Aral Balkan

Go read Lee Brimelow's latest blog post to understand exactly what's wrong with Adobe today.

Lee, who works at Adobe as a Platform Evangelist for Flash, has this to say:

The other group is filled with haters, egomaniacs, and people who are just trying to cause drama. If you say that you think Adobe should give up trying to bring the Flash Player to mobile devices and that in 5 years Flash will be irrelevant, don’t expect to be on our Christmas card list.

So criticizing Adobe's mobile strategy and suggesting that they instead focus on native compilation and broadening the appeal of their tools gets me branded as a "hater", "egomaniac", and brushed off as "trying to cause drama". I'm apparently threatened with not being on Adobe's Christmas card list. My goodness, someone call 911, those Christmas cards were the only things keeping me going!

When a company is so set in its ways that it cannot even stomach the existence of a legitimate alternative strategy then it's probably time to worry.

Adobe's Flash Platform has all its eggs in the same basket and that basket is hanging from the ceiling by a very thin thread: the Flash Player. By not seeing a future for the Flash Platform that does not revolve exclusively around the Flash Player, Adobe is myopically heading towards a rude awakening several years down the line. Instead, if it could see beyond its own arrogance it might look to spread the risk by embracing the Flash tools, frameworks, and ActionScript as the core elements of the Flash Platform and broadening the reach of the platform by allowing developers to use familiar tools and technologies to create native applications across a range of devices. It would thereby create a future for the Flash Platform that didn't depend solely on Flash Player penetration.

But voicing such opinions apparently is tantamount to heresy and makes you a "hater".

The most dangerous thing about all this – dangerous to Adobe's future, that is – is that voicing opinions such as mine that go against the dominant thinking at Adobe apparently triggers some sort of "with us or against us" switch which puts their evangelists into battle mode.

It's sad but this is just the culmination of what I've seen happening at Adobe over the past few years: Adobe has become an insular boys club that's deaf to criticism where it really matters. From what I've seen it has become an environment where if you drink the Kool-Aid, go on the diving trips, pat each other on the back, and congratulate each other regularly on what a great job you're all doing, you're one of the boys. In other words, it's finally becoming the Microsoft it so desperately wanted to be for so long. The only problem is, it's becoming the Microsoft of ten years ago, not the Microsoft of today that's trying to change its image.

I value my independence and don't care for special perks. And neither is it in Adobe's interests to cultivate a community elite so comfortable in their perks that they don't voice their honest opinions if they run contrary to the party line in fear of losing them.

So, basically, Adobe, what I'm saying is this: I really don't care that I'm not on your Christmas card list anymore. I never asked to be on it in the first place. That's not what it's all about.

PS. Do I still get a New Year's card? :-P

Comments

• Let's mark our calendars to 5 years from now and circle back to this topic then :-) I must admit that my experience with Adobe has been somewhat similar (although I've never had a christmas card from them in the first place). They really need to listen more to their customer base (that's developers like you and me) and take concerns seriously. My criticisms lie elsewhere - I actually think their mobile strategy could still work - but nevertheless I'm becoming more and more frustrated with some of the decisions Adobe is making these days. Still I have not given up hope yet, and for the time being will continue to build my products on top of the Flash ecosystem. It's still a very nice place to be.

  by Stefan Richter on 2010-01-01 14:45:37

• I think a large part of the problem is that so many of us have so much tied up in the flash platform that contemplating its failure is distinctly unpleasant. That's never stopped anything from failing in the past, however. Flash offers a number of advantages, it's rendering engine is particularly good as is the cross-browser compatibility which it provides. These qualities aren't immortal, especially in a world where things like Webkit are gaining ever increasing market share. I tend to agree with Aral, if only out of prudence Adobe's strategy needs to envisage a world in which the flash player is not ubiquitous and it's related products have independent merit. For the moment though, I think Stefan's absolutely right, 'It's a very nice place to be'.

  by Theo Denovan on 2010-01-01 22:03:49

• Aral, I have enjoyed your blog and many of your classes that I have attended in the past very much. I enjoyed dinner with you in London and think you're a great guy. I think it is healthy for Adobe that you have been bringing up opposing views on their strategies. I found your prior post very interesting and believe that it did generate healthy discussion. But this particular post seems unnecessary. Even the title of the post, "I’m not on Adobe’s Christmas card list anymore" has drama written all over it. Even if Lee's post was a total personal jab at you (which I don't think it was), it seems like you should have either dealt with it just between the two of you, or else let it drop altogether and been satisfied that you had already spoken your mind constructively. I can't quite figure out what you hoped to accomplish by this post except to take a public jab at Adobe. I completely agree with your last paragraph, that 'being on Adobe's Christmas list is not what it's all about'. So why write a blog post about it then? Rather then defend your post against my words, I hope you can take a step back, realize that I'm a person who likes you and your work very much, and consider that there may be some truth to what I'm saying...

