A Slap for Apple

NY Post

Adobe's Flash video software has become a flashpoint in negotiations between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Big Media.

On a day when Apple execs probably cheered the fact the company had surpassed Microsoft as the world's most valuable tech company, Jobs was grappling with resistance from Tinseltown over Apple's ongoing fight with Adobe.

Sources said several large media companies, including Time Warner and NBC Universal, told Apple they won't retool their extensive video libraries to accommodate the iPad, arguing that such a reformatting would be expensive and not worth it because Flash dominates the Web.

Though the iPad has been a huge hit, media companies are feeling emboldened in their rebuffing of Apple by the launch of rival touch-screen tablet devices, such as the ones coming from Dell Computer and Hewlett-Packard, sources said.

In addition, one media executive pointed out that Apple's ability to dictate terms to the media giants will be weakened further by Google TV, a software product that enables viewers to watch online video on their big-screen TVs.

Jobs banned Flash software from running on Apple devices, arguing that the world's most popular video software is unfit for his devices. Instead, he favors video software written in Web software language called HTML5.

Said an Apple spokeswoman, "We believe in open standards like HTML5."

The media companies' refusal to cave in to Jobs marks another setback at a time when Apple has had its share of both good and bad news.

In the plus column, Apple's $221.1 billion market cap yesterday topped Microsoft's $219.2 billion, making it the most valuable tech company. However, Apple is facing scrutiny from the Justice Department over tactics it uses in pricing songs sold on iTunes.

Apple shares closed down $1.17 to $244.05. Microsoft shares fell $1.06 to $25.01.

In the Apple vs. Adobe fight, Big Media's decision not to acquiesce to Apple's demands will be a boon to Adobe, which has gotten beaten up by Jobs' withering criticism of Flash.

Time Warner, in particular, is against the walled-garden, subscription-only model promoted by Apple in part because Time Warner is promoting its "TV Everywhere" initiative, which aims to make content platform agnostic so long as users can prove they are pay-TV customers.

Not surprisingly, Disney, which counts Jobs as its largest shareholder, has created an iPad app that lets users watch ABC shows for free.

CBS, using an iPad-enabled Web browser, is also working with Apple, but to a limited extent, offering only a handful of shows.

Both Fox News (which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp.) and CNN offer free video clips using HTML5 on the iPad.

Adobe to Launch new Version of Creative Suite

 

NEW YORK (AP) - Pent-up demand is expected to boost sales of the newest installment of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Creative Suite, the software package for professional designers and Web developers that brings in most of Adobe's revenue. The product launches Monday.

Bad timing hurt sales of the previous version, Creative Suite 4, which went on sale in the fall of 2008 just as the financial crisis hit. As a result, many customers - which range from small design shops and Web developers to large ad agencies - held back on buying upgrades.

In a challenge for Adobe, the launch of Creative Suite 5 comes just a few days after Apple Inc. updated the contract it has software developers sign and effectively prevented them from importing Flash applications to the iPhone and other devices.

Adobe's Flash, the format many Web videos, games and interactive graphics are created in, does not work on the iPhone or the iPad. Adobe has tried to work around this by giving developers a tool to translate Flash applications for the iPhone. Now, Apple says in its updated contract that developers must use Apple's own tools if they want to create apps for its gadgets.

In a statement Friday, Adobe said it was "looking into" Apple's new language and that it will continue to develop its app-generating technology and include it in Creative Suite 5.

Overall, the latest update of Creative Suite aims to make it easier for its users to include interactive elements in their designs. A new tool called Flash Catalyst, for example, lets traditional designers create interactive Web content without knowing how to code software. It uses drop-down menus that can turn boxes on a screen into buttons, for instance.

"It can take traditional print designers and help them get into interactivity," said Chris Kitchener, a senior product manager at Adobe.

This is also the first time Creative Suite includes services from Omniture, a company Adobe bought last fall for $1.8 billion. Omniture's technology helps companies measure the ways people interact with Web sites, ads and online applications.

