Lately rumors have it that Steve Jobs has been increasingly vocal about criticizing Adobe to potential partners. In the rumors he claims that Flash is a resource hog and is outdated technology. He’s also reportedly said that Adobe was lazy.

Now, I have no idea if he actually said these things, but I think he did. Why? Because they’re true.

First off, Adobe is more lazy than I would imagine a large software company could be. Look at recent (or even not so recent) releases of Photoshop. They barely have any new features. For a company that could be said to be the leader in photo editing, they are’t a leader at all. Photoshop feels like an application from ten years ago.

Whenever you hear about a new feature for Photoshop, the feature is generally what I would call “quaint”. Their features are largely useless but something that might make a demo interesting, usually only for the moment of the demo, and not quite successfully. They have no ability to make changes that actually make every day photo editing and graphic creation easier. Believe me, Photoshop has a long way to go on that.

What you can gather from the Photoshop situation is that the company has no technical leaders anymore. They’re either gone, or they’re rich enough that they’ve become lazy.

I got into an argument with John Nack on his blog a while back about why they didn’t move to Cocoa on the Mac sooner. It was obvious many years before that Cocoa was the thing to use, but Adobe didn’t move. John was full of excuses, but excuses didn’t get things done, did they. In business, it’s results that matter, not excuses. Now Adobe is responding to Steve Jobs’ rumored comments with excuses. Corporate excuses look a bit different, “We are excited to receive feedback and listen to our customers!”

Whatever.

With regard to Flash, yes it’s outdated technology. Nobody wants to use a “platform” that isn’t open anymore because then you’re completely reliant on the company that makes it to improve it. The reason HTML5 is great is that the many different players each keep setting the performance and conformance bars higher, so they all either get better or die.

Adobe probably knows this, but they don’t want to admit it because they also know they aren’t very good at developing software anymore and don’t want to set themselves up to have to compete.

Lastly, Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, is the worst choice they could have made. He’s just a bad fit for the company. The people that buy Adobe software don’t want to watch a bad speaker and boring executive talk. As Steve Jobs, and on the other hand, Steve Ballmer have shown, you don’t get to be an uncharismatic CEO anymore. As a CEO, you are the lead salesman to the consumer, and if they don’t like you, they’ll be looking for opportunities to replace your products.

1. Zune Version 2

   The approach Microsoft is taking with the Windows Phone is the same one they took with the Zune. Out of the blue they proclaim they have “totally rethought” what a music device/phone should be and then they demonstrate a device with what the iPod/iPhone has already had for years down to the smallest details. They call this “innovation”.

   For instance Microsoft is bragging about the web browsing experience on the Windows Phone as having great zoom and tap to zoom. Great, iPhone already has it, what amazing “innovation”.

2. Different is Bad

   To prove that they didn’t just copy the iPod or iPhone they announce new concepts in the user interface and feature areas. The problem is, the iPod/iPhone got it right and the changes Microsoft has made end up making the experience worse instead of better.

   With the Windows Phone they have this strange wide or long page that you move through by swiping. You can tell there’s more interface because you see half of the unseen interface on your current screen. Sometimes the additional interface is up and down, sometimes left and right. It’s really confusing.

   To make matters worse, they don’t use the space they have very well at all. Everything is in a really big font so where on the iPhone you could see 15 names in your address book, on the Windows Phone you can see 7. On the iPhone you can see 20 apps per page, on the Windows Phone you can see 8.

3. Applications too Tightly Integrated

   Now there’s nothing wrong with including applications with a phone, that’s a good idea. Apple does it with iPod, Calculator, Maps, Photos, etc. Microsoft does this too, but the problem is their apps are so tightly integrated that they are going to make all 3rd party apps feel awkward. Apple apps are just like anyone’s apps, but Microsoft’s apps are all a part of one big thing that it will be hard for 3rd parties to participate in.

   Windows Phone has turned the contacts concept into one of “People”. While this might not have been a bad idea, Windows Phone does it horribly. They include Facebook right with address book. This might be great as long as Facebook doesn’t have to wait for Microsoft to add features (in which case the iPhone will be a better Facebook phone.) Also, what if Facebook isn’t as popular after a year or two. Remember Friendster or MySpace? I bet you’re glad those applications aren’t tightly integrated into your phone’s software.

