Steve Jobs Open Letter Attacks Adobe Flash

[admin]

Steve Jobs has posted an article on Apple's website detailing the reasons why Apple's line of portable devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, do not support Adobe Flash.

In the open letter of sorts, Jobs attacked Flash for its unreliability, lack of security and performance, saying that Flash does not perform well on mobile devices.

Jobs also believe that Flash being a proprietary software, is not as good as an open standard such as HTML5, despite Apple's own range of proprietary software and services.

Adobe hit back immediately saying it should be up to the consumer to decide whether Flash is good or bad for devices like the iPad. While promoting the launch of a new beta of Flash that supports OS X GPU acceleration, Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen also said that Adobe would be shifting its focus away from Apple, instead focusing on its competitors in the mobile market, Google, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia.

Steve Jobs on Flash:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Adobe's response:

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/adobe-hits-back-at-apple-let-the-people-decide-20100430-ty6h.html

[Budreaux]

Now it;s getting interesting.
Let's hope Adobe will stand behind their direction. Adobe is big enough to battle Apple, and given the response from teh app design community, it seems Apple is alienating one to many groups.
This could get interesting to watch.

[admin]

US regulator now considering anti-trust probe of Apple's insistence on using developers using Apple's own programming tools to write apps for the iPhone/iPad, and barring the use of Adobe Flash:

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/apples-flash-burst-may-be-probed-20100504-u4jd.html

[Vladislaus]

I love companies having double standards.

"Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards."

So all web standards should be open? So why do they support H264 and not Theora. Go figure.

"Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products."

I guess they forgot to mention that WebKit is basically a modified version of the KHTML.


"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."

A great excuse to force every single ipad, iphone and ipod to use software available only through the app store.

[Derree]

Both the wife and I have ipads, I could care less about no flash, since I know html5 is coming, the wife hates it tho as she likes to play all those annoying games on facebook... still wouldn't trade my ipad for anything!

[Budreaux]

The Android OS for smartphones supports Adobe Flash......
Give the trend in sales over the last two quarters, I'd say Apple is really starting to feel the heat.
I firmly believe that the Android OS will overtake the iPhone by Christmas.