Creative Suite 5 includes an upgrade of the Photoshop software that makes it easier to detect the borders of images within a photograph, among other new features. This could come in handy when trying to delete or move an image of a person from a photograph. Typically, detecting just where a person's hair strands end and the background begins is a painstaking process.

CS5 will cost between $1,299 and $2,599. It will ship in the next 30 days and will be available in "major languages," which in the past meant English, French, German and Japanese, by June 4, the end of Adobe's fiscal second quarter.

Adobe Reacts to New iPhone App Policy

Wired

 

The introduction of multitasking in iPhone OS 4 was great news for app developers and consumers, but Apple left unmentioned one policy tweak that could significantly change the App Store game.

As Wired.com reported Thursday, Apple previewed its next-generation iPhone operating system and released a beta to developers, which included a new developer’s agreement stipulating that iPhone apps must be originally programmed using Apple-approved languages (such as Objective-C).

The official iPhone OS 4 won’t be available until summer, so the exact implications of the policy change have yet to be seen. However, the consensus among several developers and tech observers is that the biggest and most obvious loser is Adobe, who has been touting a new tool called Packager for iPhone, which would enable Flash developers to easily port their apps into iPhone-native. This solution, which is set for an April 12 release as part of Adobe CS5, would partly address the lack of native Flash support for the iPhone and the iPad.

Adobe’s reaction to the news on Thursday wasn’t substantive (”We are aware of the new SDK language and are looking into it”), but Lee Brimelow, Adobe’s Flash evangelist, had some more colorful words today.

“Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today,” Brimelow wrote in his blog. “The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone.”

Brimelow ended his post with, “Go screw yourself Apple.”

Meanwhile, Adobe has issued a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating that “our business could be harmed” as “new releases of operating systems or other third-party products, platforms or devices, such as the Apple iPhone or iPad, make it more difficult for our products to perform, and our customers are persuaded to use alternative technologies,” as Bloomberg first reported.

The clause from the iPhone developer’s agreement in question is 3.3.1, which reads:

    3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Apple did not return a phone call requesting comment on the new developer agreement.

Update: Kevin Lynch, Adobe’s chief technology officer, has posted his level-headed response to the revised iPhone developer agreement:

“It is up to Apple whether they choose to allow or disallow applications as their rules shift over time,” Lynch wrote. “Secondly, multiscreen is growing beyond Apple’s devices. This year we will see a wide range of excellent smartphones, tablets, smartbooks, televisions and more coming to market and we are continuing to work with partners across this whole range to enable your content and applications to be viewed, interacted with and purchased.”

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series Lacks Cut, Copy, Paste Function

eWeek

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series will lack the ability to cut, copy and paste text, similar to Apple's iPhone, upon that device’s release. In its place, users will be able to perform a single-tap action. The Windows Phone 7 Series will also lack other features upon its release, including Adobe Flash support and the ability to run mobile applications built for Windows Mobile and previous versions of the company's smartphone operating system. Microsoft is working with Adobe, however, to eventually bring Flash support to the devices.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series will not allow users to cut, copy and paste text, adding to a list of other features—including Adobe Flash support—that the company’s newest smartphone operating system will lack when it rolls out to consumers and businesses later in 2010.

"Windows Phone 7 Series will not initially offer copy and paste," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to eWEEK on March 17. "Instead, we try to solve the most common uses for copy and paste via single-tap action."

For example, the spokesperson continued, "people often want to take an address and view it on a map, highlight a term in the browser and do a search or copy a phone number to make a call. Instead of the user manually doing a copy and paste in these scenarios, we recognize those situations automatically and make them happen with just one touch."

This method, apparently, drew a positive response in early testing, the Microsoft spokesperson added, although the company is apparently prepared to leverage feedback to improve that particular feature set.

The initial devices in the Windows Phone 7 Series may also lack Adobe Flash support, according to Microsoft, although CEO Steve Ballmer assured the audience at a Feb. 15 press conference in Barcelona, Spain, that “we have no objection” to Flash, which is used by many popular Websites to power their rich content.

