«
»

Big Steverino Calls Out Flash For Sucking

Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 8:35 am by Jamie

It’s no secret that Apple and Adobe have had a rocky relationship of late, especially in regards to Apple’s mobile products and their lack of Adobe Flash support. Adobe has decided that after CS5 they will no longer support Apple mobile products and have instead thrown their lot in with Google and Android. Steve Jobs has given short explanations of Apple’s decision to ignore Flash on the iTouch, iPhone, and iPad, but now he’s posted an open letter on the Apple website explaining his position. He uses some flowery language, but I shall break down his letter into AZM speak. His argument rests on six points. And I paraphrase:

  1. Flash is as closed as tight as a cadavers rigor mortised asshole. Closed systems are for suckas!
  2. HTML5 mother fucker! Javascript, bitches! CS motherfuckin’ S And what!!
  3. Flash is vulnerable like the Death Star without the fucking shield generator.
  4. The shit be suckin’ the life outta batteries like a crackhead be suckin’ a pipe.
  5. Rollovers, man. Rollovers!
  6. We don’t want them Adobe bitches telling us what to do.

At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. I’m not sure the closed system argument flies with me. The iMobileProducts are closed like a mother fucker with Apple ultimately dictating what will or will not run on their shit. Sure, I guess you can develop whatever web app you want and as long as it doesn’t use Flash it will run on an iMobileProduct which is kind of what argument 2 boils down to. But there are times when users will not have access to the web and the only way to run anything on one is with an app.

As for the fifth argument, I’m not sure what the fuck that’s all about. Rollovers? Is this seriously a legit argument against Flash? I think javascript is a bigger culprit of rollover madness than Flash. I blame Flash for buttons that make annoying sounds. But rollovers? Who gives a flying fuck. Designers will figure out how to design for mobile products with Flash. It’s not like entire livelihoods depend on whether or not a button has an animated rollthefuckover.

I also can’t believe Steve takes the time to throw snark at PCs. And I quote (for real this time):

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice.

Now you’re just being an asshole, Steve. Flash was created in an era when multimedia interactivity was sorely limited. It was solving a content creation and interaction problem. Sure, it was designed within the confines of a keyboard/mouse/desktop/laptop paradigm but that’s because that’s what we were using. And a whole mess of us are still operating within that paradigm. If you’re argument is that Flash isn’t relevant to a touchscreen paradigm, you’re just talking shit. Battery life? Yeah, that’s important. Security? Oh yeah, Flash is all kinds of vulnerable. But rollovers and mice? Really now, you’re just being a shit head.

This whole Adobe vs. Apple thing is like watching mommy and daddy fighting. It’s so uncomfortable. It’s way past the point of an intervention. Now they’re at the pedantic bickering phase. I’m sure if cooler head prevailed, Adobe could have worked up some nice solutions for a mobile flash player that answered many of Apple’s concerns. But it’s too late now. And I’m not sure one side is winning over the other, if there can even be a winner in a situation like this.

So, what do you think. Is this an early sign of the death of Flash? Will HTML5 really be the Flash killer? Will Adobe and Android keep Flash alive and well forever? And where does Silverlight fall in all of this mess?

Source: Apple

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 8:35 am and is filed under Dumb Ass, The Future, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • http://www.hawkstudios.net Hawk

    I have been developing for Flash websites from the beginning and I have to agree with Steve. What we see right now on Flash, most of them will only function on a personal computer. For example:

    * A lot of Flash sites are using mouse position to interact with the elements. a good example would be steering in a game with the mouse.

    * A lot of Flash sites have mouse overs for directions.

    * Preview with mouse over. A good example would be creating your own avatar. When you mouseover a tool, you get a popup window with color/item selection.

    * A lot a lot of flash sites use maps/info graphic that uses mouse over to display info

    And that’s just some of the current flash features I don’t see working correctly right away when viewing it on a mobile device.

