News - Steve Jobs speaks out on Adobe Flash

[HEXUS]

The Apple CEO has felt moved to comment on the issue of his company not supporting the ubiquitous video format.

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[usxhe190]

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Steve Jobs is such a hypocrite. I don't buy their "standards" should be open.

Apple is such a closed system (almost EVERYTHING!), it's amazing and they are using the same argument against Flash.

[TheAnimus]

More apps on the iPhone Os platform?

erm except for the flash platform, java platform, oh and that WINDOWS platform.

quite a few pages designed to hide his argument that flash is web only, its not, AIR is marking the divergence. The more toolsets offered to end users, the more environments offered to devs the better.

That way I can bitch about how much I hate Java when I'm having to use Java, or Flash when I'm not wanting to watch a cartoon etc.

[watercooled]

Maybe there's a good side to it though - it might encourage people to move away from flash for streaming video towards HTML5 for example because flash is a really poor performer in comparison to plain video. For example it maxes out lots of CPUs on Youtube especially for HD on systems which can play standard 1080p videos without breaking into a sweat and the Linux port is even worse unfortunately. And it effects things like iPlayer, I get the feeling it's just the lazy option for developers now even though there are far better options out there. And that's not to mention the constant security flaws being found in it, most of which are very serious and often effect more than just Windows. No, I'm with Apple on this one, albeit not for the same reasons...

[Ross1]

funny how you never heard apple complain about adobe when it came to photoshop. god knows how much apple made off the 'photoshop runs so well on macs, its every photgraphers choice' myth.

[Hicks12]

Love how Jobs just admitted that Macs crash, doesnt bode well for their advertising now.... "Macs crash because of Flash, windows crashes about the same".

Hypocrites they all are, Flash is good and bad and it is open as it allows Java and flash to compete but noooo Its closed cause Jobs said so and Apple OS so isnt closed when its taken over a year to get a different browser to safari lol.

[mikerr]

Steve jobs says... well anything to keep in the news it seems..

It seems there's been a new apple story every day since the ipad hysteria...

[sawyen]

Careful, Steve's MIB team might pay a visit tonight and brain wash anyone that says anything remotely bad about the period pad device...

[amdavies]

Flash is a cause for concern when it comes to security issues:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#Criticism

Flash, as mentioned, is also really poor when it comes to displaying video on mobile devices. Lots of non-technical people rushed out and bought a netbook only to find that Youtube crawled when they tried to play videos. These are the consumers (the computers=Facebook/Twitter/Youtube crowd) that Apple is aiming for and having one aspect of that not work as it should would hurt sales.

[TooNice]

Adobe bites back: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/...ith-adobe-ceo/
(Actually, I am not sure if there is much 'biting' it's too late for me to watch the 15min video)

[Spud1]

Good on him. I personally dislike flash as a technology - i've had no end of problems with flash based applications, adverts, websites since it's introduction, and it encourages bad + lazy development. I would blame Channel 4's choice of flash for example as a massive reason their 4oD application failed - it was absolutely useless because of the technology they chose to use for it. It /still/ eats up tonnes of bandwidth which while not an issue for speed these days, it is still and issue in terms of usage and limitations.

It encouraged moving adverts and images to spread through the whole internet in places where they are just not needed or wanted, partly as it was so easy to just knock up a bit of rubbish to stick on a site in minutes..and contrary to what some think this is not a good thing. I've lost count of the number of times i've gone to visit a website only for my browser to crash or PC to slow down insanely - all due to the flash content on the page.

Arguably you could blame the various versions of the flash plugin and "engine" for these problems, rather than the content itself, but that's still the point - it's rubbish, and has been replaced since then with many other alternatives - HTML5 being the current best-in-slot replacement, although if you want a like for like technology (ie something that also requires a separate download) then Silverlight is a much better alternative.

So anyway, good on Steve for leaving the past behind in this one!

edit: I should probably add the other side of the story - that flash does have its uses in the right places. For games, interactive videos and so on it's actually very useful (provided people spend the time to treat it as a real application development tool and don't rush things out) - the key problem is really it's vast overuse on the internet).

[ajones]

Afraid I stopped reading right after the comment from Apple accusing Adobe as being proprietary technology. Sounds like the old pot and kettle scenario to me.

[TheAnimus]

So anyway, good on Steve for leaving the past behind in this one!

A carrot would be nice, rather than this big arse stick to lure people away.

As it stands there is a HUDGE volume of legacy work in flash. You can discourage development in a platform by making a better alternative. A good example would be the chronic demise of winforms/swing due to WPF on bespoke trading platforms (my bread n butter). The other platforms are not going away, there are plenty of projects which will continue developing on them for at least the next 5 years. I also hope something even more revolutionary comes along too.

I'm not saying its perfect, but its definitely serviceable.

The reason I think you shouldn't play any devils advocate against the technology is this has little to do with flash, its anything that can compete with the iPhone's one and only sales channel.

Also as much as I hate flash for streaming video, HTML5 just doesn't have the DRM that the rights holder demand does it?

[[GSV]Trig]

Flash is old technology that doesnt work well on low power devices, thats where he should of argued, then to go into the open standard thing was a bit of a long shot tbf and he's shot himself in the foot for it...

[TheAnimus]

But flash can work quite well, it works fine on my P series, it works fine on my tiny little Aspire Revo thingie....

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/m...-web-is-html5/

However I think microsoft man said it best.

Its not what we want ideally, but its integral to a good web experience.

[Spud1]

I take your point TheAnimus, but I think Apple are in a bit of unique position here to actually do something like this and cut away from the legacy immediately, without worrying about the impact.

Microsoft could never do it with windows - they could not just say "we're not supporting flash, and we're not supporting any of the depreciated Win32 commands anymore" - as they would lose millions because of it. They do need to do something like that though if they want to improve Windows as an O/S and get away from the problems that have plagued it over recent years. Instead they are going for the long term approach to slowly phase out the older technologies. Now you may say this is better for the consumer in so far as it offers more choice et al, but it is a very slow road that will take years to get to the end of..and it may never successfully work.

Apple on the other hand have a proper "fanbase" - people who will buy their products regardless of what they actually are. They don't need flash to make money, and as such they can make this as a purely business decision. This talk of "open standards" etc is bull and we all know it - the reality is that flash a) Causes problems on the devices as has been discussed, and b) opens up a huge hole in terms of the business apple could lose on the app store. If Apple can get away with not supporting it, then why not do so? It's not going to hurt them and from a business point of view it does actually make a whole lot of sense..

Sales of the iPhone et al have not been hurt very much if at all so far by lack of flash, so why change now?

edit: Also, if you can point me to some *good* (and legal) websites that require flash for a "good web experience" i'd like to know them..excluding streaming video sites here as that is one area I have already agreed is a good use for flash.