Steve Jobs on Flash: Correcting the Lies

Apple has posted Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash“. There are a lot of lies and half truths. No one will care. The article has enough valid points that people won’t check up on them.

That said, here’s my attempts to correct the lies.

Lie  #1: “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary.”

The Flash IDE, yes.  The Flash Player, no.  Here is a list of technologies open sourced/published by Macromedia/Adobe that are in the Flash Player ecosystem:

  1. ActionScript 3 runtime, called Tamarin.  Given to Mozilla to hopefully utilize in future browsers.
  2. RTMP (and it’s ilk), the protocol for real-time video & audio streaming as well as data (AMF).  Yes, many want “more” open sourced.  Red5 and Wowza seem to be doing just fine with what is there currently.
  3. The SWF format itself, which is what Flash Player plays/runs, has most of it’s spec published in case you want to generate SWF files.

This street goes both ways, too.  Macromedia/Adobe has adopted open source technologies into Flash Player with the hopes of embracing standards, not just the de-facto ones.

  1. ActionScript 1, 2, and 3 are all based on EMCAScript.  Yes, it’s not as compliant as many would like.  Additionally, Adobe did participate in many ECMA Script discussions/debates.  Yes, 4 didn’t turn out so well for Adobe.
  2. The XML parsing is based on E4X, ECMA Script for XML.

I’m not saying Adobe’s open sourced a lot of the Flash Player.  There’s open source, there’s published, and then there is open source.

Regarding their products, he’s wrong there too.  The Flex SDK, one of the biggest boosts for the Flash Platform in the past 4 years, is also open source (yes, the real kind).  Most utilize Flex Builder, built on top of the open source Eclipse.

Using a blanket statement saying Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary is a lie.  It paints an incorrect & negative picture over all the wonderful things Macromedia/Adobe have done in open source around their products.

Lie #2: “HTML5 being adopted by Google”

Google created the first browser to fully integrate plugins, and continues to work with Adobe to do so.  Google also utilizes Flash Player in Gmail for both file uploading, and configuring your web cam.  Google utilizes Flash Player in their online maps product for street view.  Google Finance utilizes Flash Player for a lot of their charts.  Their video site, YouTube, utilizes Flash Player for their videos.

Google didn’t start out with Flash.  They started with text, AJAX, and later Flash.  They’ve done a lot of forays into HTML5, yes, and will continue to do so.  Saying they are “adopting” it, and only it and not Flash Player, is incorrect.

Lie #3: “…75% of video on the web is in 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…”

Incorrect.  If a video is H264, that doesn’t mean it can play on the iPhone.  If you look at the iPhone specs, you’ll see the only support a subset of what H264 offers, specifically 2 major components to quality video: Using a maximum of the Baseline profile, with Simple for higher bitrates/resolutions, as well as 2.5 for maximum (ish) bitrate.

Not all H264 videos conform to these specs.  YouTube converted a lot of their Spark (Flash 6/7) videos to H264 to support iPhone because there was money to be gained in the large investment.  Even so, not all YouTube videos work on the iPhone, in part because of the aforementioned reasons.  There is a reason why when you upload a H264 video to YouTube, they’ll often re-encode it.

I’ve been in web video for 7 years.  Getting video to work in the browser is the easy part.  Setting up video encoding farms to support thousands/millions of users is not.  It’s hard and expensive.  Not everyone has the resources (read money and time) Google has, and that’s why companies like Brightcove are trying to capitalize on this problem.

Most importantly, HTML5 currently has no universal DRM solution.  That is why Flash Player’s RTMPE, and soon HTTP Streaming via Project Zeri, are the de-facto standard today.  Those who deploy video content they either own or license the rights to will not utilize HTML5 because it cannot be protected.  There is a reason you rent videos in iTunes using their <strike>ACC</strike> MP4 format vs. straight H264.  Legally, those videos CANNOT be utilized via HTML5.

Also, Hulu.com and others aren’t using H264, they’re using On2’s VP6.

Lie #4: “users aren’t missing much video.”

