Re: "Thoughts on Flash," by Steve Jobs
Apple has no business complaining about "open" when the only reason Flash cannot work on iPhones and iPads is because Apple has so closed off the hardware that it doesn't allow third party applications; Flash may be proprietary, but at least Adobe doesn't tell you what Flash animations will or will not run on the platform; permitting Weebl and Bob but banning Homestar Runner.
If Apple calls Adobe 100% proprietary, Apple is beyond that 100% mark to around 200% - proprietary software may prevent third party additions to the source code and an exclusive monopoly on selling the product itself, but they don't prevent you from running other people's software! Microsoft Word is 100% proprietary, but Open Office will run on any system where MS Word resides. Microsoft and Apple are fierce competitors, but Safari and iTunes Player will run on Windows.
In fact, I can't think of a major player in the tech market so determined to tie software to hardware sales. Apple's Macintosh OS is applauded for it's stability and UI; but is limited to the overpriced Apple hardware. There's no technical reason for this - enthusiasts have been running Macintosh OS on standard hardware - but it requires circumvention of the Apple firmware which does nothing but check that MacOS is running on Apple hardware.
On top of this, Apple used to have a customizable "PowerMac" line of desktop computers, with interchangeable hardware, including graphics cards, monitors, RAM, hard drives, etc. (A good thing too, because the graphics card in my PowerMac back in 2003 burnt out after 18 months!) This left only the Imac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacPro lines - of the four, only MacPro has any sort of customizable (or repairable!) hardware.
What really gets me is the ultimate gall of Apple in suggesting that "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."
This is a bald-faced lie.
The reason that Flash became the de-facto standard for Web video is mostly because Adobe didn't limit what people could do with Flash, nor charge extra for Flash-servers or flash-embedding technology. You bought the software and you could do whatever you want with it. Flash provided a technical solution to the problem of "how to embed video on the Web." Indeed, the open standards of HTML5 were established in response to the previously unknown demands for Web video that Flash uncovered simply by being "open" enough to not limit programmers from solving that problem!
But there was another program, I remember, before Flash, that sought to bring video to the Internet. I believe it was called "QuickTime." And it was proprietary as hell, requiring expensive server hardware to stream effectively. Additionally, all it did was play video; one of the advantages of Flash over Quicktime was that it enabled video to interact with animation, hyperlinks, Web commands, Javascript - it was far, far more "open" than Quicktime ever was.
Quicktime never took off for Web video except on Apple's own trailer page, despite, it seems, being one of the de facto standards for video in the professional market at the time Web video was taking off. In fact, any embedding Web site, such as YouTube, Vimeo, ExposureRoom, etc., will *convert* files uploaded in QuickTime to a more open format of H.264.
This is not to say that Flash is without flaws. It is proprietary software and thus is a poor standard for the Web. As it stands, however, it *is* a standard, precisely because Flash came to the scene first and in many ways, developed the demand. The best HTML5/Canvas can do is play catch-up, as developers of Web animation already know how to use Flash - and use it quite well. In fact, the main problem with HTML5/Canvas is that Flash comes with quite an awesome *visual tool for editing Flash* - the Flash application.
In fact, the Flash development application could, with relatively minor changes, be used to export HTML5/Canvas instead of Flash format animations. Maybe that'll be in CS5 or CS6 - I don't know. I do know that if Adobe thought there was demand for it, they'd put it in before someone else made an HTML5/Canvas visual editing tool - lest it cut into Adobe's Creative Suite sales.
For Apple, Final Cut Pro is a standard in filmmaking and video editing; simply because Cinelerra isn't good enough yet. For Adobe, The Gimp can do photo editing and photo manipulation as well as Photoshop in 95% of cases; it's that other 5% that keeps Photoshop on top. On the other hand, sometimes open standards dominate proprietary ones - such as the ubiqutous LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stacks for Web development, rather than Apple's ridiculous "Xserve" computers. The reason for one platform's dominance over another has nothing to do with whether the software is open or not - it is entirely due to whether the software is demonstrably "better" according to the most important criteria. You'll choose GIMP over Photoshop every time if your most important criteria is "cheaper" but for most professional image editors, that's not the case.
So what makes Flash "better" than HTML5? First, Flash is compatible with more Web browsers in use, barring the slim minority on the iPod devices. It's also easier to develop for, first, with many Flash developers having up to 7 years of experience with the language and visual tools. Third, and this is the biggie - Flash has it's own visual tools for development.
Which is why Apple's complaining about Flash not being an open standard rings absolutely hollow. If you control less than 2% of the market, blocking a de facto standard to try to replace it for one of your own doesn't harm the standard, it just makes your own products much less desirable.
This is the classic mistake that Sony makes every time they try to produce some new proprietary format in their electronics products. For example, I bought a Canon video camera instead of a Sony video camera when I got into filmmaking because Canon included a Mic-in port, while Sony's cameras only included proprietary ports for Sony microphones. Another example - pushing BluRay and causing the price of the PS3 to hit the ceiling in doing so is the primary reason that the once dominant line of Sony gaming consoles now has major challenge from Microsoft and Nintendo. Sure, BluRay did become the HD disk standard eventually, though it was mainly because of studio support - which Sony would have gotten anyway had they just developed a better console. Even so, my mom owns a blu-ray player, sure. Everyone else I know just streams high-def movies from the Internet.
Instead, if Flash is a big player because Flash has it's own development tools, why hasn't Apple, with one of the world's largest software development houses, created their own visual animation development studio for HTML5/Canvas, and open-sourced the sucker. (Let's ignore for a second that if Apple did develop such a program, they'd likely include it in the Final Cut Studio Suite, limit it to Macintosh users on Apple hardware, and charge $1000 for it.
If Apple cared one whit about open standards, why doesn't it allow Chrome on the iPhone? Why doesn't it allow Google Phone on the iPhone, or allow someone to develop an application that can record calls? Why doesn't it allow anyone to develop for the iPhone/iPad?
As for Apple's security and performance complaints, there, they might have had a point. Flash does introduce security vulnerabilities and drains battery life. Had they limited their argument to that point, I might have conceded it; however, and this is the big one... shouldn't it be the end-user's choice whether to risk the battery drain and the software vulnerabilities? Couldn't you, say, have Safari for iPhone pop up a little window saying: "This site uses Flash, which can introduce security vulnerabilities, stability problems, and drain battery life. Would you like to (Never Enable Flash/Do Not Enable Flash for this Session/Enable Flash for this Session/Always Enable Flash?)"
Finally, Apple claims the most important reason is 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 and progress of the platform."
This. Is. Bullshit.
If Apple believed that shit, they'd code exclusively in assembly language. Yes, sometimes third party layers of development software do limit programmers - but in the other 99% percent of cases, they enable programmers to code easily. A working, less-than-100% efficient program is better than a non-working or non-existent one. This is why you code for functionality first, then optimize for efficiency.
Apple also claims that cross-platform development tools are less efficient than single-platform development tools. This is true, but the purpose and the appeal of a cross-platform development tool is the idea that you only need to program an application once and be done with it. The demand for Flash on the iPhone isn't coming from people who want more efficient apps; it's coming from the developers who suddenly have to recode their apps if they want to work on the iPhone, and from end-users who wonder why the applications they have been using that work on 98% of all the world's devices don't work on the 2% that Apple controls. If your platform does not support a widely established, nearly ubiquitous cross-platform programming language, the problem is not with the programming language - it's with the platform.
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