Open letter from Steve Jobs re: Flash

Steve Jobs publishes some 'thoughts on Flash'... many, many thoughts on Flash -- Engadget

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe's founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe's Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe's Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there's "Open".

Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. 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. Apple's mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

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. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android's browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft's uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there's the "full web".

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access "the full web" because 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. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web's video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren't missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there's reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don't want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, 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. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we're glad we didn't hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there's battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

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.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there's Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on "rollovers", which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple's revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn't use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. 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?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn't support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

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. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor's platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe's goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple's platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

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. And the 200,000 apps on Apple's App Store proves that Flash isn't necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

 

Great read but still disapointed about the lack of Flash.
I'm sure there is a solution to this without each side butting heads.

 

I've long thought Flash was a resource hog that was buggy. I see why companies like Netflix went with Silverlight (Microsoft's plug-in) versus Flash when Silverlight lets Pentium III era machines and Netbooks stream content with no problem and Flash STILL can't get their act right.

Youtube still has problems rendering 1080P content many items still crash, stutter or lock up machines with flash even decent hardware.

 

Steve Jobs chatting about "Open" - Wow - Oh the irony.....

 

too long to read version: When we are "closed" to you, it's for the sake of our users so that they won't get to use sub-standard softwares, when you are "closed" to us, you suck.

 

^^^ I kind of read it more like: "We choose not to give our users the ability to make their own decisions because we think your software sucks and is direct competition to our current/future plans.." - but hey.. to each his own..

 

IE Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx

10char

 

and a rebuttel from a software developer that has been running around the net now

 

One word. Apple doesn't want Adobe to dominate in one platform.

 

No, it's about Apple wanting to retain max control. no more, no less.

 

another rebuttal:

Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

nailed it.

 

True, while I may be pointing out the bloated, buggy resource intensive properties of Flash, it still doesn't negate Apple's need for control. It is about choice.

In many aspects, Apple is no better than Sony or Microsoft, but I respect a company's right to protect their profit stream using every means possible. It is up to the consumers to revolt and vote with their purchasing power.

 

I don't think anyone minds.

I think the problem is the deception. Pretending to be a Saint when you're really not.

 

I'd change "possible" to "legally allowed", at the least.

 

I think the truth is somewhere in between. The one part I definitely agree with is that if dev's start leaning on 3rd party cross platform tools to develop apps, that it hurts the users, because of the Lowest Common Denominator problem. Basically, iPhone features that aren't common to other platforms will get left out.

Flash is free as in free beer (kinda), whereas HTML5 is free as in free. It's different. Flash isn't totally open. HTML5 is. Is flash open enough? Barely. I think it may be, but right on the edge.

As far as flash running on hardware (the GPU) that implementation only applies to modern desktop graphics cards. It won't run on any iPhone or mobile hardware (it needs to run in software on all mobiles, including the iPhone). Flash 10.1 has nothing to do with a hardware implementation of flash on mobile devices.

Also, security is worse with Flash than with javascript. That's just brutal truth. Check out wikipedia entries on flash and javascript. the security section for Flash is under "criticism".

So, Adobe maintains the Flash standard, and non-Adobe implementations of Flash have to keep up with Adobe to keep their implementations up to date. With HTML5, the standard is controlled by a committee (many companies and entities, this is better!), and it is all open. It's going to be more practical to maintain an up to date HTML5 implementation than a flash one. Basically, should the whole web be controlled by one entity or many?

Now, I think his motives are not in line with what he said, but I think there is a lot of truth in most (at least some) of the points he made anyway.

 

I agree with you. Jobs make some solid points in his article. Some of course are "you're totally saying that for marketing" but some are yea, your kind of right. Especially the one about how buggy flash is. It is, especially on anything Mac. The computer runs slower and faster, flash content crashes, battery life is shot, etc. Flash isn't optimized very well for Apple's direction in their devices (long battery life, high reliability), and that's a fact. If I were Jobs I would reject Flash too if it meant sacrificing Apple's famous standard of reliability.

