[gill_bates]

Go back through the history of Apple's (and its many, many sycophantic fans) proclamations - such as apps on the phone, push notifications, multitasking - and there is a disturbing trend of Apple (and its followeres) making moral pontifications, stamping their feet, and then quietly and shamelessly backtracking when proven wrong.

Jobs is trying to undermine the competition because he fears that he made the wrong choice.

[thought_alarm]

> 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.

[jarek]

Others have already pointed out the N900.

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.

[tjogin]

Simply existing is not good enough for Apple, their bar is higher than that. See copy/paste on iPhone for an example:

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.

[jarek]

You are, of course, correct; I was responding to my parent's unqualified claims that "mobile Flash is still nowhere to be found on any mobile device" and "mobile Flash didn't exist in 2007".

[barake]

Performance of Flash on the N770 was pretty bad but I have a feeling that the 252Mhz OMAP and 64MB of RAM were the problem.

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.

[kirse]

I have Flash on my Nokia N900... Runs smoothly and nicely, too! Directly via the default Firefox browser!

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.

[CrazedGeek]

Can you send a little of that smooth-and-nice my way?

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.)

[biafra]

I really do not care about Flash. What I care about is the freedom to use any programming language that I like or see fit for the problem at hand. Section 3.3.1 is not only banning Flash although that would be wrong too. It bans _every_ other language than the three C's and "JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine".

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.

[aero142]

Agreed, this whole flash things is a distraction from the real effect, which is vendor lockin.

[varaon]

> Yes, the spec is technically open, but there still haven't been any players that work as "well" as Adobe's.

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.

[CrazedGeek]

I had originally made a comment about rtmpdump, but I realized that my logic was a bit silly, so I replaced it with something slightly less silly.

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])

[Auzy83]

Actually, many mobile phones simply haven't had the CPU to run flash, and you'll find that none have been able to run complex applications until fairly recently.

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.

[windsurfer]

Just FYI: my N900 has flash and it works great. Hardware accelerated and everything.

[ZeroGravitas]

He said mobile flash. Nokia hacked the desktop Flash 9 into Maemo because they were so desperate to get something on their device. I can't find the link right now but an Adobe blogger basically distanced himself from it recently, saying it was Nokia's baby (which makes sense as they're the only one running it) as it wasn't 'real' mobile Flash.

[windsurfer]

I'm very impressed that they managed to get such a licensing deal.

[Batsu]

The default browser in Sprint's HTC Hero has Flash 9.1.

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.

[elpuri]

I think Symbian (S60) devices have had flash since 2004 or something and they've shipped tens of millions of devices since then. Also at least Nokia's Symbian devices are OMAP based like iPhone.

I'm not saying that Adobe's Flash has had a huge impact on the Symbian world, but just to get the facts straight.

[asmosoinio]

Yes and no: Flash Lite has existed there in the firmware for ages, but nobody is using it. It also cannot be utilized from the browser.

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...

[blub]

I've just used Flash on my Nokia smart phone to view a flash-only website. Works out of the box.

[asmosoinio]

Really, cool! What phone, what site? Gotta try it myself, I am supposed to know this stuff. :)

[blub]

It's a Nokia E72. The website was http://www.gerlinea.fr/. :)

[perokreco]

Yes, my N82 which several years old phone has flash which I use with no problem.

[codingthewheel]

You should familiarize yourself with the technologies.

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. :)

[ajross]

Isn't one of the reasons that mobile flash doesn't exist today that Apple, y'know, expressly disallowed Adobe's flash-to-iPhone compiler? Isn't that the issue at hand here?

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.

[allyt]

The topic was Flash running in a mobile browser. Like Android, which Adobe originally said would ship Flash for over a year ago. I think Adobe's utter engineering incompetence is one of the obvious points everyone seems too polite to make.

[starkfist]

To be fair, it's technologically nearly impossible. The incompetence is coming from whomever is promising it. The engineers are fucked...

[endtime]

Why? There's no qualitative computational difference between a smartphone and a desktop computer; further, the quantitative difference between today's smartphones and older Flash-capable machines of a decade ago is probably not that huge.

[acqq]

Absolutely not true that there's no difference. The speed of your desktop comes from using POWER. Today's desktop CPUs alone pull up to 130 WATTS. My desktop CPU bought in 2000 used 30 W. Now even notebook CPUs use more when they're not idle! Now I can come to a lot of web pages where only Flash ads use 100% of a modern CPU! That translates in 60-70 Watts. Then compare all this with the goals for device which should work with battery for hours.

[jm4]

That happened when? Three weeks ago? The iPhone has been out for years. And we're still just talking about one phone. I'm not necessarily condoning Apple's action, but arguing that the lack of mobile Flash is due to the new SDK agreement rings a little hollow. Adobe has had years to deliver Flash mobile and a variety of smart phones to target, yet it runs on none.

[pstuart]

No.

Apple is not the only software solution for mobile devices.

[InclinedPlane]

Or merely look at some of Apple's other technology bets:

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.

[andrewf]

To be fair, all the other pre-90s microcomputer networking standards (NetBIOS, IPX, token ring..) are also dead, Apple Desktop Bus was introduced before the PS/2 port, and IDE was introduced (as a one-vendor proprietary implementation) in the same year that Apple started putting SCSI hard drives into Macs.

[alanh]

Were they "bets" or technology choices?

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.

[rauljara]

I've noticed that it is very hard to accuse others of being morally pontificating without sounding at least a little hypocritical about it. Even the previous sentence applies to itself.

[spot]

true -- but this time he seems to have gone too far to turn back. then again, remember when PowerPC was better than Intel? Jobs is a master of the Big Lie.

[rbranson]

What was he supposed to say? Get up on stage and tell everyone PowerPC chips were crap? During the PPC days, there were many times where PPC had a significant lead on Intel, especially early on, but towards the end, most notably the G5 days, Intel's lead just widened so far and PPC's got so expensive, that it made the best business sense to switch.

[whatusername]

The Power architecture is still pretty awesome for raw power. But it's not designed for low energy consumption (ie: laptops). So while a desktop with some P6/P7 chips* would be an awesome beast - a laptop might be a toaster.

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.

[tjogin]

At the time, they arguably were better. Things change, and Apple changes too. Don't see anything wrong with that.

[tjogin]

There were no objections to either push notifications nor multitasking. At one point they weren't offered simply because you can't do all things at once, but Apple never made any objections to the technologies, moral or otherwise.