Steve Jobs finally offers up some explanations for the iPad’s lack of Flash, but his excuses just don’t add up.
Adobe has had its words over Apple snubbing Flash on the iPad. And now Steve Jobs has had his.
In a small “town-hall-style” meeting within Apple following the launch of the iPad last week, Jobs apparently told employees that Flash would soon be made obsolete by HTML5, and that it’s too buggy, obviating the need for it in the iPad.
While there’s a kernel of truth to both assertions, Jobs’ cocky Flash-bashing still seems to miss the point on both accounts.
The distant future doesn’t matter. We need Flash now.
Is HTML5 the future? Almost certainly. For instance, both YouTube and Vimeo have rolled out HTML5 betas that let you skirt Flash and use HTML5 instead. Even Google’s controversial Google Voice app for the iPhone – which is actually not an app but a sophisticated Web page – uses HTML5. Clearly, HTML5 has legs, and it’s coming soon.
But “coming soon” doesn’t cut it. It could be years until we see HTML5 roll out in full force. The team developing HTML5 doesn’t even expect it to receive the first level of recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (the group that governs international Web standards,) until 2012. According to them, the third and final maturity recommendation likely won’t occur until 2022.
Meanwhile, the Apple iPad will launch in less than 60 days.
Parts of HTML5 will be useable before that – and even work now – but opting for a work in progress seems hypocritical while you simultaneously bash its predecessor for unreliability. “There is no real test suite, there are many parts of the spec that are lacking real implementations, there are big parts that aren’t interoperable, and the spec has hundreds if not thousands of known errors that haven’t been fixed,” HTML5 developer WHATWG writes in its own wiki entry.
Even if HTML5 clicked over to final, perfect and unchangeable specifications today, Flash would remain a live part of the Web for years to come, making Steve Jobs’ tunnel vision even sillier.
We’ll live with crashes.
We can’t verify Apple’s assertion that the majority of OS X crashes are due to Flash – the company keeps all its Crash Reporter data private. But for the sake of argument, let’s trust them.
We still need it. Like a lot of shoddy products, people continue to use Flash because it mostly works: for video, music, games, intense Web graphics, apps, and whatever else developers use it for.
Shunning Flash because it sometimes crashes, or because it’s a closed-source plugin that makes the Web a less flexible place (like QuickTime) makes a nice academic approach, but ignores the reality of browsing the Web today.
Apple’s desire to keep users safe from crashes takes a straight-jacket approach: You can’t hurt yourself when you can’t do anything. Simply offering the option to turn off Flash when you want a safer browsing experience would make a perfectly acceptable compromise for users who want to walk outside the padded asylum walls Apple wants to put them in.
Sorry, Steve. We just don’t buy your Flash fairy tales. The iPad needs it.
Showing 23 comments
RSSOf course Steve is right, that all Apple Apps can be done with HTML 5 and standard tools. But for me, this is not a claim for Apple’s openness, but just an example of the de facto limitations of Apple Apps (and their users?).
For instance, when Steven Jobs honors HTML 5 fitness for the bunch of me-too video enriched web-gimmicks, called Apps, he might be right in his corner. But for serious business applications, that go beyond the personal entertainment click-clack-hurry ego-area (and so far have never made it onto the iPhone), he would prove himself hopelessly wrong.
Me as a certified web developer successfully working since nine years in 3 worlds - J2EE, .NET and Flash -, I think that I am qualified enough, to claim, that HTML 5 alone will simply NOT provide the technology nor the tools nor (skilled) people nor experiences to do really highly interactive real-time stuff EFFICIENTLY in an enterprise service context. Of course, for students and new-comers that just do not known anything else than what is free in the market, HTML 5 is a major improvement – but – that’s it! HTML 5 just does not qualify for high performing, highly interactive Rich Internet Applications the way they can be built with Flash, Silverlight or JavaFX.
And when you go for instance for iPhone-like point and slide programming, you will have, even with HTML 5, to build on the proprietary Apple OS features the same (in transparent) way you would have to do with Flash technology.
