FTC denies request for documents on Adobe complaint, confirms investigation of Apple's SDK rules?
By Tim Stevens 
posted August 5th 2010 10:53AM
posted August 5th 2010 10:53AM
Sure, Apple and Adobe aren't the best of friends, but their disagreement goes a little further than mild distaste. Apple moved to ban iOS apps not written through its own developer framework (SDK), which more or less killed off Adobe's iPhone Flash developer tools. Adobe in turn issued a complaint to the FTC, a complaint that Wired requested a copy of under the Freedom of Information Act. The release of that complaint was denied on the grounds that "disclosure of that material could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission's law enforcement activities." That is another strong indication that the FTC is currently investigating Apple and deciding whether the company is acting properly by preventing third-party access to its iOS devices. What's next? We likely won't hear anything until the FTC makes up its mind, and even then only if it decides Apple isn't playing as nice as it should be.
Sounds like history will repeat itself this time instead MS its Apple.
@Seven2k Oh, why can't we be friends?
@Seven2k
I really don't even remotely see the comparison in this arguement.
The only similarity is that there are two companies and they don't like eachother for certain reasons.
It's not like companies have done that before, right?
Oh wait.
@pple is poo
haha good point...but we all learned this in US History class in high school. America does not like monopolies.
@Seven2k
Adobe is the Monopoly in this case.
You have tons of other choices when it comes to computers, but who is a legitimate Adobe competitor.
Adobe you can stuff it. Your nothing but a man-in-the-middle attack!
@ROCKandREVIEWcom Seriously I still don't understand why we need a third party plugin to view videos in my browser. Will someone please explain this to me? Look if you are a flash programmer, my sympathies to you. But to the general public seriously why do I need a plugin to view videos? A plugin that is sometimes error prone and unstable.
@ROCKandREVIEWcom
You are. YOU. ARE. You're.
ffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
@ROCKandREVIEWcom
For web design their many open source programs out there. We here use one for the university and dont use Adobe.
@Seven2k
Sorry but moe with Gimp just is not a serious alternative, neither is any Microsoft product.
Fact is, Adobe has bought out all of the competition.
@JojoMojo
Your exactly right! I can seriously do w/o Flash as a video plugin.
Have you tried the new FireFox beta? it's got a nice ability to separate the browser from the plugins for the very fact that Adobe's Flash is the most crash-prone software on the market today and Adobe have no clue how to fix it.
@Seven2k - what ROCKandREVIEWcom is referring to is Flash. Flash is proprietary & undocumented; no one can make a clone of it. He is not referring to web development tools; there are tons of those and Apple doesn't care which ones you use.
But neither of you are referring to the use of a Flash interpreter in the development of applications, which is what this article is about.
JoJo is right. Video standards should be open so that hardware manufacturers can spec hardware that works best with that standard.
@whiskers
Your a genius. that's the most well thought-out response i have ever read.
You must have an Adobe plugin for a brain. You need a reboot.
@Seven2k
But in this case Apple has Al Gore on their team. The FTC will fold, Adobe will lose and Apple will win.
Or is global warming illegitimate? Cause if it is, then Gore and Co. might lose.
@N900
Because I want to scalp money from your customers and you don't want me to.
(Adobe says to Apple.)
@JojoMojo How to you watch Quicktime video then ?
@ROCKandREVIEWcom
highly doubt it....they came down on MS and MS is basically everywhere in the government.
@Seven2k
There's never been a powerful politician on the board of MS. Plus they couldn't really come down on them too hard or their licensing fees would go up since MS has a strangle hold on most industries.
I happen to like MS and Apple and even Adobe, I just think that Adobe is not in the right in this case when their basis is that they want the right to be a middle-man in Apple's nice clean world. Let Apple be snobs if they want. It's their stuff. It's not like their mobile devices are the only one's on the market.
@JojoMojo
>>>> But to the general public seriously why do I need a plugin to view videos?
Are you saying that there is some alternative method in existence where in we do not need a plug-in to view video? Even with HTML5 you still need a plug-in (an appropriate codec which is itself a plug in like Flash) to view video. HTML5 by itself is nothing more than a standard and even if it makes it easy to embed a video via tags, A HTML5 browser just interprets the tags and the browser still has to use the codec to decode and render the video. The main difference is that with Flash, the there is only one company making the plug-in for multitude of operating systems and browsers while with HTML5, its just a standard and every browser developer implements the standard in his own way.
