Steve Jobs - Thoughts on Flash

Basq

Very very interesting write-up!

For those who are blocked at work / behind a firewall:

Thoughts on Flash

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

AlmightyCushion

There is a lot of twaddle in there. If apple truely believed in open standards then why the hell are they pushing the h.264 codec? That's closed source too and there were some open source options (ogg vorbis and I think another one). Secondly just because something is closed source it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. There are plenty of great applications out there that are closed source.

HTML5 is by no means perfect. I don't think it's even a standard yet but that's beside the point. They haven't settled on a codec yet so one site may use a certain codec that your browser doesn't support and then you're buggered. Google easily one of the biggest companies pushing HTML5 can't even get it working right. The youtube HTML5 beta just doesn't work (I was even using chrome). The timeline slider didn't work very well. Volume wouldn't work 90% of the time either. I think there were other issues as well but I can't remember them. I wasn't the only people having these problems and I remember seeing people complain that the HTML5 version was more cpu intensive.

The touch thing is a load of bollocks. It works fine on my n900 and I've tried some flash sites using a couple of touchscreen pcs at work with no issue.

While he is right that native code is more efficient than using something like adobe's cross compiler it still doesn't ensure quality of any sort. If someone is a crap developer, it doesn't matter if they're using actionscript or objective c. I'm sure there are some great actionscript developers out there whose apps would perform great if they were ported to the iPhone. Plus isn't this the reason for the approval process. If someone makes a crappy, buggy app then apple reject it. Cross-compiling won't change this.

I do agree with him on security and performance. Adobe need to sort that shít out.

cornbb

I do think there are plenty of valid arguments for keeping Flash off the iPhone/iPad, even beyond the undoubtedly selfish reasons that motivate Apple. I think the average end-user's experience is not suffering due to lack of Flash. The majority of my encounters with it seem to consist of infuriating adverts which hog my screen real-estate and CPU cycles. I certainly don't miss it on the iPhone.

While he is right that native code is more efficient than using something like adobe's cross compiler it still doesn't ensure quality of any sort.

It doesn't ensure it, but it makes it far more likely. If you build an app written in an abstraction of C which has essentially been designed specifically for Apple platforms, using tools and SDKs written by Apple specifically for the platform, using APIs and UI elements designed to integrate neatly with the OS and hardware, tested and measured using metrics specified for the platform, you are virtually guaranteed to come out with a better product than you would have if you had used something like Java or Flash. Sure, your Flash app can be submitted to a bunch of other platforms without modification, but that just makes you a lazy developer.

Steve has laid down a bet that developers are not going to abandon the iPhone platform just because they can't use cross-platform tools. I believe he will be right. I know from experience that if someone wants to create a mobile app, they want the iPhone version done first; Android and everything else is a second priority. They also want the app to use things like accelerometers, push notifications, location services etc. In a word where Flash was available on the iPhone, I can't see Adobe supporting these features in a hurry, not to mention supporting them well.

In short, I'm wondering what developer in their right mind would want to implement a mobile app in Flash in the first place.

conor.hogan.2

Okay the main ''competitor'' to h.264, ogg theora, is not as free as people think.
The other one which I also forget the name has no backing whatsoever but in an ideal world yes that would get webkit and gecko backing and hell even IE.

It is not bad because it is closed source - it is just plain bad on every level.

Html5 beta works in chrome and safari on the mac perfectly - no full screen or hd options yet but considering it is not finalized as a standard yet or even nearly there I think it has time to improve.

More cpu intensive I dunno - deffo not on the mac - flash plugin runs at an average of 25% which is its lowest which is ridiculous when compared to most full apps usage.

As stated - we will see how flash works when it is released for Android and other phones. It has been pushed back for so long now.

Apple are known for controlling start to finish their products - the buck stops with them most of the time.

With the exception of the chips and some internals they are to blame - you go to them. (or O2 or At&t etc) This brings a much better user experience.

Why would Apple let people develop in anything that could do anything that Apple does not want or control - that code could bring the whole phone down... Who would people blame, Apple not the developer nor the platform it was developed on.

It tooks adobe ten years to move to cocoa - how long would it take them to make development on the iphone as good as done in obj-c in xcode or even close????