Listen, I am not talking games and social fun-stuff here, but have applications in mind, many other companies, people and finally people like you and me still create value and earn money with. So when we allow Apple to ban Flash from the iPhone, we will allow Apple to ban business apps from the iPhone as well. Then this is not just about technology, but about how we will integrate business in our daily life – or not.
And forget that Flash will go away, when it’s banned from the iPhones. Flash is not a HTML 5 competitor. They are different things. Flash has its niche and community already. Flash had never a stake or a real revenue stream on mobiles. So for Flash, mobile did not matter so far which means, that Adobe is does not need to have it on the iPhone either. Independent of the mobile market, the Flash framework has dramatically evolved into a real ecosystem that is MUCH, MUCH more than just the Flash Player we are currently talking about. The Flash Framework has earned money and market shares and still provides a platform where people can make money, where HTML 5 will have a long way to go (The team developing HTML5 doesn’t even expect it to receive the first level of recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (the group that governs international Web standards,) until 2012. According to them, the third and final maturity recommendation likely won’t occur until 2022....).
Besides this timeline constraint, HTML 5 it is not built for really sophisticated, complex and (bandwidth optimized) rich web-applications and will never be.
On the other side, I am personally convinced, that the Flash Framework (with Silverlight and JavaFX on its heels), is still the most professional, most stable, most shared, public accepted, reasonably priced rich internet application framework. This is especially true now, when corporations have to ensure continuity, performance and a most appealing user experience, when moving their core applications from the personal desktop to the virtual could. No doubt, the cloud will happen with home working and more mobility. But Business will not care about whether your iPhone might become incompatible with what the company needs.
So – in essence – fighting for Flash on the iPhone ensures your long-term business compatibility. Otherwise you will have either two devices, a non iPhone device or you will have to fit against your reputation of an iPhone decorated Fun boy and non-serious chatterbox or even worse, to be compared with one of those “creatives” that just own an iPhone for dressing themselves up with an decent aura of iPhone impersonated technology geekness, that in essence, is so reduced, that even your Grandma can join and fill her lonely hours with a choice of 50000 apps, that will make Steven rich, Grandma tired but will never earn her a dime in return.
With Flash on the iPhone, at least you, young guys, will be enabled to do something really useful. When not – go and play.
Silverlight rocks for video. I don't know why everyone doesn't use it (well, except Apple since...well, you know). I think it is awesome. And it is coming to the smartphone arena soon, too.
I did buy the first gen MacBook air, and I notice that the mini-VGA out port has changed on the newer MacBook Air's to what looks like Displayport. Talk about a pain in the butt to be forced to buy new dongles if I ever get a new MacBook.
Steve Jobs arrogance just really gets to me.
The funny thing about this tactic is, it's NOT worked in the past. In fact, the opposite tactic--being inclusive of popular (if inferior) technology--has HELPED Apple. Look at USB 2.0 vs Firewire; Firewire is clearly superior in real-world tests when it comes to speed, in fact massively so. Yet because EVERYONE was using USB 2.0 in their products, Apple first added USB 2.0 support to iPods, and then eventually REMOVED Firewire support to make room other things. An excellent example of Apple embracing inferior technology for the sake of popular compatibility; and iPods have continued to sell tremendously well, and I'd be willing to bet that if Apple HADN'T adopted USB 2.0, and had just stuck with Firewire, their sales would have been much, much lower, simply by virtue of the vast majority of PCs being incompatible with iPods.
Having an otherwise great product doesn't excuse this kind of arrogance and utter REFUSAL to compromise, Steve. This is exactly the kind of thing that kept people AWAY from buying Macs for years and years. A good product is only such as far as it is useful. And without flash the iPad is much less so.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/full_flash...
"19 out of the top 20 mobile handset manufacturers are now collaborating with Adobe to integrate Flash technology into their devices."
So 99% of the other manufacturers will be supporting Flash but not Apple? And not on an iPad which is more robust than a phone? Weird don't you think?