In a recent letter from Steve Jobs, he posts a self-aggrandizing letter to give debating fuel for his fans and to slap Adobe in the face! You can read the article here: Thoughts On Flash. His solution? Everyone switch to HTML5! Here’s my take on it.

Is It Really About Technology?

Besides the Mac drones out there, you know, the people that are so brainwashed by Apple that they treat Steve Jobs like the messiah of technology, how many people really accept Jobs’s word for it? Jobs gives 6 reasons:

1. Open: Jobs complains about how Flash is 100% proprietary to Adobe… Ahem, aren’t you the CEO of the dictatorial company that prides itself on proprietary software? Maybe I’m mistaken. Steve Jobs you can send me my copy of the iPhone operating system source code to chris@YoureABigFatHypocrite. I’m sorry Jobs but your arguement holds little weight here coming from you. I do wish Flash was “open” but you both lose this one.
2. Full Web: Jobs counters Adobe’s claim that the iPhone is missing out on the “full web” because 75% of videos online are in Flash. He states that YouTube has an app so what’s the big deal?… I still can’t watch Hulu so I side with Adobe.

   Jobs also counters the no-flash-games by saying there are over 50,000 games in the app store… so? There are so many games I can’t play on the iPhone. It doesn’t cost me $99 to post a Flash game on the internet and there is no censoring either! Adobe wins in this category. Sorry, Jobs.

3. Reliability, Security, and Performance: Symantec has pointed out security issues with Flash and I can understand that Jobs doesn’t want to open iPhones to security issues.

   The reliability claim is that Flash frequently crashes Macs. To me it’s a Mac problem since it runs on Linux and flawlessly on PCs.

   Performance? It’s true, Flash isn’t as smooth on my smart phone as it is on my 3Ghz i7 but that will be a moot point as smart phones get better technology.

4. Battery Life: Jobs complains that most of the Flash videos out there are in an older generation format which requires software decoding that would suck up a lot of the iPhone’s battery. Ok, that’s fine, older videos take up more battery life. That’s a problem of the developers and not of Flash. He doesn’t mention anything about the affect of Flash games on battery life.
5. Touch: Jobs complains that “many” Flash applications rely on mouseover… You need some numbers to back that up. Most Flash games I’ve played don’t or if they do you can still click on the mouseover to achieve an acceptable result.
6. Touch: Jobs complains that “many” Flash applications rely on mouseover… You need some numbers to back that up. Most Flash games I’ve played don’t or if they do you can still click on the mouseover to achieve an acceptable result.
7. Most Importantly “We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.“… Jobs… I’m sorry but being at the mercy of a first party is WORSE than being at the mercy of a third party. When people find a third party to be difficult or not working in some fashion someone comes up with a better third party. Wasn’t it your company that included bluetooth in the iTouch but didn’t release the capability of it until after people payed for an upgrade?!

Jobs, I’m sorry but your arguments failed to persuade me. This video sums up exactly how I felt after reading your letter:

My conclusion about his “it’s about technology” statement: A big load of crap. It’s all about business, Jobs wanting to increase propriety on his products, increase the number of developers, and increase app store sales.

Agree to Disagree?

It’s true that Flash has its down sides. It’s not perfect but my life revolves around it. I don’t think I could go a single day without Flash. Today I watched the Happy Town premiere on Hulu (Flash). I went to YouTube (Flash) and watched a couple dozen videos to find the right one for this post. It’s hard to get away from Flash and until there is a suitable alternative, I won’t.

“I firmly believe that Flash, despite being closed and proprietary, deserves a place on every smartphone platform because its Just That Darn Good™” says Brian Lacy of Cache Interactive. I agree. There is no rival when it comes to functionality and how widespread it is. According to Adobe’s site 99% of all web users have Flash.

Jobs did have a solution, though, we should all use HTML5 which is supposed to be open. Funny thing is some of the tags used in HTML5 are currently proprietary software of Apple! Not so selfless are you Jobs?

HTML5 to replace Flash?

Maybe, but not anytime soon. Ian Hickson of Google, Inc. is the editor of HTML5. He “expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later.” Flash has a HUGE head start.

The Solution

I say pit Jobs and Adobe in a one-on-one slap fest until one of them gives up!