Every time a user see’s a blue lego instead of the video they wanted to see, they are missing a video.  There were so many people seeing the blue lego, including Steve Jobs himself on stage demoing the iPad, that they removed the blue lego as a PR effort to make it seem like there was something wrong with the website itself vs. the iPhone/iPad.

…thankfully, Grant Skinner added it back.

Lie #5: “…Flash has recently added support for H.264…”

Incorrect.  It’s been there since August of 2007.  That’s almost 3 years.  That’s a long time in technology.

Lie #6: “…must be run in software…”

Not entirely correct.  Apple FINALLY gave Adobe and others access to hardware for desktop systems, which Adobe has recently utilized.  The #1 criticism for Mac’s & Flash video is lack of hardware acceleration.  This move by Apple will go a long way to improving video experiences, not just for Flash, for browser based video.  Meaning, cooler Macs and more battery life.

For mobile, Safari/WebKit is using H264 hardware decoding just fine.  They just won’t expose it, forcing yet again, Flash to utilize a sub par video experience for iPhone (having to launch a URL to utilize the iPhone’s default video player vs. incorporating the video into the experience).

Lie #7: “…When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all…”

See #3.  Also, not all Flash video is just a video block on a page.  Some are immersive experiences, games, or involved in compositing with other objects (alpha channels, easier particle systems, etc).  HTML5 does not currently support some of these features.

Finally, not all video is pre-recorded and progressive.  Live and streamed events are currently done using Flash Player and Silverlight.  Yes, I’ve seen systems that can do live H264 via progressive with only seconds latency over CDN’s, regardless, they aren’t what’s being used en masse today.  This includes DVR like functionality that both technologies offer, including Adative Streaming capabilities to ensure you can see un-interrupted video regardless of your internet connections’s integrity.

Lie #8: “…Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers…”

Incorrect.  The whole reason Flash Player has continued to stay ahead of the curve is because Macromedia/Adobe innovates it.  There are gesture & touch API’s in the Flash Player; I and many others have used them for the iPhone resulting in a 100+ apps on the App Store.

Lie #9: “For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot.”

Incorrect.  This was already discounted 2 months ago by Mike Chambers.  Additionally, I tested both MouseEvent.CLICK, MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, and MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, and all 3 worked just fine on my iPhone.  Additionally, I’ve seen video of a Nexus One using the native Flash Player 10.1 that plays a Flex website I made just fine with no code changes to support touch.

Lie #10: “Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover.”

Incorrect.  There are roll over states for buttons on the iPhone/iPad because you can click/touch on something, which shows the roll over state, but then drag off to not trigger the up, thus canceling your button click if you didn’t meant to touch something.  Works the exact same way as a mouse does.

Lie #11: “Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.”

Incorrect, see Mike Chambers’ post in #9.

Lie #12: “If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?”

Those same JavaScript Developers need to do the same work Flash Developers need to do: Nothing.

If both wish to utilize Gesture or Touch events, then BOTH need to re-write/adjust their content to support these events.

Lie #13: “The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content.”

Incorrect.  See #3.  Media companies will have to create players like Netflix did to support those devices; these aren’t HTML5, they’re Cocoa.

Half-Truth #1: “Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.”

iTunes, flagship Apple software product enabling the success of the iPod, selling over 1 billion songs, and empowering digital movie rentals, isn’t Cocoa.

Gruber, the same guy who Apple apparently used as an example of why Flash doesn’t belong on the iPhone, was quoted, when referring to why Apple hasn’t ported iTunes to Cocoa:

What really matters are features and user experience, not the developer technologies used to make them.

Conclusions

I agree with everything else the article says.  While the spin is HTML5 is better than Flash, Apple wants you developing with Cocoa, not HTML5; that’s where the money and good user experiences are.  While many have said that the PR person responsible for writing that article is doing Apple a disservice, I disagree.  Yes, they do lose creditability writing that many lies, and yes, this just fuels the fire for many developers, not just Flash Devs, to focus on Android instead of iPhone.

