Steve Jobs calls Flash a 'CPU hog' in meeting with WSJ - rumor - Page 4

No I am not a troll. It is all about making money. Is it in Adobe's corporate interest to spend the money to have Flash run efficiently on a Mac? I don't know the answer to the question, but given the relatively small market share that the Mac OS has, the answer may be no.

Is it in Apple's corporate interest to have Flash run on the iPad. The answer here is probably no. As pointed out by iBill, doing so would allow third parties to control the experience, which is not something Apple will let happen. It would also potentially hurt their revenue stream.

Steve: Mac, iPhone and iPad is easey to use for everyone. Best products for consumers.

Jony: You don't have to change yourself, It's fits you.

Consumer: Hi Steve & Jony. I can't see web pages correctly...

Steve: It's Flash.

Consumer: What's that?

Steve: It's 'CPU hog'.

Consumer: CPU what?

Jony: You don't have to change yourself, It's fits you.

Consumer: Ok, OK Steve. Why?

Steve: It's about future.

Consumer: About what?

Steve: It's about future.

Consumer: Come on! I am an American. I don't care about future!

Consumer: I just want to see web pages and movies now!

Steve: No, You Can't.

Consumer: Ok Steve. I bought a new blu-ray disk form Kmart. Can I ...

Steve: No, You Can't.

Scott: You just... do!

Personally I hate Flash and appreciate Apple's jihad against it but if I was Adobe in this situation I would publicly offer Apple an agreement for Apple to develop their own implementation of Flash for the iPhone. A partnership, source exchange, developer exchange, etc. This would back Apple into a corner.

Personally what I think will happen is Apple will relent and allow a standalone Flash player application to run on the iPhone. Mobile Safari will simply launch the external Flash player as needed but will prefer HTML5 video/audio when available. It allows Apple to make a clear distinction between where their responsibility ends and Adobe's begins. The Flash app could be sand boxed or jailed to minimize security concerns.

Flash is a hog on windows also. I hate sites that are Flash centric. Let's add Adobe pdf web downloads also. Same experience.

There are many shades of grey in this debate.

The quick answer as to why it's Adobe's problem to fix is that Apple has something they want. That would be access to Apple's remarkably successful and growing mobile business. Adobe is on the outside looking in, Apple is in the driver's seat.

The more complex answer is that the ship has already sailed on "fixing" the performance issues in Flash. It might have been different if they had been fixed 5 or 10 years ago. But they weren't for whatever reasons. As it stands right now, Apple has a tidy new business in mobiles, and they have successfully implemented a sandboxed approach that enables them to more directly control the user experience by deciding what can be installed and to what levels the hardware can be accessed. So far, that approach has worked well for them.

I suspect they will continue along these lines, and of course they will promote industry standards such as H264 over proprietary solutions. It makes perfect sense really. Why would Apple want the user experience of iPhone or iPad controlled by Adobe or Google (or anybody else for that matter)?

The processor on the iPad isn't strong enough to handle Flash, just like a lot of single core Atom netbooks can't handle it too well neither.

A point I was trying to make, that Flash wasn't originally built to be downsized to slower processors, but it was built with the intention that single core processors would get faster, which didn't happen of course. All these netbooks and iPads started coming out that can't handle it.





Just iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users. Which most will have a computer anyway.


I feel Steve is bemoaning Flash is because he intends to replace the MacBook line with less processor performing iPads and his customers are going to be upset they can't get the whole web experience.



Adobe might have to respond with something, like a FlashLite version that runs for netbooks, smartphones and iPads.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! It is not ALL about money. There are less tangible goods that need to be considered such as, the user experience, the good will of customers and the reputation for excellence in software engineering. A company that doesn't understand the importance of these intangibles --- and Adobe does not --- will slide downhill, slowly but inevitably.

That's what it really comes down too actually. Google Voice?

Opera made a web browser app for the iPad/iPhone, haven't submitted it to Apple yet.

