Searching and replacing Job's Flash statement

Over at Hoopyrides, Mister Jalopy took Steve Jobs' anti-Flash statement and replaced "Adobe" with "Apple" and "Flash" with "closed." The results are funny.

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

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Technology

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

echolocate chocolate

He carefully side-steps the most absurd problem with the clampdown on Flash, which is that Adobe provided a way to convert Flash into a native iPhone application–or at least wrap it in a native interpreter–and THAT isn’t allowed either.

I have nothing against replacing Flash with open standards, but dictating what development tools one can use to write iPhone apps is clearly aimed at closing the platform, not promoting some bullshit utopian world of open standards.
- peterbruells
  
  No, he doesn’t. He addressed it quite clearly.
- TheCrawNotTheCraw
  
  Exactly.
- mdh
  
  why pick on Apple for Adobe’s decision not to develop within Apple’s guidelines? I think it’s funnier to consider that just maybe Adobe is being run through their own wringer, or is flash somehow an open platform now?
  - echolocate chocolate
    
    Because Apple invented their guidelines specifically to exclude Adobe. Adobe announced they were working on a way to export Flash to a native iPhone application, which was specifically to obey Apple’s rules. Apple changed the rules underneath them and in the process screwed over a lot of Flash developers who otherwise would have a relatively quick way of getting applications on iPhone.
    
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see Flash going away on the web (not that it is, but I like the idea). What’s bullshit is Apple requiring developers to switch from one closed-but-cross-platform development tool to an even-more-closed environment, aka the Apple toolchain, and claiming that it’s somehow more “open”.
    
    Let me develop iPhone apps under Windows or Linux and then maybe we can talk about “open”.
    - mdh
      
      and claiming that it’s somehow more “open”.
      
      You made that part up. Apple makes no such claim about its product.
      
      and in the bigger picture I think you may be confusing content with platform. Flash is interweb content, not a device which consumes said content.
      - echolocate chocolate
        
        mdh–I think you might be reading more vitriol into my comments than I intended, and I’m sorry–this issue has me a little rankled, speaking as a developer and user of technology who would prefer platforms to be more open. Sure, it’s not either-or, but if it’s suddenly too expensive (or time-consuming) for me to develop for two platforms for basically no reason, then it effectively IS either-or.
        
        peter–You’re right, and I guess I skimmed over that point because I was annoyed. I think his answer is crap–just because 3rd parties might not provide features doesn’t mean they CAN’T–but it is right there.
        
        For the record, you’re all absolutely correct: Apple does not state that its technology is open.
        
        I think, reading it again, what bothers me is that it starts out implying a lot of good things about open standards, and how Flash, as a platform and development environment, runs counter to these things–I agree wholeheartedly!–but then turns around and tries to justify its own proprietary technology as being somehow superior and that’s OK.
        
        Which of course it is, from a business perspective. I suppose if I was in charge of a highly influential hardware and software platform I would probably feel the same way. Only virgin software untainted by others for me, please.
        
        And yes, of course I can develop two versions of my program using different programming languages and whatnot, that’s always true.
        
        It’s just… a year or so ago, right, I could have developed an iPhone app using whatever technology I liked, so long as it I got through the review process. Lots of apps went through, some good, some crappy, but whatever. Now there’s this extra restriction, which is clearly intended as an anti-competitive measure, and Steve’s writing staff is putting out this lovely essay about open standards being so great, but we also have to lock you into our platform for your own good… and it all feels a bit insulting, you know?
        
        At the end of the day I can write a cross-platform application in C++ and OpenGL that’s just as crappy and slow–and cross-platform–as a Flash app would be, so it all feels a bit silly telling me what tools I can and can’t use for my fart-sound-making program.
        
        Anyway… sorry, I think I’m outstaying my welcome, tl;dr and all that. I am going to read this comment tomorrow morning and cringe, so, sorry to myself as well. That’ll teach me to take things too seriously.
      - robulus
        
        Now there’s this extra restriction, which is clearly intended as an anti-competitive measure, and Steve’s writing staff is putting out this lovely essay about open standards being so great, but we also have to lock you into our platform for your own good… and it all feels a bit insulting, you know?
        
