Steve Jobs "Thoughts on Flash" - An Open Letter

While I think it was a great article and spot on...the notion that Flash is the main cause of Mac's crashing is a load of crap.

seangw wrote:
I find it so frustrating that when I'm out, and I go to check out a menu for a restaurant, the menu is in flash and my iPhone won't even display anything. Anything is better than nothing.

Why on earth does a restaurant menu need to be done in Flash? That's just sloppy and that restaurant obviously doesn't want my business if I'm out and about and look them up on a handheld device.

seangw wrote:
... I truly believe you should let end users decide.

If all end-users were knowledgeable enough to appreciate Falsch's effect on performance and stability that would be acceptable. However, I imagine the majority of Apple's consumers aren't technically adept enough to know the detrimental effects it's capable of, and shouldn't have to take a course in digital design to understand how to use an iPad or an iPhone. This concept is deeply rooted in Apple's DNA.

Jobs envisions Apple as a leader in the mobile device market, a point he explicitly made during the iPad's introduction. If you include iPhones and Macs Apple is already the world's foremost manufacturer of such devices. It's abundantly clear he wants Apple to remain in that enviable position.

Apple's fanaticism about a quality user experience is legendary, to the point they've mandated control over the look and feel of its products and the software that runs on them for years. Hence their decisions to not license OS X as well as their highly secretive and probably totally subjective App Store approval process. If an app doesn't conform it won't see the light of day.

I can only imagine the frustration Apple and Jobs have had with Adobe over their inability to think along those same lines. Adobe wants a multi-platform solution but has utterly failed to deliver a product that runs reliably on any of them. I speculate such failure has become acceptable to the majority of computer users, since their standard of quality has been forged by years of experience on the low bar of quality set by Windows and the cheap boxes that run it. Apple has shown the world it doesn't have to be that way.

If you're looking for proof look no farther than some of the posts in this very thread: Yes, we know battery life will suffer. Yes we know Falsch crashes once in a while. Yes we know it's a major security vulnerability. *Let us have it anyway.*

If Apple were to allow Falsch (or another third party "layer" over which Apple has no control) with such known limitations to run on their iDevices, two results are certain to follow: One, the market will overwhelmingly and justifiably reject the products due to instability and unacceptably limited battery life. Two, Adobe will remain unmotivated to improve its product to the detriment of anyone who uses it as well as the detriment of competing technologies already in development.

Adobe CEO chimed in yesterday as well: ...

From Narayen's remarks it's really pretty easy to understand the fundamental problem. In a Venn diagram representing each of their company's missions, Adobe's and Apple's no longer share a common union. Adobe wants its product to run on all platforms. Apple doesn't care about anyone's but their own. Why should they?

Perhaps Adobe will now be sufficiently challenged to make its product run reliably on the cross-platform market it seeks. This may or may not happen, but if it does the result will benefit everyone. Without Apple's decision there would be no such motivation. Whether the well is now sufficiently poisoned to ever resurrect an Apple - Adobe partnership again remains to be seen, but I don't believe Apple would have arrived at this juncture without a healthy amount of circumspection.

No one has to buy an iPad, iPhone, or a Mac. If you want Falsch on a mobile device, go and buy a competitor's product. After all, there are lots of them to choose from, aren't there?

If there aren't, why not?

The 800 pound gorilla in the room wears a black turtleneck and Levi's.

I just dont see the reasons you or steve say that Flash is no good. Its always worked just fine for me, our company, even my wife who isnt tech savvy. I actually like it for things like youtube, hulu, farmville, and games like that. I dont think the reasons steve or u guys say it is bad are really true, its like you just hate it to begin with and have a chip on your shoulder. Then you make up reasons to hate it. Flash , silverlight whatever they seem to have their purpose and the html youtube version isnt as good. I dont want to download apps from itunes for things i have been getting on the web. Apple is cool but this flash chip on their shoulder is not

seangw wrote:
... I truly believe you should let end users decide.

