Steve Jobs: Why Apple Banned Flash

Apple CEO Steve Jobs

/ CBS

In a rare open letter published Thursday, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs has detailed the technological reasons why his company refuses to let Adobe Systems' Flash Player onto the iPhone: he thinks it's a relic, not the future.

"Flash was created during the PC era--for PCs and mice," Jobs said in the letter. "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."

Jobs also knocked Flash for being proprietary, sapping battery power, not supporting multitouch interfaces, posing security risks, and being unstable. "Flash is the number one reason Macs crash," Jobs said.

Flash Player, a programming foundation that's ubiquitous on computers, is widely used for tasks such as online games, photo editors, and video streaming, and with the upcoming version 10.1, Adobe is trying anew to bring Flash to mobile devices. The technology is designed to work on BlackBerry, Windows, PalmOS, Symbian, and Android phones. Adobe has been increasingly vocal about its dissatisfaction with the Apple situation, especially after Apple barred a new tool from Adobe that to let Flash developers turn their programs into native iPhone applications.

A chief benefit of Flash is its cross-platform design that lets programmers reach a multitude of different devices easily, but missing some of the highest-profile mobile devices on the market--the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch--weakens the Flash sales pitch. Apple's move comes as a collection of Web technologies--HTML retooled for applications, Cascading Style Sheets for better formatting, faster JavaScript for running Web-based programs--are coalescing into a more viable replacement for today's Flash.

Jobs struck back against Adobe's protestations with a list of six reasons Apple is opposed to Flash. The most important, he said, is that Apple refuses to be beholden to another organization's programming foundation.

"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," Jobs said. "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."

Adobe is working to improve Flash, notably on the Mac where the company has acknowledged its performance lags. In addition, Flash Player 10.1 adds support for multitouch, and a new Flash Player 10.1 beta can take advantage of Mac OS X hardware acceleration for for playing videos encoded with the H.264 technology.

Jobs' open letters are unusual but not unknown. He also wrote about Apple and the environment and music.

This article originally appeared on CNET News.com.

[thesevenveils]

Here is the REAL REASON Apple has blocked Flash from its products:
First, Flash is used extensively in advertisements.
Second, and most importantly is Apple is launching its own exclusive mobile web advertisement scheme.
For more info:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/apples-iad-platforms-reported-entry-fee-1-million/

[Robin081564]

incog-nito,

Your use of the term "seamless" in that context, in this forum, seems completely inappropriate to me. Your "techie" friends, many of who have joined in this conversation, generally use that term when describing a successful integration of technologies ("seamless integration"). In the case of Apple, what you are getting is the exact opposite of things "working seamlessly". Instead, what you get are products that do not integrate well with other products at all.

If you want to make a valid argument in favor of Apple products, try bragging about the fact that you have far less technical challenges because of the abscence of attempting to provide seamless integration. The fact that Apple has chosen not to provide seamless integration with other products has helped to reduce their complexity which in turn has helped to manage perception in their favor. But, only among those that don't have a good understanding of the technologies at work.

Personally, I believe that what consumers want are truly seamless product integration. For example, wouldn't it be nice if any video game you bought and paid for could run on any gaming console (PlayStation, XBox, Wii...). To me, that would be seamless... The opposite would be a world where only Sony DVDs could be played in Sony DVD players, while Toshiba DVD players played only Toshiba DVDS. Or worse yet, imagine Sony introducing their new line of HDTVs and telling the consumer that it will only work with Cox Cable and Sony DVD/BlueRay players and audio components.

That is closer to the reality that Apple has brought to the PC and mobile computing worlds. When you think about it in those terms, it sounds absurd. But, that is exactly the sort of stuff that Apple has been feeding its customers for years and they have come to expect and accept it. And, as always, Jobs wants to take to low road (oversimplification) while telling his customers he is taking the high road.

This guy is a great salesman, I will give him that... he could sell Apple iCE CUBES to Eskimos. Worse yet, he could have them beLIEve that they are actually warming cubes that can only be created using a special iCE Cube Tray...

[thesevenveils]

Incog-nito,
Judging by your experience as you describe it with end users it appears there truly is a reason why an Apple mouse has only one button.

[p94932]

hahahah you tell em steve!

[eddom9492]

I don't know what the consensus is yet among Microsoft, Apple, and UNIX. All of a sudden 'multitasking' is of relevance enough to merit a press conference. We had cooperative multitasking put behind us with Windows '95, address space for memory increased with Protected Mode, and suddenly Berkeley Standard and X Window based Mac OS X running on an Intel multicore labeled an Apple. Flash fills a convenient niche and usually, it's efficiency that wins. You can do video and sound with Java if you wanted to and not have to download any software, and it has multithreading supported.

[quatermass2]

Jobs lives in a "reality distortion zone". Plus - he's a big hypocrite. All Apple products are closed, and anyone who falls for his schtick is part of a cult of personality.

[eddom9492]

For those people I recommend VMWare.

[leepoe1]

Why is it your business to hate Apple. They are the most admired company in America by several measures. They have the highest level of customer satisfaction. Software developers have never had a situation where a company does all of the retail work and only takes 30% of the profit. The traditional retail rate is 50%. If you don't like Apple don't buy its products. But who cares about your hatred.

[kevsan1]

I believe Flash is well over 80 percent and is used on many websites and to feed videos over the Internet. Quicktime is not all that Apple would like to think it is and has dropped in quality along with their other products. My younger brother and his wife are on their third iMac and that's only because the others fried... and the new one did, too, but it was fortunately repairable. All but one of my 10 PCs bought or home built over the years still work and work well.

[leepoe1]

Used Apple for 25 years. Still have all my machines running. I don't believe you.

[xmissile]

I'll take you at your word, but I have/had three iPods, an iPod Touch, four iPhones, two MacBook Pros, an iMac, and now two iPads. Never had one hardware glitch or an OS issue that req'd a hard reboot. I know a dozen Apple product owners and none of them have/had any issues. Conversely, I have owned several dozen PCs over the years and had hardware/software issues with every one of them.

[apuan777]

I hate to tell you this Steve Jobs. The porn industry is bigger than your industry and they have adopted flash as their standard on the internet. Like your past successes, you will lead the market in the beginning with innovation and then fall behind because of arrogance. One need only look as far as the 80's to see you've made this mistake before.

[snowball77]

When will flash be available for a mobile device?

[snowball77]

If you are an advertiser then you are missing millions of potential customers by using flash, demand html 5 and H264. Millions of customers with money to spend await. Flash is on the web as advertisments, I turn off flash when I browse the web. Flash breaks and it is up to Adobe to fix it. THere are 200,000 apps on the iphone/touch. I bet that really urks some windows fangirls. I think flash ads are boring crap. Gee Jobs is trying to make money, what he stole a page from M$?

[thesevenveils]

Steve Jobs is not a technical visionary, he is a circus barker equal to P.T. Barnum. In one sentence he states "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5...", then in his next breath he says ""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,".

Well guess what iJobs, Open standards are 3rd party applications. What are you really trying to say?

[snowball77]

Really, who owns html 5?

[thesevenveils]

Who owns HTML 5?
Apple is the main author (how about that!), Mozilla and Opera have a finger in it too.
It is has been in development since 2004 and might reach approval of W3C by the end of the year at the earliest. So early adapters will may have a product based on it several months after the development tools are released. Interesting to note W3C abandoned HTML in favor of XML, another open source standard.