        Yep.
        
        I think I’m outstaying my welcome
        
        Nope.
Anonymous

Another fun search and replace is this story from thedailywtf about bess, the net filter a lotta school systems use. Just replace “Bess” and “Bessy” with “Apple”: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bessy-Keeps-You-Safe.aspx Example:

“For some reason, Violet K. couldn’t show her sex video to the class.

Though the YouTube-posted “Mammalian Reproduction Systems” had loaded for last period’s grade 10 biology class, all that came up now was an all-too-familiar screen:

Content Blocked

Enough was enough! Something had to be done about Apple.”
scaught

No one has argued that the platform isn’t “closed”. You want in (to the appstore, apple’s mobile environment, etc)? Play by their rules. I believe in the end it will make for a better user experience.

Flash is garbage. I won’t miss it when it’s gone.
- Anonymous
  
  Awesome, we won’t miss you either. Flash is here to stay, better get used to it.
dolo54

This is a good counterpoint to Jobs ridiculous letter: http://www.blixtsystems.com/2010/04/jobs-lies-in-thoughts-on-flash/

The rollover thing killed me because I’ve made several touchscreen kiosk interfaces in flash, whereas a good number of sites done in html rely on menu mouseovers to show drop down menus. What’s really strange is he didn’t even mention the 2 really good reasons not to do a site fully in flash – search engine indexing and linking.

Also it bears repeating html5 is not a standard yet, html5 is not a standard yet… IE doesn’t support it because it’s not a standard yet. If you do a site in html5 it may or may not fully work when the standard is finalized and until then a good portion of the internet (using IE) will not be able to see it anyhow.
Sleepybat

I have a few points I just have to make here.

Every apple product is a closed system. They only promote open standards in areas where they don’t have a financial (copyrighted) interest, or are trying to enter a market they don’t currently control (Hello Safari). Even then if they can get away with not using an open standard they will. A good example is the iBook store which could have used open standards but didn’t.

More and more apps are being designed to replace internet content, moving them into a closed system controlled by Apple. Apple only champions open standards as a way to influence internet development for their own benefit.

There is not a good replacement for Flash at this time. HTML5 is NOT a standard, it is not finished and there are no Flash equivalent development tools for it (to my knowledge). I’m not talking video here which is only a part of what Flash is used for. Tech demos for HTML5 are all well and good but it simply is not ready yet and will not be ready for at least a year if not much longer.

When HTML5 is finally ready, the Flash software will support exporting as HTML5 as can be seen in tech demos on youtube.
- peterbruells
  
  What open standard should they have used? They are using epub. What they are not using is epub with Adobe DRM, they are using FairPlay.
  
  Probably the same issue as with Music – it’s the right holders that do not DRM free versions of â€žtheirâ€œ works.
  - Sleepybat
    
    Thanks for the correction Peterbruells, I should have research a little before making that point. I was confusing open standards with DRM.
    
    Am I correct in assuming that these files only work on Apple hardware? Seems odd they would pick a DRM system that only runs on Apple products if they are so into open standards. But hey, maybe I’m just being cynical here.
    - peterbruells
      
      Fairplay runs on Windows, too. Not Linux, â€žof courseâ€œ. (And as someone who has cross-plattfom sttuff including Linux, I absolutely understand why.)
      
      As far as I know there’s no book reader for Apple’s FairPlay Book save on the iPad and – forthcoming – on iPhone OS in genera, though.
tyger11

It will, indeed, make for a better user experience, because it will encourage people to move to the Android platform, which is maturing at a ridiculous pace, and will have no trouble running Flash.

