Steve Jobs Publishes Some "Thoughts On Flash"

teh31337one writes "Steve Jobs just posted an open letter of sorts explaining Apple's position on Flash, going back to his company's long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices. HTML5 naturally comes up, along with a few reasons you might not expect. He concludes in saying that 'Flash was created during the PC era — for PCs and mice.'" Tacky that his first point is that Flash is proprietary, when Apple restricts the apps that can be installed on the phone. Pot, meet kettle.

Comments

What's the saying about hypocrisy?

[sethstorm]

Turtleneck calling the kettle black?

My choice? It's Nokia. At least they have a happy medium of openness, functionality, and usability. Yes, they have Flash.

Re:Flash More Open?

[denis-The-menace]

Not to mention that you know iPhone will always lag waaaayy behind the desktop versions of Flash.

Meanwhile, hackers will make Flash on iPhone the preferred target just for bragging rights.

Flash is a CPU hog on *any* platform, it has to either go on a diet or go away.

PS:Can't wait for the annoying HTML5 ads to replace the annoying Flash ads. Is a HTML5-blocker add-ons in the works?

Flash performance on devices

[gaspyy]

This has caught my eye:
"We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it."

Well, according so some benchmarks, Flash actually performs better than HTML5 on Android.

Re:Future Announcement: Adobe Creative Suite 6

[Enderandrew]

Avatar's effects were all done on Linux. I believe WETA uses Linux exclusively for effects.

If Creative Suite moved over, a lot of audio/video/effects professionals would move to Linux. I read an article about how sound engineers are moving over to Linux because of the RT kernel.

games?

[Weezul]

Jobs says "There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world." To me, this rings quite hollow :

First, the vast majority of recent truly innovative small-form-factor or two-dimensional games are primarily flash games, possibly with ports to mobile platforms like the iPhone. Yes, the best such games are often rewritten for the iPhone, but ..

Second, the vast majority of older two-dimensional games are outdated console games that now run under emulation under linux, mac os x, and windows. I'm unsure if how well the iPhone handles these games, especially old arcade games, given the lack of keyboard. I'm also unsure how well the emulators run under Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, etc. either, maybe the iPhone has the best emulators from among the mass market phones.

I know however that my N900 offers almost all the Linux emulators, the ones I've tried play well thanks to the keyboard, even dosbox.

Third, there are still vastly more strong titles for recent consoles or desktops that'll never play well on an iPhone within Jobs lifetime.

Jobs does however state the all important caveat "entertainment titles" by which he presumably means all movies sold via iTunes too. Yes, other mobile platforms are not making movies available like Apple, true but kinda irrelevant.

Re:so what about Java?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's amusing that you think that's the security model. Why would such malware exist when Apple approves the apps and distributes them?

Because Apple engineers cannot catch every trojan submitted. And I think that's Apple's security model because that's what they presented in their whitepapers. If that isn't their security model then why did they go to all the trouble to create a signing framework when they knew it would not stop the devices from being jailbroken? Apple controls the distribution, so why the keys?

No, the reason for the model is so that Apple can tightly control the competition.

What competition? Other phone makers? How does this control them? Define your terms already.

Alternative runtimes prevent that so they are not allowed.

Alternative runtimes not only break Apple's security model but the put the available feature set and performance of applications behind a bottleneck that Apple does not control. It's just good business to not allow other companies to be able to reduce the capability of your product. I don't see what it has to do with competition though.

Re:proprietary and apple

[buckhead_buddy]

sopssa wrote: "Open Source: Nobody restricts where you can install the application, and you get the source code too -- the best situation."

No, open source is about "source" code, not the applications or products you build with it. It doesn't guarantee you'll be able to run the compiled products on a platform, since that would also promise open source programmers will fix all the bugs that stop you from running their code on a platform. You've got the source, but that's only half the battle.

sopssa continued: "Proprierary software: You dont get the source code, but nobody is restricting where or if you can install it, as long as its freeware or you have paid for it."

First, proprietary software is not code. Licensing proprietary code or software often demands where you can deploy it in the license, but without that license the law says "nowhere". Heck, even some open source code such as GCC places demands on how the licensed code is deployed; you don't agree with the terms of the license and you again have no freedom to deploy it.

sopossa concludes: "Apple: Not only will you not get the source code and in most cases you have to pay for it, Apple is in total control what applications the user is allowed to install. They dont even give you the option to decide yourself."

Again, this conflates source and product, but I get the sense that sopssa's real complaint is about the locked down practices of saying what you can run on your Apple products. Even then you do have options; if it's a personal itch you need to scratch you can jailbreak or become a developer and deploy to a small handful of iProducts. But if you want to make "the next big thing" available to all platform users Apple does demand to play by our rules or go to a different playground.

When viewed as a fledgling platform that's still struggling with performance and security, that's not an unreasonable demand. When viewed as a multi-billion dollar, uber-popular computing platform, it is downright offensive. I vacillate between these perspectives regularly, but fortunately Apple's products are the only computing product around.

If Adobe becomes wildly successful on Android, Apple might change their mind about adoption. But Apple has made it clear they aren't going to be the pioneer with Flash on a mobile platform.

Re:He Is Quick to Forgive Apple, Of Course

[Bigjeff5]

All I see is Apple stagnating in the market, while Android gains. (Android supports flash fully next release, btw)

Besides, since when has more choice ever been a bad thing? Apple is FAR more proprietary and restrictive than Adobe, and Jobs is downright wrong that Flash is not open. You can download the specification off their website and start porting flash to the iPhone right now if you want (though you'll never get your app into the App Store). Adobe isn't exactly known for their open source efforts, but they do a hell of a lot more of it than Apple does.

Everything Jobs said was an excuse, a justification to mask why he really does not want to support Flash. The truth is he doesn't like the lack of control over flash - he wants more. With Safari, Apple and Apple alone gets to say how HTML5 content is rendered on the iPhone. They can break things they don't like, or simply make them less useful. It's all about control, and he doesn't have it with Flash, so he wants flash to go away.

To see Apple's commitment to "free" and "open", just look at Google Voice. They rejected Google's app for no apparent reason. Not only that, but all third party Google Voice apps, which had been previously approved, were removed from the store citing vague "duplication of features". Exactly what features of the iPhone tie in to Google Voice? Google didn't even bother to try with Navigation, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile will get it, but not the iPhone - it isn't worth the risk.

Seriously, if you actually think Apple has an altruistic motive for openness in any application (standards, web, A/V, whatever), you are fooling yourself.