Since moving to Germany I’ve been relying on the Good Reader iPhone app more than ever, frequently referring to a PDF map of the Berlin subway system I have stored locally on the phone. That got me to thinking…
Question: It appears the security issues involving both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Flash are somewhat similar (just last month came word of the latest zero-day threat affecting both). Why then is Apple allowing PDF files onto the iPhone by bestowing the App Store blessing on apps like Good Reader, while maintaining its very firm (and very public) anti-Flash stance?
One one hand, if a head-to-head comparison of Apple’s Preview and Adobe’s Acrobat Reader is any indication, there could well be some truth to Apple’s low opinion of Adobe software: as we’ve said before, it’s hard to come up with another instance in which two applications that do exactly same thing differ so much in quality and usablility. Preview is lightweight, fast-loading, and features a very nice contextually-based search function - all qualities utterly lacking in Acrobat Reader. That the inferior product is made by the same folks who design and maintain the platform itself is even more remarkable.
On the other hand, maybe Adobe’s code isn’t so uniformly horrible after all - maybe there’s another reason Apple is perfectly OK with letting their mobile devices not only view PDF files but also to store them locally, while Flash is treated as if it had some type of digital cooties. I find the most-often offered rationale - that the advent of HTML 5 is upon us and will make Flash unneccesary - to be a bit of a red herring. First of all, HTML 5 in any meaningful form is still years away. Secondly, significant issues remain to be worked out, while the various competing browser-builder agendas have made reaching agreement on something as basic as the underlying codecs an exercise in cat-herding. Also consider that HTML 5 has yet to address ad serving, encryption, and digital rights management - which, for all its faults, Flash has. In short, the Flash platform offers the tremendous advantage of a standardized layer of abstraction across multiple browser implementations, Adobe’s figured a lot of things out about getting a video stream from point A to point B across the internet, and the platform works well enough to have prevailed in the open market - it’s not going anywhere soon (for more on why, here’s a post worth reading - from, of all people, an HTML 5-loving Google/YouTube engineer).
Answer In Cupertino, though, animosity towards Flash runs deep, and it runs strong. So much so, in fact, that what amounts to an anti-Flash manifesto was recently published on company website - written by the CEO himself, no less. What could be differentiating factor between Apple’s very different attitudes towards Acrobat and Flash? We think it could well involve an as-yet unannounced push by the company to attempt to solve the stubborn problem of getting internet video onto your television.
After all, at the intersection of internet technology and consumer electronics (the Apple sweet spot), the getting the internet television experience right (as opposed to the computer-dependent internet video experience) is undeniably the big prize - the ‘elephant in the room’, a market with the potential to dwarf even the smart phone market. There’s that pesky little problem of Flash, though - any 3rd-party technology simply won’t do if Apple is to go to the trouble of getting into internet video in a big way, given the company’s vertically integrated business model. That’s why there is not, and will never be, Flash on the iPhone (until the day the App Store model itself is successfully challenged in court).
Prediction With iTunes, Apple’s already shown that they know how to make selling premium digital content over the internet user-friendly enough to work. They just blew through their Q3 earnings forecasts and they enjoy a level of brand loyalty unmatched within the CE industry. With all that in mind, it’s almost obvious in what direction the company’s headed in next: Within the next 1-2 years, look for Apple to launch a new Apple TV box and maybe even a standalone internet-enabled television with Apple TV baked in and an RF cable interface for backward compatibility - all to access a new and dramatically enhanced Apple TV service.
A standalone Apple television? Well that’s just crazy talk, you might say. However, bear in mind two points: they have the monitor manufacturing supply chain and expertise already in place, and (maybe more importantly) it’s the hardware where Apple makes their money, not the software.
While that’s not exactly a new opinion here at digitalmissive, it bears repeating. Pure conjecture? Yep. (But remember, you heard it here first - OK, maybe not first, but early on enough to make it interesting).
Obstacles Flash? Small pickings - Apple has clearly made the determination the Adobe Systems is a company that can be dissed at will (or, given the current Apple market cap, even acquired). No, the real challenge for Apple here is that any plan to get into internet video in a big (i.e. Ipod, iPhone) kind of way would of course require going up against the vested interests of the highly lucrative, heavily regulated (and even more heavily lobbied) industry that is broadcast/cable television.
If, with all that he has going for him, Jobs still decides not to go for the ‘brass ring’ of consumer electronics that television represents, it can only be that a clear-eyed assessment of the power and entrenchment of the incumbent industry players will have dissuaded him from mounting the challenge.
Adobe is clearly well within the envelope - but doing battle against a unified Comcast/NBC and Viacom? That’s another st0ry entirely…
And even if you’re Apple, sometimes you have to pick your battles.
(The opinions expressed above are entirely unaffected by whether or not I own Apple stock - there aren’t that many digitalmissive readers out there - but in the interest of full disclosure, I do)
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