Steve Jobs offers his "Thoughts on Flash"

Sad Professor

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

The important bit:

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.

mad muffin

I have to agree with everything he wrote there.

If you search for flash + desire in youtube you will see how bad it really is on a phone.

IamMetaldave

Nicely said Mr Jobs.

jimi_t2

I've only given it a cursory glance but there seems to be more than a touch of hypocrism from Jobs. It's all well and good to talk about open source but, in reality, he's one of the biggest proponents of closed platform development up to (and including, arguably) OS X and his legacy of proprietary hardware and standards, as well as a tendency to lock out third parties in the interests of 'stability', go from Apple's fledgling efforts right up to and including the iPhone/Touch/Pad App store.

On the open source thing, its important to remember that while Apple should be lauded for their initial research or development that spurred these standards on, they are still perceived in-house as 'their' open standards. I'm not making any judgement and I applaud their pioneering spirit, but I'm just making that clear.

' wrote:

Why is H.264 being included in QuickTime 7?

A few years ago, the International Organization for Standardization selected the QuickTime file format as the basis for MPEG-4. QuickTime in turn embraced open standards and now leads the market in MPEG-4, 3GPP and 3GPP2 content creation and playback. Apple continues to build on this commitment to open standards by incorporating H.264 — the latest MPEG-4 video codec — directly into QuickTime.

but to then attack Flash because it drains the iPhone battery quicker than H.264?

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.

Well duh. You spent a significant amount of money including a h.264 hardware decoder for that very purpose as you've an intricate knowledge of it, having developed its foundations and backed it all the way, and the battery in the iPhone et al is relatively poor when the processor is anyway taxed.

Apple aren't alone in this, with integrated devices and netbooks being the recent flavour of the month in the drive for profits. The onus on development for tech companies recently has been on developing low power processors and piggybacked GPU's - its cheaper and more immediately gratifying than trying to horseshoe more milliamp hours out of a 15 year old technology. This only works so often, you can't have a dedicated processor for everything and there's still plenty of applications outside of movie watching that are taxing on the processor.

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.

i.e. Apple and its effective business partners are putting their money behind a dual-developed integrated 'open' standard. Everyone else get in line.




and then there's the point they make about WebKit

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.

First of all, HTML5. Job admits openly that

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.

Somewhat of a vested interest in fairness. Again, Apple and Google both backing heavily and involving themselves in the future of another 'open' standard. Then onto the licence under which WebKit is published;

The WebCore component and JavaScriptCore component are published under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (The LGPL places copyleft restrictions on the program itself but does not apply these restrictions to other software that merely links with the program. There are, however, certain other restrictions on this software.) similar to Mozilla or OpenOffice.

The rest of it is published under the older BSD licence which has not been accepted as an open source license[3] and, although it is considered to be a free software license by the FSF, it does not consider it to be compatible with the GPL.[4]

Tad Orwellian isn't it? All open-source software licences are open, but some are more 'open' than others.

I would argue that there should be no shades of grey about ''open'' software, and that it is a truely black and white issue.



Then there's the 'touch' issue. Currently the only hardware affected? You guessed it, the iPhone/Pad/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?

A massively moot point. It would take very little effort to incorporate a null or 'virtual' cursor into the code which could trigger roll-over events. But you choose not to support or pay licencing for Flash, explaining that its for the consumer's benefit in the long-term. Someone could develop an alternative or hack but... wait... your hardware is proprietary and closed, as is your app store given that you maintain the final veto and act as censor.



He then goes on about stability

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.

Macs were always the preferred computer of the AV and design world because of their marketed image and their early work in the field of GUIs and other related fields from the LISA onwards. However, in recent times Apple have not only developed their own proprietary Audio and Visual software (Logic and Final Cut Pro respectively), with their own proprietary plug-in standard to muscle in on the (MAC ONLY) market, but the industry standard audio and video software (Pro-Tools HD and Avid respectively) are invariably broken for a number of days nearly every time Apple patches OS X. Another case of ''We'll support your stuff developed on 'our' open standard, but not as quickly as our own commercial products''.


I know I may sound preachy, but it boils down to these two points.

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.

Adobe is not a hardware manufacturer and, as such, does not have a vested interest in maintaining superior compatability for a true 'cross platform development tool' on any single platform. Apple is and does.

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.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the 200,000 apps on Apple's App Store run on nothing but Apple devices. Don't be getting haughty about cross platform development and open sources when you and Google are invariably establishing a new oligopical heirarchy in the computer world.


