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Steve Jobs lectures Adobe about open standards
APPLE'S DEAR LEADER Steve Jobs has decided to wax his lyrical on why Adobe Flash is not a good thing for his followers.
The irony of Apple's feud with Adobe isn't lost on Jobs, who canters through the history of the companies' relationship saying that both firms had "many good times" and even a "golden era" before he slammed the software firm.
In what is clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Jobs says that Adobe's Flash products are "100 per cent proprietary". Continuing down that road, he tries to explain that Adobe retains "sole authority" on its "future enhancement", presumably forgetting that people who buy his machines are also at the mercy of Apple's continuing development of the closed source Mac OS X.
In a rare show of humility and honesty, Jobs admits that Apple too has "many proprietary products" but says, "Web standards should be open." He goes on to claim that Apple set standards for open standards for browsers by creating Webkit, seemingly forgetting that the rendering engine behind his firm's Safari web browser, among others, was actually a fork off the original open source KHTML project. By his logic, we'll be hearing claims that using the BSD Mach kernel at its core makes OS X open source.
In a sign of desperation, Jobs uses figures from insecurity outfit Symantec to justify his claims that Flash is insecure. Given that Flash is supported on Linux with relatively few security issues, maybe it is the operating system and not the software running above it that should be under scrutiny.
Jobs wasn't done yet, however, using that old chestnut, battery life, to justify barring another technology. So far he's used that as a reason not to put 3G on the original Iphone and to delay adding multitasking to the Iphone OS, with this one giving Jobs a hat-trick.
Just like a power-wielding politician, Jobs' shows his true colours in his parting shot, claiming that from "painful experience", allowing operating system agnostic development "hinders the enhancement and progress". All that guff was really to hide behind what he claims is Adobe's goal "to help developers write cross platform apps."
Instead, what he wants is applications that are available only on the cappuccino firm's devices. Anything that can offer the same level of experience on a device not blessed by Jobs is clearly something that diminishes the appeal of the firm's expensive gadgets.
The letter ends with Jobs pleading for Adobe to stop "criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind" and focus on supporting HTML5.
While Jobs is correct in that Adobe should look to embrace HTML5, the idea of him preaching about open products and innovation after identifying Adobe's "cross platform" development goal as one of the reasons why its software isn't allowed onto his devices undermines the rest of his argument. µ
Tags: Apple
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apple dont like to be considered as sellers of electrical equipment, they prefer to be sellers of a 'lifestyle'
i think its patronising and personally offensive to those of us who are not fanbois.
i cant stand his condescending attitude so i just tend to ignore him completely and therefore miss any relevant points he try to convey.
perhaps his 'spells' work really well provided you are enamoured by the guy in the first place?
guess i'll never know!
iT is not iMportant what jobs is saying. It is iMportant that IDiots will understand nothing and will continue to bui iThigns
...since there's a fatwa against cross-platform software now.
I don't view Flash routinely and it seems that what I mainly miss thereby is YouTube, which I probably see on TV sometime anyway, and games, which I don't have time for. I was startled that it apparently got converted from an animation/interaction applet into the world's favourite Web video codec, instead of a specialised tool filling that role - I suppose that people didn't want to use either Microsoft's or anyone-who-isn't-Microsoft's for fear of going the opposite direction to users or other publishers - but it does seem to work acceptably well.
@Nater: "I don't see how the iPhone not supporting Flash is such a big deal when no other phones that I am aware of support it either. How come we're not railing that Symbian or Android don't support Flash? Is it because this site has a rabid, usually non-factual, hate obsession with Apple? Could it be?"
Or could it be that Flash is actually coming to Android, and there's Flash Lite for Symbian? Verifying this took just a short conversation with our friend Google. And more importantly, the owners of Android and Symbian platforms are not actively waging a holy war _against_ Flash and Adobe.
As in any war, the civilians get hit hardest. Yes, Flash is painful, but surfing the web today without having Flash support is even more painful.
1...2...3...
SCREW YOU, APPLE!
Hey Steve
If you are soooo into open platforms, why not let Apple OS run on any PC hardware?
Get back to me when you get over that part, ok?
:)
Is that you, Nick? Well, if it is, I have to applaud you because it appears that you're actually starting to do something that resembles research now. Good for you.
No doubt Apple's systems are closed and proprietary. But that has ups and downs. I don't think the iPhone would be the best phone you can buy three years running if it wasn't locked down by Apple. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but I kind of doubt it.
I also agree with pretty much everything that Jobs said. I may despise him, but when he's right, he's right. Flash is polluting the web and the sooner it dies the better.
If Apple not supporting flash on it's iPhone OS products helps hasten the demise of Flash, so much the better. I don't see how the iPhone not supporting Flash is such a big deal when no other phones that I am aware of support it either. How come we're not railing that Symbian or Android don't support Flash? Is it because this site has a rabid, usually non-factual, hate obsession with Apple? Could it be?
If there's one good thing I can say about Lawrence is he argues with himself very well. So-and-so said this, but we know they'll use that as an argument, or this one, etc. What the hell is all this drivel about from INQ? Is hating one company over the next a new hiring criteria?
