Steve Jobs: "Flash is no longer necessary, html5 is the future.", Microsoft&Google agrees.

[Mayareira]

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...s-260x1901.jpg

Pretty bad day for Adobe I suppose, almost the entire industry seems to have focused on html5 now and it looks quite impressive (see googleblog&msdn ie blog at the bottom of the post)

Jobs responded directly from apple website after Adobe released a statement regarding Apple.

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

Steve Jobs has just posted a long open letter on Flash, listing all the reasons why Apple has decided not to support it on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

The letter is a clear, sober, in-depth view in all of Flash’s defects from Apple’s point of view, and while we’re sure it will be dissected over and over again in the upcoming days (especially the part about Flash not being open), you have to admire its frankness.

In short, Steve Jobs claims Flash drains the battery of mobile devices; it’s not very good for multi-touch operation; and its performance, reliability and security are all shoddy. It’s also a proprietary system, and while Jobs admits that their mobile OS is also proprietary, he claims that web standards should be open, like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

Most importantly Apple doesn’t want “a third party layer of software [to] come between the platform and the developer.” Finally, Jobs concludes, Flash is a relic. “Flash was created during the PC era –- for PCs and mice,” he says, “but the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards –- all areas where Flash falls short.”

Here’s the full text of the letter:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store (App Store) – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

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. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google (Google) and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari (Safari) web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android (Android)’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube (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 (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.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu (Blu)-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, 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.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome (Chrome) without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

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?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

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.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

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.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

And just one day after...


Microsoft: HTML5, not Flash, is the future of the web

Yesterday was a bad day for Adobe. Following plaintive complaints that the App Store was not an “open” development environment, Steve Jobs himself saw fit to write down his thoughts on Flash, lambasting the popular web API for being buggy, closed and unsuited to the mobile web.

You expect that sort of talk from Apple, who has made no bones about their distaste for Flash in the last few months, but now Microsoft is getting in on the act… not exactly an expected development from these two long time rivals.

Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Internet Explorer, used Jobs’ thoughts on Flash as a springboard to express Microsoft’s own official position… and it’s not too different from Apple’s. According to Hachamovitch, Microsoft views HTML5 was the future of the web, specifically praising its ability to allow content to be played without plug-ins and with native hardware acceleration in multiple operating systems. He also praises H.264 as the best video codec out there.

Then Hachamovitch turns his attention to Flash, agreeing with Jobs that Flash’s “reliability, security and performance” are not up to snuff. Unlike Jobs, Microsoft feels that Flash is important to a user’s experience on today’s web, but he doesn’t see it as the future.

The two biggest names in tech are now against Adobe. It’s just not looking good for Flash, is it?

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/201...ml5-video.aspx

And finally...

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/...-quake-ii.html



html5 Quake 2 running on a browser.

[Yabby]

HTML5 has been building speed for a while now, only a matter of time really.

[Minions]

HTML5 is fine concept, the transition of most web pages will take the next 3-4 years though, and even then older websites will still not load that use flash. Still will suck for things that only do HTML5 video in the short term.

[Atreides]

ive always wondered what it would be like to play quake II at 15 frames per second

[Mayareira]

ive always wondered what it would be like to play quake II at 15 frames per second

Looong long ago, in a galaxy far far away I was stuck with a 386dx with 8 megs of RAM. I was obsessed with [Link removed], and finished the game by literally running it at 10~ FPS.

Don't let the review grade fool you, it was a great game.

Same with Quake 1&2 (2 refused to run on 386, had to wait until I upgraded to a 486)....uh, and Carmageddon. I played Carmageddon by lowering the resolution (back then, this'd drop the screen size down to the size of your thumb).

Good times.

[Kaisha]

486? Christ, Quake2 ran bad enough my Pentium1 w/ 100mhz running 16mb ram. (not to mention long loading)

Only problem I'm still seeing with HTML5 are licensed formats becoming the standard for video/audio playback. h264 is still not implemented in Firefox due to Mozilla being against formats that involve $$$.

[Deadgye]

I personally don't like apple, but I can't disagree with them here. I like HTML5 more than flash, even though licensed formats are evil.

[Shenrien]

[Link removed]
Good times.

oh my god, I remember this game, it was back when doom was the most amazing thing ever, and everyone was making rip-off copys of the game, it was the answer for the people who could not afford doom lol.

[Julian]

Oh the irony

[Mayareira]

oh my god, I remember this game, it was back when doom was the most amazing thing ever, and everyone was making rip-off copys of the game, it was the answer for the people who could not afford doom lol.

It was one of the best games ever made...level design was phenomenal and the[Link removed] was just as good as the first one (one of the best looking/fun FPS's...ever.). Sadly, medieval shooter games somewhat shared the same fate with icon adventure games. Apart of a couple of games like Thief there hasn't been any decent one eversince. Excluding RPG/FPS breeds like Elder Scrolls of course.

