Steve Jobs recently took a shot at Adobe with his Thoughts on Flash. After reading it, the first thought that came to my mind was --- "What was he smoking?". Lets take a look at some of the aspects that Jobs presented in it. I am not going to quote anything from what Jobs wrote, I am just going to write what my take is on each of the reasons as to why Apple doesnt want Adobe Flash on its devices.
Adobe Flash not being "Open". Probably what Steve Jobs doesnt know is that Adobe Flash is actually quite open, both SWF and FLV are in fact open standards. On the contrary the entire iTunes App store, iPhone and iPad are all as closed as the Great Chinese Firewall.
Jobs position on the "full web". Adobes claim that Apple iPhone and iPad users are missing out on a lot of web content is in fact the brutal truth. There are tons of Adobe flash based games which would ideal for these devices. Why would Apple not want Adobe Flash is so that they can in reality make iPhone and iPad users depend solely on the iTunes App store and thus they can drive the sales up and with iAd generate revenue from placing advertisement inside the Apps.
Reliability, security and performance. Jobs claims that Adobe Flash is responsible for majority of Macs crash and the reason why they dont want it on iPhone and iPad, fair enough. Just before that he states that according to Symantec Flash has the worst security record in 2009. All software's have security bugs always, doesn't OS X and and other Apple technology not have security bugs. Have people noticed the size of security updates that come out from Apple each time. So should we stop running Apple software on Apple devices because of this.
Then there was touch. Probably Jobs doesnt keep himself updated about features of Adobe Flash or he is just a big fat liar, I would put my money on the latter. Adobe Flash 10.1 does support multi touch.
The most important reason to top it off. In reality Apple wants to complete control on what you can do with its technologies. It doesn't want you to use cross platform compilers as then developer can reuse code and companies can reduce costs. In essence Apple wants developers to develop only for Apple products, an indirect way to keep you from other devices. Oh yeah Adobe has just adopted famed Cocoa now after 10 years but iTunes still hasn't. Probably Apple should be worried about its backyard before it starts pointing fingers at others.
To conclude, in my opinion Steve Jobs is a big fat liar and Apple is the devil in disguise. I am no Adobe evangelist, I am just a guy next door.
