Our lord Steve has posted an open letter (sort of press release thing) explaining all the many reasons why he hates Flash.
Its’ not 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.
Neither, frankly is any Apple software. I have no idea how Steve Jobs can call the kettle black when you can program both Apple OSes and Flash but neither are open. Does it even matter that both are closed systems?
While Jobs makes the point that he thinks it’s web standards that should be open, the justification for this is pretty flaky as there’s no real reason why Flash needs to be an open system.
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.
The lack of Flash support on Apple Mobile devices means that they cannot access the full web, PERIOD. I have not idea why Apple are denying the choice of visiting Flash websites to their users simply because they don’t like it themselves.
Reliability, Stability 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
Okay, I’ll give them this one. Adobe’s PDF file format is a huge carrier of viruses worldwide and we know that Flash has been traditionally sluggish on OS X.
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.
Flash is an old standard admittedly but it’s taken Microsoft until now to build hardware rendering into Internet Explorer, and nobody else, including Apple are doing it yet. It’s only a matter of time before Adobe build hardware rendering into Flash.
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?
Flash is an amazingly adaptive and flexible technology. The argument that it always uses pop ups etc doesn’t work for me. Flash developers would very easily adapt their interfaces for the iPhone and iPad touch interfaces.
Third-Party Development tools
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.
In short, Apple want complete control over their Platforms. Giving up some of that control to the likes of Adobe would annoy them. Boo hoo!
The argument between Apple and Adobe is bound to rumble on. My guess is that Apple will eventually cave, this will happen some time after the launch of Windows Phone 7 and after Android is doing so well that the iPhone is on the decline. This will take a couple of years, but I honestly believe Apple will eventually cave. The question is, are their customers prepared to wait that long?
Written by : Mike Halsey www.connectedinternet.co.uk
Source : Engadget
