Apple Hires Former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Destroyer of iPhones 209
Nerval's Lobster writes "Why did Apple hire former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch as vice president of technology? Adobe and Apple spent years fighting a much-publicized battle over the latter's decision to ban Adobe Flash from iOS devices. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was very public in his condemnation of Flash as a tool for rich-content playback, denigrating it in an April 2010 letter posted on Apple's Website as flawed with regard to battery life, security, reliability and performance. Lynch was very much the public face of Adobe's public-relations pushback to Apple's criticism; in a corporate video shot for an Adobe developer conference in 2009, he even helped run an iPhone over with a steamroller. (Hat tip to Daring Fireball's John Gruber for digging that video up.) As recently as 2010, he was still arguing that Flash was superior to HTML5, which eventually surpassed it to become the virtual industry standard for Web-based rich content. It's interesting to speculate whether Steve Jobs would have hired someone who so publicly denigrated Apple's flagship product. But Jobs is dead, and his corporate successors in Cupertino—tasked with leading Apple through a period of fierce competition — obviously looked at Lynch and decided he'd make a perfect fit as an executive."
Business as usual (Score:0, Insightful)
Executives employed by companies try to make those companies do well.
Film at 11.
Do you honestly believe.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you believe that everyone has a brand loyalty problem? A professional can see beyond all of this kind of noise while exploiting it to their will at the same time.
It reminds me of a DJ from a classic rock station who got let go, he went on to a country station and was in all their ads about how the "new country" music was exciting and great. I know someone who met him and talked about it and the DJ's reply was along the lines of "It's just another gig. It's my job to make it sound like something you'll want to listen to." This really is no different. Even fanboys who are forced to move on eventually shrug off their old brand and act like whatever they were forced into is the best thing going. Some people thrive on making what they own is the best even if they know it isn't.
Meh.
Re:Game of Thrones (Score:4, Insightful)
Or maybe it's just a guy who wants a well paying job and he knows all the technobabble is just that...
I think too many geeks think that they world does really work out like a Game of Thrones scenerio. Thinking that one company needs to live for another to thrive and that any time someone jumps ship it's because the ship is sinking. I've seen this kind of talk around Slashdot for more than a decade and so far most of these entities that were suppose to turn belly-up at any minute are still around.
Give up. Live a fulfilling life. You're wasting your time trying to get everyone to agree with you.
HTML5 has surpassed Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML5, which eventually surpassed it to become the virtual industry standard for Web-based rich content
I would disagree. Flash is still very much the de facto standard, like it or not.
It's all a game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they have gpu acceleration now but I suspect it's just to work around that issue.
No GPU acceleration is the fix to the issue, not just a workaround. It's like deriding a 3D engine for having really slow CPU-only rendering and claiming that enabling 3D acceleration is "just a workaround" for a slow 3D engine.
Where's the value in this? (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the day these guys usually are not much more than figureheads. They institute a vague vision and ambiguous goal that is mostly reactive to industry trends. It's the people beneath them who do the real thinking, who worry about specifics, implementation and execution. The only real benefit they bring is that they have intimate knowledge of the process, philosophy and goals of their previous employer.
What else does he really bring to the table?
Re:Do you honestly believe.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, great post. Sales & Product branding 101. Sad to think the basement dwellers here on Slashdot needs that explained to them.
I'm in technical sales and have changed jobs to my competitor. Even my customers (engineers) understand that my zest for Company A is now turned to zest for Company B. They know I am passionate about whoever I'm representing, and they respect that.
Flash ban was never about battery/performance (Score:5, Insightful)
That was just PR to keep the masses thinking Apple was on their side. The real reason they ddin't support Flash was because it was a code interpreter. i.e. It let you run external code. That meant if iOS supported Flash, you could use it to run apps on your iOS device without having gotten them via the App Store.
At the time, Apple had a very strict policy against code interpreters [archive.org]. They've loosened their stance somewhat since then, but it's still pretty restrictive. It's their garden, and they want to keep it walled off. On the one hand this does improve the security of their devices somewhat. On the other it means all executables which are bought and sold for the device have to go through their App Store and 30% cut.
Battery life, reliability, and performance were all red herrings because in most Android browsers, the Flash plugin wouldn't play by default. If you went to a web page with embedded Flash, an image of a stylized F would show up in its place, and you had to click on it before the Flash would actually play. No hit to the device's performance unless you specifically wanted the Flash to play.
Re:Flash ban was never about battery/performance (Score:4, Insightful)
That was just PR to keep the masses thinking Apple was on their side. The real reason they ddin't support Flash was because it was a code interpreter. i.e. It let you run external code. That meant if iOS supported Flash, you could use it to run apps on your iOS device without having gotten them via the App Store. At the time, Apple had a very strict policy against code interpreters [archive.org]. They've loosened their stance somewhat since then, but it's still pretty restrictive. It's their garden, and they want to keep it walled off. On the one hand this does improve the security of their devices somewhat. On the other it means all executables which are bought and sold for the device have to go through their App Store and 30% cut. Battery life, reliability, and performance were all red herrings because in most Android browsers, the Flash plugin wouldn't play by default. If you went to a web page with embedded Flash, an image of a stylized F would show up in its place, and you had to click on it before the Flash would actually play. No hit to the device's performance unless you specifically wanted the Flash to play.
Don't think you understand how these technologies work. Apple has adopted HTML5 capabilities such as local storage, offline caching, and web workers as fast as anyone. You can make fantastic mobile web apps on top of HTML5 completely bypassing the app store. Flash is an abomination and needed to go. There was no ulterior motive here. It was a terrible technology that needed to be put down.
Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll take Rudolph Flash over Adolph Apple.
Whatever merit your argument might have had, it was invalidated by Godwin's law. You lose.
Re:Flash (Score:4, Insightful)
HTML5 was intended to do those things. So it was pretty much inevitable that sites would move to HTML5 for that sort of thing. However, as I said, Flash is still wildly popular among artists (so much so that it's been used to produce several animated TV shows and movies). I don't see it going away any time soon.