教主的"Thoughts on Flash"

Thoughts on Flash ——Steve Jobs （April 2010）

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. Infact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Applewas their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our newLaserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of thecompany for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneerdesktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, thecompanies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, andAdobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today thetwo companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Macusers buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond thatthere are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts onAdobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand whywe do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized ourdecision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect ourApp Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims thatwe are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite istrue. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary.They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to theirfuture enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widelyavailable, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirelyby Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is aclosed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too.Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, westrongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open.Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all openstandards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low powerimplementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has beenadopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advancedgraphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third partybrowser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by astandards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for theweb. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and createdWebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of theSafari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted.Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM(Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone webbrowser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKittechnology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobiledevices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is inFlash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in amore modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube,with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Applemobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery andviewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC,CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall StreetJournal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, manyothers. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devicescannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 gamesand entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There aremore games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPadthan for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security andperformance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash forhaving one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand thatFlash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe tofix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’twant to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads byadding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well onmobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing wellon a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seenit. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009,then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say thesecond half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’thold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playingvideo, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it insoftware uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devicescontain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in everyBlu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo,Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support forH.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an oldergeneration decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run insoftware. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, forexample, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded insoftware play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos usingH.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly inbrowsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any pluginswhatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, notfor touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on“rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hoversover a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use amouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need tobe rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewritetheir Flash websites, why not use modern technologies likeHTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash,it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten tosupport touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed andproprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch baseddevices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash oniPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flashto play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wantsdevelopers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that lettinga third party layer of software come between the platform and the developerultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement andprogress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third partydevelopment libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platformenhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. Wecannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make ourenhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party issupplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adoptenhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of theirsupported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest commondenominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome wheredevelopers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because theyare not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool.It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPadapps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobehas been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. Forexample, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobejust adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe wasthe last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to providethe most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want themto stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best appsthe world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform sodevelopers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications.Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developersreach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continuallydelighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCsand mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand whythey want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices,touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering theircontent for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longernecessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 250,000apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens ofthousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, includinggames.

New open standards created in the mobile era,such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe shouldfocus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizingApple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010