Restricting people’s freedom does not equal ‘making things better’. Wow, locking people in jail makes that jail REALLY nice! No. Just, no.
- robulus
  
  “the Android platform, which is maturing at a ridiculous pace, and will have no trouble running Flash”
  
  It is having no trouble running Flash. Right now. I’ve got an android phone, and it runs Flash 10, just fine.
didymos

@dolo54:

Er… yes, you absolutely can make touchscreen interfaces in Flash. I don’t think that Steve — or anybody else — stated otherwise. However, as Steve stated (quite clearly in fact, so I don’t understand you you managed to miss this), the Flash-based navigation that one finds on most modern websites is designed for use with a mouse, thus the use of rollovers, etc. Certainly, one could re-write all of those menus to work with a touchscreen interface, but there is the rub: you cannot use most of those Flash-based interfaces as-is, they have to be rewritten. And if you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, why bother sticking with Flash?
- grimc
  
  So instead of rewriting a few lines of code to convert from mouse to touch, I should rewrite the entire thing in another language? What a marvelous idea!
  - Anonymous
    
    If all you want to do is “rewrite a few lines of code to convert from mouse to touch,” then Jobs isn’t interested in having your app on the iphone. Which seems just fine, as good touch-based programs work differently from mouse/keyboard-base ones. If and when Adobe actually gets a satisfactory version running on a touch-based mobile device, I think users will find that many Flash apps just don’t work well that way without a major rewrite. Video may work okay, but most games will stink (@dolo54′s link).
    - Anonymous
      
      Which seems just fine, as good touch-based programs work differently from mouse/keyboard-base ones.
      
      And that doesn’t even depend on what the program does!
- MatthewFabb
  
  As Mike Chambers from Adobe points out, the Flash Player does detect mouse-overs in touch interfaces:
  http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/02/22/flash-player-content-mouse-events-and-touch-input/
  
  Not that it provides the best UI, but most content would still be okay. Note that a lot of HTML websites use mouse-overs in JavaScript especially for navigation and things have worked out so far.
  
  Also if you do want to make a Flash site/game/app to work better for touch interfaces, it takes only minutes to add listener to touch event. It wouldn’t have to be completely rewritten. Even then, since only a minority of users have browsers that support HTML5 (which as someone else has pointed out is not a standard yet, not even a specification, but a work in progress that has yet to go beyond First Public Working Draft) and with few tools that support HTML5, there’s still a lot of games or applications that make sense using Flash.
kaffeen

There are so many different things that are absurd, ridiculous, or just pure hypocrisy in his “open letter”. One thing that is absolutely ridiculous is he mentions that battery life is extended by hardware video decoding. Something which he just recently opened up in the past month (hardware video decoding capability). H264 is decoded on hardware, an edge that he does not mention and for which he compares to Flash usage (which can only use software decoding because that is all Apple has allowed until the past month). Another lie is that H264 is open. Is it not. Apple happens to be on the board for that, as is Microsoft. Both companies are going to profit from this codec because it is *not* open and because it is proprietary and licenses owned. Every argument he makes can be said of the same for Apple. Another thing is the Flash specs are actually open too. Apple does and says everything while looking at their own wallet, something they are entitled, but don’t be fooled and let them hoodwink you. This type of doublespeak and lies are something we expect from Microsoft, now Apple is doing the same thing.
- Anonymous
  
  You might want to read it again, Jobs never mentions h.264 as being open. He specifies HTML5, CSS and JavaScript as open though, and he would be correct.
  - kaffeen
    
    Oh, excuse me, he implied it perhaps? He mentions it in the same article he talks about open standards, the implication is there. He does this often (implications, misdirection, hoodwinking). I will give you credit though, he does not specifically say it in one sentence. Having said that, he has authorized many others to say it.
    
    His spokesperson (Trudy Miller) said the following “HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 that are open and standard”
    
    Wrong. H.264 is not open(now Ogg Theora, that would be truly open, I wonder why if Apple cares so much and is so altruistic they don’t adopt that one). HTML5 is not a standard either, it is a specification…a specification that is not yet fully formed, is under development, and is not available/functional on all browsers. Javascript has a worse bug/virus/hacker than Flash, I don’t think I would highlight that to be honest.
    
