The way Steve Jobs has been talking lately, you'd think that Flash was Steve Urkel -- some 90's has-been that was entertaining while it lasted but is no longer relevant. Well, I for one don't believe the hype. Contrary to Jobs, Flash is alive and well all over the Internet and remains the choice of millions of game and web developers.
Jobs' months long public feud with Adobe reached new heights last week when he posted an open letter explaining Apple's continued blocking of Flash on its iPad, iPod and iPhone products. And while many of his arguments may sound logical, they're also extremely hypocritical.
According to Jobs, "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." Sure, but isn't that the same way Apple's iTunes works?
He then goes on to say "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." OK, so where does Quicktime, Apple's plugin for video viewing, fit in then? Per Apple.com, "more than 25,000 Web sites refer customers to the QuickTime download every day. Every one from auto sites, musicians, the BBC, and the best movie trailer site on the Web uses QuickTime and increases its distribution." Sounds like a product positioning itself as a "web standard" to me.
The fact is that while Apple remains the golden child of next gen hardware development, they are not the only option -- or even the most popular one. In fact Apple's mobile OS still trails Blackberry's RIM, with Android gaining market share daily. And Android's latest OS (2.2) will support Flash, which means that all Android-powered tablets (which are likely to hit the market in the next few months) will allow users to view Flash-based websites, play hundreds of thousands of games and view Flash video without seeing that annoying blue Lego.
Apple may currently be winning the battle, but if they continue to shut out ubiquitous technologies, closed or not, they may lose the war.
Follow Jessica Rovello on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ArkadiumGames
If Apple owned Flash, Jobso would be up there pimpin' Flash as the greatest thing EVAR.
Something similar has been approached, but until recently been never realized in the new world of data handling.
But Apple, always fiercely defended by its ultra-loyal devoted partisans, has seemingly managed to create its own "company store," successfully selling one data handling device to which it totally controls normal access, the iPhone, and now presumably, the iPad.
Many now look with growing disappointment at the company's restrictions on outside resources, and its censorship or suppression of software it finds objectionable -- sometimes disgracefully on purely competitive business grounds.
Certainly, Apple has the right to sell what it wishes in its own stores, but preventing others from selling software to its products? That's precisely the 21st century update of the "company store." And forbidding outside developers to speak out about their relations with Apple -- is this not Big Brother in action?
When commentators have been critical on this point, Apple devotees have responded: "It's a company, and they can do what they want."
Monopoly avoidance is an important public policy.
Perhaps Apple's "company store" policy can be voided, because Apple does have a quasi-monopoly, established by its restrictive operating systems, over the hardware universe it has pioneered.
in the old 19th century railways. it fits perfectly also.
Ther are in fact a lot of authoring tools that can produce SWF output. Many of them are inexpensive. Yes they aren't as full featured as Adobe's authoring tool, but that is like saying that JPG files are Adobe proprietary off because Photoshop has more features than other image editors.
It boils down to one simple thing: Apple will never support Flash because you can to pretty much do everything you would want to do in an app with Flash but not have to pay iTunes 30 cents on the dollar.
And even if Flash is 'old' so what? There are a lot of 'old' standards that every browser manufacturer supports specifically because there is a large installed base.
There are plenty of Youtube videos I've seen personally of HTML5 in action on the Ipad and still the fruit company product comes up weak and inept. They don't ever take responsibility for anything they cannot do or cannot do well. The fault is always of others and for others to solve.
Good column Jessica Rovello
when one contemplates the 1000000 ipad buyers out there who are now stuck with their toy
and have to shell out for basic paraphernalia like cameras, adapters, etc. Perhaps the number of
cases of buyer's remore is more than 500000 given the Flash neglect alone. It's going to lead
to a lot of arguments at the kitchen table over whose fault it is, who was it that failed to heed
the ancient warning.................................now synonomous with Apple: BUYER BEWARE
For years now you could run 64-bit applications in OS X, yet only now has Adobe updated Photoshop to take advantage of that....and if there's one program that could benefit from being 64-bit, it's certainly Photoshop. Apple doesn't want to be tied down to the whims of wither or not Adobe will keep updating Flash for the iPad (if it ever came to mobile devices that is...so far it's still in development and not really released yet).
But it's very simple, if you want to have your application run on Apple's device, just follow their rules. If you feel these rules are too restrictive or hamper your creativity...then feel free to go develop on some other platform. There are a myriad of other devices out there other than the iPhone and iPad. Go, ply thy magic elsewhere and be happy! Apple isn't the only game in town. They don't have a monopoly. But it's their toy and their playground. If you want to play in their playground, follow the playground rules. Otherwise go play somewhere else.
Still, you say, I can use QuickTime, hardly a web standard which W3C recognizes or that HTML5's media tags are ready for prime time yet.
Oh yeah, I forgot. QuickTime is propreitary, is updated when and how Apple gets around to it, has enough DRM in it to bloat the hell out of it and often doesn't run well on Windows or Linux. But it's good enough cause it's a Apple product.
We all know that this is really "Steve Jobs Control Freak" and has little or nothing to do with technical details and everything to do with "it ain't Apple so you can't use it".
Perhaps Jobs should shut his mouth about openness as long as he isn't interested in practising what he preaches.
No one is forcing anyone to use Flash. It would merely be a part of the ecosystem. And if it doesn't work well then users won't go near it. If WebKit extensions which aren't a part of the open standard (yet) and may never be work then use them. Let the best implementation win.
Otherwise we have Steve Jobs Control Freak to fall back on and little else.
"Flash doesn't work well for apple, HTML5 does." Here ya go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4