To my friends in the Flash community.
It’s the day after getting kicked in the gut by Adobe. I know I don’t feel any better and from the Twitter stream it doesn’t sound like anyone else does either. I’m sure that everyone is doing pretty much the same thing as myself: going back and forth on what this news means. On the one hand it’s true that a tiny percentage of in browser Flash work is being done specifically for mobile. I know I had no plans to build for mobile Flash. Did you? So this doesn’t really impact us, right?
What seems to be at the core of the communities malaise are these two questions:
- After this news how am I supposed to sell Flash Platform apps of any kind to my managers and clients?
- What’s next on the chopping block?
That first question is a PITA. It makes our work more difficult. But whatever. We strap in and pitch our ideas and mush forward.
But that second question. That’s what has me concerned. Does Flex make enough money? Are they going to stop working on it? If they did what would happen? What about AIR. They say they’re doubling down on AIR, for now. What if that doesn’t work out for them? Are they going to pull the rug out from under us again?
We can yell and scream on social media all we want. Do you think Shantanu or any of the other suits walking around are going to hear or care? Nope.
I know the evangelists are hearing it. And I feel sorry for them. But they’re just the messengers. Unfortunately for us they have little or no impact on the decision making at Adobe.
We need the suits at Adobe to hear us. They need to think about delivering messages to the community first and Wall Street second. Hell, just send Wall Street a fucking letter in private for all I care. Your public message needs to be for the public. That goes for every company in the world.
So here is what I propose to get the suits attention:
- To all User Group Managers: call off all meetings for the next 3-6 months. Meetup for drinks at a bar instead so everyone can get together and bitch about Adobe. But don’t have any official meetings. I know what you’re thinking: what good will that do? Probably not much. But hopefully it will make you feel better. It’s a small symbolic protest. What else is there?
- CS6 is probably due to ship sometime next Spring. My guess is that it will coincide with the 360|Flex conference. So, lets put off purchasing any upgrades for at least one quarter. CS is the cash cow for Adobe. When they release a new version Wall Street expects a bump in revenue and profits. Lets deny them that for at least a quarter. Ask everyone you know to wait 3-6 months after CS6 is released before they make a purchase.
You might be thinking, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea but I actually need to upgrade ASAP and use the new features.” I know that’s usually the case myself. What I plan on doing is using BitTorrent to get myself a free copy to use until I purchase the upgrade months later. I like paying for the software I use and we certainly need to recognize that if we don’t support Flex through purchasing Flash Builder then we may not have it around much longer. But Adobe can suck on it for a quarter. Right?
What we really need is an inspirational speech by Samuel L. Jackson. I think this one pretty much hits the spot. :-)
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I like the sentiment. However, regarding “lets put off purchasing any upgrades for at least one quarter” – did you see this morning’s news post about the Creative Suite? If you’re not using CS5 or above when CS6 comes out, you won’t be eligible for upgrade discounts.
@Michael That’s the news we’ve been waiting for. People could still put off upgrading or subscribing to the cloud services. But I don’t have much faith that they will. I wonder how I’m going to handle this. I’m not going to pay $50/month for CS because I don’t need it. Photoshop is the only CS app I use. I wonder how much they will continue to sell Flash Builder for and if I’ll be able to purchase it alone for the same sort of price I did in the past. If they price it out of range then I’ll just pirate it.
Great article man. I would also recommend people try the 30 day trial of CS6, at least put off buying for 30 days, hold out as long as you can. The only place corporations feel it is in their wallet. It’s also a good idea to wait and see if Adobe changes direction again before putting more money into their tools.
While I think the sentiment is there, I don’t think any of this can possibly help. I’m moving on, and doing so quickly. While I’ll still be on my current Flex project until the no longer need me (I’m not stupid :)), I’m going to get my HTML/CSS/JavaScript skills back up to par and prepare for the transition.
I’m also heavily considering handing over management of the Flex UG. I can’t see putting any more time into a community I don’t see myself being a part of in the coming months. Frankly, I’m relatively certain most of our group will have the same mindset as me anyway, and would probably rather join up with the HTML group in our area.
No sense in beating a dead horse.
@TJ That really sucks but I feel your pain. And you’re right: doubtful any of this will help but it’s worth a shot. I hope Adobe is hearing this from the community. I’m holding out hope for the Flash Platform but not for Adobe itself.
lol. I saw the Samuel Jackson Deep Blue Sea image and I bust out laughing…plus knew where this post was going.
