Steve Jobs Posts 'Thoughts on Flash' Open Letter

[whooleytoo]

For those late to this thread, please allow me to summarise:

It's 50%:
- Adobe sux. Apple rox.
- Flash is the past. Flash is evil. Flash kills kittens.
- I don't like Flash, so I don't see why anyone else should be allowed use it. It does't make sense.
- All my browser problems happen in Flash
- If you want Flash, buy another phone. Duh.

And 50%:
- Apple sux. Adobe rox.
- Flash has an IDE and compiler and tweens and an interactive server..
- I want to use my phone for anything I like, and if I can't I'll scweam and scweam and scweam
- All my Flash problems happen in Safari and/or OSX
- If you don't want to use Flash iPhone apps, buy non Flash iPhone apps. Duh.

I predict at least 100 pages.

 

[*LTD*]

right now.

Well, "right now" you're busy developing for Apple. Maybe you can get on the ball and learn HTML5. You already know Flash, apparently. You're the perfect type of person to take advantage of this opportunity. In a way, I envy you.

 

[DreamRaj]

Sweet.

Well written, Steve!

 

[kirky29]

I think Steve has summed Flash up nicely there.
I myself, look forward to when Flash does die.

But, for the mean-time, Click2Flash works a treat for me! And 'CosmoPod'.
Shift click on it, and it'll load up the Flash video in Quicktime/VLC.
A lot quicker and neater.

 

[brian.gillespie]

Patiently awaiting a shot back from Lee Brimelow.
www.theflashblog.com

While i think that HTML5/CSS3 is wonderful for web design, there are just certain things that these standards will never be able to achieve.

Flash/AS3 gives developers the ability to create animated gui's that just cannot be created with simple html/css/js. While these flash created websites are mostly advanced artistic examples made for the full web, and not mobile, there just isn't the capability to do them outside of flash.

Just take a look at any website featured on www.thefwa.com and tell me that a recreation of these sites will look the same without flash. You would be kidding yourself.

Wow, I just went to that website and clicked on the Derek Jeter shoe show. That's a great example of why I hate Flash. I know I have a slow connection, but it took over a minute to load and turned on all my fans on my laptop. The arrow from the mouse turns into a hand and is so laggy. How would you get that hand icon to work anyhow? How would you mouse over the shoe and then click the mouse button to grab hold and spin the shoe? How would you work that without mouse buttons?

Is this supposed to be a good site? Are these some sort of online advertising award winning experiences? This is exactly why I use click to flash. I simply don't have time to slog through this kind of site. That's 4 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

 

[pmz]

I'm guessing you're not a Flash dev?

I really despise it when people throw out the label "Flash dev."

What is a "Flash dev" supposed to be? Other than a 3rd grade amateur who has wasted exorbitant amounts of time learning a poor tool for development?

"Flash devs" are Developers, who either know multiple programming languages and styles, or they know one....

If they know multiple, they are likely in a good position to shrug off Flash, suck it up, and move forward.

If they know ONE, (only flash) they were never a significant developer to begin with, and will thus be left behind as they should. It is equivalent to the IT guy who 10 years ago was the "only man we could call" to fix our office PC issues, who today sits home unemployed because his job doesn't exist anymore.

 

[Macsterguy]

the answer is simply that HTML5 isn't a replacement for Flash. for example, THIS is not possible with HTML5.

Please believe me, This is the truth... I went to this site "we choose the moon .org as you said...

My brand new Macbook pro got very, very hot then the flash plugin failed asking me if I wanted to report it...

hmmm

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Yes. I read it. The point I was making was lead by example. How can Apple criticize someone for not being open when its not open itself. They can't pick and choose when it right or cool to be open.

Steve glossed over the fact that H264 isn't an open standard. He glossed it so wonderfully... the man is very good at what he does.

Funny that he also cited Blu-Ray as using his "industry standard" codec - considering how expensive it is to license the codec for Blu-Ray development suites.

hmm, how about making a canvas export tool for Flash CS5 perhaps? Apparently making apps export to the iPhone overshadowed this feature in CS5.

Adobe gets my money when Flash does everything it does now but exports to HTML5 with a canvas tag. Their current canvas exporter is rudimentary at best. With the Flash to iPhone export dead in the water, there is no real reason for users to upgrade to Flash CS5.

 

[Mister Snitch]

It's the way a winner talks. You can tell Apple has their ish together and has a pretty clear idea of what they want for the iPad and for consumers.