I still play them today, Doomsday Engine allows you to run them at higher resolutions and they look quite impressive.

486? Christ, Quake2 ran bad enough my Pentium1 w/ 100mhz running 16mb ram. (not to mention long loading)

Carmageddon was worse, I finished the entire game by playing it at the lowest resolution (ghetto gameboy screen yo).

[Kaisha]

Man, I had such good memories of Carmageddon, one of the very few racing games I played right to the end.

[QuePsiXI]

Carmageddon...
Marry me Mayareira. You can even cheat on me with porn stars and 6s and I won't hit you with a golf club.

[Correction]

Am I the only one who caught the hypocrisy in crowing about 'open standards' in one paragraph then saying 'everyone's gonna use H.264 (a royalty-laden, patented, closed codec) anyway so who needs flash?' in the next?

[Not Kuno]

Cool vid with the html 5. Also I can't believe anyone else played Heretic/Hexen. lol

[Senoska]

Html5 is good but I still stand by it not being a flash killer. Apple is against flash, not because it's better, but because it makes their app store absolutely useless. Apple is all about money in this situation. They're trying to cover their ass by acting like they're doing us a favor. Flash is a good format for certain things, such as animation or content delivery. While HTML5 may take over some larger sites like youtube, I have a hard time believing smaller apps & sites will make the switch as well.

Honestly you've got no reason to hate on Flash like you do. There are a few problems here but nothing like apple is trying to say.

[Kirb]

I was reading about this a few days ago.

Apple's position misses the point. Sure, HTML5 is superior to flash in a lot of ways, but people don't care about what will be implemented as the standard in 5-10 years, they want what is the standard right now. Ian Hickson, the editor of the HTML 5 specification, stated that he expects the HTML5 final draft to be complete in 2022. Various places will take advantage of HTML5 a few years earlier than that, to be sure, but still, that's a hell of a timeline. Apple is just covering their ass while trying to look like they're doing everyone a favor.

Clients and consumers don't care about what's going to be usable in the future, they care about right now. And right now, Flash is used a hell of a lot.
Crippling web access by not enabling flash support on the ipad and various other products just pisses people off and wasn't a smart move, regardless of how well it's optimized for mobile units. Disabling flash on their products doesn't mean that they can't also use HTML5.

Looking forward to messing with HTML5, by the way.

[Senoska]

Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store (App Store) – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Whoops! Guess we forgot about being hypocrites.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary

Still forgetting about being hypocrites.

If we just put our fingers in our ears and yell louder than everyone, maybe this bullshit will become true!

[Kirb]

I thought that's how Apple usually goes about things.

Pissing off Adobe is a really bad move for Apple, not the other way around. Adobe is a key player in visual entertainment industry standards, Apple, as a platform, isn't a standard for anything but Music/Sound engineering apps and arguably Final Cut Pro. They were already on bad terms when Adobe didn't give the OSX a x64 version of Photoshop in the CS4 suite, and I don't see this whole debacle sweetening their relationship.

Cool vid with the html 5. Also I can't believe anyone else played Heretic/Hexen. lol

For the longest time I thought I was the only one that had ever played Hexen.

[Mayareira]

I thought that's how Apple usually goes about things.

Pissing off Adobe is a really bad move for Apple, not the other way around. Adobe is a key player in visual entertainment industry standards, Apple, as a platform, isn't a standard for anything but Music/Sound engineering apps and arguably Final Cut Pro. They were already on bad terms when Adobe didn't give the OSX a x64 version of Photoshop in the CS4 suite, and I don't see this whole debacle sweetening their relationship.




For the longest time I thought I was the only one that had ever played Hexen.

Cutting support on a system that around half of your sales are tied on, just because their CEO criticized a product of yours is an incredibly, unbelievably, ooonga moongaly bad idea. Not only it would tarnish your corporate image beyond any repairable point, and tag you as a loser, it would also cause an irrepairable blow on the profits. Millions of companies/businesses/schools out there invested on Mac systems and they won't simply say "aight, we'll switch". They'll fuck adobe in the ass.

Possibility of Adobe ceasing development of CS for OS X is 0.00%. Industry doesn't work this way, and typical teenager "omg give my candy back" attitude would return as a nail to your coffin.

Carmageddon...
Marry me Mayareira. You can even cheat on me with porn stars and 6s and I won't hit you with a golf club.

http://thegamereviews.com/userfiles/...ddon/splat.jpg

hang on to yer helmet.

[Kirb]

Never said anything about cutting support, that would be stupid.

But I don't doubt that Windows is gradually being focused on first, nowadays, because over the years, OSX lost its niche as the multimedia OS king as Windows and Linux gained power and stability. In any case, it's not smart for either company to bicker over this sort of thing, when both depend on each other for sales. I don't really think Apple has the stranglehold you think it does on Adobe. It's more like they're choking each other at the same time.

Half of their sales are on OSX only? You have actual stats on that, doesn't sound right.