Today Adobe launched an aggressive ad campaign skewering Apple’s “closed” philosophy. Retaliation for Apple’s muscling Adobe’s Flash technology off their mobile operating system, Adobe is choosing to take a “high ground” argument by ignoring their specific exclusion and focusing instead on the closed ecosystem Apple prefers.
This is hardly the beginning of the “open vs. closed” debate and certainly not the end. In fact, Adobe’s strategy is precisely calculated to take advantage of the fact that many proponents of the open approach are passionate, even zealous advocates of openness while those who prefer closed largely do so as a personal lifestyle choice and not as part of a conscious philosophical choice. Thus Adobe is betting that stoking the flames of open systems and frameworks will raise a larger argument and objection to the Apple approach and, in the process, perhaps help them outflank their present antagonist.
Sadly for Adobe, it ain’t going to work.
To be certain, for people who appreciate freedom and democracy, open source approaches to software are immediately and viscerally desirable. It lends itself to hyperbole and moral backslapping. “Are we going to let the Big Corporations tell us what we can do?” “NO!!!!!” “Are we going to trust the government to tell us what we can say?” “NO!!!!!” “Do you want Steve Jobs to tell you what to buy?” “Erm, maybe…”
That’s where it gets sticky: many people are quite content buying whatever Apple (Steve Jobs) put out there. And while that may offend our natural sense of self-determination it speaks to the strengths of the “walled garden” approach. Most everything that Apple pushes out is pretty well baked. Consider the App Store: between being essentially first to market and with their oft-criticized heavy-handed editorial model, Apple has created a very robust, usable space. If you go looking for interesting apps you will find them, quickly. It will be a relatively pleasant experience buying them, and the process will be consistent for all of your purchases. It certainly isn’t perfect; I could write a scathing article nit-picking the issues it does have. But if you compare it to the Android Market it is so much better. The Android Market reflects all of the negative “wild, wild West” characteristics of the open source movement: in some areas there is lots of content while in others there is surprisingly little. The purchase process can be inconsistent. Whereas Apple largely delivers on the brand promise of the App Store being a cool, useful and usable place, the Android Market works great for geeks and experts who are used to playing tug-of-war with technology but presents user experience obstacles that the layman doesn’t want to deal with. Rather than being embraced by the masses it reflects all of the traditional clumsiness in technology that engineers proudly take for granted. Sadly this reduces computing experiences to something for geeks and nerds as opposed to everybody.
The bottom line is that a closed and controlled system in the right hands, from the consumer’s perspective, drubs open systems, hands-down. Open systems don’t benefit from a clear and consolidated vision; they reflect the idiosyncrasies of everyone contributing to it. Indeed, while the entire open source software movement is near-and-dear to the hearts of the engineering community, for non-engineers it is largely opaque. The reason product people haven’t linked arms in large numbers with the engineers is because when they try to get into the projects and repositories it is a hot mess. Usable by engineer’s standards but dense to everybody else. The same openness that works so well for creators simply isn’t good for consumers. It has played out that way for decades in technology and it will continue to play out that way until open systems and approaches can provide end user experiences that compete with those that come from a well-tended closed garden such as Apple.
So while Adobe’s latest salvo is perhaps a clever attempt to curry favour in our industry it certainly isn’t going to slow down the consumer’s preference for an excellent experience over a sub-standard one.