Agree completely.

 

[Apple-Muck]

But who's fault is that? Is it Apple's fault that people choose to create things in flash? No one forced them to create that website that way. They chose to. The same way that Apple creates its products the way they want them done.

Same way that developer Decided to create the website in flash. Apple is decided not to allow flash on the iphone. Don't like it? Don't buy it simple as that

I agree that everyone has a free choice ...I guess it would not be a bad Idea for Adobe to consider a serious Flash overhaul that complies with most af Jobs' Flash-list (Which is an allround list for future development) ... Allowing flash based websites to continue to exist.... Co-creation is the keyword here !!

 

[pubwvj]

I use to like Steve Jobs.

Perhaps he did not appreciate your advances.

 

[martynmc7]

I use to like Steve Jobs.

And oh the irony he says its not open.

This kind of comment is really irritating me as it seems to be repeated ad nauseam on every website response to this letter.

In the very next sentence he states that many of the products Apple produce are proprietary, but that the internet should be based on open standards as it's a shared resource. Now you could argue to merits of h.264 as open or not, but most people are just saying "oh Apple is closed, so Steve Jobs talking about openness is hypocritical."

It is possible to have an open philosophy to some things (like the internet) and not others (such as OS'). Most people aren't grasping this!

 

[jamone13]

the answer is simply that HTML5 isn't a replacement for Flash. for example, THIS is not possible with HTML5.

Oh yes, the wait 5 min for a web page to load?

I've yet to see something on that site that you can't do without flash.

Just because there aren't drag and drop HTML5, and javascript tools doesn't mean it can't be done. It just means that skilled people will do it, and less designers that have no business coding interactive things.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

"For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X."

Surprised he chose to point out Adobe's adoption of Cocoa in its huge creative suite of products when Apple themselves have yet to implement it in the Final Cut Pro suite.

 

[devinsblog]

I really despise it when people throw out the label "Flash dev."

What is a "Flash dev" supposed to be? Other than a 3rd grade amateur who has wasted exorbitant amounts of time learning a poor tool for development?

"Flash devs" are Developers, who either know multiple programming languages and styles, or they know one....

If they know multiple, they are likely in a good position to shrug off Flash, suck it up, and move forward.

If they know ONE, (only flash) they were never a significant developer to begin with, and will thus be left behind as they should. It is equivalent to the IT guy who 10 years ago was the "only man we could call" to fix our office PC issues, who today sits home unemployed because his job doesn't exist anymore.

LOL. Word. Couldn't be more true...

 

[Augure]

Will Apple kill the last remaining qualities of the Tech world: Objectivity and Good sense ?

Because I can kill in a debate any ignorant or simply dumb Apple iSheep who dares to say Flash is dead:
1. Some good sense facts: - About 90% of video game, 70% of videos and millions of websites are in Flash
- Flash is known standard (even if not open) while HTML5 is only fully compatible with Safari and Chrome = Only 8% of browsers and users can use it...
- Every other mobile device and PCs are compatible with Flash and I've haven't heard about major and repeated issues
- You can't do half what you can do on Flash with HTML5 and the W3C has not even made it a ready standard.

2. Some perspective: - Safari made my Macbook crash twice this morning.
- Iphone is not compatible with Flash, it's battery sucks. Android or HTC are compatible with Flash and have better batteries
- Flash has made a lot of improvement on compatibility such as Blu-ray. Macs with Blu-ray players do not exists.
- Apple has obviously the more proprietary and the less open standards that exists.

So here is the truth, dare to say the contrary especially on facts. But I sense that the utopic tech world, where it was all about logic, pragmatism and facts has become so full of stupid iSheep who buy any marketing technic, that you say bye bye to high innovation pace...

 

[Darkroom]

Well, "right now" you're busy developing for Apple. Maybe you can get on the ball and learn HTML5. You already know Flash, apparently. You're the perfect type of person to take advantage of this opportunity. In a way, I envy you.

i stopped developing for for iPhone, and i will not renew my yearly fee when the time comes around at the end of the summer. it's android and actionscript RIAs for me. i do, however, very much like the XCode IDE and their SDK is nice, but i just find it all so limiting.

 

[Small White Car]

It's a fair point!

But Apple could use the same logic to say: "Dump MS Office, and use iWork instead. When we update the OS, we'll update iWork at the same time. Microsoft can't do that. We don't want our business customers to be at the mercy of 3rd parties..."