I live right near Microsoft, I used to work there, and as usual you have people drinking the kool-aid. “Oh my god, the new Windows Phone 7 is so much better than the iPhone.” That’s just what they said about the Zune. They think this because they have no ability to tell the different between good software and bad. That’s also why they still work at Microsoft, and why I and most of the other smart people once working at Microsoft have left.

We know at a glance that this device will not be a big hit even though Microsoft will surely spend billions to make it appear to be. On a related note phone makers such as Sony are expressing and interest in having their own customized phone operating systems to differentiate themselves. This makes sense, especially for devices. I think companies are getting tired of paying the Microsoft tax and then having to compete solely on price with their competition. That’s not a fun or profitable business to be in.

I know some people will just “love” iPad … but think, for a second, rationally.

What the heck it is for? You cannot put even USB stick into it! You cannot run any “office” software, no IDE, not even Web with flash or even Java … well you can read a pdf … wow.

There has to be a reason, for most people, to buy it, right? What it is? Price – no . Battery life – no. Connectivity – haha! Usablity – not even a test editor! Multitasking … everyone remembers Microsoft idea of limiting this to three – can Apple pull out with one? I don’t think so.

I admit, I’m nerd the worst kind, but … your question: I won’t buy it if it does not do a single thing I want. And nobody I know neither, nerd or not.

I’m sure you can take this guy’s comment apart line by line and find all the inconsistencies and arguments that don’t really make sense. But I didn’t post this comment to blast it, I posted it because this guy is right, the iPad is not made for him. But I think he and other people don’t realize there are different kinds of nerds out there. He admits:

I’m [a] nerd[,] the worst kind

I agree and like most nerds he isn’t very self aware. There is a whole segment of nerds out there that don’t really want to accomplish anything. They buy computers so that they can change hard drives, switch out memory and graphics cards and as he says, “put even USB stick into it!”

For him this is fun, and more power to him. But I think he doesn’t really realize that he’s not accomplishing anything. Apple makes computers and devices that are ready to make you productive at whatever real world task you want to do such as reading a book, browsing the web, listening to music or watching movies. They don’t need new hard drives or more memory (at least not very often) and Apple understands that the USB stick has been replaced by the modern home network.

50 years ago there were home inventors and “tinkerers” that had a basement full of projects, none of which worked, and they considered themselves to be productive. Now, we have guys like this guy. You can tell he’s not even productive at developing software because he complains that the iPad doesn’t have an IDE. Really? He would consider writing code on a device like this?

I’ve been writing code every day for the past 15 years and I merely tolerate using my notebook if I need to get out of the office to a coffee shop or the library. For real productivity I need to be in front of a big screen with lots of power. I would never dream of torturing myself with trying to write code on an iPad. None of the serious developers I know would want to do that. But this guy would, and he’s not wrong to want it because he would just like the fact that it was there. He’s use it to write one or two lines of Perl.

Anyway, I’ve been rambling, but my point is that there are many different subclasses of nerds and they all think they are in the majority. But really, they’re all tiny little minorities, which is good, because that’s diversity.

The iPad will sell well for normal people.

The truth is, we have a lot of devices in our life now, most of them purchased from Apple. When they come out with another device we’re just not going to be as excited for it. But the thing is, the iPad as a form factor is a game changer. It’s going to change the way we live our lives and interact with computers. No, it won’t replace computers at all, it will add to our lives in different ways than computers do.

For instance when you are watching TV your iPad will be right there and you can look stuff up related to what you are watching. When you are on a plane you will be able to do all sorts of useful things without lugging a laptop around. I’m going to put the charger next to my bed and use the iPad as an alarm clock. The iPad fits in anywhere. Unlike a laptop, it’s natural place is near you which actually makes it more convenient than even the iPhone who’s natural place is in your pocket.

The iPad will be a sleeper at first, but then people will realize that it’s useful in almost all aspects of their lives and people will buy it not because it’s neat, but because they actually feel it will help them in their life.

As usual, Bill Gates can’t see this, it requires a little bit of vision and some understanding of actual human beings.

I’m a little disappointed at the iPad’s 1024 × 768 resolution, especially for an ebook reader. I realize that resolution was probably chosen to keep the price down, but one of the things I feel like ebook readers had to their advantage was high resolution screens to make text look good.