I completely understand why apple doesn't want flash. But the question is whether adobe wants or needs apple enough to make the effort. Adobe has what 75% of web based video. Apple has what 7 percent of the desktop market and the mobile market, while growing, is still smallish if I remember correctly. So in a nutshell does it make economic sense for adobe to thus.

I made an analogy to iTunes and some said if one doesn't like it then buy a zune. Same logic applies if one is that upset with flash on mac then turn I off or buy a pc.

Sent from my iPhone

iTunes is not a Plug-in
iTunes is not pretending to be a standard
iTunes does not use limit playback to proprietary formats.
iTunes is not needed for anything out of the iPod/iPhone/iPad ecosystem. Currently anyone who wants to visit an interactive site MUST have flash installed.
While definitely not resource-efficient, iTunes for Windows is not even as nearly as bloated than Flash: Mac or otherwise. One is a frickin plug-in, the other is a full program on its own.
You know how I know this? Because I have a W7 partition for games. I use iTunes on both OS X and W7.

Bad analogy. Bad troll.


That is some upside down thinking. And HTML5 is newer than Flash... Bye bye logic.


Then why are you behaving like a troll?


Wait, who said H.264 is the only alternative? As far as I know, there is also HTML5.


Or the 867Mhz G4s that beat the hell out of those 1.6GHz P4s... And the Itanium. And that Sun processor

with all due respect everything you talked about is there to sell computers. If apple could have the same good will and fanatical fan base and sell crappy but cheaper to make computers they would

The device does not change yourself, it bends the industry to its knees so that it can fit you.

You lose. Adobe loses. Apple wins. Consumers win.

Steve will change his mind.
Just like iPhone SDK.

HA HA HA...

Using this logic, please explain the rationale for Adobe to spend money developing Flash for Linux and Solaris.

The worldwide marketshare of Mac OS X is less than half the 7% you mentioned, but that isn't the reason why Flash is downright awful on all systems. it's also not a reason why Adobe wouldn't want to make it better on Mac OS X.

Just look at WebOS and the Flash 10.1 they are trying to build for it. The installed base for those devices are very low compared to Mac OS X. There are more than enough Macs out there to warrant Adobe's attention, and that is even before you consider the price that Adobe as a company gets from their professional products from Mac users. Even back in 2004 it was about 25% of their revenue. Apple now sells 3M Macs a quarter when they only sold 836k Macs in Q4-2004. They only sold 2M iPod back then.

Flash is a problem as it's just not designed for a mobile platform and HTML5 video tags are better in every way, but an additional issue with Flash on Mac OS X, according to Adobe, is the inability of them to access deeper into the core OS like they can on Windows. This would explain why Flash on Windows is better, but don't read that Flash only being a resource hog on Macs as that is not the case.

For comparison, note that people have been complaining about Flash not being on the iPhone for over 3 years, since January 2007, and yet here we are at the end of Winter of 2010 with Flash still not on any Android, WinMo or WebOS platforms. You can't blame Apple for that and there is no other possibility here expect that Adobe was lazy by not proactively streamlining Flash sooner. Hell, the only reason they added H.264 and HW acceleration was because MS Silverlight was doing it.



HTML5's video tag spec allows for H.264 and Ogg Theora codecs to be used.

ARRRRGH not THIS again!

Do your Atom processors use the same architecture as A4's?
Do your Atom processors sport either 3-4 cores or the same tradeoffs a G4 processor had (less frequency for less pipeline stages?). One of these two is sure to be found on the A4.
Can your Atom processors play 720p video without a hitch? Instantly?
Can your Atom processors power OpenGLS games?

No. No, no and no.


Excuses. HTML5 runs fine on these "slower processors", and as some stated, Adobe itself said they are targeting mobiles.


Not only you continue on this dumb assumption that iPad has a weak processor, you show that you are among the people that really think iPad is meant to replace ALL computers. No further commentaries necessary.


Flash (no pun intended) news! FlashLite exists! It sucks!
In other news, even if it supported iPad, iPad wouldn't support it.