Sad Professor

His 6th reason is the key one.

Jobs posted a similar "thoughts on music" a few years ago which pretty much sounded the death rattle for DRM on music. Jobs is a lot of things, but he's no fool. He knows he can win this. And based on Adobe's response, I'm guessing they aren't going to get their act together. Even Microsoft have followed suit. It's over for Flash. Adobe just don't know it yet.

conor.hogan.2

http://www.macstories.net/news/steve-replies-to-email-all-video-codecs-are-covered-by-patents/

This is true - htc and other are being hounded by Microsoft and possibly others despite using linux-y guts for android which is open source


So what will replace flash for video without google-apple and firefox getting raped by the owners of h.264 which will sue or getting crazy high rates when the time runs out

(they are not looking for royalties till 2013-5 or something like that)

projectmayhem

Sad Professor wrote: »

based on Adobe's response, I'm guessing they aren't going to get their act together. Even Microsoft have followed suit. It's over for Flash. Adobe just don't know it yet.

I'm not so quick to jump on that bandwagon. Flash might still have a future if Adobe bother to develop it beyond the mess that it is now. It's still a useful product, even with HTML5, but Adobe need to push forward with it.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

So what will replace flash for video without google-apple and firefox getting raped by the owners of h.264 which will sue or getting crazy high rates when the time runs out

(they are not looking for royalties till 2013-5 or something like that)

They're saying they'll be after royalties in the future but two things could happen: 1) a new format could take form. There's no reason to believe Apple, Google or someone else could make an open platform in that time. 2) Apple & co. invest in h.264 to ensure it becomes open and proprietary to mobile platforms, free.

cornbb

Microsoft have weighed in, in general agreement with Apple.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63T47V20100430

Adobe must be soiling themselves.

conor.hogan.2

Of course Microsoft will weigh in - Google are thinking the same but most definitely won't say anything because thats not how they do it.

Adobe will or has overtaken Microsoft as most targeted for viruses (spyware etc) because their Acrobat stuff is muck too.

They have been around way too long to think that they will get their act together - they won't.


As for the royalties on h.264 or ogg theora - it is only a matter of time and if people get used to using them it will be difficult to stop.
That is why they are loyalty free now and for enough time for them to catch on and then bam - royalties.

If Google and Apple etc wanted to develop that codec they could while they are working on html5 but they dont seem to be.
It would be in their interest and if it is genuinely open and free it will be adopted in Gecko browsers and Microsoft will adopt it too as they eventually did with some support for html5.

"All video codecs are covered by patents," read the reply. "A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other 'open source' codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source."

They are quotes from jobs in one of his infamous emails - the most notable of these would be linux distros and even htc having to pay Microsoft for intellectual property etc..

Red Alert

Flash basically has two uses for most people:

Ads - no thanks, good riddance.

Playing videos - as a nice cross-platform way to make sites like YouTube work. But HTML5 is going to sort this by defining the video tag.

H264 is also a much more advanced codec that already has support for hardware acceleration in many devices. Ogg Theora's only advantage is that it's free - it's technically inferior and requires higher bitrates.

Flash is also a big security risk, and performance hog. I can personally confirm that almost all IE and Safari (Windows and Mac) crashes I've had have been down to Flash.

x in the city

I am anti mAc as much as I am anti SkY.

They are just leeching everyone with their Mac-malware.

buy mac stuff to run other mac stuff, cant even run normal mp3s onto music players, oh no you need i tunes.

Apple just dont want to pay loyalyies to adobe for the rights to use flash.

fek mac.

give me an N series any day

conor.hogan.2

I have seen people confuse MAC with Mac - but never seen or heard someone call it mAc :rolleyes:

malware?

Eh you can manage an ipod without itunes - plus there are plenty of alternatives to ipods.

I am pretty sure Apple would not have to pay Adobe for this anyway.


You are well able to buy an N series or any android or win mobile etc etc etc phones if you want - thats the whole point.

There is no monopoly, no bullying - Apple has always been there way or feck off.

x in the city

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

I have seen people confuse MAC with Mac - but never seen or heard someone call it mAc :rolleyes:

malware?

Eh you can manage an ipod without itunes - plus there are plenty of alternatives to ipods.