Having said that, the Kindle DX only has a slightly higher 1200 × 824 resolution for about the same size display, so like I said, I’ll have to just wait and see.

I know I won’t be able to wait, and will have to buy the first version, but I know the second version will be better with a smaller bevel and possibly a camera for video conferencing. Maybe even a higher resolution screen. I guess I’ll just give my first one to a relative or something. Oh Apple, you already have me planning versions into the future.

There’s no way I’m getting the 3G version. I pay AT&T enough money as it is, I don’t need to pay them more. That’s just a matter of principle with me.

I’m kind of looking forward to having a charger on my night stand and using the iPad as an alarm clock. Since I will be leaving it there anyway because I read before going to bed, it may as well replace my clock radio. I wonder if it will play internet radio?

I’m also looking forward to having it near me when I watch TV for when I want to look things up.

Now, if they would just release the Harry Potter series as ebooks that would be great.

First Jon joked about Bill Gates getting and iPhone. First rule, never joke with Bill Gates, he’ll freeze up.

Then Jon mentioned that Bill Gates was now on Twitter, which was fine. Except it was clear that even though this matter had hit the press days before, Bill Gates only had a cursory idea of what the Twitter experience was really like. Then Jon asked the obvious question that everyone asks: “How many followers do you have?” Bill Gates completely froze. He had probably not been twittering himself and had no idea how many followers he had or that knowing your number of followers was important. After a long pause, he replied by asking Jon how many followers he had. Jon, being a good host, realized Bill had no idea what he was talking about and just moved on. Second rule, don’t ask Bill Gates about technology, he doesn’t know.

The rest of the interview seemed to be more of what we have come to expect from Bill Gates. Bill was talking about his charity as if he actually does real work, but you could tell he was talking about things his assistants or employees had done and that he only had the tiniest string linked to our reality.

He was smiling a ton, more than normal people would, and it came off creepy. I understand that Bill has huge interpersonal and social issues, so I felt kind of bad for him. I realize this type of thing is not his cup of tea. One interesting thing, he looked much better than he has in the past, and I wonder if he’s had plastic surgery?

Featured Story

Palm CEO, former Apple exec says he’s never used an iPhone

Excerpt

In an interview at CES this week, Palm chief executive and former iPod chief Jon Rubinstein said his company doesn’t pay much attention to Apple, and noted he has never even used an iPhone.

Rubinstein sat down with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher to talk about his company’s new lineup of webOS-based handsets due out this year. In the course of the conversation, Apple and its market-leading iPhone unsurprisingly came up.

Rubinstein said that although it sounds “really strange,” his company doesn’t pay much attention to Apple, and he doesn’t worry about the iPhone. To that, Swisher responded: “I don’t believe you.” Rubinstein then claimed he has never touched an iPhone

“I don’t have an iPhone,” he said. “I’ve never even used one.”

Comment

It’s just crazy when CEOs try to do this. They tell obvious lies that actually make them look like really bad CEOs.

So Jon Rubinstein thinks that the sign of a good CEO is to never look at the competition’s highly successful products? Huh? Kara Swisher should have said, “Okay, if you say so, but I don’t see how that would make you better at running your company.”

Apple was clearly the “winner” when Jon Rubinstein left the company. It’s both funny and a little sad when CEOs get in such a bubble that they start talking complete nonsense. It reminds me of Rudy Giuliani’s recent nonsensical rant against Obama.

Featured Story

CES: Intel takes wraps off netbook app store, dubbed ‘AppUp’

Excerpt

Intel this week unveiled a beta version of its application storefront for netbooks, designed to make downloading and purchasing applications similar to the experience on App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Called the Intel AppUp center, the download destination will be included in future low-cost, low-power netbooks from manufacturers including Acer, Asus, Dell and Samsung. The beta client, downloadable from intelappup.com, is available for Windows machines running the Intel Atom processor. Support for Intel’s Moblin operating system is said to be planned in the future.

The first applications available fall into categories similar to those on the iPhone App Store, including education, entertainment, games and health. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said his company expects to expand the business model to other platforms in the future, including traditional PCs, handheld devices and smartphones, TVs, and other platforms that utilize Intel processors.

Comment

This feels like another example of people taking Apple’s lead and running with it in all sorts of random directions.