However, iPhones and iPads still rock.  While Apple is “only the 10th” largest phone manufacturer, they are the only mobile platform people care about right now in the USA (unless you’re a pissed off Flash/Flex Dev).  Their app store, combined with the user experience, is un-matched.

Me?  I’m still trying to learn Cocoa so I too can participate in building applications for these wonderful devices; devices whose sales won’t be hurt by that article.  My colleagues in the industry?  Most are heading towards Android along with Adobe.  Those moonlighting in Flash & iPhone development simultaneously don’t say much, beyond correcting & helping me with my Objective C knowledge on Twitter (y’all rock!).

…oh yeah, and someone cast Cure 2 on Adobe.

158 Replies to “Steve Jobs on Flash: Correcting the Lies”

  1. Regarding Lie #1, it’s still true that even though anyone could create their own SWF compiler (which people have done), the development of new features for the Flash Player is not open. If you want new Flash features, you petition Adobe. If you want new HTML5 features though, you petition the open W3C, which represents every major browser vendor and a bunch of other interest groups. In addition, there are no specs for creating a competing Flash Player, which would be necessary to be truly “open”.

    Lie #6 was discussing older video codecs like Spark, which no mobile devices have hardware accelerated decoding support for. Not H.264, which Apple has admittedly not given access to until recently.

  2. Just because the spec for the SWF format is posted publicly doesn’t make it open… just documented. Is there an open process for the community to participate in the future of the format?

  3. @Stephen Not true, the community has continually petitioned Macromedia/Adobe for features in the Flash Player, and they’ve responded. Examples include Microphone access, and Sound’s sampleData. It’s not a standards body, nor held to the same rules, but it IS democratic. You just have to make a loud noise, and get a bunch of your friends to do the same; Adobe will listen. Sometimes.

    @Brian Agreed, that’s why I pointed out that some things are open source, and some aren’t. It’s not a matter of SWF being open source, it’s that’s calling it “closed” is incorrect. It’s not closed. It may not be currently accepting contributions, but I’m sure if you had some good ideas, and got more people to exclaim your ideas, and you could sell Adobe on the business value, they’d add it.

  4. Sure I’ll drop some knowledge on ya. Languages that don’t have constructors suck.

  5. I only dabbled in it, but am I missing something regarding developing apps for iPhone? I very well could be mistaken, but it seems to me that Apple wants you to use only their language and IDE, which is only available on their platform. How is that “open” in any way?

    I’m completely disregarding the entire HTML5 issue because I feel there’s such dishonesty about the whole thing from so many angles: you’re right, it’s just a talking point for SJ to rally his troops, who have no interest in reality.

  6. Good article thanks for it…I have written something simlar myself. The main reason they dont support flash I feel is to lock developers into the iPhone, which ultimately means a lot more cool apps on the iphone that arent available on other platforms…Its the same business model that VHS used with Porn to get rid of Betamax…

    However, with Windows Mobile 7 and later relases of Android, I am not sure the iPhone will rock enough to warrent developers not deving great apps for these platforms, espercially when you can use Silverlight and .Net on windows mobile 7 devices…

    I think this maybe an own goal in the long term (actually i hope it is)

  7. @stephen – I’m sure there’s a lot that could be said about Adobe, but it’s hard to ignore their track record as far as listening to their user base. At the very least, they make an attempt to dialogue….does Apple?

  8. “You just have to make a loud noise, and get a bunch of your friends to do the same; Adobe will listen. Sometimes.”

    See? Exactly Brian’s and Stephen’s point. There is no formal and open way to influence the development of the SWF spec, nor for any other of Adobe’s products, whether they are open source (which is irrelevant to this question) or not.

  9. I can’t agree with you more on the DRM issue. I don’t think that the top 100 sites are going to want to give out their videos for free. highFive();

  10. Thanks for the concise roundup. I’m just as much a fan of Apple, but couldn’t help but feel a little steamrolled by the inaccuracies. The bottom line is they want to control how we create content in order to control who that content is created for.

