

Video: Steve Jobs on Flash (D8 Conference) - zach
http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100601/d8-video-steve-jobs-on-flash-adobe-and-other-technology-apple-doesnt-use-anymore/

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jdietrich
I'm not entirely sure I can think of a legitimate argument against him, but
Jobs tends to have that effect, doesn't he?

We can fuss and argue all we like, but his basic premise of "being selective
about features is good for business" is pretty much impossible to argue with
in light of Apple's financials.

There's a lot about New Apple that makes my skin crawl, but ditching Flash
seems to make perfect sense. Ditching the floppy disk drive in 1998 seemed
pretty outré, but it didn't take long for the USB flash drive to make it seem
like a farsighted move. That's the thing about being ahead of your time - it
only ever seems clever in hindsight.

~~~
tomlin
"...but ditching Flash seems to make perfect sense."

We'll see if that comment reigns true once FroYo 2.2 takes hold (if it does).

Reminds me of when Nintendo told me I didn't need to have HD because "real
gamers" didn't want that. A lot of dusty Wiis out there.

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aditya
Hrm. I wish this was the entire video, as opposed to an edited version.

EDIT: ok, they seem to be putting them up one by one:
<http://video.allthingsd.com/>

~~~
thought_alarm
It's not the full video, they're just splicing quotes together.

And they're using a crappy Flash video player that doesn't support full screen
and keeps resetting when it runs out of bandwidth, despite pegging my CPU. How
barbaric. (Once you're used to HTML5, it's hard to go back to the old way)

~~~
arithmetic
>>And they're using a crappy Flash video player that doesn't support full
screen and keeps resetting when it runs out of bandwidth

That's pretty ironic, if you ask me.

~~~
commieneko
Ironic or illuminating?

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drawkbox
Flash really isn't able to run on devices slower than 1.5-2GHz and 500MB-1GB
of RAM. It uses software rendering most of the time.

So really it is not obsolete, it is stuck in a gap in time that is well known
and being taken advantage of. All software rendered animation and
interactivity is slow on a device running < 1GHz even html5 content. Anything
hardware rendered or accelerated is faster such as native or hardware hooks
into canvas.

Adobe should have made flash hardware accelerated (or more hardware
accelerated) to not be caught in this pickle in time where mobile is taking
off but the hardware is still too slow. When devices get to 2GHz and 1GB
memory flash will run fine. By then they should be hardware accelerated to
provide a competitive advantage if they are smart.

I like Flash and html5 (<canvas>) and have no preference. Adobe made Flash,
Apple made canvas and some key features of html 5 with supporting webkit which
they open sourced very wisely. However html5 is still a few years off on web
and flash is still a few years off on mobile. What happens next is anyone's
game.

~~~
thought_alarm
The problem is this: After a decade of promoting web standards and wrestling
the web from Microsoft's hands, the most significant roadblock between the
mobile web and the desktop web is a single 3rd-party plug-in from Adobe. This
is a serious problem that Linux users know all too well! It's also a rather
depressing problem to have in this, the year 2010.

One solution is to wait around for Adobe to get its act together. A lot of
people don't like that solution. The iPhone has been out for three years now,
and we've all seen the poor performance of the Android Flash demos, to which
apologists cry "but you only have to enable Flash for web sites that really
need it!" It's clear that we still have a long time to wait for Adobe; or we
can promote Flash alternatives.

~~~
tomlin
"and we've all seen the poor performance of the Android Flash demos"

Tell me you hate Flash, tell me you love open standards, tell me about a great
alternative. Don't spew BS as fact, though, please.

"I am just blown away that this pop-up screen Flash heavy site even works as
well as it does on a mobile phone." -- [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-
phones/hands-on-with-android-...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/hands-
on-with-android-22-froyo-and-adobe-flash-player-101/3891)

"and here’s our first take: With Flash on your phone, no website is really out
of bounds. Flash does not appear to be a battery hog, nor does it chew away at
your phone’s resources." - [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/first-look-
flash-andr...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/first-look-flash-
android)

The battery argument is weak, at best. If I leave my iPhone's iPod playing for
6 hours, my battery dies. If Flash drains it in 7 hours, there is an outcry
about battery life.

