Steve Jobs On "why No Flash"

[nikster]

Think what you will of Steve Jobs but I think everyone knows he's a pretty smart guy. Personally, I think the man will be remembered as the Thomas Edison of our times.

And now he has actually gone and written an entire page on why he doesn't want Flash on iPhones, iPads, and iPods. Straight from the horse's mouth, here:

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

As usual, there's a surprise - something I was not aware of:

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

Anyway, he then goes on to explain that the most important reason is actually to prevent Adobe from providing cross platform tools. Others have pointed this out too, most recently Jean Louis Gassee - the problem with cross platform tools, a platform on top of a platform, is that it ends up watering down all apps to only use a "lowest common denominator" set of features. Features that are not available on all platforms tend to fall under the table. Given the breakneck speed at which Apple develops its iPhone OS - and actually MUST develop its OS in order to stay ahead of the chasing pack of copycats - it's understandable.

Apple's success is based on building products that are extremely innovative. But as soon as they release something, everyone else is busy copying it, and improving upon it, slowly whittling away at the advantage - witness Android and MS Mobile 7. The only way Apple can keep profiting from its innovations is to keep innovating, to turn out blockbuster after blockbuster, year after year. They need to keep running.

[britmaveric]

Per usual JOBS is full of sh*te. However I think eventually flash will be on the iphone regardless of how he feels.. might not be sanctioned, but it will be there.

[bkkmick]

To hel_l with Jobs. I want Flash on my iPhone.

[nikster]

To hel_l with Jobs. I want Flash on my iPhone.

Why?

This is a serious question. I only browse with Flashblock in place, Windows or Mac.

[nikster]

Per usual JOBS is full of sh*te. However I think eventually flash will be on the iphone regardless of how he feels.. might not be sanctioned, but it will be there.

Flash isn't on any mobile device as of right now. Adobe better release something soon... as it is the mysterious Flash on mobile phones is pure vaporware.

[negreanu]

12 months. Flash will be a thing of the past HTML5 will become the norm. You tube and many other video tube sites are making the change.

Its less processor intensive and far more stable. There is no argument for staying with flash when everyone knows html5 is a better product.

[Phil Conners]

To hel_l with Jobs. I want Flash on my iPhone.

Why?

This is a serious question. I only browse with Flashblock in place, Windows or Mac.

You also go to concerts with cotton wool in your ears?

Apart from the obvious situation with flash video, why would you want to limit the experience a website can offer you? I know some Thai websites completely go over board, not just with flash but with everything, but properly made website with a tasteful flash part shouldn't need to be blocked.

[nikster]

To hel_l with Jobs. I want Flash on my iPhone.

Why?

This is a serious question. I only browse with Flashblock in place, Windows or Mac.

You also go to concerts with cotton wool in your ears?

Apart from the obvious situation with flash video, why would you want to limit the experience a website can offer you? I know some Thai websites completely go over board, not just with flash but with everything, but properly made website with a tasteful flash part shouldn't need to be blocked.

I have seen 3 different uses of Flash, all of which I prefer to live without:

1 - Video. HTML 5 is better.

2 - Advertising. I block it. Don't want to see it. Find it very distracting when things animate and move around on my pages, would rather they don't.

3 - Navigation of the website, displaying slide shows, etc... All of this can be done in HTML 5. In addition, Flash animation doesn't make a website better. It's usually a sign of a badly designed site. It reminds me of the beginning of Desktop Publishing. People suddenly had 20 different fonts at their disposal, and many decided to use them all, resulting in horrible design.

Then there's ....

4 - Games. OK. Admittedly, I do not play Flash games. But I can see that others want to.

So from my point of view, games is the only legitimate, non-annoying use of Flash on the web.

@negrenau: Steve Jobs knows that once online video standardizes around HTML5, Flash is dead. Or rather, it won't die it will just become irrelevant. No one will care. No one would miss the crappy navigation on websites, or the ads. The iPhone was not going to kill Flash - people are not going to use it as their main or only web browser. But the iPad is a different proposition - this is a lean, mean web browsing machine, and it will damage Flash. Websites will remove their unnecessary Flash for the iPad (and maybe realize that in actuality all the Flash they have is unnecessary).

[Phil Conners]

1. HTML 5 is hardly out yet. Give the industry time to pick up and perhaps one day it can take over the role of Flash.

2. Agree - except there are better ways of dealing with this but I keep being told that I'm not allowed to talk about that here.

3. as with 1. And I though I made it clear that I was not talking about some Thai websites going over board with it.

Flash may be dying but it's certainly not dead yet.

[nikster]

Flash may be dying but it's certainly not dead yet.

Agreed.

I switched to the html5 trial on youtube, works fine. Initially no full screen mode, but they're adding that, apparently it needs special browser support.

[nikster]

Whoa... Flash may go down sooner rather than later. Now Microsoft has joined the bashing. This is truly unusual: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx

Money quote: "The future of the web is HTML5."

It looks like Adobe is up against Apple, Microsoft, and Google...

[Crushdepth]

I find a lot of Jobs reasoning fairly self-serving, but I just hate flash (or more to the point, crazies who build massive webpages in it and then locate their server in North Waziristan, eg. Nokia).

Silverlight is much better.

(That was a joke).

Edited May 3, 2010 by Crushdepth

[britmaveric]

HTML5 is already rated as rubbish. Think Adobe will win this.