Fair enough, Microsoft is evil. But it's like Mr.Burns, it makes no bones about it. What Apple and Google are at is making us willingly embrace them and their products because of their hip, eco-friendly and stylish (but expensive) hardware with their open-source (but runs better on our gear!) standards. Y'know, because they're really cool guys. Not like those dicks in suits at Microsoft. And hey, they've Bono for their ads.

kjl

I paticularly like they way he says flash is a closed development standard, unlike the iPhone, good luck Steve, the iPhone is about as open as a pharmacy after 10pm. Not only do you have to buy the sdk, you also have to buy a mac and pay $99 for every app you release and wait though some bs approval system that discards good programs for no reason, how open is that?

and he could also open up the x.264 chip to adobe and let them utilise the processing acceleration.

Flash could easily work on the iPhone, similar to the way they have YouTube app launch so could they do it with flash.

And as for the lies that they don't have a stable version, em I've seen it working nicely on the google phone, and I;ve seen flv players in cydia, so clearly jobs in off his rocker.

I know all you fan boys are going to eat up every word he says, but grow your own opinion for a change.

I like my iphone, but only because of the jailbreak community, as far as macs go, they are more expensive, with the worst operating system I have ever seen. I was trying to use photoshop on one the other day, and i know I can put two fingers and click for right click, but would it really be such a big deal to give me a bloody right click button?

Jobs has turned into the person that he hated.

Sad Professor

He quite clearly states that the iPhone, etc is closed.

"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."

Why does everything have to open? The iPad, iPhone, etc are products designed and developed by Apple. They should be able to do whatever they want with them. If consumers don't like them they don't have to buy them. If developers don't like them they don't have to develop for them.

The web is different. No one owns it, nor should they (give Google a few years).

There's an important debate to be had here, but it's getting clouded by all this "open = good, closed = evil" bulls**t.

jimi_t2

Sad Professor wrote: »

Why does everything have to open? The iPad, iPhone, etc are products designed and developed by Apple. They should be able to do whatever they want with them. If consumers don't like them they don't have to buy them. If developers don't like them they don't have to develop for them.

Thats fine, just don't go attacking former business partners for being 'closed' developers. People in glass houses...

Oafley Jones

jimi_t2 wrote: »

Thats fine, just don't go attacking former business partners for being 'closed' developers. People in glass houses...

Agreed. Lot of ****e from Jobs there.

Flash on skyfire looks good.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/skyfire-2-0-beta-for-android-video-preview/

Sad Professor

Adobe's CEO responds:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/29/live-blogging-the-journals-interview-with-adobe-ceo/

Basically he says Flash is "open", crashes are Apple's fault and Flash doesn't drain battery power. Eh, yeah, right.

Jobs might be an arrogant prick, but at least he's not an idiot.

conolan

I don't believe that the technical reasons are the only reasons, or even the real reasons for banning flash.
Google have announced that the next version of Android will have full support for flash, so buggyness and battery issues will be firmly tested.

Sad Professor

conolan wrote: »

I don't believe that the technical reasons are the only reasons, or even the real reasons for banning flash.

Of course not.

It's about business, pure and simple. But it's good, sensible business that probably benefits the end-user. Apple are protecting their platform. Letting Flash into a position where they could get a stranglehold on the iPhone would be suicide. Even if it didn't, Flash is such a ****ty and antiquated piece of technology that it would have a devastating effect on iPhone performance, which Apple would get blamed for. It's utterly ridiculous that anyone expects Apple to allow it.

Apple spent years getting screwed by Adobe and Microsoft. The only reason the Mac survived is because Jobs made it independent of the pair of them - Safari, FCP, iWork, etc. Now the shoe is on the other foot and Apple are in control. Even if Adobe got their act together, why should Jobs put himself in that position again?

I'm tired of the "open" vs "closed" crap and all the moralising that goes with it. The real conflict here is between developer and end-user. Adobe is looking out for the developer because that's who they make their money from. Apple is looking out for the consumer because that's who they make money from. We all know what developers want. But just because cross-platform is good for the developer doesn't mean it's good for the end-user.

jimi_t2

Sad Professor wrote: »

Of course not.

It's about business, pure and simple. But it's good, sensible business that probably benefits the end-user. Apple are protecting their platform..

How could this possibly benefit the end user? Apple are prompting the way to a closed hardware platform with a CLOSED OPERATING SYSTEM.

I'll repeat that, 3rd party developers cannot release ANYTHING on Apple's latest iterations of the 'i' series without their express permission. Even then, the OS is alienated a layer away from the Root - so apps or extensions can't access other files.

So what? Well for one, I hope that for all your AV needs that you like Apple products, cause you sure ain't going to get the industry standard Adobe ones now. Apple has seen the profits such companies are making, having mainly focused on the hardware side of things up to this point, and are now saying ''Well, if you like our whole ethos then we'll allow you to buy into our ideal - as long as you only use OUR software, or software where we're getting a significant cut of licencing''.

