Wow….just wow….never in a million years would I have expected to read what I just read…A 1600 word essay from Steve Jobs himself explaining IN DETAIL why Apple is supporting flash less and less. You can read the original article here straight from apple.com.
Argument
Steve highlights six main points to explain his reasoning.
1. “Open”
Steve dives into detail about how flash is a completely closed system. He admits that the iOS is proprietary too but explains that flash is completely controlled by Adobe, the definition of closed.
2. Full Web
Since the iDevices stopped fully supporting flash people continuously say that without flash you’re missing out on 95% of web video. That is blatantly not true. He first talks about YouTube since they hold an estimated 40% of web video and come with a handy little application to make it all work, and then he lists these: “Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.” A very convincing point.
3. Reliability, security and performance.
The trifecta of the computing experience, and something flash has never delivered on any Apple platform. Don’t believe me? Just go here (warning depending on your browser it may crash immediately, thats the point.) Or you can just read this article from TUAW explaining the 16 month old bug…
4. Battery life
I’m glad Steve touched on this because this is something a lot of people don’t understand, and he explains it in detail. Mainly flash video is decoded in software rather than hardware (where H.264 is decoded) which destroys your battery life.
5. Touch
This makes perfect sense. Flash relies heavily on hover events to achieve silly effects, this is obviously not something you could provide on an iDevice, Steve puts it this way “Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers.”
6. The most important reason
Steve debunks the idea that they only reason you can’t develop in flash for the iDevices is political, he explains that it’s because of their spotty performance when transcoded.
Final Thoughts
I think this is a great argument that really may be one of the last nails in the coffin that is flash, something that I am not sad to see go.