  11. Pingback: Thoughts on Apple
  12. I’ve seen those Flash built apps in the store and the were either non-compelling or had performance issues. Can you point me to an app that was made with Flash that shows it can perform on the device?

    Also can you tell us when Flash would support all the OS 4 features? With CS5 about to be released seems like it could be until CS6 in 18 months or so. Apple is already spread thin enough getting the SDK out for their tool chain so you can’t expect them to start accommodating Adobe and Flash developers.

  13. So much for this “rebuttal”, you have lied in point #1 itself, no one will care about the rest.

    You say the Flash player is not proprietary, but it is. Just read the comments on this Adobe blog post:

    http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail.html#comments

    Answer me, is the special handshake in Flash Player 10 and above documented? Can anyone other than Adobe legally implement a Flash server?

    And Adobe promised answers here, but more than 2 months later, nothing:

    http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/continued.html

    Stay classy, Adobe.

  14. As a flash/javascript/cocoa developer I don’t think I really care what technologies are available on what device and what devices are popular.

    I think we can be perfectly happy to adapt our approach to the realities of the market. The more complicated the market is the more our clients need us.

  15. I dev primarily in Flash and Flex, and it is kind of depressing to see the hate thrown out at the platform right now. I agree though, everyone who sees the long term writing on the wall is looking to expand their languages beyond just Actionscript. The echo chamber was so full of objective C experiments at one point that I was beginning to wonder if the old Macromedia list had any Flash developers left.

    I can’t blame people for wanting to move over to Apple’s ecosystem. At this point Cocoa is a pretty sure bet. iPhone development on the ad agency side is just now getting started and there will be plenty of opportunities for devs there. The army of Cocoa developers that has materialized out of thin air is a testament to that opportunity.

    Android seems like more of a long shot right now (I’m talking about the native application perspective). If the platform continues to grow at its current pace, it will definitely end up being the more profitable direction. Especially since it is far earlier in the game on that side of the fence and everyone is spending their time learning Objective C.

    I’m rooting for Android to continue its incredible growth, because I believe that at least in the mobile industry, Google’s platform and market tactics are the least evil of the big three.

  16. There is no “hover” detection on touch-screen devices, although this isn’t a problem limited to Flash.

    Firing off MOUSE_OVER along with a MOUSE_DOWN is obviously not the same as MOUSE_OVER on its own.

    For example, how do you MOUSE_UP off-target to avoid a CLICK if the whole screen is clickable? In fact, how do you start a “MOUSE_OVER”, avoiding a CLICK, if there is no unclickable area in the first place?

    Now what happens if your MOUSE_DOWN is actually intended to initiate scrolling?

  17. I Agree on everything, and for the people upset: Apple is using HTML5 just to take attention away from the fact that they don’t want you developing on any other phone, HTML5 is going to be really cool some day, but you are missing the point: you can’t develop Iphone apps on HTML5, just web pages, so the whole thing about not being open, is just BS.

  18. Show me an HTML5 site that is even halfway equal to a Flash site… yeah you can’t! It’s hard to be a big bad Flash Killer when you can’t even produce a single web site that can compare with the average Flash site.

    I’m so sick and tired of HTML5 lovers spouting off their mouths with nothing to show for it. More than 50% of the Web’s browser population still doesn’t even support HTML5 yet! It will literally take “years” before enough people have updated their browsers for them to even utilize HTML5.

    Putting Steve Jobs and HTML5 lovers in their place… awesome rebuttal Jesse!

  19. I used to work at Adobe and you have absolutely zero idea what you’re talking about. Not surprised you’re having trouble learning Objective C.

  20. Where is the smart phone running Flash to show us how great it supposedly is? No one has seen it and Adobe has had three years to figure out how to make Flash a viable piece of the mobile puzzle. But, they failed and Apple is moving on.

    If consumers gave a rip about not having Flash, Apple would not have had record sales of iPhones and such a strong start in the iPad market.

    Like it or not, Flash is becoming irrelevant in the mobile world and consumers could care less. Apple’s stuff works, no matter how much the uber nerds complain about Flash not being included.