    Or perhaps you would like to find out more about H264 at the Apple website where they say the following…
    
    “Apple continues to build on this commitment to open standards by incorporating H.264″
    
    You can defend Apple all you want, but they clearly cannot defend themselves and they are laying the bullshit pretty thick. They are all Appholes if you ask me.
yri

Pot, meet kettle. But if you ask me, Apple has been much more annoying about it.

I’m holding out for HP to go wild with WebOS. Long live my legacy Palm apps!
- kaffeen
  
  WebOS might be a very good alternative on tablet devices. Light, snappy, and easy to develop applications. It will be very interesting to see this. More alternatives are good. I suspect Android is the superior alternative to Apple. With Sony now getting on the Android bandwagon for television (some very exciting announcements for this coming soon), the functionality, capability, and “open garden” will be pushed to extremes by many different manufacturers. More devices, more applications, and more functionality. Jobs has walled himself in and is going to see history repeat itself. The question only remains who is the next Microsoft. I suspect that it will be Google, but HP is a strong contender as well. They are becoming the “Walmart” of technology these days. They have a very wide base to work. If they were to jump on Android, I don’t even think it would be a fight. WebOS might be a real winner though, time will tell.
z7q2

I support BoingBoing to the extent that I put up with that 10-15 second freeze every time the multiple flash/shockwave ads duke it out on my CPU when I load a page. Would BoingBoing be a better experience if I used a flash blocker? Possibly. I haven’t up until now but this seems to get worse with time, so it might drive me to banishing flash ads from my computer. It’s my decision and I’ll make it when I’m ready. But then, I’m connecting a general-purpose computer of my own construction to a general-purpose web that gives me lots of options for content, so I can make my own experience.

This situation is not necessarily comparable to the experience Apple’s reality distortion field wants to impart on you. Their gig, their platform, their rules, consume content their way or do something else. That’s also your decision, btw, you don’t have to buy into it, and I certainly don’t (and I’m one of those people who went $2500 into debt for a Mac Classic 20 years ago).

I’m a web app developer, and life is getting better for me slowly but surely as the browser universe as a whole supports enough of the javascript/css/DOM feature subset these days that I only have to write code once and it works on anything you can run a browser on. It is an excellent way to develop for multiple platforms.
- arikol
  
  flash blockers make the web usable. Sad to say.
  That was the case on my windows machine which I recently upgraded to Ubuntu, and doubly the case on both my Ubuntu machine and my old Mac.
  I try to allow ads on the sites I love (like boingboing) but don’t hesitate to block anything which makes my CPU spike. This has made a big difference in the responsiveness of the web, as well as the battery life when I’m unwired.
  
  I wonder, out of curiosity, how much energy do you think is wasted worldwide through obnoxious flash crap on webpages? Have the environmentalists checked it out? Seeing my laptop go from 4% CPU usage up to 35-60% CPU usage due to one badly crafted page is suggestive..
  - Sleepybat
    
    As a web designer I cringed at the horrible design choices made by most banner creators. I’ll often see my CPU hitting 60% plus, that’s just crap design and implementation. It’s not completely flash’s fault, designers and coders have to take responsibility for the way they build flash banners. I for one always check CPU usage if I’m producing anything in flash.
    
    Unfortunately HTML5 will not fix this problem as its animation of vectors and images is just as bad if not much worse on power usage than Flash. I also wonder how easy it will be to create advert blockers for HTML5. HTML5 may not be quite the internet paradise many people expect it to be.
    - robulus
      
      Agree that problems being attributed to flash above are generally going to be problems on any rich media platform that becomes widely used, and that flash is quite likely to become the premier development tool for html5 once it becomes a standard.
echolocate chocolate

I should add that the overarching goal of the rule change is to make cross-platform development more expensive. Apple does not want skilled developers writing high-quality iPhone applications and porting them easily to Android or Windows phones. They’re banking on iPhone being the popular choice right now–developers have to choose between Apple’s closed platform but larger audience, or more open platforms with smaller audiences.
- mdh
  
  They’re banking on iPhone being the popular choice right now–developers have to choose between Apple’s closed platform but larger audience, or more open platforms with smaller audiences.
  
  it’s just not an either/or situation. “Both” is an option here. Yes, it’s more difficult, but plenty of folks made good money at it back when apple was the small player.
  
