Design

Entering the Flash vs HTML 5 argument is a trip down snoozer lane, but this passage from Hartmut Esslinger’s book ‘A Fine Line’ kind of framed the debate in a new light. Esslinger’s ID company frogdesign helped Apple design the original Macintosh line, he comments on overcoming the challenge of low fidelity dot-matrix printers that were ubiquitous at the time. Apple was focused on designing a computer that could produce high-resolution graphics and needed a printer that could deliver them in a home or office. Esslinger’s aside at the end is a telling piece of history that most people will have long forgotten.

Apple made an under-recognized breakthrough in the 1980s with its advances in desktop publishing. Our goal was to move beyond the horrible graphics of dot-matrix printers, so Apple began by licensing modern typestyles from the German type setting company, Berthold. We then took the Canon’s high-end copy engine and combined it with a Macintosh board, which had the capability to process the high-resolution PostScript graphics of scalable fonts, and added a “soft window” user interface. The printer was an instant success. With it, Apple pioneered an entirely new industry for design software (companies such as Adobe wouldn’t have started without it).

To be fair, Apple did not indirectly create Adobe, as the technology embedded in the printer was in fact Adobe’s first invention – PostScript. Founder John Warnock, a former Xerox PARC employee, created a technology that allowed scalable fonts for high-end main frame printers ($30,000 = high end). A combination of the Apple Laserwriter ($7,000), a copy of Aldus Pagemaker and a Macintosh is what set-off the Desktop Publishing revolution. Esslinger’s passage hints at the lucrative future for the publishing industry that we benefit from today, but their solution for protection against poor-quality graphics is the clue to Apple’s current strategy for the web. In the 1980s, Apple built a computer (the Macintosh) the industry did not understand or need, only until all the pieces were in place did the value of the Macintosh computer ascend. Apple’s foresight to use PostScript within the printer and OS allowed Adobe to be part of that revolution. Today, Apple is still trying to protect itself from poor-quality graphics, ironically from Flash, an Adobe acquisition from Macromedia. If you replace the Macintosh of the 80s with the iPad, you’ll see a pattern that Apple again needs to build the proper ecosystem for the device to exist within. Flash is a capable tool, but to Apple’s standards, it provides them with enough reason to break rank with the Industry – again. The iPad and iPhone is Apple’s new Macintosh and unfortunately for Adobe, Flash is the clunky dot-matrix printer of the 21st century. Oh the drama, nap time.