    No where do I see Adobe admitting that flash developers will have to change their code to work with the mobile device. Better yet, how does the developer know where is the flash piece being viewed at. Does the developer create two different pieces? Etc.

    All I’m hearing from Adobe, Flash is important and it must be on mobile devices. I’m sorry but THAT’s fucking bullshit.

    At least with HTML/CSS/Javascript, a site can adapt to the device or computer.

  • Jack T Robyn

    Good counter-arguments here. It was my understanding that the big reason flash was being ignored originally for mobile devices is that it was a resource hog, both in memory and HD space.

  • Hamstadini

    But you know Adobe’s in trouble when both Apple AND Microsoft agree!

    http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/30/microsoft-weighs-in-the-future-of-the-web-is-html5/

    Oh snap!

  • Kunoichi

    Of course Flash will die eventually. Every programming language and environment dies eventually. Flash isn’t the Higgs-Boson particle of coding.

    However, Apple’s stance to it is…elitist, unrealistic, and childish. Fine, Flash and touch-screen devices don’t play nice. Guess what? Most people don’t have touch-screen devices. That is not the standard, and it will probably be a good 5 to 10 years before the price point and popularity are at a point where they are standard. Apple’s only ahead of the curve because they market to pointless-gadget loving hipsters and yuppies who can and will blow too much money on a device that isn’t actually better than anything else out there. Which, as that means they’ve got, what, 10% market share? They can’t bitch about what’s useful to the majority of the market. Which right now, Flash is still useful.

    Jobs’ snark at “PCs” is idiotic. He can claim his Macs aren’t PCs, but they are. Personal Computer. Not IBM, or Dell, Personal Computer. Which is what Macs are. And I hate to break it to him, but most of his product line still uses mice. And, his OS is still just as closed as it ever was, the AppStore notwithstanding (after all, that’s for the gadgets, *not* the computers). If Jobs wants Apple to ditch making desktop and laptop computers, then he can claim, shakily, that his company is “open”.

  • http://duagcore.wordpress.com/ Cortharis

    I just want to say I think everyone is wrong (Apple, Adobe and Microsoft). I don’t know why I want to say that, but I do.

    Unless you can’t absolutely live and function without your i-mobile device, you’re not going to care or bother with this absolutely inane arguement and petty battle. I feel the entire assumption about iPhone, iTouch and iPad owners is that they only use these devices and it is their sole method to access the internet and that they don’t use PCs. When you think about it, that’s lunacy.

    And HTML 5 bugs me a bit. Currently I don’t have a web programming/ design background and what I do know about HTML4 and CSS is limited, but if HTML5 comes out, it makes my life messy in the fact I have to re-learn something, but good that I wouldn’t have too much taint from the old days and that could give me a leg up.

    But seriously I’ll care more when they get basic internet working first.

  • FmF

    Nice to see a bunch of grown intelligent rich as fuck men act as if they are still 16.I don’t see my self adopting to a touch screen for my computer ever.Mainly cause being hunch over some kind of table top computer seem to be impractical 90% of the things i do.About flash vs html5 i don’t give a shit any more.Steve have to push to make they’re devises look better,Adobe have to bash it to continue to make money.Sound like a used car sales men talking shit about his competitor across the street.Make shiny shit and shut the fuck up!

  • Ajanhelendam

    With the advent of the mobile web for handheld devices, mobile specific HTML standards were introduced. For most Web developers this was very small niche market until the iPhone came along.

    Apple makes some great products, but a fair number of duds as well. Personally, I find Steve Jobs to be inspirational when he’s not bullying from the pulpit. His Stanford commencement speech is one of the best I’ve read. However in this letter he’s got the famed reality distortion field turned to the max.

    I will concede that Flash has plenty of issues and Steve covers many of it’s failings, but only in between a bunch of “spin”.

    Apple has very little open source in general. What parts are open source were already open source when Apple decided to incorporate them into their “product”. Webkit is the only project that I can think off hand that ever went any where and I think it it wasn’t for it’s KDE ties it would have gone the way of Darwin. Seriously, Microsoft has a better track record with open source than Apple, so that’s pretty sad.

