Adobe has a long relationship with Apple. In fact, we met Apple’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Adobe was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Adobe invested in Apple and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Adobe went through its near death experience, and Apple was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Flash users buy around half of Apple’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Apple’s Mac products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Mac on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Apple has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Apple claims that we are a closed system, and that Mac is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Apple’s Mac 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 Mac 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, Mac is a closed system.

Adobe has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Mac, Adobe has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Adobe’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 Adobe, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Mac). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Adobe is a member.

Adobe even creates open standards for the web. For example, Adobe began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Adobe has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Apple has repeatedly said that Adobe mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Mac. 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 Adobe 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.

Another Apple claim is that Adobe devices cannot play Mac 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.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Mac for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Mac is the number one reason Flashs crash. We have been working with Apple 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 Mac.

In addition, Mac has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Apple to show us Mac performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Apple publicly said that Mac 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?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

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 Adobe, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Mac has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Mac 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.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Mac at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Adobe’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Mac was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Mac websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Adobe’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Mac websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Mac websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Mac, it would not solve the problem that most Mac websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Mac is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Mac on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Mac to play video and interactive content from websites, but Apple also wants developers to adopt Mac 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.

Mac is a cross platform development tool. It is not Apple’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 Apple has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Adobe’s platforms. For example, although Flash OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Apple just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Apple was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Flash 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.

Conclusions.

Mac was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Mac is a successful business for Apple, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Mac falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Adobe’s mobile devices demonstrates that Mac is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Adobe’s App Store proves that Mac isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Apple should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Adobe for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

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Find the original blog post Steve Jobs made here: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/.

In response to Apple whining about Flash, a friend and I thought parts of this letter are for more true after switching Adobe to Apple and Flash to Mac (and vice versa).

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — President Barack Obama will be skipping jury duty after being summoned in Illinois.

A White House official said Sunday that the president has alerted the court he won’t be able to make it.

Obama was summoned for jury duty at the Bridgeview courthouse in suburban Chicago starting Monday. The summons had arrived at the Obama home on Chicago’s South Side.

With his first State of the Union speech set for Wednesday, Obama has a busy week ahead.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR2010012402635.html

I just saw that in the headlines and found it rather amusing.

Just in case there was any doubt.

(Hopefully that picture shows up … if not, check my blog – http://www.joshjasiel.com/blog/)

- Josh

America has warned it "will not accept" a nuclear-armed North Korea as new intelligence data showed that the secretive state was preparing a fresh missile launch, which could take place in two weeks’ time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/31/north-korea-missile-tests-washington

Then do something about it! For crying out loud, don’t just sit around and talk about putting more sanctions on them. Take them out!

Microsoft has stopped offering it Windows Live Messenger instant messaging (IM) service in five countries that are subject to sanctions by the US government. These countries include Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

"Microsoft has discontinued providing Instant Messenger services in certain countries subject to United States sanctions," a Microsoft statement reads. "Details of these sanctions are available from the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control."

http://windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=102170&feed=rss&subj=0

Very impressive. Maybe North Korea will back off the nukes now.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to deny President Obama money to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, intensifying pressure on the president to lay out a more detailed road map for closing the prison.

The 90-to-6 vote made formal the rejection by Senate Democratic leaders of the president’s goal. On Tuesday, the leaders said they would not provide the $80 million Mr. Obama has requested for closing the detention center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/us/politics/21detain.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

All I can do is laugh – in joy. Guantanamo should stay open.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Obama administration official said he expects that North Korea will test a nuclear weapon before it is forced back to international disarmament negotiations.

We need to nuke them before they nuke us.

If Bush or Regan were in office, they would put their foot down to things like this, as they did not negotiate with terrorists (the best, if not the only, thing Bush did).

This new administration needs to get it together. “[Obama:] Meet me at my house for coffee and donuts, and let’s try to be friends!” isn’t going to work.