  I really don’t mean to pick on you but that axe you’re grinding is kinda rusty, and your false dichotomies are annoying to those who debate in good faith.
Elijah Meeks

I’m getting so sick of HTML5. I know it will buy my groceries and pick up my children and, yes, HTML5 will actually cause Monsanto Terminator crops to produce viable seeds, but can we please stop talking about it until it’s actually finished and supported?

I do feel a bit silly, though, given that HTML5 actually wrote this response for me.
- holtt
  
  Elijah, that’s kind of how I’ve always felt about Flash.
  - Elijah Meeks
    
    Really? Flash wrote your response for you? Then why doesn’t it do anything on rollover?
    - holtt
      
      I guess I don’t understand your reply. My post referred to the “I don’t understand the hype” part. Flash has been hyped for a long time but I’ve never seen it as a miracle worker.
      
      I’m just a jquery kinda guy I guess.
- robulus
  
  Oh, stop your griping. According to wiki, we can expect HTML5 to have W3C recommendation by 2022.
  
  I kid you not.
ratcity

Let me develop iPhone apps under Windows or Linux and then maybe we can talk about “open”.

There are 13 instances of the word open in his statement. As has been noted many times already Jobs never says the iphone is an open platform. That would be laughable. He says it supports open web standards.

Anyway, I hope Android gives Apple lots of competition and we see better alternatives. I’m not an Apple fan because I look forward to the totalitarian slave-world that some fear. I think there will always be more open and more closed platforms side by side.

Why not the big moral outrage over the nintendo gameboy? Nintendo sold more of those than Apple has sold iphones. It’s a far more closed platform.

And yet life goes on just fine and it’s a better time to run Linux than ever before.
echolocate chocolate

Well yeah, obviously there are even more closed examples one can point at.

My point is: this announcement about “open web standards” comes when Apple is under fire for closing their platform more than it was before.
brianary

I think the most interesting thing about this is that Jobs felt enough pressure to force him to address this issue again. And not very convincinglyâ€”meaning he’ll have to come back to it again.
Anonymous

When someone’s control is scaled to a size this large, the undertaking eventually becomes impossible to manage. To many moving parts so naturally one tries to keep prospective weaknesses at bay. One ends up playing more defense than offense. I don’t think Job’s understands the intrinsic limits of the human will nor the benefits of the collective. I think it is inevitable that Apple begins to retard as they assert more control.
Anonymous

“Mnemonic Device â€¢ #6 â€¢ 13:45 on Thu, Apr.29 â€¢ Reply
So, when Jobs wrote
“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.”
I guess that just flew right over everyone’s heads?

Sorry, needs to be said again.
apaull

Interesting the number of people complaining about Flash crashing so regularly on the Mac… Are they suggesting that Microsoft is a better product?

We all know the answer is “no it’s not”, but it is a little odd that after all these years Flash still has so much trouble running on Macs. Flash is a platform that has been a widely accepted standard now for what, 15 years? That’s an eternity in the computer industry.

Every time Steve Jobs complains about Flash crashing Macs, he’s admitting his engineers aren’t up to the job of building an operating system that can handle one of the internet’s main content delivery platforms. If Microsoft can do it, then surely Apple can too.

Imagine Sony releasing a television that crashed every time you tuned into CBS – and then blamed CBS when every other television manufacturer can get it to work (actually I could see that happening but that’s another story…)

The commercial benefits of Flash not running on iPods and iPads are enormous for Apple, and to not even passingly mention them in his letter says volumes about Apple as a company.
- housewarmer
  
  Holy mackerel! That’s some fine logic there. So it’s Apple’s responsibility to fix Adobe’s software eh? While they’re at it, why doesn’t Apple make Windows not suck so much?
  - apaull
    
    I think you’ll find it’s not Adobe’s problem. Flash is what it is (rightly or wrongly) and millions of Apple users around the world expect to be able to use Flash in the same way that Windows and Linux users do – without problems.
- bibulb
  
  I was not aware that Apple wrote the Flash plug-in. Given that they didn’t, why is it their responsibility now to make sure that it works?
  
