Flex, Flash, Spoon and the road ...

I just had to brain vomit this....

  1. Flex relies on the Flash Player and/or Air, correct? Without constant
    tight integration between Spoon and the Flash Player... I think Flex is
    heading down a troubled road with a stormy horizon around 1, 2 or 3
    years from now.

You can innovate until you are blue in the face, but you need deep
integration into the Flash Player to make things work even halfway
decently. Lets face it, Flex has been a bit of a dog in performance. It
has issues like the rest of the software world, but now it lacks
significant engineering efforts.

Is this situation going to materially improve in the next 6 months? Will
it be better or worse without heavy, heavy Flash player integration? How
will that be accomplished given Adobe needs to focus like they've never
focused on their new SaaS offerings among other treats outlined in the
linked document?

  1. Enterprise was the leading innovation context for a long time, this
    is changing! Are we not at all concerned that a consumer driven
    revolution in productivity and innovation will change Enterprise?

Furthermore, we are seeing a lot more of; "Here is my iPad, now make it
work!" from the CEO's through Mobile Sales to IT. This is a major shift
and its accelerating. Many are starting to say that for the first time,
consumer tech will drive enterprise tech going forward.

I see a lot of Flex folks saying; "Enterprise will save us!" Maybe.
Economic conditions are changing very rapidly from governments to
bakeries. Radical divergence from the status quo will be common place in
tech. I've seen an iPad in a fire truck.

  1. What a lot of people fail to realize is Adobe is in a bit of trouble
    financially speaking. They have revised enterprise growth down every
    quarter and "legacy" (cough) projections look tepid at best. See
    here:

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/2011_analyst_mtg/pdfs/FA2011_web_MarkGarrett.pdf

Their strategy is to focus on the marketer and boost subscription rates
to meet top line growth. They are literally betting the farm on
subscriptions and marketing. That doesn't sound "enterprise-y",
"flash-y" or "flex-y" to me.

  1. They will try to move the creative seats to a subscription based
    model in the next three years. OUCH! I fucking hate subscriptions,
    everyone and their mother wants a $5 dollar a month (or more) deduction
    from my checking account! Obviously, I don't believe in this model.

I'm sure if I can see the following, many others have as well. The
market is ripe for Adobe to get upstaged in their legacy apps (PS, AI,
FW). What I'm trying to say is, nothing lasts forever and this company
is in an awkward place right now.

I like seeing the glass half full, but there are way larger forces at
work here. We are fool hardy to accept them at face value with no
further consideration.