    H.264 is not an open codec(plus Apple has a vested interest in this format), nor or any of the QuickTime formats. Ironically, though Flash isn’t open, 3rd party software was always allowed to author it as long as the output would play correctly on the last Adobe player. Flash has become more open over the years and it’s my opinion that it’s only a matter of time before it becomes an open standard like PDF did in 2008. Hmm… Apple Quartz uses PDF and that’s part of OS X, so way before PDF became open.

    He really starts to go off the deep end with his 6th reason. Cross-platform development. Seriously, you’re going for that angle? What about fricking iTunes, well yeah, they really haven’t innovated with iTunes client itself, but I doubt the iPod would be so wide spread without the “PC” version iTunes. But when you think about all the software Apple puts out in Mac and PC versions, this point seems totally far fetched. The more you read into this point the lamer it gets.

    If you phrase it like Steve, it seems like Adobe took forever to convert to Cocoa, but the reality is that Carbon is OS X. Granted it has backward compatibility, but it’s an OS X specific framework, which makes it the logical choice for the first versions of CS for Mac OS X. What Adobe could not forecast was the eventual cancellation of 64-bit support with Carbon. Which was officially cancelled in 2007. Furthermore, all 5 frameworks were basically in sync when OS X started, but that is no longer true. As to other major vendors, Microsoft was the only one I could find that mentioned Cocoa but only for Outlook for 2010. It’s implied that Office staples due to starting on legacy code is not Cocoa. Seriously Steve, if you don’t want vendors to simply port code which is more cost effective and faster you shouldn’t have provided Carbon in the first place. Reality, vendors are converting over to Cocoa from Carbon since 2007 after Apple released updated road maps indicating limited support for Carbon in the future.

    Further reality check, go to the Apple store and look for the Top Sellers for the software category. It’s all Apple products, Office and two *VM clients so you can run Window applications directly inside Mac OS X*. Adobe CS does get a nice placement at the top banner region along with Office.

    Conclusions.

    When your on-line store lists 2 VMs for Windows as Top Sellers for software for your platform that’s irony in regards to the quality of said “innovating” platform.

    If it wasn’t for YouTube (Flash), the Top Sellers centering around Final Cut most likely would not have been able to grab the market share they have today.

    @Hawk I completely sympathize with your frustrations. However, Adobe for the most part does have legitimate claims. It’s not like they’re asking Apple to provide Flash support, rather Apple has been preventing them from making Flash available. Where as it was technical reasons why Flash hasn’t appeared on other phones, not so with the iPhone and iPad. Steve trumpets security, yet why is Flash still available for Macbooks and the like then. It’s not like you can install plugins for Safari and especially, now that all the *important* content providers don’t rely on Flash because of the iPad.

  • http://www.idrawdigital.com Drezz

    Hilarious. I read the letter and the only thing I got from it was “My way or the highway.”

    Very typical of Apple and its mandate to do as much in a proprietary format as possible. BUT – I don’t blame Jobs for staying the course. Apple has hugely increased its share of the computing and mobile market, so they can afford to act ‘elitist’ and create new tech and gadgets that appeal to the masses.

    As for Flash, I could see this coming from a mile away. Where the ORIGINAL Adobe suite of products was optimized to work in a Mac environment, the former Macromedia suite (Flash, Dreamweaver, Freehand and Fireworks) was not. Unless they rebuilt the structure of the software from the ground up, Flach will never be efficient in a Mac environment.

    I think Jobs just got sick and tired of people complaining about how terrible Flash runs on a Mac vs a PC.

    I don’t see Flash disappearing, like Beta vs VHS or HD-DVD vs Blu-ray, but I do think they’ll need to develop a Flash Lite or Flash Mobile in order to have some kind of impact in that market. Perhaps with some stripped down functions and some more efficient handling, Flash might be an acceptable platform for use in the Mac world.