@ROCKandREVIEWcom because HTML = hyper TEXT markup language.
HTML never had multimedia in mind when it was created...
@SirNoDroin
I wasn't talking about HTML, but now that you bring it up, it has always had a way of interfacing external content with the page. This content could be audio, video or any other type of document.
@Seven2k
Except Apple still hasn't done anything that's even close to being considered anti-trust, and Microsoft did. See the difference?
@Seven2k
Funny to see how hard Adobe is fighting to retain its 96% monopoly deathgrip on Internet dynamic media content and actually crying about it to the FTC to prevent free and open competing alternatives, the ones Apple is chosing to use instead. --Key thing here is Apple is using open source alternatives, Apple does not own them.-- Adobe cannot claim to have the right to inject its monopoly status into Apple's business model in order to profit from all the work Apple has done. Specially since Adobe couldn't deliver a Flash player that could work on the iPhone.
In contrast with Adobe's monopolistic market share, Apple is third behind Nokia and RIM. There is no iPhone monopoly. Flash is a proprietary plug-in instaled on many platforms and Adobe is fighting hard to prevent competition. Apple does not spread iOS across the entire market, its used only on Apple products, therefore any other vendor can freely launch its own competing mobile OS.
Apple has killed monopolies before.
1) With QuickTime it countered Microsoft's criminal threats that demanded Apple take the product off the market to avoid competition with MS's media playback ambitions.
2) the iPod killed MS's ambitions to cover all portable digital music players with heavy DRM.
3) Defeated MS's attempts to tie Zune to it's Windows monopoly; etc, etc.
Apple broke the back of MS's monopoly by refusing to license MS's technology and instead developing its own alternatives that the marked found to be better.
@Jack Really?
@HighestRanked1 You are throwing your points in which are fair enough, but you are also missing out the glaring problems with your argument. Whilst I can't be bothered to sit here and write an essay response all I need to say is:
a) Javascript performances and canvas performance on iDevices run poorly, clearly they aren't ready either.
b) Flash runs great on my android, and the javascript performance is through the roof.
Personally I think this whole spat needs rid of now, Apple's halo has gone, Android is rising (fast), and its bringing with it the best of both worlds. At the end of the day what it boils down to is a have, and a have not and I'd prefer to have, than have not.
@fourthletter All videos should be viewable by an HTML5 tag. All videos which I can't view like this need to die... including Quicktime.
@Jack
Damn....all i have to say is look closer and open your eyes.
@DarthGeek Flash still feels non-native to the browser. Codec is very different from a plugin. It steals my keyboard focus. The right-click shows a different menu. My trackpad doesn't do the two finger scroll when I am over a flash video or animation. The back browser support is crap. I could keep going on and on. The gist is that ...flash is not as native to the browser as the HTML 5 tag is....... codecs or not.
@Darkroom If you can't make a valid logical point and have to resort to name calling.... you suck more than anyone else. Go away troll.
@JojoMojo But which format? ogg? h.264? webM? It's good to have as a backup but I certainly wouldnt rely on it, and I certainly don't think it's particularly unified to double embed 2+ video formats specifically for different browsers...
@HighestRanked1
"Funny to see how hard Adobe is fighting to retain its 96% monopoly deathgrip on Internet dynamic media content and actually crying about it to the FTC to prevent free and open competing alternatives, the ones Apple is chosing to use instead."
Funny? Nah, total shyte actually. The point is that Adobe aren't ABUSING their monopoly and preventing other companies delivering multimedia rich content. Apple are by banning source code they don't like when everybody knows they're only doing it to cut out Adobe.
Spot the difference? Nope, not holding my breath.
@Seven2k ...and all I have to say is open a law book. The fact that you don't like what they are doing does not mean that they are doing anything wrong. The fact that the FTC/DOJ are investigating them does not mean that they are doing anything wrong. The facts are simple, so I'll lay them out.
Apple does not have a majority share of any of these markets, except personal music players and music distribution, two areas where Apple is receiving no complaints of an antitrust nature.
Apple hasn't used its (minority) position in any way to keep any of its competitors from creating phones, mobile platforms, application stores, or media markets.
Apple is completely free to specify the terms for use of their products, and for putting your software on their store.
The consumer is completely free to choose hardware and software from another manufacturer, should they disagree with Apple's terms. The numbers would suggest that they are doing so.
The investigation is a waste of government resources and taxpayer dollars. This Engadget article is a waste of bandwidth. This comment is probably a waste of factual information.