  For at least ten years now, Adobe’s half-assed their Mac support. This is very well exemplified by the quality of the Flash plug-in. (Mind you, that was crap back when it was a MacroMedia product, but it’s not like they’ve gone in and made it work better since then.) Adobe’s been rather noteworthy in the Mac developer world in their consistent inability to deliver working code.
  
  I don’t blame VW because that guy in the Passat is incapable of driving, nor do I blame Apple because Adobe is incapable of delivering a non-buggy product.
  - apaull
    
    “I was not aware that Apple wrote the Flash plug-in. Given that they didn’t, why is it their responsibility now to make sure that it works?”
    
    For the same reasons why they go to great lengths to make sure HTML works – and CSS, and Javascript, and Java, and Adobe Reader… Because they are web-standards and their customers demand it.
    
    To further your car analogy – a car that “crashed” as soon as it hit one of those popular free-ways that all other drivers enjoy wouldn’t be much of a car now, would it?
    
    The reason why Flash is not on the iPod, iPhone and iPad is that it suits Apple’s all-controlling agenda for it not to be. Is Flash being “buggy” on Macs a deliberate Apple ploy? Possibly…
    
    Adobe’s cross-platform App publishing ability in the new version of Flash was a well publicised feature and had been available in the beta for months. The fact that Apple timed the announcement that apps built this way would be banned from the App Store to the day before CS5s launch just shows the level of dirty tricks the company is prepared to play.
  - MatthewFabb
    
    bibulb, well here’s a tweet from Mike Downey, who works on the Silverlight team but previously worked for Adobe:
    
    “I will say that I know for a fact that Flash runs much faster on Windows because MS gives Adobe the hooks they need – Apple does not.”
    That’s from: http://twitter.com/mdowney/status/13081946335
    
    Anyways, Flash Player 10.1 will see a big speed boost in rendering graphics in future versions of Safari (available now only in night builds) because Apple made the CoreAnimation API available to Flash. Current benchmarks apparently make the Mac version actually faster than Windows. Here’s a link about that:
    http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html
    
    Meanwhile hi-def video in Flash will increase in speed and less CPU on a Mac after Apple finally provided an API to get hardware accelerated video decoding, after Adobe has been asking publicly about getting such an API since last year.
    
    That said, part of the problem Adobe faces is Flash designers or developers who do some really bad pratices in creating Flash content. Such as ramping up the frame rate to 140 frames per second or trying to do too much in the code. Adobe makes tools to lower the barriers to create content, which unfortunately means people who don’t know what they are doing are sometimes making Flash content. Anyways, Flash Player 10.1 that is coming out of beta shortly is supposed to deal with many of these concerns. On top of reducing the CPU and memory of Flash, there’s new fail-safes in dealing content that is trying to gopple up too much CPU or memory.
    
    When similar tools are made for HTML5, the same problems will happen for HTML5 content as there is for Flash content. People will then be installing Canvas tag and Video tag blockers to avoid the bad ads and extra CPU.
Anonymous

I second the first comment about what Mister Jalopy did here: Brilliant!
Anonymous

Sorry readers. But I think Apple is both within their commercial rights and have a defensible position with respect to maintaining both their market share and customer satisfaction. Rant all you want, but I think that Steve Jobs is essentially correct in his reasoning.

As a developer, having a cross-platform development kit is both a blessing and a curse. as Mr Jobs said, “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.”

Apple are right to be concerned about this. Cross-platform development kits have the potential to harm the market share of Apple, erode the audience for App Store developers, and introduce a level of control to Adobe over the quality of apps which is neither in the best interests of Apple or its developers.