Apple spent years getting screwed by Adobe and Microsoft. The only reason the Mac survived is because Jobs made it independent of the pair of them - Safari, FCP, iWork, etc

What? This is just erroneous. There were at least 3 browsers out for the Mac before IE came onto the picture, and all of them were far superior to the botched port of IE Microsoft did. As for FCP, iWork etc... they could just as easily shipped with OpenOffice or something.

But no, Open source isn't good enough for Apple. It has to be THEIR open source.

And hey, talk about creating a computer platform which is COMPLETELY in contradiction with every aspect the EFF and open source groups hold dear. Apple is censor and executioner now. Flash is FAR more open than Apples SDK on the iPhone/Pad/Touch ever was, not to mention that h.264 and HTML5 combined don't come close to offering whats lost with Flash.

Hopefully once themselves and Apple firm up on their soon to be Oligopoly, they won't take a disliking to... Oh, I dunno. Islamic countries? Or they won't favour the US government for example.

jimi_t2

Sad Professor wrote: »

Basically he says Flash is "open", crashes are Apple's fault and Flash doesn't drain battery power. Eh, yeah, right.

Jobs might be an arrogant prick, but at least he's not an idiot.

Well thats a fairly trite simplification of the matters at hand.

What the CEO of Adobe said, verbatim, was;

''Mr. Narayen calls accusations about Flash draining battery power "patently false." Speaking about Mr. Jobs's letter in general, he says that "for every one of these allegations made there is proprietary lock-in" that prevents Adobe from innovating.''

So yeah, the Hardware level stuff is abstracted so far out of the OS that Adobe can't even use powersaving algorhythms or whatever work-around they had to eke out more battery life.

Of COURSE Apple's in-house software solutions are going to be better. They're only developing for their own platform and they're the only developer on said platform allowed anything close to a full SDK or even a final say on whether the end-product is legally allowed to proceed to publishing. They've purposefully designed their technical progression to this point, to create a virtual monopoly.

Shame on Steve Jobs tbh. He's treating his client base in a fairly patronising way. Understandably there's issues with Adobe, but a lot of these issues were CREATED by Apple.

tricky D

The most important bit isn't explicitly mentioned. They want less competition for products in the App Store. It's all about the money.

mad muffin

You don't like it, don't buy Apple products, simples.:pac:



Oh and:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/4564503719/

Sad Professor

tricky D wrote:

The most important bit isn't explicitly mentioned. They want less competition for products in the App Store. It's all about the money.

And I suppose Adobe isn't motivated by a desire to preserve and expand on their existing dominance?

Look, of course it's about money. Jobs doesn't need to mention that, nor does Mr Adobe, because it's obvious. Money is the motivator of everything in a capitalist society. The question is who (other than Apple and Adobe) stand to benefit from the result of this conflict? It comes down to the developer and the end-user.

jimi_t2 wrote: »

How could this possibly benefit the end user? Apple are prompting the way to a closed hardware platform with a CLOSED OPERATING SYSTEM.

Apple are forcing developers to target the iPhone only. Whatever about the means, the end makes for better apps that take full advantage of the iPhone and its features. This might not be good for developers who are limited to Apple's tools and Apple's device, but it is good for iPhone users. Yes, it means less choice, but better choice.

I'll repeat that, 3rd party developers cannot release ANYTHING on Apple's latest iterations of the 'i' series without their express permission.

Which weeds out the crap. And users can download new apps confident that they aren't going to screw up their phone. But I admit, Apple need to be more open in this regard, maybe by having some-sort of less restrictive, more developer-friendly alternative to the Appstore.

At the end of the day though, since it's Apple's device they get blamed for the problems with it, even if those problems are caused by lazy, crap-ware producing third-parties.

I'm not saying Apple should rule the world, or that their way of doing things should be the only way. There's nothing I'd love more than to see Apple face some serious competition. But I don't think there's anything wrong with their way of doing things being one of the choices on offer.

What? This is just erroneous. There were at least 3 browsers out for the Mac before IE came onto the picture, and all of them were far superior to the botched port of IE Microsoft did. As for FCP, iWork etc... they could just as easily shipped with OpenOffice or something.

In the pre-OS X days, yes. But where were these other browsers in 2001? Netscape was pretty much dead at that point. I was stuck using Microsoft's piece of **** browser for the better part of a year before OmniWeb (which wasn't free) was semi-usable. There was Opera and iCab as well, but they were a joke and couldn't be used as a primary web browser, and Mozilla was too unstable. Apple was dependent on IE for a compatible web experience. OS X did not have a decent browser until Safari (which I'm not a big fan of) arrived.

