Apple's Thoughts on Flash

Not sure if people have read this yet, but it is new to me.
Thoughts on Flash

Wow, good read. Thanks for sharing.

I read this earlier. Good see Jobs officially addressing the issue.
Curious to see if HTML5 will really take off.

Jobs makes a pretty compelling argument. Particularly with his points about Flash being geared toward a mouse-driven interface. Up until now, I thought that with some competent and efficient code, it could be done. Now I'm not so sure.

cwa107 said:

Jobs makes a pretty compelling argument. Particularly with his points about Flash being geared toward a mouse-driven interface. Up until now, I thought that with some competent and efficient code, it could be done. Now I'm not so sure.

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I get what he is saying, I had a Nokia N900 that was touch screen that had full flash on it. It was great, the only downside was the touch screen was resistive.

I read this article this morning after it was posted on M-R. I think everyone should read it, it's a pretty compelling argument considering what the Adobe CEO said in response to Steve…lol

Well we all know about the war on Flash. What people want to hear is the evidence. And that article from Jobs shows pretty compelling evidence as to why Flash on a mobile device is all bad news.

And in Adobe's defence I've tried to look for a good article with proof that Flash is good for mobile devices. And you know what? I found no such articles. I only found Adobe fan boys bashing Apple. Or very vague articles saying Apple is bad for rejecting flash just cause they are. Giving no real reason as to why this is the case.

So now the ball is totally in Adobe's court. To put out some information with proof saying flash on a mobile device is good. As soon as I read such an article I'll consider flash. But till that day I have no reason or proof to say anything nice about flash at all.

[edit] Here is an interview with the Adobe CEO where he replies to Steve's letter.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/

the8thark said:

[edit] Here is an interview with the Adobe CEO where he replies to Steve's letter.
Highlights: The Journal’s Exclusive Interview With Adobe CEO - Digits - WSJ

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That looked more like a few quick, off-the-cuff remarks. I want to see something that is less dismissive and more of a point-by-point rebuttal. Trouble is, I don't know that Adobe has much ground to stand on - and that's when you get dismissive comments like these.

So Apple may not be the only one that feels Flash is not the way to go. Microsoft says, 'The future of the Web is HTML5' | 9 to 5 Mac

yeah but MS has their own proprietry codec in "Silverlight" or whatever it's called. MS has a while to go before they embrace the open standards like Apple have. But I think they (MS) are making the right steps toward it.

What's funny tho - although Adobe fanboys are on a major Apple stomping spree, I had read (in one of the articles I think u posted the8thark) that MS wasn't going to have flash in their latest windows mobile...

the8thark said:

[edit] Here is an interview with the Adobe CEO where he replies to Steve's letter.
Highlights: The Journal’s Exclusive Interview With Adobe CEO - Digits - WSJ

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The commentary in that link absolutely made no argument whatsoever. If anything, Adobe is like the kid who only knows how to play one sport and wants to keep playing it on and on, while the other kids play other sports (and multiple sports at that) and move on. Adobe is afraid that the other kids will leave and play other sports. And that is exactly what is happening.

cwa107 said:

I want to see something that is less dismissive and more of a point-by-point rebuttal.

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Good luck finding that. I have not found such a well thought out statement from Adobe. And I've looked for ages. Only these cop out statements from Adobe. And you're probably right. They can't prove their point with facts, as not too many facts exist in favour of the Adobe camp.

I still must say Steve nailed exactly what flash is and how Apple treats it in his statement. Virtual rep to Steve Jobs +1 .

Most of that argument is credible expect the cross platform and Cocoa argument. To begin, he says this:

Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

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That is very true in that developers can not access iPhone specific APIs and libraries but that's not to say that this is a problem. In fact, if a developer uses a cross platform development tool, they obviously have no problem using it or they wouldn't be using it. If it didn't do the job, it wouldn't be used especially if the app is to be sold. From what I've seen, the Flash development environment for the iPhone (not sure what it's actually called) can handle much of what a developer making a basic app would need.

Second, Jobs notes this:

Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

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If Apple really wanted the broadest selection of apps, not only would they open the app store inclusion process but they would allow developers to use the tools they are comfortable with. Who knows how many developers have an idea for a great app but can't develop it because they can't spend the time and money to invest in learning and producing an app with CocoaTouch and ObjC.

Third, the letter notes the following:

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.

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I'm going to use the argument I read elsewhere which I think is valid - how long did it take for Apple to adopt Cocoa for Finder? Finder, arguably the most central piece of OS X for the user was only ported to Cocoa for Snow Leopard. Sure, they did it quicker than Adobe ported CS to Cocoa but it would appear that this is a questionable argument when you consider Finder's role in OS X.

I'm not arguing against the exclusion of Flash (this is where me and Jobs agree 100%). I do think though that the argument against development tools that aren't Apple's and arguing a company's slow adoption of technology and standards is a weak premise to base part of your argument on. From what I understand, the iPhone packager for Flash doesn't create Flash apps but creates native iPhone apps. If this is the case, it could be argued that the apps aren't any longer Flash apps and since they would have been designed for the iPhone would suffer from few if any of those problems.

H.264 insider story

I completely agree with what Jobs has to say about Flash. I think it sucks too. But I kind of don't believe what he says about H.264, this is why,

There is talk on the web that Apple and Microsoft are members of MPEG LA, the firm that is a patent pool. They are the ones who are licensing H.264 technology.

So it seems that what ever royalties MPEG LA collects, it will be distributed among all the patent holders of H.264, and that includes Apple and Microsoft.

So Apple and Microsoft customers will never have to pay royalties as they are members of MPEG LA.

Here is the list of patent holders
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf

And here is where I read this news,
Web video gets H.264 royalty reprieve | Deep Tech - CNET News

All this talk of H.264 is looking suspicious to me now.

Adobe CEO, Ex-Adobe Engineers Weigh In on Jobs’ Flash Attack
Adobe CEO, Ex-Adobe Engineers Weigh In on Jobs’ Flash Attack | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

A nice article, well worth a read and there is this pic too.



I think some people are like "I wish I was steve" .

Very interesting read! The article makes some good points, and I'll be sure to have my husband read it. He's been fairly irritated that his iPad can't play an awful lot of videos, even some on youtube. Since he watches a lot of martial arts videos posted by people all over the world as a part of his job, it's fairly annoying not to be able to do that on his very portable iPad, which he got specifically so he could leave the Macbook Pro at home.

Disappointing to see Apple's failure to support Flash. Perhaps someday HTML5 will catch on, but not supporting Flash is like saying you're not going to support JavaScript in favor of pushing Java - makes no sense to customers and users, who will likely never get rid of their working Flash apps.

rbraddy said:

Disappointing to see Apple's failure to support Flash. Perhaps someday HTML5 will catch on, but not supporting Flash is like saying you're not going to support JavaScript in favor of pushing Java - makes no sense to customers and users, who will likely never get rid of their working Flash apps.

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You haven't really read everything posted in this thread about flash, have you?

rbraddy said:

Disappointing to see Apple's failure to support Flash. Perhaps someday HTML5 will catch on, but not supporting Flash is like saying you're not going to support JavaScript in favor of pushing Java - makes no sense to customers and users, who will likely never get rid of their working Flash apps.

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Might want to read Microsoft's take on it with the soon to be released IE9 they
seem to be omitting it also.