Incidentally, as I understand it, each Flash-compiled iPhone app would require individual App Store approval, so Apple would still retain 100% control over the platform. Any Flash app which wasn't of sufficient quality could be rejected - it's not as if Apple has been slow to reject useless iPhone apps up to this point.

You're confusing 2 different things. You're talking about the flash-compiled apps which, yes, Apple didn't like, but Steve is actually talking about ACTUAL Flash on the web.

Like, getting into Safari and playing Farmville.

In that world everyone would quickly fill up their home screens with web bookmarks to flash programs and iPhones would be half apple-approved apps and half flash-apps.

And THAT's the world where (for example) Apple says "Hey! We added cut and paste to the iPhone!" and Adobe says "Great...we'll add paste support to Flash apps in 18 months." What happens then? Everyone says "Oh, well my iPhone doesn't really have cut and paste since only half my apps have it...I'll buy some phone that does it everywhere."

And Apple is left suckings their thumb waiting for Adobe to help them out.

That's what Jobs never, ever wants to happen on the iPhone.

 

[xgman]

Jobs is acting like a bully. I don't like it.

 

[jamesryanbell]

Jobs is ABSOLUTELY right on.

 

[philosopherdog]

Go Steve

Time to bring down this ridiculous technology. Flash has seen its day.

 

[JohnAstro]

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. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Lets see
how we can change that

Apple's products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Apple, and Apple has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Apple's products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Apple and available only from Apple. By almost any definition, OSX is a closed system.

 

[mrmkirsch]

Open Platforms

The iPhone uses web standards and that makes it an open platform?

Please!

Yes, anybody can download the development kit for the iPhone and code up applications. But then the powers at Apple get to turn thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the applications based on secret and seemingly arbitrary criteria, often negating hundreds of hours of work on the part of developers.

Flash? I hate it, hate it, hate it. But it HAS become an entrenched standard on the Internet. And depriving consumers of the ability to use those web sites catches them right in the middle of this Apple/Adobe tug-of-war.

What would make sense to me is for Apple to allow Flash onto the iPlatforms in a way that gives the consumer control of whether it can be active, perhaps in an on-demand or white-list-url fashion...look at "Click to Flash" for the Mac platform.

All I know is that, while Flash is mostly used to annoy consumers with out-of-control advertising, there are a FEW desirable sites that have chosen to implement actually useful programming in Flash, and some of us consumers suffer because of the iPlatform's inability to use those sites.

This isn't about corporate financial struggle; this isn't about corporate power brokering; this isn't about security; this isn't about battery performance. This IS ABOUT giving the consumers what they want AND letting consumers make their own informed decisions.

Steve just needs to get over himself and stop trying to be the Czar of the hardware and Internet.

 

[MacFly123]

BUUUUUUURRRRNNNN!!!

I LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!!

Thank you Steve for setting things straight! I COMPLETELY AGREE! AMEN!

 

[iBug2]

Steve glossed over the fact that H264 isn't an open standard. He glossed it so wonderfully... the man is very good at what he does.

Funny that he also cited Blu-Ray as using his "industry standard" codec - considering how expensive it is to license the codec for Blu-Ray development suites.

Yes H.264 is closed, but it's not a web standard as of yet. If Apple is indeed behind each web standard being open, then they should support an open codec for becoming the standard.

The problem is though, even if H.264 is not open, it's so common, and hardware makers already have mobile chips decoding H.264, which don't exist for other codecs right now, it makes sense to use H.264 for the time being. Theora is a competitor yes, but the quality is not comparable right now. It uses more CPU to decode and more space. Until someone can come up with an actual open rival to H.264, we'll probably have H.264 all around.

But other than that, nothing Apple proposes as standard is closed. HTML5, Webkit etc. Apple's own iPhone OS is NOT a web standard. It's an OS. So that being closed has nothing to do with "Open Web".

About Flash's performance, seriously, I'm using google maps street view on my Octo core Mac Pro, and flash uses 180% CPU for simply changing the viewing angle. It's not even a video. It's just panoramic picture.

And Jobs is correct when he says Adobe is very slow to adopt to OS X. Yes Adobe was surprised when they found out that there won't be a 64bit Carbon, but they sure as hell knew that eventually they'd have to port their app to cocoa, since cocoa was "the" API to use for OS X, Apple said this in 2001. Carbon was there to ease the transition. Then again, Adobe is not the last major third party developer. Microsoft Office is still carbon. The upcoming version is cocoa yes, but Adobe beat them to it in this case.