  by Nate Chatellier on 2010-01-06 23:07:09

• Hi Aral, please forgive me if I don't pick out the right part as the main idea: "Adobe's Flash Platform has all its eggs in the same basket and that basket is hanging from the ceiling by a very thin thread: the Flash Player. By not seeing a future for the Flash Platform that does not revolve exclusively around the Flash Player, Adobe is myopically heading towards a rude awakening several years down the line." From what I've seen, Adobe's goal with Flash is to create an entire publishing platform, an ecology, a source of stability and predictability across all the interactive screens we'll soon use. It's not just authoring tools, not just runtimes, not just servers... more a total publsihing environment that anyone can build upon. Creative Suite and Flash Player are both parts of that, but neither trumps the other. Is this the core of the debate? (btw, I think folks in comments pricked out the selective-quoting, and the "boy's club" line was particularly unfortunate here.) jd/adobe

  by John Dowdell on 2010-01-01 18:28:33

• I think the people pointing out Aral is in group 1 not 2 are missing the point, there shouldn't be a group 1 or 2 at all. How are you 'evangelizing' the technology by labeling a portion of your customers 'haters, egomaniacs, and people who are just trying to cause drama'?

  by Adam on 2010-01-04 16:39:24

• Hi Aral, don't take this too seriously. The fact that you think Lee is talking to you ("gets me branded") proves his point about egomaniacs :)

  by rolf on 2010-01-08 15:10:23

• Rolf, not to beat a dead horse but I didn't just think Lee was talking about me because of ego: he basically quoted a blog post I'd written a few days earlier in his post when referring to the second group.

  by Aral on 2010-01-09 14:07:47

• Hmm... I think you took that quote a bit out of context. The preceding lines: "There have been many people who have chronically complained about us over the last year. I put these people into two groups. Group one is filled with passionate people who love Flash but are frustrated with certain decisions or directions that we take. These are the people that I don’t mind hearing complaints from, as a lot of the time, we agree completely with you. If your true objective is to help the Flash Platform become the best that it can be, then please continue ripping us a new one and we will gladly pass that feedback to the appropriate teams."

  by Keith Peters on 2010-01-01 15:07:07

• Aral, You're taking Lee's comment out of context - I think you fall more into Lee's group 1 rather than 2. Guys like you and Lee are fundamental to us newbies - we follow you and look up to you, so enough of the bitching, and lets get back to positive, constructive arguments that move things forward (which you and Lee are so good at).

  by Nick Brown on 2010-01-01 15:30:30

• Aral- You have done more for Adobe than many people working there. ARP was the first framework I used, and your Flex Guides on their site were my first intro to Flex itself. I might not agree with all your posts, but I always enjoy them. And you have more than earned the right to view speak your mind. I assume this is all a misunderstanding. If not, Adobe is dumber for pissing you off than you would be for pissing them off.

  by Nate Kidwell on 2010-01-01 16:46:25

• Hey Aral. I have to agree with Keith and Nick here that you seem to have taken it out of context. Also, I learned something about this kind of thing from a little back and forth with Ted Patrick a few months ago: You can't immediately take this stuff so personal and assume that they are talking about you when they talk about a group of people that act a certain way or write blog posts about certain topics. Just because a couple of your posts (or mine, or any blogger's posts for that matter) match a given criteria, that doesn't mean they had those posts in mind when they wrote what they wrote. Come to think of it, it may be a little presumptuous for any of us to think so. Regardless of how "famous" any one person may be, that person is still just a person and is not always the first person on everyone else's minds.

  by Jason Fincanon on 2010-01-01 16:57:41

• Aral, you've done far too much for the Flash community to be lumped into "the other group." Don't worry about it. Oh, and Merry Christmas :)

  by Wendy Serrell on 2010-01-01 17:40:02

• Hey Nick, Keith, & Jason. I wish I had taken it out of context. Lee's quote is basically from my post regarding Adobe's mobile strategy. And before he posted it, he tweeted this:

  @ryanstewart I'll chime in on @aral's thoughts. They are provocative and will generate quite a bit of blog traffic.

  It's really sad that what I hoped would be a debate about Adobe's mobile strategy becomes about generating blog traffic. So I don't think I'm misreading what Lee wrote at all.

  by Aral on 2010-01-01 17:45:16

• (Oh, and thank you all for taking the time to comment and for caring, and thank you Nate and Wendy for your kind words.)

  by Aral on 2010-01-01 17:52:44

• Wow now I've finally made it. Aral we should trade links more often.

  by Lee Brimelow on 2010-01-01 19:13:11

• I guess I'm really confused as to why we should sit around and plan for a day when the Flash Player is not ubiquitous, when all the actual data speaks to just the opposite happening. Every player version we release gets adopted at a faster and faster rate, with Flash Player 10 beating all previous records. So we are spending our time making sure that Flash remains a ubiquitous and exciting part of the web experience.