An app store for netbooks is not necessarily a bad idea, except that it’s not clear whether netbooks themselves are a good idea. Especially in the area of PC laptops, you can get a “regular” laptop for just one or two hundred dollars more than a netbook. Soon enough the term netbook will just mean junky cheap computer with less functionality.

Furthermore, Apples app store works because all the devices are compatible. But I’m not sure that’s the case with netbooks, I can’t see why it would be. So is Intel ready to guarantee that all apps on their app store work on all netbooks? If not, how will they organize the compatibility issue? If they solve it just like PC software solves it, by having the developers worry about compatibility, that won’t make it easy to write apps, which is part of what make’s Apple’s app store work.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens, but this doesn’t feel like an idea that’s going to work.

But what’s bad is that it seems like there are a lot of lessons we should have learned from the past that are getting ignored. Javascript, PHP, PERL, and all the other “internet” languages all feel very unprofessional. They all need the flexibility and logic that C has, for instance.

However maybe it’s only because people are ignoring lessons of the past that we are able to have these new languages and learn the lessons of the present. What I hope is that the next phase is that these two things come together so we have the best of the old and new all in one or more languages.

Everywhere I looked I saw people stating their opinion that garbage collection was not implemented because it was a performance hog and would reduce battery life. Now, this may be the case, but of course Apple has never said it, and if they did, it would be retarded. And I’ll prove it.

Let me state for the record that I was a developer on Windows Presentation Framework, which was one of the first large projects to use C# extensively within Microsoft, so I’m well aware of the truths and lies of garbage collection as it’s a battle I had to fight often, even sometimes with my own teammates. I worked closely from time to time with the guy who designed the garbage collector in C# and if it matters I was even friends with his son, who also works at Microsoft. My point is, I am speaking from a place of experience, while others usually are not.

First, garbage collection is not a processor or resource hog unless an app is very badly written. In fact, it is more likely to make your app faster because memory is allocated out of a linear pool (there’s probably a more technically correct name for that) so allocations are much faster than without garbage collection. Also, garbage collection usually occurs at very smart times both when nothing else is going on and only when necessary using very smart metrics.

What would make garbage collection slow is if you are constantly allocating and deallocating memory for complex and deep trees of objects. Of course, this will make your app slow without garbage collection, as well, and is a good sign that your app is bad and you are not a good developer.

But most apps don’t do that, so things are going to be fine. Think about how most apps work, they are event driven. The vast majority of time they are idle. What does the garbage collector even have to do? It’s not going to run if there haven’t beed quite a few allocations. Compared to unmanaged memory allocation, the performance could go either way in very miniscule amounts, and it’s certainly nothing to affect battery life. Again, the exception is bad applications and, heaven forbid, a bad garbage collection algorithm.

Also the iPhone doesn’t multitask applications. How much garbage collection is one application that only runs while the user is explicitly using it going to do?

But I have some really firm proof for you, too. When the iPhone first came out Apple was telling people to write their apps entirely for the web. People hated this idea, but Apple loved it. They didn’t want to deliver an SDK for the iPhone.

Well what do apps written for the web use as a language? Javascript. And what is Javascript? A garbage collected language. So it stands to reason that if garbage collection is so horrific we should all stop using our web browser on the iPhone and certainly Apple shouldn’t be telling people to develop web apps for the iPhone. But they are. Why? Because garbage collection literally is not an issue.

So why is there no garbage collection for Cocoa apps on the iPhone? Well, I have no idea, and most likely, neither do you. But I’ll give you a much more reasonable explanation: time. Apple has been rushing super hard to get the iPhone SDK out the door. What can be dropped without having an effect on functionality? Garbage collection. I hope that they include it soon, because I highly doubt it’s a performance issue, and garbage collection really makes development easier.

I haven’t been at Microsoft for a few years, but when I left this issue was so political that the C# team was doing tours around the campus to show people that garbage collection was not evil. But even developers at Microsoft are stupid. They think that if they didn’t write the code, it must be bad. They won’t use frameworks, or tools, or anything. Every algorithm in every app is written from scratch even if a hundred other apps use it. Did you know that the Office team has written their own HTML rendering engine from scratch to display Outlook HTML messages? Well, they have. Because it’s better than Internet Explorer? No, it’s actually much, much worse, but they can’t trust anyone else’s code. That’s why Microsoft’s stock is so low, and why I and many others felt it was not worth staying there.