@fpad77 Flash works great on Android*
*performance may vary depending on the content itself. if the content has been optimized for mobile delivery, then great, otherwise, use it at your own risk. Some files for example: FLV files, may not work, or crash the browser.
@winst It's wise to have mobile ready versions of anything be it html/css/java/flash. That's pretty much a given. In saying that, it can run desktop version content only very well, but if the content is fixed layout instead of fluid, as well as buttons/roll overs being setup inefficiently you are inevitably going to run into difficulty on mobile devices, but the same goes for any sort of rich media application.
That aside, not having mobile versions ready to go is forgivable when only last year full flash on a mobile device was unheard of.
@HKCally
Adobe doesn't have the right to inject itself into Apple's business. They don't have the right to have their software be allowed on any platform of their chosing. They don't have that right because it's not a right.
Furthermore, none of this would be happening if Adobe had delivered an actual, functioning Flash plug-in for iOS. Instead they delivered a bag of feces and claimed it was good enough. Fact is no mobile platform actually has Flash working as good as it does on desktop versions. Apple is not going to get a bag of somebody else's problems just to say Flash runs on iOS, nevermind if it works like garbage and user experience be damned. Apple is not Google nor MS.
Allowing 3rd party dev tools to compile for iOS is simply allowing Adobe or any one else to hold back progress and innovation on iOS. Apple can't have lowest-common denominator dev tools compiling with outdated code. Devs need to be given the most advanced and newest dev tools possible to produce the best possible Apps. Innovation is driven forward, they win and consumers win too.
So no, Apple is not going to allow Adobe to hold back Apple's innovation from reaching consumers. Innovation momentum stays with Apple.
@macserv - thanks for saying what I wanted to. Apple is not in a monopoly position, and furthermore, they have not acted in any way that could be considered anti-trust.
@Seven2k and @fpad77 - since you both questioned Jack's assertion that Apple has not acted in an anti-trust fashion, could you please outline exactly which acts of Apple's you consider to be anti-trust, and why they are anti-trust (according to law, not your gut feeling, i.e. just state which statute, section and paragraph refers to the actions you are nominating as potentially anti-trust), and also why Apple's less-than-thirty-percent marketshare would be considered a "monopoly" in any case.
@HighestRanked1
Your arguments are so funny and unrealistic.
>>>> and actually crying about it to the FTC to prevent free and open competing alternatives,
Adobe is not crying to FTC to prevent free and open alternatives, but to stop Apples own anti-competitive moves that are preventing Flash on Apple's platforms. A platform like Android allows both Flash and HTML5 which allows for fair competition. The user has the choice of using either or both.
As for your comment about apple breaking monopolies, its really funny to hear that considering apple is a bigger monopoly than any other company. They have so much control over what people can and cannot run on their platforms and they went to the extent of making their USB Extension cables incompatible with non-apple products. That's how bad a monopoly Apple is.
If Apple would release an IOS SDK for Windows then this would all be over.
@Edobe To expand on that comment, right now Adobe has a valid argument since the only way to make IOS apps is through the IOS SDK. And the IOS SDK is only compatible with Macs so in order to make an iPhone or iPad app you must have a Mac. This can be seen as anti competitive since Apple has many programs such as Safari or iTunes that work fine with Windows but they refuse to make an IOS SDK for Windows forcing iphone devs to purchase macs. If the IOS sdk were available on windows Apple's point would be that since anyone can get the ios sdk they don't need to allow apps to be developed through 3rd party software
@Edobe Maybe you are right. But I really hate Adobe. I am torn here. If it was some other company I would probably be supporting them. No offense to all the flash developers out here.... I think flash is the biggest virus to infect the internet.... it needs to die.
@Edobe Actually, no, the only way to make iOS apps is to code them in a compatible language (one of 3). The SDK is required to package the code and submit it to apple and provides the virtual phone system for app testing. Even 3rd party generated code (ported code) works with the SDK. Apple is simply refusing to allow "machine generated" code or code from another language to be machine converted onto one of the 3 the compiler supports. This is for performance and security reasons. Machine ported C code is simply not nearly as efficient as native written C code, creates larger packages, and for debigging purposes is a god awful nightmare since it typically is very hard to read and contains few if any developer notes/comments).
These ported code apps can not be quickly edited for bugs, run slower, compile larger, and are buggy. You code has to be converted to C, Object C, or C+ before running through the SDK for compile, apple is just insisting that be done MANUALLY. No one said you can't use the code editor of your choice (so long as the code in in C).