  21. I was thinking about #6 which wasn’t mentioned in this article.

    Yes it’s true that it may take longer for the Flash Player to adapt native OS features however it hasn’t stopped OS’s from innovating on traditional computers.

    However for the Flash -> iPhone method really it was a non issue. They would have had to support backwards compatibility for those apps just like any native app that is written pre 0S4.0 (or any future OS)

  22. Great article, thanks very much.
    I love developing with flash, it’s an easy to use and powerful tool. I doubt very much I would have learnt to code at all if actionscript hadn’t evolved as it has (as I have learnt and adapted with it over the 3 versions).

    A CEO’s role is to increase the profits and market share of the company he is employed by.

  23. Great post. All Steve cares about is tying developers to his devices and protecting the app store revenue.. all the other reasons are just smokescreens.

  24. I first started using Flash over ten years ago, now I can’t use the program at all. None of the ability I spent considerable time and expense developing is of any use to me. I can say something similar for Director. Yet the skills I learned in building my very first website in HTML are something I still use every day. So yeah, if Flash can be kicked off the web, if I can actually learn a system that isn’t going to be redundant after the next update but expanded and improved up, I’d rather see that supported.

  25. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Yeah that pretty much describes the blog posting here.

    When you open 4 different browsers, point them all at the same window and they crash due to flash, there’s a problem with the plugin. If there’s no plugin and the same page loads just fine, there’s a problem with the plugin.

    It’s not Apple disliking Adobe.

    It IS Apple watching out for its user population and that’s a good thing.

    To hear a few voices jump out and gripe over Steve saying what many of us feel…oh well, get over it.

    I personally am sick and tired of the amount of downtime that I have experienced over flash crashing my computer in the past 5 years.

    What I am tempted to do is form a class action lawsuit against Adobe to clarify this in the press that they need to fix the crap they put out.

    I think with the number of people who have experienced downtime out there that we could easily bankrupt Adobe and make it a prime take-over target for Apple.

    Now, how would that work…hmmm…I have to think about this, but I do know we could then clean up the developer community, pull licenses from those who don’t play ball, and also shut the yaps of “evangelists” who don’t speak kindly of our partners out there in the sphere.

    FLASH is NOT a productive piece of the computing experience. Having won an iPad and been using it since it arrived on April 3rd, I can tell you that I’ve not missed flash at all in the amount of hours I’ve been using it.

    Now take that experience and multiply it by a few million iPAD users and you have a fix that part of the market could care less about flash.

    If you ripped flash out of the net completely would ecommerce cease?

    NOPE. I would run substantially faster.

    Might want to check the reality train and see if you have a ticket or not.

    Something tells me that adobe might wish to look at developing another video technology that is not called FLASH.

    No Operating System depends on Flash to work. It’s an add-in. It’s not a necessity. Just because Google put it into Chrome does not mean it’s necessary. It’s an add in.

    Sheesh.

  26. Have you tried the “drag off” thing from Lie 10 on, I don’t know, the web. Dragging on a web page tends to drag the web page…

  27. Let’s go through these claims of lies one by one shall we:

    1 – Flash IDE proprietary. Fact. Flash Player open? Well, not really, you have documented SOME of the SWF format, and as such, someone else’s Flash player may not run them. Is this open? NOT AT ALL. You’ve mentioned 5 things that are perhaps a little bit open, or utilise something that someone else created – badly I might add with conformance to ECMAScript. Hardly makes the Flash ecosystem open.

    2 – HTML5 being adopted by Google. Yes it is. In Chrome. In GMail. In YouTube. So that’s a FACT isn’t it. The fact they are clearly trying to be aggressive by adopting the Flash player in Chrome doesn’t make it any less of a fact.

    3 – 75% of video on the web is H264. You don’t argue with that. I’d wager that it is H264 that the iPhone/iPad/Quicktime can indeed play, otherwise what would be the point of putting it on the web. You assertions do not support your argument.

    Your further assertions about distributing video is a red herring. Whether the player is Flash or the browser, the distribution method is irrelevant.

