It's no secret that Steve Jobs is no
fan of Adobe Flash -- Jobs basically kneecapped
Flash development tools with iPhone OS 4.0. In addition, Jobs has
long said that Flash on Mac computers is slow, buggy, and an
incredible
resource hog.
We all thought that the relationship
between Apple and Adobe was beginning to thaw a bit when Apple
announced that it
would make hardware acceleration APIs available to developers like
Adobe. That lead the way for yesterday's
announcement of Flash Player 10.1 "Gala" for OS X which
provides hardware acceleration of H.264 video content on Macs with
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, or GeForce GT 330M GPUs.
But that isn't quite the end of the
story. In fact, Steve Jobs has even more to say about Adobe Flash in
the form of an open letter entitled "Thoughts on Flash".
Jobs' long-winded rant goes on about the fact that Adobe Flash is
proprietary; HTML5 is a better, open solution; the fact that Flash is
a security risk to Mac computers; and that Adobe Flash simply eats
away battery life on notebook computers (among other things).
Here's a blurb on Adobe Flash being
proprietary:
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.
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. Rather than use Flash, Apple
has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s
mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power
implementations of these open standards.
And here's another section with regards
to Adobe Flash and its interaction with touch-based devices:
Flash was
designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For
example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up
menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific
spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a
mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites
will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If
developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern
technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
Jobs concludes, saying, "Flash was
created during the PC era – for PCs and mice… But the mobile era
is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards –
all areas where Flash falls short."
"New open standards created in the
mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too),"
Jobs adds. "Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great
HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving
the past behind."
The fight between Adobe and Apple is
definitely not over and we'll just have to sit back and wait to see
what Adobe's response to Jobs will be.
For those that want to read the full
letter, head on over to Apple's website.