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voidpointer
What Jobs says is totally consistent from his perspective (or if you will,
from within his reality distortion field): In a world, where there is only
apple devices, Flash indeed has outlived its usefulness because there is no
need for multi platform rich application/content development/authoring when
there is only one platform left. Surely, that is how Jobs would like to
perceive the state of affairs. Given how well Apple is currently doing in
leading the mobile device space, his vision does seem to to converge with
reality. Unless of course, the competition will get their act together and do
something with Android that will have as much mainstream-appeal as the iPhone.

~~~
jstevens85
> In a world, where there is only apple devices, Flash indeed has outlived its
> usefulness because there is no need for multi platform rich
> application/content development/authoring when there is only one platform
> left.

If that is indeed Jobs' view, why is Apple putting so much effort into
advancing open multiplatform technologies like HTML5 and WebGL? Surely if
there was only one platform left, then everyone could write 3D content
specifically for the iPhone OS. There wouldn't be a need for anyone to use
WebGL, so why are they wasting their effort in implementing it in WebKit?

Here's another explanation. Jobs believes that in 2-3 years time, browsers and
mobile CPUs will have advanced to the point where HTML5 is equivalent to Flash
in most scenarios. So why bother wasting engineering resources on trying to
get Flash working acceptably on the iPhone when the technology may be obsolete
within a few years? Why not just get those engineers to instead work on
improving JS performance in Mobile Safari?

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dpnewman
As much as the hacker in me reveres "openness", I think Apple's approach will
ultimately be a fantastic motivating challenge to open alternatives. Setting
the UX bar high, and "game on".

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lenni
Not really related, but isn't it a little bit sad that out of the 19 D8
speakers that are being emphasised on the right hand side panel only _one_ is
female?

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bbsabelli
I watched this using flash.

~~~
bradleyland
And the experience pretty much sucked. Their Flash player leaves a lot to be
desired. I loaded it on my iPad, just so I could watch using <video>.

------
sree_nair
"What to exclude and What to include in a product is part of making a
product.That's what the customers pay us for, to make great products. If we
succeed, they'll buy them. If not, they won't." - simple. I think the expiry
date on the Apple-Flash press mania has reached and it's time to move on...

------
dave1619
He seems angry... like he's really offended that people are criticizing his
decision to leave out Flash from the iPad. He says he wants the market to
decide. But when the market decides, then it's too late. Even diehard Apple
fans are not happy Flash can't be viewed on the iPad. Big opportunity for
Android tablets, courtesy of Steve Jobs and company.

~~~
pavs
uh... sorry to break this to you, but they sold 2 million ipads in less than
60 days. I think the market doesn't seem to care. Not sure how the future will
pan out, but they are way ahead of everyone else, just like they were with
ipod and then iphone (touch phone market share) and now with ipad.

If apple would have decided to go with flash I think they would have to
compromise on battery performance. They did ask adobe to give them a less
power hungry, more stable flash build for ipad, which they didn't. Anyone who
uses an apple computer will tell you how ridiculous it is to play flash videos
(or anything) on a mac. Your machine will go on hyper-drive, and your browser
will crash frequently.

Adobe has a history of working slowly on flash, which had horrible stability
along all platforms not too long ago, while its definitely much better on
Windows in recent times, it didn't improve much on OSX. Their next release for
mobile is already delayed twice AFAIK. I think this speaks volumes about Adobe
software development. I am hardly an apple apologist, but if there is anyone
to be blamed for the omission of flash on ipad, its adobe.

iPhone was released 3 years ago, and Adobe still doesn't have a good flash
player for mobile or mac.

~~~
16g
*and your browser will crash frequently

I keep seeing this claim all the time. Flash is a complete resource hog, i
agree. But my mac/browser has never crashed because of Flash, since i bought
this in 2007. Mind showing me a flash site that could crash my mac/browser?

~~~
pohl
Bear in mind that you are one person, and your mileage may vary. I'm glad
you've had better luck than I.

Software changes over time (both the browser, and the flash plugin, and the
flash code deployed on web pages) so asking someone to reference a particular
site that will crash your particular browser won't help you understand what's
going on. A better idea might be a few clever search strings:

<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=safari+crash+log+flash>

Or, alternatively, you can look at the architecture of chrome and ask why they
put tabs in separate processes, and why mozilla is also putting protection in
place:

[http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/mozilla-
prev...](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/03/mozilla-previews-new-
feature-to-guard-against-flash-crashes.ars)

Apple isn't just making a wild conjecture when they say that Flash is the
leading cause of browser crashes. They get stack traces sent to them by the
crash reporting mechanism, and they get to count how many crashes come from
what region of code. Drawn from sample sizes in the millions, this constitutes
measurement.

~~~
16g
OP says "your browser will crash frequently". Most of the replies (including
yours) to my question only points to crash logs that cant be reproduced .Your
answer is a very generic explanation on software development.

And that is exactly what i am saying. I keep seeing all these people
complaining about Flash , but no one has a proof that actually works.

As i mentioned before, Flash is a complete resource hog on the mac but no one
here has a solid reproducible proof for "frequent crashes".

I choose not to believe in Apple's claims and numbers, as they are in open war
with Adobe now on the issue. Opening up Flash on iPad and iPhone is lost
business for app store(if you own an iPad/iPhone, you already know that
currently there is no decent html5 application that work properly on these
devices.)

~~~
pohl
Call stack traces are not generic. They point to specific places. Those places
are aggregated and counted. You're free to disbelieve that Apple is reporting
their #1 source of crashes honestly, but you should take a look at the Top
Crash link provided by ZeroGravitas. If you're not seeing the same pattern,
you're not looking without bias.

[http://crash-
stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byurl/Firefox/3.6....](http://crash-
stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byurl/Firefox/3.6.4)