Flash wasn't a hog on my Macs until Adobe took Macromedia over Flash went down hill fast. Plus take a look at the news about Adobe's Flash/Acrobat bugs. This proprietary format needs to go and HTML5 (demonstrated in the Sublime HTML5 video) for video ASAP.

Lastly why does Flash suck on my 2008 Dual 2.8 Mac Pro as well as on my Mac Book Pro 2.16. Face it Flash just plain sucks. However it won't go away because what will all those add server serve up there adds and Flash seems their only answer. That is why I use ClickToFlash.

Ooh, much better than my WebOs example.

I see. According to Wikipedia, Ogg Theora is open and free.

WhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWh yWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhyWhy

Steve Jobs NEVER said iPhone wouldn't get an SDK. Nor that he didn't want one. WebApps were only a warm-up and it took them 8 months to do it because Apple is just like Blizzard: they take their time to do things right.

I think it's "openness" is sometimes under debate. You know, how something can be used for years and then someone comes out of the blue to sue you once it becomes popular.

Most importantly, Only Mozilla is supporting it in their browsers. A few of the supporters for H.264: Google in their videos, Apple in WebKit, Intel in HW acceleration, MS in Silverlight, Adobe in Flash [...] Blu-ray Consortium and many. many more. It's just too many to fight against.

Google even came out saying that Ogg would kill the internet compared to H.264. While it seems a bit hyperbolic right now, the benefits of H.264 increase as quality of the video increases.

Actually I am not wrong if you have an iMac and its getting "bogged down" due to flash then you need to return it. Members here act like running a Flash is the same as Crysis on a 30" monitor...LOL. Also another myth it has very little to do with the CPU this would be far more of a GPU issue. Sad not even Steve Jobs understands that fact.

Your problem but certainly not yours alone is that you do not understand the difference between short-term financial benefits and long term benefits. Maximizing this year's profit at the expense of viability in ten year's time is why companies fail. Apple under Steve Jobs has been successful because it has NOT gone this route. Microsoft and Adobe suck because they do not get this. 'Vision' essentially means knowing that you have to take care of the future, because it arrives sooner than you think.

Riiight. Apple and Microsoft, and Google, and Symbian, and Palm.... all of them use inferior hardware engineering, it is IMPOSSIBLE that flash is simply crappy.


1)It does not run perfectly fine on Windows. I can vouch for that as even when in my windows 7 partition my macbook gets its battery life cut by 33%
2)HINT HINT: Flash for Mac =/= Flash for Windows.


It would be nicer if the whole industry abandoned this moribund platform.
It would also be nice to post opinions here on AppleInsider without stumbling upon Apple bashers' nonsense.


Err? Like someone here once said, most flash interaction depends on mouse-overs, which are impossible on touch-screened devices, so if web designers have to rewrite their stuff, why not do it on a newer, open and more resource-friendly standard?

"The very worst that can happen is a reasonable drop in battery life"

When the average consumer gets only 6:30 hours of battery life instead of 10, guess who they'll blame?

Yeah iPhone battery life sucks already even without flash. Its about 3 hours if your using the web. Fact is Apple hardware performance has always sucked compared to what the reast of the world is using. The fact their iMacs just now have quad cores speaks for itself.

I could see your point when it comes to the iPhone or any smartphone but there is no reason why a multi function Tablet can't run Flash. That is just a joke. This has very little to do with Flash and alot to do with Steve Job simply screwing his customers because he wants to try and prove a point. The fact is you should be able to decide if you want to add a plugin or not, everything should be made available to you.

[CENTER]Here's One Solution:



I'm sure most people are intelligent enough to make such a choice - if given.[/CENTER]

Although Jobs comments are just rumor, if true, I do not think Jobs criticism is directed at Adobe's employees. Jobs is essentially saying that the company lacks vision and is happy just strumming along.

