Playing with your own tools
February 16th, 2007 . by polyGeekRyan Stewart comments about the Adobe and Photobucket collaboration, or whatever it is:
In the end, I worry how this affects the people building great applications on Adobe’s platform. Macromedia and Adobe have mostly stayed in the role of enabler, creating great tools and then letting their customers build with them. Adobe seems to be eating its own dogfood more and more by building competing applications on top of the platform.
I would certainly agree that this is dangerous ground for Adobe. On the one hand the more A+ web applications that are out there using Adobe technology will strengthen the image of the Flash platform and create more opportunities for us Flash Developers. The downside is that if they overdo it then they will scare away the money guys who might fear that Adobe will come in and do them one better.
The approach they are taking with the Apollo investment strategy might be the best way to go. When someone does build a quality product then partnering with Adobe will only bring in more credibility and lots of eyeballs. And it obviously provides incentive for the money guys to use the Flash platform if they think they might be able to get Adobe onboard and thus get an instant return on their investment.
The advice I would offer to Adobe is: Don’t be like Microsoft. I think that’s a legitimate concern after reading about the various undocumented APIs in the Flash player concerning VoIP. (Additional info from Om Malik and JD on EP.)
It’s pretty obvious where they’re going with that. I’m not sure I like the precedent they are setting. I would love it if Adobe would commit to documenting all of the APIs in the Flash player so that we all get to play with the same tools.
As Yoda said, “Don’t give into the quick and easy path. That is the path to the Dark Side.”
What, you thought I would get through a posting without a movie quote?
Adobe is still being the “enabler” here. They’re helping Photobucket create a cool Flex application. Someone from Adobe explained their process to me the other day: Adobe helps a company build a cool product with some technology made by Adobe. This company then gets full control of that product, including maintenance and all that jazz, and Adobe gets a cool “look what Flex can do” case study. From that point forward, the company must get down and dirty in the code on their own, or hire some other consulting firm to take over further implementation.
Josh, Thanks for clearing that up about Photobucket. I believe that teamwork between Adobe and companies working with the Adobe technologies is a great idea. But that still leaves the undocumented APIs as a concern.
It’s probably just too much for Adobe to resist leveraging the ubiquity of the Flash player to develop a few killers apps that only they have the APIs to build.
On the bright side: if someone’s going to do it I would rather that it was Adobe than Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo, etc.
Hi Oz, re: “undocumented APIs in the Flash player concerning VoIP”, is that driven by the following line in the linked September weblog?
“First, I should point out that the Flash player has had VoIP capabilities since March 2002 and the live video capabilities are activated primarily by the existence of a server in the middle called Flash Media Server making it a client-server solution.”
If so, then in 2002 the Player added Nelly-Moser voice compression and cam/mic controls, in addition to the Sorenson encoding/decoding video engine. This is what drove the early versions of Macromedia Breeze.
Did I misidentify the concern…?
jd/adobe
JD,
After further research and much deliberation I’ve concluded that I probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Really, this is all confusing. Part of what I’m reading, or interpreting, is that the “hidden APIs” are just the cam/mic controls we have had around since MX. Other bits that I read make it sound like there is further functionality currently in the Flash player that we common folk don’t have access to.
Without a doubt Adobe is trying to add new communications capabilities to the Flash player, such as SIP. It’s exciting to think about the Flash player becoming the nexus for any and all forms of communication.
Any elucidation you can provide would be appreciated. In the meantime I’m just going to go back to something much easier to understand, like using the BitmapData class in AS3 and recurse methods to create fractal prettyness. That’s something I can understand. :-)
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