I’m not really clear on how the actions you mention will make the suits to keep fate in their product. Adobe is a business after all, so less sales and a twitchy userbase will hardly improve things.
Anyway, HTML will replace Flash Player someday, we all know this. Let’s all remember writing AS1 for Flash Player 5 and be proud of what you could do! It was great then so it will be now.
It’s silly, wasteful and motivated by money and the hive mind but that’s life. And besides I like to learn tech even when it’s worse then current so whatever, get zen, lets do this! (Im not even being sarcastic.. or double :) But if in some years when HTML5 is finally 6 and settled and Flash died and we can finally do all it could do now, but Open, and some nice Standard guru proposes to make a spec for a cross platform application module you can embed in your website that eats bytecode programmed interactive content that’s like a sandboxed application (‘oh wow ghost of steve, it’s so awesome!’) then I will re-educate and become a carpenter.
@Bart Yeah, I’m thinking more and more about doing carpentry myself. :-)
You know, I’m not a big fan of learning new languages for the sake of learning them. I love to build things, apps/games, and learn new things like Away3D and such. But when I think about learning, or relearning, something it just depresses me. I want to make shit. And I can’t fathom doing anything native. Creating two apps to do one thing? Ghastly!
Anyhow, it looks like AIR is going to be the workhorse for Adobe. They are using it themselves to make the Mobile CS apps. And AIR is really all I care about so I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to continue working on my current projects using it.
I really hope Adobe is more successful in getting more AIR runtime users on desktops and devices than the Flash Player. With AIR, the web for all devices is just waiting for more innovation and the Flash Player is serving as a gateway to get there for some. That gate could be closing.
There is a petition going around demanding that the Adobe CEO step down as a result of this catastrophe.
http://www.change.org/petitions/adobe-systems-shantanu-narayen-to-step-down-as-ceo?share_id=urPbtBDzNZ
The charges are:
• Failure to address the threat to Adobe’s brand that Apple presented 20 months ago by simply showing the world that Flash already worked on the iPhone.
• Failure to provide clear leadership in the web technology space where Adobe is a key player.
• Failure to consider the impact of perception on the brand from a poorly worded and ill-conceived PR statement which has done irrevocable harm to millions of jobs within the Flash Platform ecosystem of technologies.
• Failure to respect their responsibility towards transparency, communication and openness valued by the communities of designers, developers and other stakeholders working in the industries under its stewardship.
• Having caused irrevocable tarnishing of trust in Adobe’s integrity as a company due to their inability to fulfill on previous commitments to the industry, to key players and to its customer base.
This recent move by Adobe is NOT a failure of the technology, however they wish to spin it. IT IS A FAILURE IN LEADERSHIP.
In feudal Japan if someone had failed so miserably to foresee the negative impact their actions would have on the reputation of their kin, they would have been forced to fall upon their swords in shame to save the honour of their clan.
So what symbolic falling on of swords can we expect from the leadership at Adobe? That’s what I want to know.
What is required, in my opinion, is for someone else to be at the helm who will hold Adobe to its commitments, respect its customers, and show themselves to be a leader in the market.
Polygeek, you are the man :) And S.L. Jackson is the man too :)
Ivan I.
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Flex Certified Expert
Adobe UG Manager
Ivan Ilijasic recently posted..Flash, mobilne mašine i PR majstorije
” Does Flex make enough money? Are they going to stop working on it? If they did what would happen?”
You’ve probably heard by now, but they did essentially give up on Flex. They open sourced it and are leaving it up to the community to further develop it. Adobe will no longer be pushing Flex for enterprise, instead they are pushing HTML 5. That decision hasn’t helped this situation at all.
@DaveW Yeah, I think the comment that Deepa made that “we think HTML5 is the future of Enterprise” – or something like that – was totally boneheaded. At this point who gives a fuck what they think and they’ve been so wrong about so many things that their credibility is shot.
But I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. If their right then perhaps they’ll have something that improves our tool set. But I suspect that what ever HTML5/Enterprise solution they cook up will be a miserable failure and I’ll love seeing them fall on their face.
Instead of getting a group of people together to complain about how unfair they think Adobe is being, why not propose holding meetings that will showcase what other paths are available to developers so that they can stay relevant in the face of what has happened?
Canceling user group meetings, or turning them into drunken bitch-fests, will have no affect on Adobe, however, it will affect those who attend the meetings and use them as a way to further their skills.
Be part of a solution, don’t further the problem.