Further, Jobs's relationship with Abode is spotty. When Apple was struggling, Adobe's Mac support wasn't stellar. It was talking of dumping Mac development all together. Last thing Apple wants is to have to rely on an Adobe technology on the web. If Adobe decided it didn't want to develop for Macs anymore, Apple would suffer. Apple wants open source to rule the Internet.

Problem is that most people can't see the bigger picture. Further, many people's short term interests might not be aligned with Apple's long term interests.

That's some negative thinking


I know H.264 has more support. Was just exemplifying that should things get ugly, H.264 isn't the only alternative out there.

This is why Apple and Steve Jobs is a joke when it comes to Flash. Look at these hardcore system requirements, Yeah Flash is a real hog.

PowerPC G5 1.8GHz or faster processor

Intel Core Duo 1.33GHz or faster processor

256MB of RAM

64MB of VRAM


Holy crap 64MB of VRAM. I think I had that in my system 8 years ago. How many here even have a G5? By the way these are the recommended requirements not the min.

This is if you jump up to a 1920x1080 you know full HD.

Intel Core Duo 2.66GHz processor (or equivalent)

512MB of RAM

128MB of VRAM


Yet again hardware I had 5 years ago. This is for Flash 10.


Maybe some of you should give up the Mac and get a Windows system seems like the requirements are next to nothing for full HD.

Intel Core Duo 1.8GHz, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor (or equivalent)

128MB of RAM

64MB of VRAM

I think we can all see the CPU/GPU hog myth is just that, a myth.

How about this solution:

















See? Nothing to worry about. You just go to the browser and mind your own business.

While you ask "Is adopting Flash that hard?"
I in return say "Is letting it go that hard?"

Wow. If a 10hr battery drops to 1.5hrs with flash, then my iPhone's 5hr battery would be 45 minutes!

I am not a programmer but my understanding is that mac has a unix kernel so the port to linux would not be that big a deal iwould think.

However it may (or may not) be a big deal to optimize for he mac and have worry about how it affects windows performance

He doesn't get that it's Apple's device and they don't want to support something that degrades the UX.

[CENTER]You Mean Like...

If the option of successfully utilizing hundred-upon-hundreds-of-thousands of FLASH-based apps/games (Free-of-Charge) is made available to users, they might think twice about actually paying for (strikingly) similar content from the Apple/iTunes App Store?
[/CENTER]

Maybe instead of Apple always trying to have a 51% gross margin like they do on the iPad they should give their customers the hardware required to run anything on the internet. However I know your "shareholder" brain can't think that way. If every other Tablet can run a fully functioning OS certainly SJ can boost his hardware specs to run something as simply as flash.

Not being able to run it on a true mobile device like the iPhone is acceptable however not being able to run it on a multi function Tablet isn't. Even more so when everyone here was talking about Slate computing taking over the world when it can't even handle Flash 10.

Instead of people beating up on Adobe they should turn their beat down on SJ for being stupid enough to build a Tablet running a mobile phone OS. That was really innovative.

[CENTER]But...

'It's All About Apple's Design/UI/User Experience'

(Unless said 'Experience' involves viewing FLASH content - That is.)[/CENTER]

Isn't that the truth. A puny large iPod hand held mobile device that runs iTunes Apps only?

it's so cute how you ignore the fact that nearly all Flash games and apps have to be rewritten because they were designed for a mouse and keyboard being present, not the occasional finger input.

Flash ads? Why would you want that? Flash video not gonna work on a slow ARM device fore any decent quality. It's really amazing how dense you can be and how your arguments keep getting weaker and weaker. You want something to want it like a child without even examing the fact of why it's not even available this far into 2010 yet you want to blame Apple all the way back to 2007.

PS: Where is the 64-bit version of Flash? ...and you this that Apple is the problem.

Shoehorning a desktop OS into a tablet has been so successful. A decade or tablet sales and yet the iPad is what you're talking about, not all decade of tablets that have come and gone without fanfare because they were soooo Innovative.

PS: How did your troll math come out to a 51% gross margin?
PPS: Don't be jealous of my mad business skills.