With no definite timeline announced for Flash support, Microsoft and Adobe have nonetheless been collaborating to integrate Flash Player 10.1 into Internet Explorer Mobile on the Windows Phone 7 Series. Mike Chambers, Adobe’s principal product manager for developer relations for the Flash platform, wrote in a March 9 posting on his personal blog, "I don’t have an ETA or other specifics right now, but it is something that both Adobe and Microsoft are working closely together on."

Integration of Adobe Flash into mobile devices has become an unexpected hot topic of discussion among the tech community in recent weeks, after a January "town hall" meeting at Apple headquarters in which CEO Steve Jobs allegedly suggested that Flash’s buggy nature was the reason it had been excluded from both the iPhone and the upcoming iPad tablet PC. Jobs also insisted that HTML5 would be the Internet’s future for delivering rich content to Websites.

In response, a member of Adobe’s marketing team wrote in a Jan. 27 corporate blog posting, "Without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of Web content, including over 70 percent of games and 75 percent of video on the Web."

Apple’s position led a number of companies hoping to compete in the mobile space, including Hewlett-Packard, to emphasize that their own devices will include full Adobe Flash support. "With [our upcoming tablet PC], you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand. No watered-down Internet, no sacrifices," Phil McKinney, HP’s vice president and chief technology officer for the Personal Systems Group, wrote in a March 8 posting on the company’s Voodoo blog. "A big bonus for [our tablet PC] is that, being based off Windows 7, it offers full Adobe support."

Flash support or no, Windows Phone 7 Series will make a clean break from other technologies as well. During the Mix 2010 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft executives emphasized that current Windows Mobile applications would not be compatible with the new smartphone operating system.

“We do recognize that there are a lot of folks who have been writing apps for Windows Mobile for some time,” Larry Lieberman, senior product manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Developer Experience, told eWEEK in a March 15 interview. "But we recognize that the landscape has changed, and as we’ve been looking at stuff, we had to drastically change our game, and really the only way to do that was to look at what we were offering and what we could do to address this in a competitive accelerated manner."

Windows Phone 7 Series will utilize Silverlight and XNA to allow developers to build applications and 3D games for the upcoming Windows Phone Marketplace. However, Microsoft has also taken pains to insist over the past few weeks that it intends to continue supporting Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. 

Apple’s iPhone also lacked copy/cut/paste upon its release, although the company later offered that functionality in an update. It had been long requested by many users, particularly those who use their smartphones more in the manner of ultraportable cheap desktops. Given the iPhone’s success before that update, though, it stands to reason that Windows Phone 7 Series lacking copy/cut/paste will not exactly be perceived as the deciding factor in whether the smartphone operating system proves a success.

Apple iPad Does Not Support Flash

Information Week

Adobe says no Flash support means Apple's hot new tablet is incompatible with millions of Web sites.

Apple's iPad tablet computer, launched Wednesday amid a wave of hype almost unprecedented even for the overly excitable tech industry, is missing a feature so basic it renders it almost useless for Web surfing.

That, at least, is the criticism leveled at Apple by media software developer Adobe, whose Flash display technology powers interactive graphics on the bulk of Internet pages (while a handful use Microsoft's Silverlight).

As revealed during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' demonstration of the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, the iPad does not support Flash.

"There's something important missing from Apple's approach to connecting consumers to content," wrote Flash marketing manager Adrian Ludwig. "It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and customers," said Ludwig.

"If I want to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab—not to mention millions of other sites on the Web, I'll be out of luck," he added. Apple's decision not to support Flash on its iPad is curious, given its ubiquity throughout the Web and the fact that Adobe and Apple do not compete head on.

Adobe, however, is developing a workaround. Its forthcoming Packager for iPhone kit will allow Flash developers to build apps that run on the iPhone and, by extension, the iPad.

The lack of Flash support isn't doing much to mute the buzz surrounding the iPad launch. And Apple insisted the device is plenty flexible—capable of running the more than 140,000 programs currently available on the Apple App Store.

"iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price," said Jobs. Pricing starts at $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for their 64GB cousin.