Steve Jobs speaks about Flash

[Brandon Kraemer]

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Pretty straight forward... thought it was interesting enough to pass along. He makes some very valid points and it will be interesting if there is a formal response from Adobe. As a mostly Mac user, I like this open approach by Jobs to explain what is up at Apple, the public responses to emails especially. Thought this was interesting given the flash vs. h.264 "wars" that seem to be going on.

bk

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

HTML 5 is the future of content delivery on the web.

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Interesting that Jobs doesn't even mention iMacs, MacBooks or MacPros.

Um, because those already support Flash and he's defending why iPads, Ipods and iphones don't ADD that support (since they dont have it now)

 

[Martin Weiss]

Shawn, you managed to respond in those 5 seconds it took me from writing my post, posting it, reading it, realizing my mistake and deleting the post again.

You just scored yourself 10 points for keyboard skills

 

[Ketch Rossi]

HTML 5 is the future of content delivery on the web.

Agree, and in my recent research for my web sites, I found that almost every site offering Flash Templates, started my MBP overdrive, very demanding, or very slow.

 

[MichaelHalsell]

Why such a public and thorough comment on the part of Apple?

 

[michael zaletel]

"Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind. - Steve Jobs - April, 2010"

Ouch.

-michael zaletel

 

[Kwan Khan]

I strongly believe that mobile phones and tablets are different categories and there should be some authoring software to produce content for tablets. As for me, Flash is a great choice here. But if Flash is rejected, what Apple can offer?

 

[Eirik Tyrihjel]

There is a hidden agenda here, I am sure, wheter it is Apple or Adobe who is to blame I have no idea. But the fact is that us the that use the iphone suffers from it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Uh, makes perfect sense to me...

FLASH is a proprietary system that is terribly inefficient and outdated. HTML5 is a completely open format that does not lock site builders and content providers into using tools provided by a single company. Adobe had their time with FLASH and it's time to move on. People talk about how flash causes their Macbooks to go into overdrive. It does the same thing on PC's, FLASH is a terribly inefficient resource hog. I personally would not want FLASH churning away on my iPhone, sucking up the battery and definitely not running along-side other apps once we get multitasking in a few months.

Already quoted by Michael a couple posts back, but I have to re-quote it here:
"Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind. - Steve Jobs - April, 2010"

I'm in complete agreement and have been thinking this for a while now. It's too late for the impending CS5 release, but I'm thinking FLASH CS6 could become the ultimate HTML5 development environment if Adobe were to embrace the open format and run with it. They are the market leader and in perfect position to capture this emerging market. ...Just sayin. If they don't, someone else will. And whining about it isn't going to help anyone. Apple has made their stance and it makes no sense for Adobe to resist this when there are now around 90-million iPhone OS devices in use now and continuously growing.

I think the only people who have anything to complain about are those with existing web sites that depend on FLASH for content delivery. They are now caught in a situation where they need to migrate to HTML5 for this content and will have to maintain both FLASH and HTML5 implementations for the time being until HTML5 support is more widespread. IE9 is in beta now and should be available to the masses in June. Many other browsers already support it along with webkit extensions.

 

[Rick Burnett]

It would be nice if HTML5 was more supported, cause from what I see, or could find, it didn't appear to be supported on too many browsers yet.

Try this site:

http://html5test.com/

For me in Safari 4, I scored 115/160

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

I wish Steve Jobs would post "Thoughts on Final Cut Pro" or "Thoughts on R3D Support" -- now that would be interesting...

 

[Bruce Allen]

So what can you actually do with HTML5?

Yes, I hate Flash, but if Steve bans cross-platform 3D game engines too, it'd suck. There is a strong need for an easy way to make next-generation content that takes advantage of the fancy 3D acceleration in the devices we already own.

To me all of these "next generation iPad magazines" with pre-rendered animations are missing the boat. The future is interactive 3D. Not bad-looking VRML or something. Nice game-quality 3D engines delivering responsive interfaces that run in 3D. Metal buttons have environment maps and listen to the motion sensor so that if you tilt the iPad, the reflection changes.

I really hope Apple doesn't ban Unreal Engine, Unity3D or Shiva. Because there's no way in hell I'm writing my own OpenGL engine, physics engine, etc from scratch.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

I wish Steve Jobs would post "Thoughts on Final Cut Pro" or "Thoughts on R3D Support" -- now that would be interesting...

He has... well, in some regards...

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/14/steve-jobs-responds-to-customers-email-about-final-cut-pro/

 

[Rick Burnett]

So what can you actually do with HTML5?

Yes, I hate Flash, but if Steve bans cross-platform 3D game engines too, it'd suck. There is a strong need for an easy way to make next-generation content that takes advantage of the fancy 3D acceleration in the devices we already own.

To me all of these "next generation iPad magazines" with pre-rendered animations are missing the boat. The future is interactive 3D. Not bad-looking VRML or something. Nice game-quality 3D engines delivering responsive interfaces that run in 3D. Metal buttons have environment maps and listen to the motion sensor so that if you tilt the iPad, the reflection changes.

I really hope Apple doesn't ban Unreal Engine, Unity3D or Shiva. Because there's no way in hell I'm writing my own OpenGL engine, physics engine, etc from scratch.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

An engine designed for a high power computer or game system doesn't always scale well to low power dedicated hardware solutions. I am absolutely amazed at the openGL architecture on the iPhone. There are already a number of 3D engines available now from what I understand (I have an App in the App store, but it doesn't use any 3D).

