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Steve Jobs' Wall Street Journal Visit Reportedly Included Arguments Against Flash

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Building on comments reportedly made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at a town hall meeting for company employees last month, Valleywag claims that Jobs focused a significant amount of effort during his recent visit to The Wall Street Journal on selling newspaper executives on the need to move away from Adobe Flash for digital content.
Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy.

But he also called Flash a "CPU hog," a source of "security holes" and, in perhaps the most grevious insult an famous innovator can utter, a dying technology. Jobs said of Flash, "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology."
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According to the report, Jobs then shared a list of technologies such as floppy drives, data port standards, and CCFL-backlit LEDs that Apple had helped computer users abandon in favor of newer technologies.

In his arguments against Flash, Jobs reportedly claimed that including Flash support would have decimated the iPad's battery life, bringing it down from its claimed 10 hours to the neighborhood of 1.5 hours. Jobs also claimed that abandoning Flash in favor of other tools would be "trivial" for The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that they embrace H.264-encoded video has one means toward that end. He apparently did not address, however, the steps that would be required for the paper to entirely redo its entire Web-based content in iPad-friendly technologies such as JavaScript.

Just yesterday, Adobe Chief Technical Officer Kevin Lynch defended Flash's reputation on the Mac and noted that increasing numbers of smartphone operating are supporting the standard. Based on his comments, Lynch appears to remain hopeful that the adoption of Flash for mobile platforms will convince holdouts like Apple that it can be supported.

Article Link: Steve Jobs' Wall Street Journal Visit Reportedly Included Arguments Against Flash
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/02/18/steve-jobs-wall-street-journal-visit-reportedly-included-arguments-against-flash/
He's so conceited, I really hope the newspapers keep using flash, just to spite him. Never-mind I also disagree with his whole philosophy of trying to tell other companies what's in their best interests.
 
I'd personally rather see Adobe step up their game and improve the quality of Flash.

But I don't have a lot of faith that they'll be able to do that.

And to think - Flash was pretty much the sole reason they bought Macromedia.
 
Just yesterday, Adobe Chief Technical Officer Kevin Lynch defended Flash's reputation on the Mac
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Which is why flash crashed my browser at least 5 times yesterday, which is better than 8 times the day before.
 
Hahahahahahahaha!

I can imagine old Steve foaming on his mouth talking non-sense and general ******** while at the same time, in the real world, things like this are happening:

FLASH ON NEXUS ONE! --- > http://theflashblog.com/?p=1781

Steve go retire for the sake of all of us please!

:D


EDIT:

By the way, did Steve or any one of you wonder, why Flash crashes Safari on the Mac and it never crashes Firefox!?!?!

LOL!

Perhaps Steve should be fixing Safari instead of talking poo...
 
miles01110 said:
Was the Core 2 Duo on that list also? :rolleyes:
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lol haha, I agree :p, Core 2 Duo is OLD! was first introduced in 2006.. I'm seriously annoyed at Apple for not supporting flash.. Its still relevant, I heard Apple is making way for HTML5, but thats not gonna happen for a while I don't think, infact its probably not going to be in use right away, people will make the transition slowly.. Apple should support flash for now... =/ And again it irritates me if we are talking about technology why the hell is apple still using Core 2 Duos.. Why is apple still using Direct X 10 video cards.. and why isn't apple using triple channel memory.. Not to mention the new SATA & USB 3.0..
 
In his arguments against Flash, Jobs reportedly claimed that including Flash support would have decimated the iPad's battery life, bringing it down from its claimed 10 hours to the neighborhood of 1.5 hours.
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What utter bollocks. Apps will use the same CPU power decimating battery life so will they be banned next?
 
I just don't understand the big deal with Flash. I have flash blockers installed on all my browsers, and I'm not seeing what I'm missing out on, other than a lot of annoying ****.
 
I agree with Jobs on a lot of things but this is not one of them...
Flash is not just video, Its incredibly rich interactive web media that cannot be replaced with html5.

I have a feeling this will come back to bite the apple...
 
And here's what some at the WSJ thought of Apple after that meeting:
its worth noting that shortly after the meeting, on Feb. 10, editorial board member Holman Jenkins issued a WSJ op-ed comparing Apple to Microsoft and saying the company "is in danger of becoming preoccupied with zero-sum maneuvering versus hated rivals." His primary and lead example of this sort of "maneuvering" was Jobs' decision to keep Flash off the iPad.
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From gizmodo.
 
ChazUK said:
What utter bollocks. Apps will use the same CPU power decimating battery life so will they be banned next?
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When using my macbook on battery, I lose 2+ hours of life if I go to a site with flash and spend anytime on the site. Also, my macbook gets about 20 degrees warmer anytime I use flash...
 
ChazUK said:
What utter bollocks. Apps will use the same CPU power decimating battery life so will they be banned next?
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You have no idea whether it's bollocks or not, so your attempt to wear the "contrarian chic" badge looks silly.

I suspect it's not, because Flash video wouldn't be taking advantage of the H.264 hardware decoder. Moreover, your analogy to other apps is ridiculous, because we aren't talking about just any app that someone might stumble upon--we're talking about a critical field, browser-embedded video, that essentially has two competing technologies. Supporting one is cheaper and easier than supporting two, and of course they're going to support the one that has the best cost/battery/stability tradeoffs.
 
freeny said:
I agree with Jobs on a lot of things but this is not one of them...
Flash is not just video, Its interactive web media that cannot be replaced with html5.

This will come back to bite the apple...
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Yes it can, and will. You will see in the 12 months website having html5 and flash sites. Once all browsers support html5, they will turn off their flash sites.
 
I think one of the biggest reasons against Flash is that you're locked in to Adobes system once your content and site design is made for Flash. It would be better to go with more open standards like H.246 and HTML5 and Javascript. They are more future proof.

Right now if your content is in flash then you miss 50 million users on iPod touch and iPhones. And they are the most active mobile internet users. This shows that being locked into Flash can be a bad thing regardless whose fault it is that there is no Flash available. Once designers make Flash free site for iPhones then Android, Windows mobile and Palm users will use them as well. So the problem with Flash gets worse.
 
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