So, shoot me down â€“ you and I are both entitled to have our opinions â€“ but I support this decision by Apple.
- MatthewFabb
  
  “Apple are right to be concerned about this. Cross-platform development kits have the potential to harm the market share of Apple, erode the audience for App Store developers, and introduce a level of control to Adobe over the quality of apps which is neither in the best interests of Apple or its developers.”
  
  Apple could still reject any iPhone app made by Flash CS5 based on quality. However, they aren’t basing them on quality they are basing this on development tools. Apple actually had an iPhone app made by Flash CS5 in their featured apps section in iTunes. A number of them have sold quite well (by Adobe’s there’s currently over 130 in there) getting good reviews by Apple. Yet now they will reject these or reject future apps by inspecting apps at the byte code level in order to tell them apart.
  
  Also at the same time, Apple seems to be throwing out all apps made by 3rd party tools, including some great games made by Unity3D. This will greatly reduce the number of 3D games on the iPhone app store, as only the large video companies like EA will be able to make their own 3D engine from scratch with Objective-C, as it will be too expensive for the small independent companies.
boyfinley

I’d have more sympathy for the Apple baiting crowd if it weren’t for the fact that Adobe is trying to establish their own monopoly. It needs to be said again & again, Adobe aren’t some indie sweethearts, they’re a greedy corporation trying to make the web as reliant on it’s own technology as they can.

Adobe makes amazing creation software & I’m really excited about CS5, but I also really don’t want Flash on my mobile devices.
Anonymous

the real reason why flash won’t run on apple’s machines: they suck! check this out:
http://coderview.blogspot.com/2010/01/vsxu-on-apple-current-status.html

Now let me explain what I more often call “the apple situation”Â®:

Apple tend to rip of their customers by using only the worst (cheapest for them) graphics chips possible, if your mac is a macbook (not macbook pro) you’re out of luck unless
it’s the latest version being sold now.

It barely supports OGL2.0 and the graphics performance is horrible – it’s sharing RAM between the GPU and CPU which is typical for cheap low-end computers in the 200$ to 300$ range. As soon as you start throwing some work on it it’ll drop to 10fps.

What to look for when buying a computer for VSXu/OpenGL is the same as for the latest games – a graphics card with dedicated vram.

So one would expect this from a Macbook pro then? right???

But no, even the graphics on the macbook pro’s that are now selling is poor at best – I just checked.
They ship with nvidia 9400M – old graphics components not intended for high-end graphics – and some of the models also (imagine that!) use RAM instead of real VRAM.

So either way the performance on a mac laptop will be bad.

For the mac platform to run proper graphics, the only acceptable computer will be a mac Pro (the big over-priced lump of metal) with the _extra optional graphics card_ (the original one is also old cheap crap they get from nvidia almost for free which really does NOT suit the rest of the components in it and has nothing to do with being professional). And it can’t even power 2 graphics cards from nvidia because of the under-dimensioned PSU. NOT professional at all! I mean – a Pro graphics machine should be able to run multiple screens with hardware accelerated graphics. But apple apparently don’t care at all about graphics.
jdk998

Old meme is old.
TheCrawNotTheCraw

Jobs says that the majority of crashes on the Apple platforms are due to Flash. Are we supposed to believe that Adobe didn’t have an adequate incentive to fix the situation, if it is true?

If Flash is used in 75% of web video (according to Adobe), and Mr. Jobs thinks that HTML 5 is so much better, wouldn’t it have been in both company’s interests in supporting Flash to the best extent possible while a transition is made to HTML 5 and H.264 hardware-based codecs? *That* would have displayed consideration for users of Apple’s device.

But Apple insists on sucking the air out of every room it enters. And Steve Jobs seems to have a persistent need to dominate one situation after another.
- mdh
  
  95% of the time my browser crashes it’s flash.
  
  But that’s just the browser, the computer itself never crashes.
  
  make of that what you will.
J France

Flash, contextually, is a web-based thing. Jobs is very clear about the OS being closed, but he has a vision for the web, and although the “only” window to that content is Safari (and now Opera Mini!), it’s a bloody big window, which has been implemented in a way to sit next to apps – almost seamlessly.