  by Lee Brimelow on 2010-01-01 22:35:51

• I think you should've spoken to Lee personally, or listened to the perspective of 3-4 others before making a public issue. I'd certainly have suggested you sleep on it, and not make a drama of the issue. Otherwise you're more of a dramatic distraction, taking a role in an episode of "Day of Our Flash-Platform Lives", and less of the stimulating & provocative Aral of Hot Shots that everyone came to enjoy. I think you misread yourself into Lee's "group 2". The blog post, and tweet, seem like they'd place you in "group 1" of the complainers. You've shared a preference that Adobe focus elsewhere than mobile, out of a passion for Flash. You have other desires of how Flash could rock the world, and my understanding is that those are the type of critiques Lee is open to hearing more about...

  by leef on 2010-01-01 22:38:35

• To set the record straight I wasn't putting Aral into either category. But I will admit to finding the last few posts here, this one especially, as being overly dramatic and not constructive. That is my opinion and now it's time to move on. There is no spat, no feud, or any hard feelings. Just a disagreement.

  by Lee Brimelow on 2010-01-01 23:04:51

• ... and disagreements and debates are a good, healthy thing. Let's not forget that. Let's not simply label any controversial topic as "drama" in an effort to dismiss it without addressing the actual argument being made. That would be to do everyone a disservice. That sort of atmosphere leads to people not voicing non-mainstream ideas for fear of getting hammered down; it limits the bounds of thinkable thought in our community. That's a Bad Thing™. Scott Janousek and Mark Doherty both wrote thoughtful responses to the issues I raised in my previous posts instead of avoiding it altogether by labelling them "drama" or "crap". And some interesting (and I feel useful) debate has come out of it. They may not agree with every bit of what I've proposed or perhaps not even with the central tenet but they addressed the points on an intellectual level – that's how we geeks do things and that's a Good Thing™. Lee, regarding your comment on Flash penetration: Flash doesn't enjoy anything resembling the ubiquity it does on the web on mobile phones; Flash on mobile is currently a fragmented, un-monetized, lowest-common-denominator mess and I honestly believe that a strategy that relies on Flash Player penetration on devices as a prerequisite is fundamentally flawed. This isn't drama. It's my opinion on the subject given my decade of experience in Flash and my more recent experience with mobile technologies in the last few years. So if you are going to address the actual issues being raised, please do. But do not belittle them or sidestep them by labelling them "drama" or "crap". They are neither. And doing so is an intellectually lazy device that devalues my honest effort to shed light on an issue that I feel is important. Of course there is no spat or hard feelings (some people apparently can't wait for the lions to enter the auditorium on Twitter). Woe the day that a technical or strategic debate in our community does lead to such things.

  by Aral on 2010-01-01 23:49:36

• What does Mystic Meg have to say on the matter?

  by Alan Jamal on 2010-01-02 02:05:35

• Haha well that's just because you haven't gotten to know me yet Aral. I am neither intellectual or thoughtful. I'm the guy you come to when you want to know what we really think about something ;)

  by Lee Brimelow on 2010-01-02 04:40:01

• I'll be brief, since I'm *definitely* a detractor of Flash on any Apple platform. I consider Flash the Walter Mondale of the Internet (to MSFT's 'Jimmy Carter'). Yeah, I have a point here and it's this: If Adobe's only strategy to counter dissent is whinging and 'enhanced PR' like Dowdell jumping on your blog -- as opposed to addressing valid criticism (ref. Mr Bynkii) and diversifying their strategy -- then you giving the Flash "platform" "several" years to naught is generous. Adobe needs to learn to stop abusing the words 'ubiquity' and 'platform'. Because to iPhone users/devs, they have neither. So, they should stop the whining and PR and move on to "platforms" (school's in, Adobe: hardware + software) where they will be more welcome or apropo. And since you guys spend more time on PR than research: the Wii. Zippy Powerpoint type stuff. What Flash/Director used to excel at but what you've lost sight of. That kinda stuff. It'd also help if they stopped abusing their users with all the fluffy PR, and trying the patience of system admins like me.

  by Drunken Economist on 2010-01-03 04:09:56

• @ adam In my view the two groups perfectly separate people like Aral who have constructive complaints, from the people who just hate Flash, and want to see it's existence ended. I see their adamant anti-Flash complaints in forums occasionally, they tend to attribute animated Flash ads, intro's, CPU usage, and overly-creative UI design as the reasons Flash should die.

  by leef on 2010-01-04 20:36:52

• HTML5 video support on YouTube and Vimeo now. That's a serious threat for embedded Flash. Flash's killer app was the FLV video, and now the HTML5 "video" tag is going to kill that. Air and Flex are cool for application development but on the mobile space HTML5 support is going to kill Flash.

  by lawless on 2010-01-22 17:47:17

• Hi Aral, Ok, did not know that!

  by rolf on 2010-01-31 14:48:58

• The fun thing is that it's just a matter of time before Adobe will sit there all alone. Flash *will* die. It's not my opinion, it's what is going on on the web right now. Everyone else but stubborn Flash developers stuck in the late 90's has realized this, even Microsoft is doing an effort for web experiences these days. And with fewer flash developers (which I bet there are today than ten years ago), Flash really has no selling point in a few years. That's my prediction. And I will rub my tummy when I'm right in a few years.

  by Arve Systad on 2011-11-09 15:33:05