  • greg

    I can’t believe the gods of irony don’t strike Jobs down where he stands any time he says something against “closed systems” as if Apple doesn’t say, “Do it our way or don’t do it at all” ala iP* app exclusivity and whatnot. “Our Hardware and Our Software” is Apple’s lesser known motto.

  • http://angryzenmaster.com Jamie

    @greg, that’s the argument that really bothers me. The other ones do hold some merit, and there’s a big part of me that truly despises Flash and what it’s done to parts of the interwebs, but if we’re talking closed systems, Apple’s mobile devices are fucking closed tight.

  • http://www.fantastic-realties.com/studio_blog Samuraiartguy

    Since both the technical points, Steve’s and Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, rebuttal to the WSJ are essentially true, if only differing in self-serving emphasis. AND Adobe ARE being punks and Steve IS being a Dick. John Stewart had it right… I have to call it:

    [ picked up from C|net comment: ]

    True.

    All of it.

    But yes, there are business reasons too. So just off the cuff, I would have to say “all of the above” PLUS Apple in addition wants to protect the App Store and the Source – App – Store – OS – Device – User chain completely dictated and controlled by Apple. Do understand that elegance and user experience and simplicity is a religion for Steve Jobs. Hence the dropping of legacy tech that Steve considers finished even if still in widespread use. Floppy Disks, SCSI, NuBus, Motorola Processors, Firewire 400, all kicked to then slid off Apple’s curb, not to mention that Apple only grudgingly supports right button mouse functions.

    HOWEVER….

    As a Graphic and Web Designer… and I’ve elsewhere commented that I may have considerable fanlove for Apple, Adobe has me by the short ones. I pretty much HAVE to have the Creative Suite Applications to be professionally relevant, the same way that other professional users almost MUST have Microsoft Office if they want to coexist with other users, even though alternatives exist in both arenas. And let’s not get into Mac/PC stuff… I just prefer the working environment and service life of the mac. I know I could still work on the PC side with somewhat less costly gear. The arguments there are tired, thank you.

    I applaud the emergence of HTML5, CSS, (Better) Javascript, H.264 video, and can’t help but notice their accelerated implementation since the announcement of the iPad by a growing list of media and ‘Net heavyweights. But Flash is still out there and will not be going away anytime soon. There are still respectable number of users on IE 6 or AOL 5. *cringe* with their god-awful HTML rendering and even worse CSS implementation. Still out there. I still have to own and use Flash, as my markets and client audience still demands it. It’s also a demanding and at times difficult development environment for many. Not to take anything away from the many extremely talented and skilled Flash designers out there. Quite the contrary, you have to have the dual skill sets of a Visual Designer and a hard core Coder to effectively get the most out of the application, or work with a team of designers, developers and coders. An option not always available to small business or solo freelancers. A recent site I worked on hosts some mp3 audio files, – a non-flash dependent format, right? Well, the HTML/JQuery player module still requires a Flash PLAYER to get reasonable cross-platform playback.

    So obviously, we’re not done here.

    I am not particularly happy about the less than totally cooperative relationship Apple and Adobe has had dating pretty much since the changeover to OS X. But the current developing throwdown between Apple vs Adobe vs Google vs Microsoft can be potentially expensive and bruising for all users, Creatives in particular. Apple’s (Steve’s) choices in this matter may make sense internally, and even (or especially) technical and strategically, but they could show a bit (a lot) more grace about how they are going about it. While I do grok, “Our sandbox, our rules, our shovel,” it puts developers in a bit of a difficult place. Not to mention the extreme fuzziness concerning the App Store Approval criteria. And the Gizmodo – Stolen 4G iPhone drama is taking on a grimmer dimension. And John Stewart tagged it spot-on last night. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

    PR Matters.

    It will be a while before this all resolves. Not BORING, but as a professional creative, not comfortable to be in the crossfire either.

  • Pingback: Geek Entertainment News and Commentary - Angry Zen Master