I think those that freakout over the OS and the App store walls miss the point – although their walled garden is shitty, no argument – it’s not the be all and end all.

Jobs sullies his argument by bringing in the dev tools (although his arguments are acceptable, I suppose). Otherwise this is right on, and a brilliant vision for the future of the internet, which is at the core, what he is talking about here.
- Anonymous
  
  Well heaven forbid anyone get in the way of Dear Leader’s vision for the web, which after all exists solely at his pleasure.
  
  Seriously, I get that he thinks blank pages are superior to content not under his control, but anyone with an iThing better agree with that too, since it’s his way or the highway.
  
  Dictatorial control and selective censorship have their advantages, but only if you agree with the dictator on *everything*
  
  In this case,
  fart apps = a-ok, funny
  shake apps = not ok, might be used to jiggle boobies
  playboy app = ok, boobies are stationary
  google voice = not ok, competing
  internet = text and images only, minimal interactivity
  
  And worst of all, he can change his mind on any of it, at any time, for any reason. Handcuff yourself to whoever you like, but Jobs has the key.
Thac0

Brilliant!
dougrogers

What a lovely hobby-horse.
stack

http://www.macosforge.org/

Darwin
WebKit
LLVM/Clang
libdispatch
etc…

Just sayin’…
- Anonymous
  
  And can you use a complete install of these as an operating system for your iPhone? No? Didn’t think so.
allen

As a friend of mine said:
“Translation: We don’t want our users to be locked into Adobe, we want them locked into Apple!”
kaffeen

Those in glass houses?
Mnemonic Device

So, when Jobs wrote

“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.”

I guess that just flew right over everyone’s heads?

It’s darn fun to shake your tiny fists at the New Evil. But come on, guys. This is childish.
- misterjalopy
  
  Didn’t fly over my head. I mentioned it if you follow the link.
Anonymous

As a web developer and former Flash coder, I am more than happy to see Flash go extinct.

For those defending Flash, I am not sure how perpetuating Flash is in your interest. It is against the entire spirit of the WWW. Let’s be real: Flash is owned and controlled by Adobe, and if you want to make a Flash file, you need Adobe Flash. Does this not bother any of you?

I would recommend to people who care about keeping web development open to push Adobe to adopt HTML, CSS and Javascript, rather than push Apple to adopt Flash.

I could see Adobe making an excellent Flash-like application to construct HTML, CSS and Javascript that would rival Flash files. Something like Dreamweaver, just more advanced.

Till then, I have a Flash blocker on my web browser. The day that plugins are no longer part of the web will be a good day.
- MatthewFabb
  
  “Let’s be real: Flash is owned and controlled by Adobe, and if you want to make a Flash file, you need Adobe Flash. Does this not bother any of you?”
  
  Nope, that’s a popular myth that has been incorrect for many years now. Adobe’s own Flash compiler that comes with the Flex SDK is completely free and open source. There’s a number of tools both open source and commercial that can create Flash files, often using Adobe’s own Flash compiler.
  
  Here’s a decent list of open source tools available to create Flash content:
  http://www.flashmagazine.com/news/detail/open_source_and_free_development_tools_for_flash/
  
  “The day that plugins are no longer part of the web will be a good day.”
  
  I disagree, as I think there’s always going to be a place for plugins to push the envelope of what can be done in the browser and roll these new features out quickly. Look at what Flash Player continues to do with peer-to-peer video, audio and data, in version 10. I’ve yet to see any of the web standards even begin talking about these kind of features that have great potential. Then any great ideas found in plugins can then be incorporated into browsers in a later version of the HTML spec, the way that HTML5 has taken many ideas from older versions of Flash.
snakedart

I, for one, was furious 25 years ago when I learned I couldn’t run COBOL on my Apple //e. But I eventually got over it.
mn_camera

Ooooh…truth hurts!
Roy Trumbull

Think: Steve vs Larry pissing contest.