Steve Jobs slams Adobe Flash as unfit for modern era - Page 5

HTML5 is an open standard. It includes other forms of playback as well as H.264. You are killing your own central thesis.

Thompson

More like a full broadside.

Looks like I´m right again, I touched a few nerves and people are trying to discredit me.

Everything Steve does in public is carefully orchestrated, this letter is no exception.


Steve had a decision, either make a tablet like the HP Slate and run Flash, or go without Flash and create a cheaper slimmer device with better battery life that would sell more units than the Slate.

So Steve chose the lower price and the war with Flash as to beat HP on price and gain market share.

Of course the war with Flash is really not with Adobe, but to get websites to make iPad versions of their sites so users of the iPad won´t complain to their friends thinking about getting one.

It´s a no brainer why iPad supplies have been constrained on purpose and the 3G model is weeks away. Apple is giving web sites time to convert as to have minimal impact on iPad users, and to create the sense the device is being sold out everywhere, that itś in high demand.

Plus he takes little jabs at people who oppose him. That's another similarity.

I don't think they're trying to kill it, I think they're trying to make it standards based. But standards are slow to change (due to committees) and can be lowest common denominator type stuff. If you can get the web to be standards based you will have an easier time keeping your apps an innovative step ahead. And therefore keep people in the apps viewing iAds and not on the web viewing Google adwords.

I don't regard these things as separate issues.

Cheers

You are still wrong. H.264 is open, it just isn't free. Except actually it is free until 2015 (at least).

There is a glimmer of truth in what you say, but it's not nearly as clear cut as you're making out. There are no open and free codecs available for video that are without doubts in patent encumbrance. That creates an element of risk. Codecs developed by the MPEG currently appear to be the safe bet because of their prevalence and history, and the MPEGs standing in the industry. That they are not offered under the GPL or some other open source license is a problem, but it's a lesser evil than a proprietary Flash wrapper around a proprietary video codec; at least it takes one level of proprietary out of the equation. Apple have some measure of reassurance in backing h.264 because they are one of the license holders, so they can guarantee themselves of its future. They can't do so with Theora. Dirac is another possible, but has its doubters. H.264 is not doubted, and while it is being offered for free it seems to be the best option.

The possibility of Google releasing a codec from their On2 purchase as an open source web video codec may change this.

Whatever the case, it is not Apple's responsibility to police the web and promote it as an open platform, it is the w3cs remit. That Apple is doing so in its spat with Adobe is a side effect of many other technical and business reasons, as Jobs sets out in his letter.

Only in your world does Steve Jobs decide where you are going and maybe a few others on this forum. The rest of us understand if we don't like where Steve Jobs is going we have a choice to move to another option. Which simply isn't an option only inside your head.

For the exception of the iPod Apple doesn't control any market with a #1 product and even though their revenue is way up that fact remains because there are people like you that are willing to pay an insane markup for every product they produce.

With the attitude Jobs has Apple is in for a major fall from grace. And the retards here can joke all they want about Apple is doomed but they may want to watch what they joke about, they just may have their wish come true. Apple is starting to act alot like the old Microsoft. And we all know how well they are doing.

HTML5 and H.264 are NOT synonymous. Quit writing as if they are.

Thompson

He's the CEO of a major company, I should damn well hope his public statements are orchestrated!

And where does Adobe fit into this? If they had it there way, you would need Flash to play any video, regardless of codec, and it better be one it decides to support.

So. Flash or H264?
Big businesses who are willing to spend money on quality are pushing for H264 to become the standard. The HTML5 definition of <VIDEO> needs to be widely accepted to take any meaningful hold over Flash. H264 which has great hardware support and is used in a very large variety of consumer products is the best way to go at this point. It is a great quality codec. I don't see the problem with standardizing it with the open standard of HTML5 at all.

To my knowledge, I never said they were synonymous. Steve Jobs is the one who implied they were synonymous by using "HTML5" in his letter as opposed to "H.264". Adobe's Flash technology will mainly compete with H.264 for video playback. HTML5 is just a spec for markup language on the web. I understand the difference, but Steve Jobs doesn't want you to.

You always have that choice. You can also go right ahead and build yourself a square wheel. Maybe certain novelty shops sell them. You always have options.


Apple either controls the market with a #1 product or they set the standard. Apple's influence in this industry is astronomical. Of course, you won't see that if your head is in the sand.


I think we all know where to put your "predictions."

Another post of nonsense from you. Goodbye.

Your rant fails to address the several good points regarding why Flash sucks for the mobile (and touch) world.

Thompson

Some day phones will be able to measure when a finger is hovering over the screen

The 3G model isn't weeks away. In fact, mine arrives tomorrow.

Impact? Most of us have used iPhones since 2007. And we also employ Click2flash on our Macs. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPads are selling like 13 yr olds in Thailand.

You read AI frequently, surely you've stumbled upon last quarter's results.

Face it, these devices are hits, despite the lack of flash.

I'll put this in perspective for those who do not understand.