    H264 not supporting DRM is also a red herring. You are using DRM now as a defense that Flash is more open. GOD HELP US ALL. YOU ARE CLEARLY MAD. You rent videos in iTunes in M4V format, not ACC format. There is no such thing as ACC format.

    How is Hulu using VP6 relevant. Did Apple claim they use anything else? No. Another red herring.

    4 – User’s aren’t missing much video. FACT. All the major distributors are moving, or have moved to H264 for delivery on iPhone/iPad.

    5 – 3 years ago is pretty recent. FACT. Well it is isn’t it. Hardly a defense again. So Flash can play H264. How does this make it any more open than a browser?

    6 – Apple did give Adobe (and others) access to the GPU in hardware, on video cards that support it. That’s only 3. Your own Labs site then goes on to say this reduces power, and CPU utilisation. So really, you’ve agreed with Apple. Perhaps they should have provided this earlier. Flash having access to the hardware frightens the life out of me though. I mean really, the actual hardware. Heavens. Then again, where is the 64bit version of Flash on Mac? Oh yeah, nowhere.

    7 – If sites re-encode their video into H264 browsers can play them back without Flash. FACT! Your red herring about some crummy adverts and the like that appear, eg. in YouTube, is hardly useful. This of course, can also be done with JavaScript/CSS/HTML thanks.

    You can play live H264 with HTTP streaming. Another open standard. So YOU sir are lying about Flash being a requirement there. Just because they aren’t being en-masse, doesn’t mean they can’t be.

    8 – Flash was designed for PCs. FACT. I’m using a Flash site right now without a mouse on a touch screen, and it doesn’t work. Thanks for lying. Try it sometime. Support for touch requires the developer to support it. Try playing Farmville without a mouse. It’s easier to hit yourself with a pain stick.

    9 – See above.

    10 – Actually Jobs is correct. There isn’t a concept of a rollover. “Roll over states” are actually “on touch” states – not the same thing.

    11 – Flash sites DO need to be rewritten if they are to correctly support touch. Give an example of a site that works perfectly, and I’ll show you one that doesn’t.

    12 – HOW IS THIS A LIE? GOD HELP US. Did Jobs say JavaScript developers did NOT need to rewrite? No. Another red herring then.

    13 – Urr, why does BBC iPlayer work on my iPhone without an app. Oh yeah, because it’s in the browser. Hardly Cocoa. The BBC decided to use the web standards to work their magic. If NetFlix decide to create an app that’s up to them, but they didn’t have to.

    HT1 – Defending yourself by pointing the finger at Apple again is hardly a defence. Adobe’s support of Apple technology, as Jobs points out is quite shocking. First the move to Intel was not exactly fast, then the move to 64bit was dog slow, and the final move to Cocoa, whilst simultaneously porting your awful fake Apple UI over is not a defence. It shows that Adobe is not interested in actually supporting futureproof technology. In the move to Intel why did you not move to Cocoa, just like Apple indicated?

    Apple have not said they want anyone using Cocoa, they’ve said they don’t want a company like Adobe – with no interest in the iPhone OS platform beyond another reason to sell their products – to become a barrier. They don’t want sub-par Android apps coming over as-is to iPhone OS – they want great user experiences, that will support multi-tasking in iPhone OS 4, without having to wait for Adobe to implement it. That’s what they want. In fact they are supporting the user, not the developer. What an innovative thing to do?

    PS. Your final comments that iPad’s rock, really doesn’t make your post any more genuine.

  28. Where can I download those open tools that allow me to open .fla files and produce Flash content as Adobe Flash Professional would?

    I often buy Flash components and they are always (OK, 99% of the time) distributed in format that require me to buy Adobe Flash Professional.

    If there are free or open source alternatives, I would love to give them a try.

  29. Actually, Android is pulling ahead of iPhone for developers.

    And yes, being tenth really does count for something. It’s largely because MANY developers who know develop for Android found the iPhone SDK too limited, as well as the iPhone too, or found the reasons for rejection into the app store way too arbitrary.