Looks like the market is way ahead of them:

After looking at Symantecs 2009 report I can say that Steve also couldve said that among Symantecs list of vulnerabilites Flash rated 2nd most secure, followed by our own QuickTime... And Im betting theyre both due to the Windows versions which doesnt even affect us on Macs.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20002879-245.html

Youtube has already started moving away from Flash. Hulu is reported to be working on an app for the iPhone/iPad that doesn't use Flash. Farmville is also working on porting their game to the iPhone/iPad.

I dislike Flash because it burns through my MB battery in no time. It also ***** up all my CPU cycles, winds the fan up on my MB to keep the processor cool and grabs as much RAM as it can.

I really don't hate Falsch any more than I hate the influenza virus. There is nothing inherently "good" or "bad" in either. They merely exist.

What I hate are their effects. To wit,

crashy, buggy, CPU-hogging, bandwidth-sucking, battery-killing ...

Yeah, I've never experienced buggy Flash sites any differently than buggy HTML sites. Flash just works for me.

The HTML-only version of youtube isn't as good as the regular one that uses flash. And I really don't want to download an app for everything I do with Flash on the web, but I understand how it makes business sense for Apple to kill things that might be alternatives to iTunes music, app, & movie store. I just disagree with it.

I really think you guys have a chip on your shoulder, and would make-up anything to put Flash down. But Steve has the same chip on his shoulder, so you're in good company. I think its a bad move especially since Flash is going to be on the other smartphones. Our iphones arent the only game in town anymore, Android looks pretty equal, although I wish iphone had widgets like Android. And windows phone 7 looks impressive though Ive only seen it in videos.

Perhaps Adobe will now be sufficiently challenged to make its product run reliably on the cross-platform market it seeks. This may or may not happen, but if it does the result will benefit everyone.

John, I'd love to quote your entire post (it's very coherent), but was particularly drawn in by this statement. Ultimately, Apple's reluctance to include Flash will (hopefully) encourage Adobe to try and make Flash more dependable on all platforms.

Adobe's prerogative should be to address these complaints now; otherwise they risk losing further market share as more and more developers embrace HTML5 (which is great anyway). Personally I'm surprised by the fact that Narayen will not at least acknowledge concerns raised against the stability and CPU usage of the Flash plugin. Incredible.

Yeah, I've never experienced buggy Flash sites any differently than buggy HTML sites. Flash just works for me.

Buggy sites are one thing, but most sites utilising Flash do use an exorbitant amount of CPU cycles. To demonstrate this, I disabled [ClickToFlash|http://clicktoflash.com> and played a video on YouTube. Just allowing the main video to play in the Flash player increased the CPU usage from 1.4% to 44%. When I disabled ClickToFlash entirely, *CPU usage increased to as much as 60%* !

!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4012/4565605087_825415478a.jpg!

(See the full size photo [here|http://www.flickr.com/photos/snkhan/4565605087>). This was not a carefully orchestrated demonstration of Flash CPU usage; please try this yourself by bringing up activity monitor and playing a video on YouTube. Bear in mind that I have an iMac with a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM. Now consider how Flash would perform on a mobile handset with limited power, limited RAM and a less powerful processor!

Julian Wright wrote:

Battery life? Why not let end users make that decision.

Because clueless users would simply blame Apple that their device doesn't live up to the battery life claims.

Right. As if apps from the App Store don't drain your battery. Only Flash drains batteries quickly? Again: Apple's excuses don't make sense.

OS Lucinity wrote:
The HTML-only version of youtube isn't as good as the regular one that uses flash.

Agreed. And just wait until Player 10.1 is released. It will use both the CPU and GPU to play HD video on devices that previously could not play HD. It will also render animations with less load on the CPU. This will apply to all platforms:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/gpu-acceleration-in-the-next-flash-pl ayer/

In sum, it will blow HTML 5 away. (Flash already blows it away, in my opinion, but the gap will widen considerably.)