What is Adobe doing?

[FlashLackey]

We're doing quite the opposite...focusing on Mobile, but more for iPad (not necessarily iPhone compatible) with Blackberry native for additional companion products. As our focus is on the financial community, we may not be in line with the rest of the world, but as Android continues to gain ground on iPhone penetration, the iPhone subscriptions are still improving as well.

We do iPad also. But, the trend we're seeing is more that clients are choosing mobile-friendly HTML-based apps (instead of flash-based) so that they can be viewed on iPads rather than full-blown iPad apps. Very few clients we've pitched to want to shell out the additional cash and deal with extra Apple bs for a limited demographic.

iPad, IMHO, has lapped everyone else in the tablet world. You might as well just refer to a tablet as an iPad as every other offering is an also ran.

I haven't tried the other tablets to know how good they are. But, I agree that Apple has a head start on everyone. However, they can't compete on price point and will eventually become the Escalade of tablets rather than the Toyota. Could take a few years though...

I do, however see HTML5 as the solution to having to build native apps across many different platforms...assuming that all of the tablet makers can apply the HTML5 methods in the same manner for the same experience across the board.

I disagree with this. We have 15+ years of evidence that multiple deployments of HTML by third parties will never be consistent. Now, instead of a few top browsers, we have various levels of phones, tablets, tvs and who-knows-what other devices are going to be running web apps on their little led screens. Plus, the sophistication of what the standard is supposed to handle has increased. Even the designers of HTML5 are aware of this problem. That's why they aren't expecting full implementation until 2022. 10 years ago we didn't have iphones or ipads. Who knows what the situation will be like 10 years from now? They set the bar for themselves so low that we're supposed to accept 10 years of half-assed implementations and inconsistencies so that they can say "it's not our fault because it's not ready yet."

The irony is that the current structure of HTML/Browser web viewing is the dinosaur. Not plug-ins like flash. HTML should be rendered by a W3C, open-source plug-in. That way it renders consistent across platforms, can be easily updated, can be tiered down for light-weight devices, etc. Why the standards fanatics object to this is beyond me. It seems to simply be pride and not wanting to have to admit they were wrong about flash and the doomsday predictions they made about plug-ins 15-20 years ago.

All of this isn't even to get far into the fact that HTML is a mark-up language being tortured into a scripting language. Mark-up is very useful for many applications and web sites. However, it falls way short in meeting many demands. Ford doesn't want to sell their vehicles on a web-site that looks like Mozilla or Verizon. Styling, etc. are a huge PIA via HTML. It was never designed for that and HTML5 brings very little to nothing new to the table in that regard.

RIMM is basically a dinosaur at this point.

Can't argue with that. RIMM is way behind for whatever reason. But, Google is no slouch with UIs, imo.

While I couldn't agree with FL more, Sadly that creates a no win situation with apple fanboys. They will believe what they want to believe regardless of the evidence and feel threatened when someone tries to spell out the facts.

Sad but true. Fortunately, businesses will eventually "vote" with their pocket-books. And that favors flash, iPad alternatives, etc.

Getting into bed with Apple is a no-win situation in terms of when they decide to compete against you, they'll pull a Final Cut Pro or Motion - which competed so heavily and favorably against Adobe Premiere (FCP) and AfterEffects (Motion) that Premiere had a version or two that was skipped on OS X and AfterEffects is usually a secondary when it comes down to certain kinds of effects or quick projects.

It's true. Adobe's products really are logical territory for Apple to go after. I can't blame them as a business for doing it. And if they came up with the best web app solution and everyone understood and wanted it, we would be all over selling it. I just hate to see them making ground on a fraudulent basis. It basically ends up degrading the quality of the product we're able to deliver to our clients.

From a business stand point, the best place to be is under a paying contract no matter the platform. The landscape will always change and we have to be prepared for the possibility of flashes death.

It certainly has it's pros in times like this.

Adobe is a lucrative company, but they act like their last dollar is on the table. Heavily fractured teams who don't communicate, lots of valuable dev cycles wasted on producing crap like Flex (sorry Gerbick, it sucks). Core employees leaving to start great products like Corona. A step towards unifying their app's UI's went sideways fast.

I'm definitely getting that lumbering corporate fatigue feel from Adobe also. Isn't there a PC version of Steve Jobs somewhere that they can hire?