    Also you neglect to mention the numerous times Steve Jobs was calling the kettle black in that ENTIRE writeup, from being open, to being secure, Jobs lays the BS on thick.

    The reality of why Steve Jobs is rejecting Flash has nothing to do with a better user experience. In fact, BLOCKING a third party SDK hurts more than it helps. This move is PURELY so Apple can do what they love to do, restrict users and developers.

    I use Android now. IT’s just plain BETTER than an iPhone. And because of that, Apple’s suing HTC over their Android phones, under the premise of Android infringing on their multitouch patents, never mind those patents are BARELY valid at best do to prior art: Apple didn’t invent multitouch or even design how it works. They, like with everything else, id a non-innovation. Hence, I object to Steve Jobs abusing the word “innovative” in this big whopper of an article.

  30. Great explanation! i don’t want that html5 kill flash because i work with flash, but, if somethng new technology will replace Flash , it has to be superior than flash, and javascript isn’t superior.

  31. Re #8: If you want a prime example of how Flash-based applications have an inferior UX due entirely to Adobe’s laziness, look no further than the lack of support for horizontal scrolling (using the touchpad) in AIR applications on OS X.

    Due to the proprietary nature of the Flash Player, whether in a browser or embedded in the AIR runtime, third-party application developers cannot do anything to work-around this shortcoming.

  32. In all those disputes on the web I just wonder how many Apple fans who have no idea about what is Flash and what is HTML5 are making far-reaching conclusions.

    Well, show me at least one application that allows non-programmers to create appealing content for iDevices? Maybe for phone it’s not that important, but for tablet it’s somethings obvious. I suppose iPad is a good device for presentations, but you won’t hire C++ developer for each and every presentation.

    Some would say that Flash (again Flash) can export to HTML5. But anyway this export will be quite limited, because HTML5 does not support a lot that Flash does.

  33. as cool as the phones / pad is i can’t bring myself to support a product built around FUD, smearing and the approach Apple takes with their app store and saying what you can and can not use to build apps.

    Why i picked up a droid and incredible. already built a couple flash apps for it!

  34. Let me clarify, especially on the OPENNESS POINT, on Steve Jobs being a real hypocrite and pain in the ass:

    NONE of their products are very open. In fact almost ALL of them are SORELY open. Version four of their policies that they’re releasing with the 4G iPhones is LOADED with Draconian “lock out the users” garbage NO other platform developer would DREAM of doing. Not only is Flash not allowed, BUT THEY EXCPLICITLY STATE WHAT LANGUAGES YOU WRITE THE APPS IN AND HOW IT IT IS EVEN BUILT.

    That’s example one of SJ being an ass about Adobe being proprietary and locked down, because the cold hard truth is that Apple is the most restrictive consumer electronics company in IT HISTORY. And he has the balls to blame Adobe for not being open?

    Other examples are the fact that the iP* products don’t even allow third party software or homebrew without jailkbreaking. I’m a FOSSie. That ALONE is tantamount to being EXTREMELY proprietary and restrictive. And again, Jobs has the audacity to call Adobe names?

    I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Jobs actually FOUGHT against authorizing the use of Boot Camp on Macs because that would allow his users to have thoughts outside the narrow restrictive Apple world view. It’s a wonder he doesn’t restrict his users from dual booting at all.

    HTML5 is just a coverup. He actually also lied about Webkit being derived from a SMALL open source project. Konqueror is one of the top Linux web browsers. It ain’t some fringe project nobody uses or has heard of. And most of Webkit’s technology they brag about was the KONQUERER and KDE teams creation and innovation, not Apple’s. Apple just merged KHTML and the Konqueror Javascript engne, and tweaked with the code a bit. Fortunately it was GPL and had copyrights from other people, so Apple couldn’t commit the code theft they did with BSD for OS X.

    I won’t address the other hypocrasy. Just know that not only was he lying but he was accusing Adobe of doung things THEY have been doing since the foundation of Apple over 30 years ago.

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