It is like driving a car, most all cars use gas to get to one place or another. Most car companies all make propriety cars since you can not take parts from every car to put them on any car.

Now everyone agrees the best way to get one place or another is using hydrogen cars, but the Oil companies insist on selling you gas at their stations and continue to slam the auto industry for making hydrogen cars when gas also works. Oh the gas companies are more than happy to sell you a translator to use gas to make hydrogen

Adobe is doing everything they can to maintain a revenue stream just like the Oil Companies would do if everything was moving to hydrogen

Read the letter again: Apple HAS been pushing Adobe for improvements for years now. We've heard this before in other forums too, so it's not like this letter is the first mention of Apple working with Adobe to make Flash better for mobile devices (and to stop crashing Safari).


Boy do you have it backwards!

Adobe, the media, and stock analysts have been lampooning Apple incessantly about the lack of Flash on their mobile devices. Most of we've heard from Steve about Flash before now came from either internal e-mails that were leaked out or snippets from closed door meetings.

If anything, this letter that actually EXPLAINS the reasoning is long overdue.

Thompson

You should read the replies in this thread.

Now developers aren't vowing to leave in mass but its pretty obvious that there's a lot of discomfort associated with the new SDK agreement.

I really believe that users are smart enough to figure out the good apps from the bad. IMO, when you have a robust platform like the iPhone/iPad currently enjoys these restrictions seem unnecessary. I can understand Apple's concerns but they are fighting an imaginary enemy. The iPhone platform enjoys success that the Mac never had. Apple just needs to create the best possible tools they can and the developers will use them. They aren't stupid either.

You were in such a hurry to post that you couldn't read a paragraph or two further on? Fail.

Except that Mac OS-X does "fully support" Cocoa and has been actively removing it's Carbon elements with each release. It isn't the black and white situation you make it out to be, and it depends mostly on the parsing of that "fully.".

Steve said Adobe only "fully" supports Carbon with it's CS5 release, but everyone knows that CS5 is hardly a 100% Cocoa application. Half the interface is still drawn on the screen with Flash for cripes sake. Steve's "fully" in that context just means "They've finally decided to convert to Cocoa." By that metric Apple was "fully" Cocoa when they made the decision to move away from Carbon all those years ago.

No one expects Adobe to be 100% compliant and 100% Cocoa anytime in the next five or ten years, but they have started the process and are apparently making some kind of half-hearted effort to change. Apple started doing that years ago and is almost finished with the conversion.

That's a big difference and indicative of a much more nuanced picture than you paint.

That's largely irrelevant. Apple decided not to use Flash in 2007 when the original iPhone came out. At that time, it wasn't even Apple's decision - because there was no full version of Flash for mobile devices. Wait....there STILL isn't.


I wish people would get their facts straight. There IS no Flash war with Adobe. Even if Apple WANTED to put Flash on the iPhone, there is no full version of Flash available. The version that's only been delayed half a dozen times and may come out this summer requires an 800 MHz A8 - so it won't run on the iPhone, anyway. The war ended when Adobe failed to show up.

The 3G model is weeks away? That's funny, my tracking number says it will be here tomorrow. No, it won't be available in all areas, but it WILL be available tomorrow - please stop making up lies.

Furthermore, your statement that supplies have been constrained on purpose is a pretty serious accusation. The CEO of one of the top companies in the world said they were making them as fast as possible and supplies were limited because demand exceeded expectations. If you're calling him a liar, you'd better have evidence -- or a pretty good lawyer.


You forgot - in Adobe's fantasy world, EVERY mobile device has an 800 MHz A8 or faster.


Nice of you to accuse me of lying without bothering to check the facts. I was the one who claimed that Flash shot my CPU to 120%. I never claimed it was a blank document. I said it was a document that had no video or animation. You can check it for yourself - if you have an ounce of integrity - rather than simply calling people a liar. MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz. Go to www.webkinz.com and log in. Then check the CPU usage.

Or, you could check Engadget's web site for tests of the new beta. The release version (which I am using) goes as high as 140% - on a system that's a lot more powerful than mine, although they were using a more complicated task.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/a...sults-may-var/

So stop accusing people of lying - especially when you don't know what you're talking about.


Apple was supposed to have made a decision in 2007 based on Adobe's promises for the future (promises which they've repeatedly broken)? And based on Adobe's horrible history of supporting the Mac over the past 10 years? Even today, there are no cell phones on the market that support full versions of Flash and we only have Adobe's word that we'll have them sometime this year. AND, a number of reports on the beta say it's slow and choppy, as well. So Apple should have put all their iPhone plans on hold in 2007 waiting for Adobe to release Flash? And given up many billions of dollars in revenues? I'm glad you're not running any company I'm invested in.

Oh, Apple is definitely right on this one, and I speak from the experience that I think Steve is talking about.

Back before the transition to OS X, most developers used Metrowerks CodeWarrior to build Mac OS applications. This system was certainly nice, but it included a bunch of extra layers on top of the Mac OS APIs. The result was a horribly slow transition over to Carbon. Ultimately, Apple had to release and promote XCode over CodeWarrior for CoCoa development. It sucked for us developers at first, but ultimately we got accustomed to the differences, and then the OS upgrades (and switch to Intel) went a hell of a lot more smoothly.