Don't know why everyone is blasting Steve Jobs like he's selling drugs or something. He explained why he didn't put flash. You can decide if his points are legitimate or not (I think most of them are), and take it as that. He gives you an explanation, and then you blast him?

 

Looks like MSFT is siding with Apple on this. Poor Adobe. (Engadget link)

 

Apple should of let flash be installed through some sort of "App installer." HTML is great for videos and other markup but still can't fully replace flash. Google supports HTML 5 but also allows flash to be developed for their Android platform (well they allow anything). But they know its not up to them to tell their users how they can use their phone. From Google's point of view if Adobe wants to develop a program that will enhance it's users mobile experience it can, and if users don't like it they don't have to install it. I'm not sure why Apple feels it has to spoon feed its customers the "correct" software to make sure they don't use buggy software. And how is Flash buggy, I've never had problems, plus Apple should look at the quick-time platform on windows, then tell us its flash thats buggy. The only reason they won't allow flash it seems, is to bank 30% off of converted flash games on the itunes app store, which is sad. If apple keeps the iPhone platform so controlled the iPhone will remain nothing more than a glorified iPod while other phones are becoming actual computers. I could care less about openness or closeness I just want the best, and thats not what Apple is giving its customers here.

 

Adobe CEO, Ex-Adobe Engineers Weigh In on Jobs’ Flash Attack | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

 

I think both sides make some good arguments. And its interesting to see Microsoft side with Apple, but I agree, HTML5 and standards in general is always better than proprietary formats (and I say this of Microsoft Silverlight and Apple Quicktime as well, both of which I dislike ).

 

what has my curiosity peaked with Htlm 5 is the html aspect is OPEN but it seems that they are shoving CLOSED codecs at us H.264 foe example, for streaming over it. and for those of us that have worked on some of the old closed codecs such as vodei etc. it is possible the HTML 5 satandard could be going backwards on the free and open internet. and tossing in media restrictions and viewing nightmares for the new standard ... but I am no fortune teller and only time will tell.

 

Apple isn't pushing HTML 5 because its wants to promote open web standards, its too allow video playback (like flash videos used now) with out allowing flash based web apps to be a back door to the Apple App store. Flash is different than HTML 5. HTML would be a great standard for web video but cannot replace all the features of flash. Most of the people who are bashing flash are simply hopping on Job's bandwagon. There might be better technologies available than flash but it isn't Apple's job to tell its users when one they should use. Flash is an application and a user doesn't have to install it.

Also the newly release HTC droid incredible runs flash, although it somewhat resource heavy, you can enable or disable it. In fact most Android phones can run the skyfire browser, which converts flash videos to HTML 5 content viewable on the phone. Apple wouldn't approve such a feature on the iPhone. There might be quarks but I'd much rather have the choice.

I thinks its weird that when Microsoft implemented signed drivers, lots of people were appalled by the idea that if you wanted to write a driver for windows you had to get it "signed" by Microsoft (supposedly for them to make sure it was secure) at the cost of $500 or so (which I think is complete BS). But this is essentially what the entire iPhone OS is based on, except almost worse. Apple controls what you can and cannot use on the device, ensuring that all content is routed through the app store with a 30% split of the profit + $100 registration fee going to Apple. Know that the only reason Apple doesn't support flash is for App Store profit.

Apple needs to create a transparent Approval process, while allowing thinks like flash to be installed at the user's digression. All these artificial restrictions to keep the app store profit margins high are really holding back iPhone growth, as android phones released today really out pace even the upcoming iPhone 4g. Just look at the droid incredible's sense UI, its clear one company monitoring all the software and hardware of one phone, cannot compete with the innovation of multiple hardware and software OEMs. Apple really needs to open up and just allow things like flash which is a big complaint about i-devices. Flash is not the problem here, its Apple's pointless restriction on what could develop to be a great proprietary and put together OS competitor to Android. If only Apple would give up on this outdated App Store model, and if Steve Jobs just accepts that its not up to him to decide what applications customers should support.

 

Looks like Jobs' plan is working and flash on the iPhone, iPod and iPad will be a moot point when it comes to video. Flash is loosing ground quickly.