The ongoing public bickering between Apple and Adobe only continues to grow it seems. Last Friday (July 22nd) Adobe posted a bulletin of known issues between its products and Apple’s latest operating system, Lion. It seems many took this as a sign of Apple trying to kill off Adobe and Flash from the desktop scene as is the case with their iPad/iPhone/iPod products. Rob Christensen clarified some misconceptions on the Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog stating:
“We saw that there were some questions today related to Flash Player 10.3 support for Mac OS X Lion (10.7) related to hardware video acceleration. To avoid any more confusion, we wanted to clarify:
The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.”
Adobe stirred the pot when it incorrectly stated that hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion and the backlash it has received in response is duly noted. By far the most prevalent question asked is, why exactly is the list of known issues with Lion so long for Adobe. Lion has been known about for quite sometime and the developer beta/preview for Lion has been available since February 2011 but it’s obvious there have been some changes developers were unaware of in the final build. While it may seem as if only Adobe products are experiencing major issues with the new OS from Apple, Lion has been equally problematic with other software.
Many others are experiencing compatibility issues with Lion and even Apple themselves have quite the list of bugs showing up around the web with adopters waiting patiently for an update. Along with Adobe, Microsoft’s Office 2011 has its fair share of problems, Sonos a leading player in home wireless music systems isn’t compatible as of release and PreSonus’ Firestudio FireWire recording system doesn’t have new drivers for Lion.
While it’s true that the developers preview has been around since the early part of this year, many of those one million people who downloaded Lion on day 1 of it’s public release labeled compatibility as a forethought. Those who have been around OS upgrades or dealt with them in the past already knew what to expect. When you update to the newest OS there are bound to be compatibility issues, lack of drivers/support and so forth, it’s a pretty big risk moving forward on day 1 of availability. The amount of dissatisfaction and in some cases anger at these issues on Lion are a little startling, to say the least.
Lion adopters and advocates should realize that the OS is just a week old and that many of the companies taking heat for the bugs or incompatibility are already working on solutions. Evidence of such can be seen from Microsoft, Adobe and others who have already posted known issues with their software and Lion and the continued process to supply a fix. The myth or belief that all of these products should be working without issue on day 1 is just not a realistic one. Every vendor or developer isn’t going to endorse having support for a new OS on release date. The onus relies on the company to have a statement notifying it’s consumer base that their product is or isn’t supported on the new OS, as well as the consumer for researching or at the minimum inquiring about compatibility.
There’s a common perception to be on the “cutting edge” of technology just make sure you aren’t on the “bleeding edge”, the difference is quite astounding. Knowing when to upgrade is just as important as knowing when not to upgrade.
Via(thebitbag)
