002

+8

01/28, 07:14pm | report spam | (1 reply) close Reply |
comment title

Every Flash thread ends up with people equating Flash to annoying banner ads and praising HTML5. Flash is simply a runtime for actionscript content the same as your browser runs HTML5. It can be used to create a game or an ad or whatever the programmer wants to make.

Killing Flash just means ad agency coders switch platforms, it doesn't mean the web suddenly becomes ad free. The reason ad agencies use flash is because it is the best platform right now for creating ads. If HTML5 or Silverlight becomes a better platform then the ad agencies will use it. Hating Flash because of ads is like hating video because of infomercials.

I would welcome Adobe making flash faster, more stable or more efficient but killing it just throws out the applications it does well and doesn't really move the web forward at all.

Watson
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Joined: Dec 2001

+5

01/28, 08:31pm | report spam | close Reply |
Adobe has never supported the Mac

Look on their user forums. If you happen to use Mac OS X Server or have a case-sensitive file-system, Adobe reader completely bugs. Half of the plug-ins won't work, and you can't even get to the application preferences. When you finally figure out that it has something to do with the file system, the developers claim that Apple doesn't advise using the case-sensitive file-system.

In reality, they are too lazy to use consistent capitalization in their coding and in their naming of files. If you need case-sensitivity (and I do) you find out way too late that you can't fill out pdf forms that use plug-ins that are borked by their laziness.

As far as Flash is concerned, from what I understand the reason that the CPU heats up is that people encode their videos for "the best quality" which makes it choose a frame-rate that is way to high for most laptops or computers that use integrated video. If the developers of Flash games/video were more considerate of the end user, they would lower the frame rate down to something more reasonable for mobile users.

I doubt that's going to happen.

Go to the HTML5 version of YouTube - you can watch all day and your computer fans will never start screaming like they do from 30 seconds of Flash.

iGlad
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Joined: Dec 2009

+4

01/28, 09:53pm | report spam | close Reply |
Jobs was making a point!!

If you didn't think that Steve Jobs was sending Adobe a message when he came across that flash video(?) that didn't show yesterday, well you are wrong he was and the fact that he never made a comment about it said lots which is why Adobe are bitching about it now, as that must have hurt Adobe. As for me well I laughed and laughed and laughed nice one steve!!

bobolicious
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2002

+1

01/29, 12:29am | report spam | close Reply |
I avoid flash - slow, buggy, unreliable...

...most sites that have it I move on from before they finish loading - yet I've licensed acrobat from the beginning, and depend on it daily...

bonaccij
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Joined: Jun 2003

+1

01/29, 06:15am | report spam | close Reply |
Do you really think...

...that "Uncle Steve" really made a "mistake" by showing that page that didn't work with Flash? I don't. I think that was intentional to publicly say "Look, we still aren't supporting Flash on the iPhone OS". Just my two cents.

Now, as far as e-pub and DRM - has anybody here on this site bought an e-pub from eReader? They are all encrypted. I wish people would stop getting down on Apple for DRM. They simply institute what the bigger companies need them to in order to get content out to the masses. When you download an e-pub from any of the major sites, they are all encrypted with your CC number - so... why are we complaining about Apple possibly using DRM? Of course they are going to because everybody else does. No-brainer...

JulesLt
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0

01/29, 09:06am | report spam | close Reply |
ePub DRM

ePub is a standard.

The Adobe blog is right - books bought through iBooks won't play on other ePub devices, because they also are controlled by Fairlplay DRM (Apple's DRM solution). What the blog fails to mention is that there is NO open DRM standard - by definition, DRM is about wrapping things in secret encryption codes - the closest to an open standard is the Blu-ray one, which works because the secret keys can be revoked and changed, when they are cracked or leaked.

Pretending anything else is a lie (and especially if you pretend a proprietary DRM is a 'standard' - a standard is something documented and published). Pretending Apple have broken ePub in some way is definitely a lie (Adobe's standard allows for any DRM scheme to be applied).

As for Flash. It's a Mexican stand-off. The licensing terms of each platform means that neither one of them can do the job alone (Apple cannot implement Flash without breaking Adobe's licence, and ditto in the reverse). But we have not seen any proof, yet, of a working performant ARM optimised mobile Flash - only talk of one, or ones that are slow.

Nate83
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+2

01/29, 10:26am | report spam | close Reply |
Web Developer

Flash gives us web developers a way to deliver rich content that would otherwise only be available in desktop apps or with lots of nasty javascript. Creating apps in flash not only allows me to deliver a richer experience, but it also allows me to get around having to cater to old school browsers like IE6. HTML 5 might be a Flash killer, but it doesn't have the browser support needed for developers to actually use it right now.

http://theflashblog.com/?p=1641

facebook_Károly
Via Facebook

Joined: Jan 2010

+3

01/29, 11:01am | report spam | close Reply |
Hi Adobe, why not make a Digital Editions app?

