The spark that caused Apple and Adobe to clash together began after Apple’s special event, revealing to the world the first iPad on April 3, 2010. This iPad drew the intention of frontline news’ medias, investors and competitors. Weeks later, tech news and bloggers captured the iPad lacking Adobe’s Flash (Kincaid), all prophesied, due to Apple’s patterns prior the event.
With the waves created by the blazing heat, the CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs executes the letter titled, “Thoughts on Flash.” by using different elements of writing strategies to address Adobe’s claims, persuading critiques and readers to understand why Apple has not allowed Flash on their iOS devices. This original spark has caused great controversy between Adobe, Apple, investors, developers, and readers, yet this public letter has elaborately extinguished the claims of the critiques.
This letters strengthens the main objective by introducing the letter with nostalgic and formal tone, causal diction, creating the logical appeal by providing the readers and critiques an array of comparisons, cause and affect strategies and hypocrisies.
The Use of Nostalgic and Formal Tone, with Causal Diction.
Adobe and Apple have had an interesting history together, and not just that, there were “many good times.” This letter begins with Steve Jobs using his personal memories from Apple and Adobe’s golden age, where both companies “worked closely together,” pioneering “desktop publishing.” This nostalgic approach unfolds a corporate past within the letter (Jobs).
With Apple’s “Near death experience,” Steve swiftly changes the nostalgic tone with a sympathetic tone to introduce his claim that “Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart.” The first evidence for the claim acknowledges that the Adobe found new interests such as “markets,” resulting with Adobe’s Flash inconsistent software.
The focus of the paper reflects the patterns of specific words and phrases, creating an artistic affect demonstrating the causal diction used within the whole article. Using an online text analysis tool that gives detailed statistics of text, the whole article shows patterns that represent a bigger picture.
Words such as “We,” represented Adobe’s views shifting later into Apple’s views. Within a text analysis, the list of Unfiltered Word Count (see table 1), the word “We,” ranks in 10th place and places as the first pronoun within the list. This word repeats 23 times, with the frequency of 1.35%. When placed in context, the syntax follows something like this: “we met Adobe’s founders,” “we do not allow Flash.” This then reflects to Adobes claims that: “they say we want,” “claims that we are.” Then reflecting back to Apple’s views: “we strongly believe,” “we also know,” “we have,” and continuing until ending with, “we can understand.”
Table 1
This Table “Unfiltered Word Count,” Represents the Top Words Expressions by Rank, Frequency, Number of Times They Were Used and Part of Speech.
| Rank | Expression | Count | Frequency | Part of Speach |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | the | 65 | 3.8168% | definite article |
| 2 | and | 64 | 3.7581% | conjunction |
| 3 | to | 36 | 2.1139% | preposition |
| 4 | Flash | 36 | 2.1139% | noun or verb |
| 5 | of | 29 | 1.7029% | preposition |
| 6 | is | 29 | 1.7029% | verb |
| 7 | on | 27 | 1.5854% | preposition |
| 8 | for | 27 | 1.5854% | preposition |
| 9 | in | 23 | 1.3506% | preposition |
| 10 | we | 23 | 1.3506% | pronoun |
- a.Note: The text analyzation was obtained using https://textalyser.net/
The phrase “Flash is,” within the list of 2 Word Phrases ranks 3rd place, repeating 7 times with the frequency of 0.4%. In context within the letter, the syntax follows: “flash is not open,” “Flash is the number one reason Macs crash,” “Flash is proprietary,” “Flash is a successful business for Adobe,” and that “Flash is no longer necessary.”
Table 2
This Table “top 2 Word Phrases,” This Table Represents the Top 2-word Phrases Used by Ranking, Frequency and Number of Times.
| Rank | Expression | Count | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | third party | 8 | 0.50% |
| 2 | mobile devices | 8 | 0.50% |
| 3 | flash is | 7 | 0.40% |
| 4 | and iPads | 6 | 0.40% |
| 5 | iPods and | 6 | 0.40% |
| 6 | iPhones iPods | 6 | 0.40% |
| 7 | of the | 6 | 0.40% |
| 8 | the best | 5 | 0.30% |
| 9 | we | 5 | 0.30% |
| 10 | want to | 5 | 0.30% |
- Note: The text analyzation was obtained using https://textalyser.net/
These patterns are not just limited to causal diction; other patterns are visually notable. Some of the most notable top words used include: Flash, Adobe, Apple, devices, mobile and developers. That pattern itself explains the gist of the whole letter. However, this pattern presents a conflict with the first two paragraphs at the start of the letter. Don’t get me wrong, but Steve specifically distinguishes between the readers and the critiques. That influences the perspective of the letters claim and the logical appeal including the warrants and data.
Table 3
This Table “top Words Used,” Represents the Top Word Used by Ranking, Frequency and Number of Times Throughout the Public Letter.
| Rank | Word | Occurences | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | flash | 36 | 3.50% |
| 2 | adobe | 20 | 1.90% |
| 3 | apple | 16 | 1.50% |
| 4 | devices | 15 | 1.40% |
| 4 | mobile | 15 | 1.40% |
| 4 | our | 14 | 1.40% |
| 5 | developers | 13 | 1.30% |
| 6 | platform | 12 | 1.20% |
| 6 | open | 12 | 1.20% |
| 7 | web | 10 | 1% |
- Note: The text analyzation was obtained using https://textalyser.net/
The Logical Appeal.
The letter begins to question the logic of Adobe and further using Adobe Flash’s reputation to reflect and strengthen Steve’s views in persuading, that Apple will not use Adobe’s flash for all iOS devices. The evidence consists of six reasons, ranging from the syntax above: “flash is not open,” “Flash is the number one reason Macs crash,” “Flash is proprietary,” “Flash is a successful business for Adobe.” This emphasis the last reason within the syntax that “Flash is no longer necessary.”
These logical reasons all consist of informal and blunt areas that show Adobe and Adobe’s Flash software weaknesses and hypocrisies. As example, with the first reason, Steve points out Adobe’s claims that Apple is closed-sourced, “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc.” The evidence follows the cause and affect strategy. Steve ends this reason by stating the contrary, “For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine.” These types of weakness and hypocrisies impact the last and final reason.
Reason six, “the most important reason,” the Developer. The word “Developer” is ranked 5th in the top words used within the letter. This reason consists of hypocrisy previously mentioned within the reasons. This last point fully strengthens Steve’s argument that, “Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.” That itself goes against all of Adobe’s claims and provides enough evidence for the claim.
This in conclusion summarizes the reasons why Steve choose this specific claim, “Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart.” That itself created a strong foundation that interwove two stories, stitching the seams together but separating the story using different shifts in tone and reminding the reader and critique on the claim by using casual diction.
This has resulted a framework of logical reasons and finally concluding that, “the mobile era is about low power devices,” … “all areas where Flash falls short,” “Flash is no longer necessary,” and, “Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
This in final has strengthened the influence within Steve’s claims, while persuading tech communities such as developers, computer coders, the media and customers with the truth of the critiques claims.