When did OpenOffice become OS X-native? It certainly wasn't in 2002 - was it even available at all then? It was hardly a viable alternative to MS Office at that stage. Apple are still dependent on MS for Office, but not as vulnerably so as they once were. iWork isn't great, but it's a fallback if MS ever pulled Mac support.

Leiva

Seems Microsoft are not exactly helping Adobe regain any ground ...

According to Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft general manager for Internet Explorer:

Quote
The future of the web is HTML5. Microsoft is deeply engaged in the HTML5 process with the W3C. HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design. The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.

Sad Professor

Good article here which briefly explains the reason for Apple's current mindset:

http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr10/PlatformControl.html

partyatmygaff

mad muffin wrote: »

I have to agree with everything he wrote there.

If you search for flash + desire in youtube you will see how bad it really is on a phone.

Flash Lite is all that's out at the moment on any phone (Except the N900 with it's software accelerated Flash 9.4 which performs very well). How can you judge something that's still unreleased?


HTML5 Is not ready yet. It's powerful and it's very functional but it just isn't used enough instead of flash. Take youtube for example, flash based with a very buggy HTML5 version. Nobody wants to buy an iPhone/iPad for €500+ only to find 90% of all online videos don't work.

Flash 10.1 on the Nexus One/HTC Desire looks very promising now. In February a 17 minute flash video was tested on the Nexus one totalling 199MB data usage only used 6% of the battery. That's prerelease so it can only get better. No stuttering or any other performance issues.

http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2010/02/24/battery-performance-with-flash-player-10-1-on-nexus-one/


Anyway, I have a HTC Desire so I just want to say thanks to Steve Jobs for freeing up Adobe's time to work on Flash for Android. Much appreciated, Steve

cornbb

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Nobody wants to buy an iPhone/iPad for €500+ only to find 90% of all online videos don't work.

Well, that's not going to happen. Like Steve says:

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

I agree that in theory it would be nice to have flash, but I can honestly say that I've never missed it.

As for HTML5 not being all that perfect, give it some time. I've seen it do some pretty cool things: http://www.craftymind.com/factory/html5video/CanvasVideo.html

partyatmygaff

cornbb wrote: »

Well, that's not going to happen. Like Steve says:



I agree that in theory it would be nice to have flash, but I can honestly say that I've never missed it.

As for HTML5 not being all that perfect, give it some time. I've seen it do some pretty cool things: http://www.craftymind.com/factory/html5video/CanvasVideo.html

Don't get me wrong, HTML 5 is great. In fact, if flash were to disappear tomorrow in favour of HTML 5 I wouldn't bat an eyelid but fact is most websites have not yet adopted Flash (And those that do have not implemented it fully). You're buying an iPhone/iPad today and today the majority of interactive web content on the internet is presented via flash. Some websites use AJAX, some use silverlight, some may use HTML5 but the majority make use of Flash. Steve Jobs thinks his products can dictate internet standards and to an extent they can, many developers are trying to implement HTML5 alongside flash now so iPad/iPhone users won't get left out but that would be mainly mainstream websites like youtube.

HTML 5 is pretty amazing though. Some Google Developers managed to get Quake 3 Arena running in a web browser through HTML 5 and it worked perfectly well.

cornbb

I've seen some cool things done with flash too, but I think you're overstating it's ubiquity a little bit. I'm thinking of all the websites I regularly visit, and not one of them uses flash for anything besides adverts. Except for YouTube and google maps maybe, but they have dedicated apps anyway.

Apple has a habit of dropping technologies that it has deemed to be 'past it'. For example I remember the outcry over the lack of a floppy drive on the iMac. Some may think that dumping flash is premature, maybe it is, but it is also likely to nudge html5 along.

jimi_t2

Sad Professor wrote: »

Good article here which briefly explains the reason for Apple's current mindset:
gives one mans opinion as to why Apple are justified in trying to legitimise attacking Adobe

http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr10/PlatformControl.html

FYP

partyatmygaff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y7XJI4NN7k

A prerelease version of Android 2.2 FroYo with Flash 10.1 support running on the Nexus One.

Flash poor performance, what?

Fingleberries

Sad Professor wrote:

I'll repeat that, 3rd party developers cannot release ANYTHING on Apple's latest iterations of the 'i' series without their express permission.

Which weeds out the crap. And users can download new apps confident that they aren't going to screw up their phone

For a very loose definition of crap ...
It weeds out applications that may crash, or have problems like that, but there are mountains of crappy apps that still make it through the filters. How many Flashlight Apps could one possibly need? I have even seen some as paid flashlight apps, although more fool to anyone who buys one of them.