David Gerard wrote:
> Are you *sure* we can't put a narky message when iPhone users click a
> video? Adobe do!
>
> http://twitpic.com/kf361
>
> (assuming it's real - can anyone with an iPhone please check?)
>
>
Adobe is the most feared company on the web right now.
Even though Microsoft has the most popular browser, a number of
excellent alternatives exist: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konquerer, and
Chrome. They don't support 100% of what IE supports, but you can
browse the web all day with them and rarely find a site that they don't
work with.
There are no entirely satisfactory replacements for Flash and
Acrobat, and certainly not cross-platform and widely installed.
On top of all that, Apple and Microsoft both have personal
vendettas against Adobe.
Five years ago web video was buried beneath a three-way battle
between the MicrosoftOnlyMediaPlayer, TheRealBadMediaPlayer, and
TheQuicktimeMediaPlayerThatWorksOccasionally. Publishing video online
would typically mean creating files for all three players, and probably
at 2-4 different quality levels, so you might have 6-12 files. Then
there would be a complex hunk of javascript that would try to guess
which player you had, which would work right... if you were lucky.
Then there was the whole codec nightmare; even if you had the right
player, you probably didn't have the right codec. Although there were
supposedly mechanisms for installing new codecs, you'd usually risk
wrecking your ability to play video at all if you tried to install a codec.
Macromedia (later aquired by Adobe) quietly introduced video
capability in Flash... It was a few versions later when Flash video
players were widespread, and then all of a sudden people realized that
web video could be as simple as pushing "Play" and having the video
really play.
Apple and Microsoft, both of whom have ambitions to control digital
video, will never forgive Adobe.
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