Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice.
You think so?
Smart-phones have been around a long time. The iPhone was announced over three years ago, yet here we are in the middle of 2010 and mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found on any mobile device. How is that not Adobe's fault? Is Adobe just not very interested in mobile Flash, or are there very serious technical challenges that Adobe has been unable to overcome?
Instead of waiting around for Adobe to get their act together, Apple delivered HTML video and interactive web content for their mobile devices, they delivered it years ago, and they did it using open standards and open source development that their competitors are not only taking advantage of, but are utterly embracing.
It is the tale of one company that's able to get things done, and another company that isn't. And it shows how foolish it is for companies like Apple, Google, Palm, and RIM to depend on a company like Adobe to deliver the "full web".
There was no choice to be made. Mobile Flash didn't exist in 2007, it still doesn't exist today, and any dependence on Adobe is foolish.
If Adobe had simply failed to deliver a product, no one would care. Instead, they did deliver it (or were just about to deliver it), and Apple freaked out.
Apple is not the only software solution for mobile devices.
And didn't it support Flash?
>Now I can come to a lot of web pages where only Flash ads use 100% of a modern CPU!
Okay, so show a placeholder for Flash content and only load and play the things the user double taps.
This machine was fast enough to play Quake 3 and a dozen other gaming titles, but is too slow to play youtube videos. I just don't get it, is the flash vm really that processor intensive?
I can't see how flash could run well on the upcoming android devices if it runs so poorly on the Athlon 1.6ghz.
This may come as a surprise to some, but there's a whole mobile world outside of the Apple iPhone... you get far better hardware, no lock-in, and (now with Android/Maemo) a very solid UI.
You say there's no lock-in outside of the iPhone, but what do you call Flash? Yes, the spec is technically open, but there still haven't been any players that work as "well" as Adobe's. Which, by the way, is many people's problem, as Flash Player has been nothing but a pain to me. The Linux and OS X versions are horrible and Adobe's done very little to fix them.
Also, I'd kinda dispute the "better hardware" and "solid UI" claims - better is very subjective, and Android's UI could hardly be considered "solid" (the portions of MeeGo from Moblin look promising though).
(I feel silly to include this, but it could be necessary: I don't currently own a single Apple product, my main computers run Windows & Linux, and my phone is a Samsung Moment which runs Android 2.1.)
It's a valid point, but a lack of good competition doesn't make the standard any less open; published is published. Consider 2002-2004, when Internet Explorer had nearly 95% market share [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers]. HTML was an open standard, but no viable competitor existed until Firefox was released.
My point (that I didn't really make) is that Adobe and Apple are both equally proprietary. Trying to argue either side will be a loser's game.
(I offer as an illustration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-ENUWAxzc0 [audio's NSFW])
The argument is not that Flash is open or the holy grail. It is that Apple forbids the use of any unapproved language. And the real problem is that they can prohibit it's use because they dictate whats availabe for the iPhone and what's not.
The world would be a better place if they could not get away with this. Let's hope they can't.
On a more historical note, mobile Flash did exist in 2007. I was using it to watch Youtube on my Nokia N800. It was slow -- the device didn't have enough CPU power to simultaneously download and playback, so you had to pause the video and let it cache completely first. But it most definitely did exist, and I am convinced that implementation would have worked well on 2009 hardware. The N800 wasn't exactly a breakthrough device, nor was it super popular. Yet Adobe somehow managed to deliver for Nokia.
The N800 was introduced in early 2007. Its predecessor, the 770, was introduced in late 2005, with Flash out of the box. I never owned one so I cannot comment on the performance.
I would also challenge your statements regarding Apple delivering HTML video for mobile devices -- mostly the HTML years ago part. Also, H.264, which Apple is pushing, is by no means an open standard, which some of their competitors have issues with.
They could have implemented the menu-driven kind of copy/paste found on Palm Pre and Android, but they wouldn't because it sucks. Apple prefers nothing at all over a solution that sucks. So we got nothing in place of cut/paste, until they figured out to do it in a way that didn't suck. Simply existing is not good enough. Not even Adobe is claiming that Flash on mobiles works today, let alone three years ago.
I bet the 1Ghz Snapdragon/512MB RAM combo you're seeing in new HTC devices could run Flash fine if the Nokia Maemo devices could chug along.
I'm not saying that Adobe's Flash has had a huge impact on the Symbian world, but just to get the facts straight.
Going all philosophical: If a software has zero users, does it still exist?
EDIT: My view may be dated. I haven't checked what Nokia is offering through the ovi-system these days, could be that Flash Lite is actually somewhat widely used nowadays.
Also: Flash Lite has existed also in Nokia Series 40 models ("standard phones", not smart phones) since 2007 or so...
But as you said, works fine on E72, which is S60 3rd ed feature pack 2. I'm impressed!
It works well enough, but frankly I don't like the default browser and it isn't portable because it's custom built... not to mention downloading large flash files is not something you want to do on Sprint's network.
That's why smart phones have also mostly sucked until recently too (no, it isn't that the iPhone's suddenly created demand, its just due to an evolution in technology).
Besides, you miss the point. H.264 IS a patent encumbered format, and Apple is going out of their way to jab at its loyal developers.
For that reason (and many others), I will now be replacing OSX on my mac with Windows 7 and will not personally be supporting OSX for my project (Nightingale). In fact, I'll be asking the community if it is the right thing to do shortly.
Apple's disrespect for other developers is absolutely incredible, and I have NEVER seen such a disrespectful person. He doesn't give a damn if other companies spend months developing a software package for his platform, or if they have bent over for Apple for years. I'm totally done with Apple now.
Adobe has been trying to get Flash on the iPhones since Day 1, and has been unable to do it because of some honestly pretty shitty business practices on Apple's part. Now you may love Flash or hate it, but the bottom line is this: the iPhone can never be considered a best-of-breed gadget when it still provides a second-rate web browsing experience in which about 40% of the Internet is forever closed to you.
The reason that Apple does not, will not, can not support Flash is simply this: it would gut the App Store like a week-old fish.
Kindly remove the blinders from your eyes, then get back to us. :)
Apple Desktop Bus over PS/2 and serial (ADB lost, native ps/2 and serial connectors are still around and USB can easily talk to ps/2 or serial devices with the aid of a simple adapter).
SCSI over IDE (IDE won).
PowerPC over x86 (x86 won).
Firewire over USB (USB won).
AppleTalk over TCP/IP (TCP/IP won).
I don't think Flash is the right choice, and I'm ok with the idea that some mobile devices won't support Flash, but this anti-Flash jihad seems to be going too far.
For the first time, Apple choosing "not-Flash" actually has enough weight to force content publishers to choose "not-Flash" more often. This will eventually influence more of the tech industry. Personally, I'm thrilled.
The G5 was a Power4 chip of some sort from memory.
Jobs read the market well. The move is definately to Laptops / portable devices - and Intels chips were much better at that.