To me, the iPad looks like it’ll be the most attractive eBook reader out there. There is no need for the iBooks app to support other stores—they can simply publish their own app. The iPad will automatically inherit support for Kindle and B&N/Fictionwise eBook stores from the iPhone, although I suppose Amazon & B&N will provide an iPad-native version of their apps at some point.

There is nothing holding back Adobe from publishing an app for Digital Editions books. They promised one for the iPhone a few months ago—they never delivered, of course. People don’t seem to care too much—I am yet to meet anyone who has ever bought a book from them.

Nate83
Fresh-Faced Recruit

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-1

01/29, 12:20pm | report spam | close Reply |
Also

I don't see why people are up-in-arms over Adobe's software. Flash has allowed us to do what html 5 and webgl are promising for a long time now. It could run better on a mac if Apple opened up it's OS a little more, and that's why Adobe is pissed.

I also think Adobe's other products like Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, After Effects, etc, etc, etc are amazing.

NetMark
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Joined: Jan 2010

0

01/29, 05:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
Yellow Journalism

"MacNN staff" really wants to stir up controversy with a headline saying "Adobe attacks!" And you won't even link to the original Adobe blog post, which is really a very balanced bit of criticism:

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/apples_ipad_--_a_broken_link.html

That's irresponsible, MacNN, and you should know better.

It's clear to me why Apple doesn't want Flash player on the iPad. It's NOT because the Flash Player eats up CPU or battery life. I have it from good sources that Apple has seen the latest versions of Flash Player for devices, and that the performance gains in those latest versions are amazing.

The real reason is that if everyone could get free Flash games and video on the iPad, it would cut into Apple's revenue. Why pay to download games from the app store when you can get thousands of free ones using Flash? It's a blatant attempt to corner the market on app and video downloads for Apple. And all you "Flash haters" are playing right into their hands.

mytdave
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2000

+2

01/29, 05:47pm | report spam | close Reply |
good and bad

So yea, Flash performance sucks big time, especially on the Mac. But Flash has been great for a number of reasons, including capabilities for web pages that previously didn't exist, a nice development environment for webmasters, wide ranging capabilites from audio, animation, video, i/o support, games, etc. plus the multi-platform support (Win, Mac, Lin, Solaris). Name me any other multimedia environment that has all that...

Now, on the other hand, I prefer open standards, and I also like companies/developers who can avoid bloat, and Flash is neither open nor svelt. I greatly welcome HTML 5, and I would LOVE to see the standard support BOTH H.264 and Ogg (truth be told, I don't want any particular codec deemed "the standard" - I would hope HTML 5 provides a framework for those codecs to run, rather than requiring a particular codec).

But remember, Flash is about more than just video codecs... which also makes me wonder why Adobe's complaining so much. I don't know who will win this pissing contest, but I'm sure Apple isn't too pleased with Adobe making so much bloatware for the Mac. I think Apple has waited patiently for a long time for Adobe to get their act together, but have finally come to the "if developer 'X' can't make a decent piece of software, I guess we'll have to do it ourselves" stage.

Yet, this isn't so much about Apple vs Adobe, methinks, as it is about open standards like HTML 5. I'm glad Apple is embracing the open standard and shirking the proprietary, and I hope Flash as we know it goes away.

Now, I don't want to see Flash die, but rather I would like to see Adobe embrace HTML 5 and rewrite flash to take advantage of the standards, and fill in the gaps where there isn't a standard, and keep the Flash development tools - tuned to generate code that meets the standards. That just makes good sense.

yozef
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Joined: Feb 2010

+1

02/04, 08:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
There will be a time

Apple fans are a little too much re-echoing what Steve Jobs says. And no doubt, he is a man that will leave a trace in the history.

Adobe, the launcher of Designer Softwares for decades, such as Photoshop for Designers who were the only ones that kept Apple going till 1997, as they were the only ones using it, suddenly disbanded the idea of Flash on the internet because Steve Jobs wants the iPhone h'Apple-ly Closed.

There will be a time when trend strategists will look at how they saw flash as merely a 'Banner Ads' annoyance. Than truly understand Hybrid, Web-Applications suck as RIAs and the power of Flex, Flash while Skinning with Photoshop and Catalyst.

Flash has been doing touch screens long before Apple was in the game, at least publicly. Removing Flash from the iPad is Purely for Apple to Run whatever it wants and Not because Steve Jobs felt like bashing Flash for incompetence reasons.

yozef
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 2010

+1

02/04, 09:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
On another note

Flash does not only play Video. If HTML5 can render As-Or-Better Quality Videos, nobody would be happier than I, and the next random web surfer.

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Adobe attacks iPad over Flash, ePub book standard

updated 04:25 pm EST, Thu January 28, 2010

Tablet locks iBooks to Apple hardware, Adobe says

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