The truth is Flash is a pig. Go onto youtube or wherever and watch your memory usage skyrocket for your browser. We've all noticed this for years. And just try watching a 1080p flash video and watch your quad core CPU spike. I welcome hardware optimization from Adobe, but what the hell took so long? Jobs had to insult you to make it happen?
The truth is, much of the Internet is Flash based. It shows how good a product it is because it's everywhere. If Apple thinks not including Flash in their product won't be an issue because he's going to lead a new innovation, well, that's his point of view. Personally, I wish we could all just get along.
Come on Jobs, don't throw out these lame "reasons" (excuses) for not wanting Flash on the iPhone. The *absolute* only reason Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone, the only reason Apple's fuhrer himself has taken time to denounce it, is that it wrests control away from Apple's APIs so people won't have to buy services through Apple's own distribution system. Open standards my ass. Having "Apple" in the same sentence as "open standards" only serves to dilute the latter's meaning.
Battery life, security, performance--these things don't matter to Jobs when it comes to Flash on the iPhone. It's hilarious, but not unsurprising, that the gullible masses eat these sad reasons up at face value. What, 2 hours running actual apps on the iPhone? Is that any different than what you'd get from running Flash? Nor can I see Flash being any less (or more) secure than whatever infests those phones already. This is just a battle to maintain control of the iPhone as a platform, to reduce access to those outside of Apple's favor, to maintain the status quo that keeps Apple products segregated for Apple's exclusive benefit.
Why does this remind me of Kim Jong il giving lectures on democracy...
All you people about the ads on flash, what are you ediotic?
You act like adobe is the enabler of adds, So if adobe is gone the ads are gone? Just because you have html 5 the ads arent going to be html5? Thats an ediotic comment so dont even bring that up. Ads are the backbone of the internet, with out adds there wouldn't be google, dyndns, file sharing websites, and all the services we take for granted. Dont act like stevie wonder who is blind, the benefits of hulu, youtube, pbskids, and so many flash loaded websites that show what flash can do where html cant even come close. I use adblock and javablock, and guess what java is more of a culprit since it enables flash to be loaded on a browser. After all adobe makes easy for any noob to start making content.
Which is a threat to apple, why is that stevie wonder doesnt load up an fm program to itunes? Because he hasn't come up with a way of milking it yet. I have a samsung omnia with winmo 6.0 and pocket ie, i get the inquirer with all its glory. Even the stupid full page redirection ads,and by full glory i mean videos too!!!!!! I can even watch videos from embeded youtube, yeah thats right. Even though youtube.com asks for 10 i still see the embeded stuff on websites!!
Money For Old Rope with Jobs as the executioner of iAd revenue, nets him the Full Monty Dummling the princess and the Grimm's Golden Goose and all others stuck to it are sent to covetry.
I would think it anticompetitive to purvey by means of a perplexing network of uses which allay and allege to the disadvantage of other established concerns in the market venue what is it I am the nonpurvertor.
I think Steve jobs has become a Moron. A Greedy moron. I agree about flash but for a different reason. It tracks everything you do. And if you want to see it for yourself you have to go to their website and open the settings manager. Since some people like myself try to protect my privacy, it's pretty much all in vain thanks to flash player. I really don't see thats it some 3rd party's business where I go on my computer. It's almost impossible to protect yourself and I resent it.Just like everything else big business wants to snoop in your life and invade your privacy and will do anything for profit.
You can change the settings in flash settings manager ,but you will wish you hadn't.
Meanwhile it will be google who has to cough up the dough to get a good open source modern codec for that HTML5, and not apple, who even asks people to pay to enable the fullscreenbutton in quicktime..
Anyway jobs has to be off now to watch videos of his policeforce while it invades another person's home because jobs is displeased with that person.
You're mostly right - it's a kind of absurd letter. But I have to agree with Jobs on how appalling Flash actually is. Forget iPhone and think of your CPUs - Flash ads are the main reason most web surfing has now become more CPU-intensive than transcoding video. My laptop gets hotter than Paris Hilton's firecrotch when playing back Flash videos. Flash is an absolute monstrosity and needs to be taken down a peg or two. And finally, let's be a little more reasonable here - Apple hasn't ever created a web-wide CPU-gobbling monster like Adobe has, ruining the experience for everyone.
What he said was that for *WEB* development Apple had yet to see a version of flash on a cell phone that (A) ran video at full speed and without hogging power and (B) didn't need flash apps re-writing to work with touch interfaces.
If you don't get a "full" web experience when you do put Flash on your mobile, and you lose battery life and security then why bother with Flash?
For *APP* development then Adobe are working to the lowest common denominator, and they have a history of being woefully late in using newer APIs. Apple don't want Adobe dictating the speed that their developers use new features, so they chose not to allow apps created using Flash.
If Adobe didn't have a long history of foot dragging and poor support for Apple's platforms then they might have a better case.
I thought The Registers take was little less bias.
When will people learn that Apple's Schick is to sell a religion, not quality consumer goods.
iMagine the futility of trying to argue against the Pope on the technical aspects of Catholicism. You're just not going to win because what you see as an argument, they just see as the work of the devil there to test their faith. Think of the euphoria they must feel when they weather the fork-tongued abuse of the PC user and feel their faith only strengthened afterwards.
article, Lawrence, I agree with all you said.
Jobs plays dumb and thats pathetic. I wander if he believes himself :\