I doubt apple is going to ban an API as you are free to use whatever API's you want. That said, you do have memory restrictions that limit what can be ported easily.

I've ported many routines from other OSX apps and UNIX (written on Red Hat) to work in my apps that I've been developing.

 

[Bruce Allen]

An engine designed for a high power computer or game system doesn't always scale well to low power dedicated hardware solutions. I am absolutely amazed at the openGL architecture on the iPhone. There are already a number of 3D engines available now from what I understand (I have an App in the App store, but it doesn't use any 3D).

Look at Unity - it was used to make Top 10 games on the App Store.

However:
1. there is an Android version coming (Steve's got to hate the idea of people being able to write an app that works on both platforms)
2. it uses C# as the internal scripting language (against new iPhone SDK rules).

There are a lot of people worried right now. I imagine that if they repackage it as a set of libraries, you can get around things but still... if Steve really wants to ban cross-platform development tools (which is what he says is the #1 reason for banning Flash), then it'll be gone.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[J Davis]

HTML 5 is the future of content delivery on the web.

Sorry Mark but I have to disagree. The <video></video> tag in HTML5 places the onus of decoding the codec on the browser not on a proprietary plugin. You of all people know how many codecs are out there and how often they change. Before h264 it was on2 and h264 won't be the last. Do you really think the browsers are going to pay the licensing on each and every codec?
Firefox and explorer are not paying which is why html5 h264 will not play on those browsers.

IMO there is great power and flexibilty of browsers using proprietary plugins. Namely because technology changes so fast that it is impractle to expect the browser to handle the entirety of it and stay up to date.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Look at Unity - it was used to make Top 10 games on the App Store.

However:
1. there is an Android version coming (Steve's got to hate the idea of people being able to write an app that works on both platforms)
2. it uses C# as the internal scripting language (against new iPhone SDK rules).

There are a lot of people worried right now. I imagine that if they repackage it as a set of libraries, you can get around things but still... if Steve really wants to ban cross-platform development tools (which is what he says is the #1 reason for banning Flash), then it'll be gone.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Well given this:

"We know from painful experience that 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. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms. - Steve Jobs - Excerpt"

I see what you mean. That is troubling. I do understand what Steve is saying, because I've been waiting for an update to the software package I write in called Max/MSP for two years now that has not implemented changes to their video playback system that Apple fixed a long time ago.

The problem I have is that while it is true what he says, it's also not completely true either. Common libraries that encapsulate enhanced features get people to market faster. The proof of this is their own Cocoa API itself. It also provides some variety. Some coding solutions provide enhanced solutions for different problems.

But, my translation to what he says is this. If we aren't careful, someone is going to make an API that is cross platform, might not be efficient, and if every one starts using it, their performance will degrade on the iPhone or not offer the latest optimizations.

It will be interesting to see what happens. One thing I will say is that the interface model on the iPhone does not support what FLASH needs completely. There is no pointer, so there is no concept of mouse in mouse out events. Even if the iPhone had FLASH, the mechanism for a lot of the code out there would have usability issues.

While I despise Flash, I still don't see a replacement in anything they've given for embedded applications on the web. I disagree with them completely on this front and believe they are hindering advancement on the web. Sure, playing videos is one thing, but I think the future is also in smarter web pages that have protected proprietary code, and things like JavaScript cannot work for that, it's unprotected IP.

I also own an iPhone and I really like it, I'm not locked in for life. I've used the Android, and it's nice, but I think it does need some refining. Maybe with the next OS revision and 4G phones I'll reconsider.

 

[Paul Leeming]

If Apple really wanted to support open standards they'd support Ogg Vorbis and Theora, among others.

Not to mention the pot calling the kettle black. ProRes anyone? Oh sorry, can't make that unless you own a Mac.

Apple is all about proprietary and locked in platform technology.... as long as it's Apple's platform.

Disingenuous Steve....

 

[Nick D]

King Jobs

King Jobs

There is a hidden agenda here, I am sure, wheter it is Apple or Adobe who is to blame I have no idea. But the fact is that us the that use the iphone suffers from it.

HaHa... poor King Steve Jobs is self-serving and only interested in market share, and is grasping at straws here to try and convince everyone that everything other than APPLE HARDWARE with their software of choice is insufficient... dare I say hubris?

Jump because he is pushing a rock-stiff ipad to replace paper?
What about flexible OLED for $499? Then, we're talking game on...

I was one of the 0.001% lucky souls who used a NexT computer at University, and if anything, Steve's a great showman, but not visionary here, unless HIS COMPANY opens up to cross-platform development...

As if Apple develops bleeding edge software or hardware?
More user-friendly fashionable MP-3 players. computers and phones- Yes, but... Hello? Blu-ray, USB 3, shall we go on...

Final Cut, Logic, Mac and Macbook Pro Hardware now a generation behind or twice the price...
c'mon Steve, $270 a share not good enough for you?
What happened to building better multimedia computers, gave in to Intel for good?

2 things for Apple zealots to always watch out for...

1. Steve Jobs obituary (either he or Warren Buffet first, but I have a suspicion there's body parts or a clones stock-pile for them somewhere...)

2. HP or Google will eat some of their lunch soon as they lose focus, certainly better than Palm ever could...

Easy down Steve, back to our meds, both of us, that is...