Thompson

Not unless there is a groundswell of hardware acceleration (mobile and desktop) for it...

Plus most people choose to ignore the fact that Apple promised 64 bit carbon and then a year later decided they weren't going to do it after all. If Apple had said carbon was dead when they promised a 64 bit version, CS4 probably would have been done in cocoa.

There was a screwed up version of a Sun Tzu quote that I hear from time to time, "Never press a desperate enemy," which is exactly what Steve Jobs is doing.

"But what can Adobe do?" you ask, simple, make Flash open source. Its coming, and probably sooner rather than later.

-kpluck

You mean the product that Ballmer kind of demonstrated but that isn't going to hit the market now? Wonder why? Wonder what the battery life would have been like on that thing.

Thompson

I'm not sure Adobe started this "war" but Jobs is certainly doing his part to keep it going, and that aint good for both company's customers.

How do you know what Adobe has or hasn't attempted in efforts to "work quietly on this"?

Look, I perfectly get the desire of any company to control it's own product and limit the ability of 3rd parties to develop for competitors' products as well as their own. It's a completely rational approach, but there is a point where it becomes self-defeating.

Apple not only bans .sfw from the iPhone and iPad, but it changes the developers agreement to ban aps that run natively on both if they were authored in Flash, then published through it's new compiler to Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript (which was a major addition to CS5 and presented one of the biggest reasons to upgrade for many people). It also puts in question whether or not 3D games published from tools like Unity 3D are in violation as well. There is no reason for such a punitive stance on Apple's part. This only punishes professionals who support both companies. Humans are capable of generating bad code all on their own. Banning Adobe's compiler from Flash is no guarantee of a "controlled user experience" any more than Apple is going to inspect every line of code written natively from scratch by any coder. Why not at least work out an agreement between the two companies in which Apple can work with Adobe to ensure Flash generated content running in the iPhone/iPad native language is acceptable, instead of cutting Adobe off at the knees from the start? Again, if Jobs doesn't like .sfw, fine. But it's nothing but bad for designers and users for Jobs to extend his dislike of Flash to areas that impact the ability of those who use/rely/develop on/for both companies' products. What's next for Jobs in his beef with Adobe -- an Apple EULA that says no web site maybe viewed through Safari if it was generated in DreamWeaver or the Apple police will show up, bust down your door, and confiscate your computer if it's a Mac?

Tell me honestly which would you prefer to use? You really have a great conspiracy driven imagination
but since you have never built a product like the iPad and sold about million the first few weeks I don't give your point of view much weight.

Hmmm...seems you disclosed something about yourself I should report to the authorities.





The lack of Flash on the iPod Touch and the iPhone is understandable, they have lower performance processors because the nature of the device fits into small places.

The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.

hi new troll user.
Too bad he never said H.264 is "open". I see this same lie repeated several times by new users. Is this the new Microsoft/Adobe/Faux News talking point?

Well, if we let reality be our guide, millions and millions of people want a BluRay player in their computers..

But you are pointing out two irrelevant things. The article is about Flash, not comparing Flash to the Apple "ecosystem".
Adobe called Flash open. It's not.

What does this have to do with whether Flash is open or not?

No personal offence meant, (seriously!), but I find it hard to pay attention to your posts. I feel like anyone who posts on a forum like this and insists on changing the font size or colour or posting in stanzas etc., just kind of lacks credibility.

It makes me wonder more about the personality of the person posting than what they are trying to say, an in that light, is indicative (to me), of the kind of mind that thinks they know better than everyone else and isn't really open to other people's ideas. I hope this isn't true of you, and it's not an accusation, I just wanted to say that it's hard to take you seriously when you do that kind of thing.

You know it is not pretend stuff.

Adobe now taking beta testers for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0

http://www.betanews.com/article/Adob...oid/1271687589
‎

If that's all you're using Flash for, then it's no great loss, is it? Not long before those same videos will be available in something more mobile-friendly, and then we can all look back and wonder why we argued over this.

Thompson

I went all over that site and never saw the activity above 58% for a second or two peak most of the time is was in the low teens and even single digits even with all the animations. So I don't know what might be wrong with your set up but I certainly don't see the same CPU usage you report.

But yeah try to program that site in HTML5 good luck.

Sun Tzu also said, "The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting or pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep."


And, relative to recent events, "If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before its time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told."

From reading your post it seems that you agree with me. If Apple provide developers with good tools for wring iPhone apps they'll naturally gravitate to them.

But I think there is another agenda here at work. Apple wish to make it difficult to write apps that can easily be ported to several platform in order to blunt the the success of Android. IMO, if they wish to blunt the success of Android they need to make the iPhone available to ALL US carriers. They are plenty of users who simply will not choose ATT as a a carrier, regardless of the device.

Adding the other US carriers will solve that problem.

And it gets roughly one fifth of the battery life of the iPad.