Steve Jobs has posted a long open letter detailing just why he hates Flash. It lists six reasons why the iPhone and the iPad won’t get Flash and essentially says Adobe and Apple used to be friends but they’re not any more. Read on for details of the definitive Steve Jobs Flash smackdown…
Steve Jobs says Flash isn’t open. While Apple has plenty of proprietary products including the iPhone OS, he says web standards shouldn’t be closed: “While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available it does not mean they are open…Apple has adopted HTML 5, CSS and Javascript – all open standards.”
Steve Jobs takes ont he claim that without Adobe, the iPhone and iPad can’t access the full web. He attacks the stat that 75% of web video is Flash: “What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.” He then not surprisingly praises the iPad’s Youtube app and lists all the sites turning to HTML 5.
Then Steve Jobs goes on to attack Flash for being unreliable, insecure and performing badly. He says: “Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.” Perhaps Adobe can deliver that demonstration on a Google Android phone?
Next up on the Steve Jobs hates Flash chart is battery life. Then he dives in to Flash’s history: “Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not touch screens using fingers…most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”
The final killer punch from Steve Jobs is to point to the number of apps in the iTunes App Store and conclude: “Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.”
Steve Jobs has attacked Adobe and Flash before but never so publicly or at such length. Is he right to say that Flash is unnecessary or do you still want the option on your mobile? Google Chrome OS will have Flash built-in but is that enough to save Adobe?
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