Rocking Team

Steve Jobs just posted a long newsletter on the Apple website title Thoughts on Flash explaining the exclusion of Flash from Apple products like iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Steve Jobs mainly pointed out six reasons why Apple products don;t use Adobe Flash

1. Open

In the letter he says “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary.” Proprietary mean computer software which is neither free nor open source. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. He claims web standards should be open, like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

2. Full Web

Accessing the full web includes videos and games. Adobe says more than 75% of videos in web are flash. But Steve Jobs claims that all these videos are also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

“YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.”

3. Reliability, Security and Performance

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. He also says Flash is the number one reason for the Macs crash



4. Battery Life

The mobile era is about low power devices. To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. The video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

5. Touch

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers.

6. Finally, Adobe is a third party

Most importantly Apple doesn’t want “a third party layer of software (to) come between the platform and the developer.” Letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

And atlast Steve Concludes “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”