@Scott I doubt that moving a UG meeting to a bar would result in a drunken bitch-fest. A bitch-fest to be sure. But drunken I’m not so sure about. And more than likely such a meeting would include a discussion of people sharing their thoughts about alternatives. So I think it would be quite useful.
There is more of a chance it will be a drunken bitch-fest if you move the meeting to a bar than if you held it at the normal meeting place :D
Be part of the solution, don’t perpetuate the problem.
@Scott What do you have against bars? And who says that a drunken bitch-fest isn’t a useful process for working toward a solution. People need a chance to vent so that they can get it out and then get on with real productive work. Maybe not you but many people do. I’ll be a part of the solution as I see fit.
I have nothing against bars. However, in my experience, they tend to cause more problems than they solve :D.
I am not saying that people should not vent, but venting under the guise of a ‘user group meeting’ just feels wrong to me. It seems more like the spoiled child having a temper tantrum because his parents won’t buy him a new toy.
You could also start a nice looking website ‘Why HTML is better then Flash’ but enumerate aspects only Flash can do well or HTML5 cannot do at all or crappy. With loads of snarky remarks on the technical incompleteness of HTML5, browser inconsistency and sarcastic explanation why you wouldn’t need these features anyway (“because rich media production in HTML is as easy as stacking CSS transitions on a text-flow layout”).
Some points you can cover:
Binary serialisation (AMF) – (JSON sounds awesomer so it is)
Typed Scripting Language – (types and packages are for lazy people)
P2P Rendezvouz – (torrents are for hackers!1!)
Consistent x-platform playback – (you are such a bore!)
Integrated, interactive streaming video – (popcorn.js can do that! (not))
Scriptable display properties – (text layout is fine for text so you dont need hierarchical freeform block layout)
No IDE – (real hackers use text editors)
Coders work as animators – (because real Animators never had anything to contribute)
Video with alpha-channel – (why would you need th.. [brain explodes])
@Bart I was seriously thinking about doing something like that about a year ago. Just show lots of very simple and targeted examples of things that can be done in Flash but not HTML. It would just be so time consuming. But now I’m rethinking that decision. It probably would have gotten a decent amount of traffic and paid for itself. Damn, another missed opportunity.
Oh, and of course it would have to be snarky. :-)
We actually tried something like this a year ago: 10 Flash Things You Can’t Do With HTML5.
It did NOT go down well. (I think we got our tone totally wrong; we intended to say “sometimes Flash is still the best tool for the job”, but it came across as “HTML sux Flash rools!!!”) Big negative backlash.
@Michael I remember reading that back when it came out. Yeah, there’s a lot of backlash there. I think mainly because you have a diverse readership there. But I believe it was an excellent, and useful, post. There is a tendency, especially by fan-boyz and the media, to mis-perceive technology and think that there is one solution for everything. Wait, that sorta describes me to. :-)
Personally I don’t give a flying fuck if Adobe proposes that I migrate my skills to logo, assembly language or Commodore 64 Basic. I have not spent 13 years getting really good at ActionScript development to toss it the can because Shantanu Narayan feels like raising his salary from 5 mil. to 12.2 mil per year. Talk about the 1% rich motherfokers. Long as the Flash player and AIR is available, and someone is willing to pay me to develop for it, Adobe can shove HTML5 and the rest of the cloud software up their ass. Yeah I’m pissed, and I’m not going to apologize for it. What astonishes me is how many developers are just bending over and taking it.
@j0eflash You absolutely have nothing to apologize for. Actionscript is an awesome language to work with and create amazing things. We’ll be doing that for a long, LONG, time to come.
The way I figure, in a few months a lot of managers are going to look pretty stupid when they realize that Flash and AIR are still here, and they’ve wasted thousands of dollars developing enterprise solutions in a half-baked technology that Flex used to do in half the time for less money. Then, so long as Adobe doesn’t do anything else stupid (which is no guarantee at this point), there will be an exodus back to Flash. That is, if the Church of the Occupy Flash doesn’t kill it off first. I hope Anonymous hacks their ass into oblivion.
This is one of article that’s clear to understand.
In my opinion, it should be Adobe’s communication that is too bold, and also confuse, easy to be judged by people who don’t know what is really going on about Flash Platform.
I think Adobe should do something more than answer from blog. It should be clear and expose direction to bring the faith in Flash platform back. Because the world is understanding: “Adobe leaves Flash to die”.
Teerasej recently posted..4 ความคิดต่อท่าทีของ Adobe เรื่อง Flash Platform