@Edobe
"And the IOS SDK is only compatible with Macs so in order to make an iPhone or iPad app you must have a Mac."
And Adobe doen't have HUNDREDS of Macs for working on, oh I don't know, their largest selling suite of software?
It's not that I'm in favor of either one, but Adobe has the sources to do it. They just don't want to play by Apple's rules, and they shouldn't have to if they don't want to. More power to Adobe for fighting the system.
@Edobe
Adobe is full of it. Apple has just as much right to restrict use of it's developer system as Adobe does to restrict use of it's Ai files. Tried to open a later CS file with an earlier version of CS? What other legitimate programs can you use to work on Illustrator documents or LiveCycle. The List goes on and on. Adobe is just upset that they suck at a few things, don't know how to fix it and as a result Apple doesn't want them around.
This spat between Adobe and Apple goes way back - much farther than this recent event, I don't see it healing overnight, but both companies could use a fresh dose of "OPEN."
@Edobe
Somehow I don't see Apple wanting to invest in something that won't actually generate revenue for them. They absolutely needed iTunes for Windows to drive adoption of the iPod and now the iOS devices. Safari was probably a mistake since I doubt it is generating as much of a return as they were hoping for. Porting Xcode to Windows would be utterly pointless because it not only would be expensive to do so but also would mean they lost sales of Macs.
@JojoMojo When I continue to see awesome thing like this in Flash:
http://getcu3er.com/
Then I have to disagree. Flash is a valid technology that picks up where HTML leaves off.
HTML - "Hyper-Text Markup Language". The point of HTML was not to create rich-media animations. Even CSS - "Cascading Style Sheets" is what it says, styling of the information that has been marked with hyper-text.
I wouldn't use HTML to design my company logo. I wouldn't use HTML to clean up a photo I shot. I wouldn't use HTML to do any image work, commonly people use Photoshop.
And thus, when it comes to rich-media production, I would choose the tool that does it correctly - Flash (and possibly Silverlight). I don't think Flash should be used when HTML and JavaScript can work just fine. However, there are instances where Flash is useful to create a more remarkable user experience.
All that said, I am just like any other designer. I use the tools available today. For you and all the other Flash haters out there, please go make something better. It isn't HTML5. As nice as it is, it fails to replace Flash in the current spec and isn't supported widely anyway. But when you develop both a player that works cross-platform pixel perfect and a robust authoring environment with better stability and features than Flash, I'll be all over it with thousands of other designers.
@Anatidae
nice point...your last part was great. If someone created something that was better than flash i dont think Adobe would try to lock down people. If they did then they will have the same issues MS and Apple has. Apple is selling snake oil to corner people and them use their little secret flash replacement project.
@NotZura Forcing people to buy boutique expensive non-mainstream computers to develop software for the presently dominant smart phone is the very definition of anti-competitive monopoly practice.
And for all the people hating on Flash I would like to point out that to watch Quicktime videos (used by a lot of studios for trailers) I have to install a third party plug in which also installs an updater that tries to install Apple's Safari browser and iTunes all the time.
I'm not having a flash love in here, but both companies make crap buggy software that needs constantly updated so their really is no good guy here.
@Anatidae
I have no idea what you are talking about. You used Flash to design your logo? Most people use something like illustrator or photoshop for that.
Our company just went through a revamp of our website and stripped every bit of flash out of it. Our company does not care about how hard it is for a designer to create a website, Our company does not care what language its written in. All we care about is:
that our viewers are having a good experience.
that we are not crashing their browser.
the widest audience can actually view our site.
Right or wrong, Flash is now fragmented. you either have it or you don't. The primary point of a company website is to get your message across. Why would any company want to exclude a percentage of their customers that can't or refuse to use flash. Can you do some neat stuff with flash, sure, but you can also do a lot of cool stuff with out it. The reward is not worth the exclusion you get. A smart website is one that will work on any browser without any plug ins. Open Standards FTW and may flash die already so I don't have to keep reading this crap.
@fourthletter
While I am right there with you with the QuickTime wanting to install iTunes and Safari, I don't see a realistic alternative to asking developers to write applications using a Mac. Porting the whole Xcode SDK would be a heck of a job, surely, and what would the benefit be if you don't get any revenue from it. That's not anti-competitive, that's just common sense.
@fourthletter
Good points.
I you make the case for simplification through direct use of the original protocol. Let's dump all of these crap plugins.
@Altivec
Ummm....link your site.