I am pretty sure Apple would not have to pay Adobe for this anyway.


You are well able to buy an N series or any android or win mobile etc etc etc phones if you want - thats the whole point.

There is no monopoly, no bullying - Apple has always been there way or feck off.

so your sayin apple couldnt give a flying fluck if no one used i tunes....

or if no one payd for all the add ons needed for iphones and the like

and im sure apple would have to pay adobe, they are not a charity

Basq

You came in here just to rant about being "anti-Mac" and spewing utter bulls*it like "Mac-malware" - that's fecking rich!

Be gone!

Talisman

Apple to face antitrust inquiry - New York Post

An antitrust app
Apple may be in the eye of regulatory storm

By JOSH KOSMAN

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_buvCWcJdjFoLD5vBSkguGO#ixzz0mwqoU8VN

After years of being the little guy who used Washington to fend off Goliaths like Microsoft, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is about to learn what life is like when the shoe's on the other foot.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple's new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple's programming tools.

Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.

An inquiry doesn't necessarily mean action will be taken against Apple, which argues the rule is in place to ensure the quality of the apps it sells to customers. Typically, regulators initiate inquiries to determine whether a full-fledged investigation ought to be launched. If the inquiry escalates to an investigation, the agency handling the matter would issue Apple a subpoena seeking information about the policy.

Officials at both the Justice Department and FTC declined comment. Apple did not return calls seeking comment.

The threat of Apple being the subject of an investigation would be a remarkable turnabout for a company that has long seen itself as being outside the establishment, and one that has egged on antitrust officials to blunt the momentum of larger rivals.

However, thanks to the popularity of the iPod and iPhone, Apple is having a tough time continuing to play the role of David fighting against Goliath. Indeed, its market cap of $237.6 billion exceeds that of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, whose market cap is $201.7 billion.

Apple put its might on full display last week when Jobs wrote a scathing explanation for why Adobe's Flash programming language was unfit to be used on Apple products. The day his missive was released, Adobe shares fell 2 percent.

In forcing computer programmers to choose developing an Apple-exclusive app over one that can be used on Apple and rival devices simultaneously, critics say Apple is hampering competition since the expense involved in creating an app will lead developers with limited budgets to focus on one format, not two. Generally, app developers are paid from a cut of the revenue generated when consumers buy the app.

Shaun Meredith, a former Apple employee who runs software development company InfoBridge, said that as a result of Apple's rule change, some of his customers are choosing to finance apps that are compatible with all of Apple's competitors instead of those that work only with the iPhone or iPad.

Indeed, though Apple has the most applications, it is a distant second in terms of operating system market share. According to comScore, RIM, which makes the BlackBerry, has a 42 percent share, while Apple's take is 25 percent. Microsoft has 15 percent and Google's Android software has 9 percent.

conor.hogan.2

That should not happen and probably won't happen.

They do not have a monopoly or even a near one in smartphones.

cornbb

Agreed. I can't think of any market that Apple operates in where there is not very healthy competition.

p

I think the main reasons behind this is business decisions. Quite simply Apple wants to control what's put on their platform. Just like the Xbox and the Playstation, 'exclsuive titles' drives sales. If cross-platform tools like Flash/Unity etc... allow people to create cross-platform apps, it reduces the unique offering of the iPhone. It's always the same way; market leaders hate cross platform tools, smaller contenders embrace them.

All the rest, the technical reasons, (many of them incorrect) are just trying to tack on issues to pretend to provide a more general argument.


One point in particular is very wrong. Flash was originally designed for tablet computing, before it even became a web platform about 15 years ago. Also, many thousands of touchscreen kiosks in airports and museums are authored in Flash. It's a much better touchscreen platform than HTML is, canvas or no.

Talisman

p wrote: »

One point in particular is very wrong. Flash was originally designed for tablet computing, before it even became a web platform about 15 years ago. Also, many thousands of touchscreen kiosks in airports and museums are authored in Flash. It's a much better touchscreen platform than HTML is, canvas or no.

I remember creating such applications along time ago while in college. I got a summer job 'coding' touch screen kiosk software for tourist offices and hotels - Macromedia Director 4 was the product used. It was simple scripting but it was a real money spinner for the people I did the work for.