Steve Jobs has clarified why Apple does not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods, iPads. This hopefully clarifies all issues in mind of Apple product users, Apple critics and Adobe Flash fans.
Adobe recently pointed out that “Apple released a new draft of their iPhone developer program license which had the effect of restricting applications built with a number of technologies, including Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5”.
Then Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO revealed that they “have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others.”
Now Steve Jobs replies point wise why Apple will not support Flash. Here we a few key takeaways from his statement –
- Adobe’s Flash products are a closed system, and Apple would rather adopt open source technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript
- While Adobe says 75% of web video is in Flash, it is known that almost all this video is also available in H.264, which can be viewed on iOS devices.
- Flash causes Macs to crash.!
- Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder
- Flash was designed for use with mice, not for touch screens – lets take the example of “rollovers” for instance, or pop up menus
- Adobe has been slow to keep updated with Apple’s platforms.
Basically Steve Jobs wants to suggest that the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards where Flash falls short. 200,000 Apple Store Apps proves Flash isn’t necessary for developers to create rich applications and games and creating HTML5 tools is the future.