With this press release from Apple, Steve Jobs is officially drinking his own cool aid and drunk from his overflowing cup.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-publishes-some-thoughts-on-flash-many-many-thou/

 

Let’s address his six points.

1) Flash is not open.

This is generally true but Flash’s proprietary nature is constrained by its relative ubiquity in the marketplace.  Adobe cannot leverage it to control more than it already does simply because the outcry would be too large.  In the “It’s a closed ecosystem.” point Jobs and Adobe are similar except that Jobs is closed at the App Store submission versus the technology.  Does it really matter if your application uses HTML5, CSS and Javascript if Apple’s App Store moderators won’t let you publish your application?  Don’t let him fool you, the iPad/iPhone/iTouch platform is no more open than Adobe’s Flash platform.

2) The iPhone/iPad/iTouch can’t access the “full web”.

It can’t, plain and simple, no matter how Steve wants to sugar coat it.  Many sites do not offer HTML 5 video.  Even more sites don’t have an alternative to Flash games.  Steve claims that 50,000+ games are on the App Store.  Many more exist for Flash through game portal websites.  Disney.com, Fantasy sports, Nickelodeon, numerous MMOs, the list goes on and on.  How many more games would be instantly available to the iPhone/iPad/iTouch if Flash were allowed on the platform?  Then again, that’s the point isn’t it? 50,000+ games on the App Store wouldn’t be a reality with a Flash player on the device.

3) Reliability, security and performance.

Of all his points, this is the only one that has any real credence.  If Apple has in fact challenged Adobe to show them a Flash player that performs well on the devices then it is in Adobe’s camp to produce said player.  Of course the moderators for the App Store will likely deny the submission but that’s another matter entirely.  Can Adobe do it?  I think so.  Windows Phone 7 will have a Flash 10.1 player.  Android OS has a Flash 10.1 player. 

4) Battery life will suffer.

This would be a true statement if H.264 were implemented everywhere.  Many video providers haven’t moved to H.264 and for that reason HTML 5 is out of reach so they stick with Flash and I’m not just talking about the Pr0n industry.  More importantly, there’s no precedent that this matters for applications.  Trapster is a GPS application that I’ve written about before.  It eats battery for breakfast, lunch and dinner but provides the user with a valuable application.  Almost all of those 50,000+ games he mentions eat battery.  My kids will attest to the drain that games put on their iTouches.  So why should the battery life standard be held up in front of Adobe’s Flash player when other apps get a pass?  We have to go back to point 1 to find the answer to this.  Hint, it’s not about open software.

5) Flash apps are not built for Touch.

What!!  Flash is used to generate all sorts of user interfaces.  Scaleform uses it to build a large number of game UIs for PCs, Xboxes, PS3s and more.  It’s true that the mouseover is something that many Flash applications use when the application is designed for the PC or a device with a mouse but to rewrite your entire application in a new language because an input mechanism isn’t supported on the target device makes no sense to anyone who has programmed a non-trivial application.  Apps can be adapted for touch based interfaces and that says nothing of being able to use Flash without resorting to the use of mouseovers which is entirely possible.

6) Third party development tools provide for inferior applications.

I don’t even know where to start on this one.  Unity 3D is a 3rd party development tool that is behind almost every smash hit game in that 50,000+ catalog he brags about.  The new SDK rules and his statement in this press release kill that application.  MonoDevelop from Novell was set to open iPhone development to legions of developers that prefer C# to Objective C.  Development for any platform in the history of computing is littered with middleware that makes future development on the platform easier.  Steve is placing a huge development obstacle in the way of every developer in the name of following some idealistic paradigm.  Steve, you’ll still get fart applications on the App store and more importantly, you might prevent the next Plants vs. Zombies from making it to your platform. 

Conclusion

If you read his press release on why Flash is not allowed on the new Apple devices, it reads like a parting of ways between Adobe and Apple.  If I’m Adobe, all I heard was “Thanks for helping us sell Macs with your Creative Suite offering but for our future direction, you’re not wanted.”  If I’m Adobe, I pull Creative Suite off the shelves for Macs and fight the good fight.  If Steve doesn’t want Adobe then Adobe shouldn’t want Apple.  The resulting uprising from Mac Creative Suite users will either confirm the move or tell Apple that Adobe has an important place in it’s product line. Come on Adobe.  Fight the good fight.  Unity 3D and others will thank you for it.

UPDATE 3 May 2010: Apparently, the DoJ and the FTC have had enough of Steve Jobs and his antics.  Here come the Anti-trust lawyers.  This should have happened sooner.