Apple vs Adobe

30/4/2010

Anyone who has used an iPhone will be well aware that that nifty little plugin Flash from Abode is well and truly missing. Flash is something that most of us use day in day out, even if we don’t realise it, with most video and animation being powered by it.

It’s been a long bugbear for users around the world as Flash is so prevalent in the non-Apple world.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has at last come clean on the reasons for this in an open letter. His message: Flash is a failure on mobile devices. Don’t hold back Mr Jobs. And he didn’t. Jobs has gone to the trouble of listing 6 different reasons why Flash is a has-been and cannot exist on the Apple platform. These include the feeling that software if full of bugs and hence “Flash is the number one reason Macs crash”. Other reasons include that battery life deteriorates through Flash usage and Flash does not work well with touchscreen devices.

\\\"Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they 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,\\\" he wrote.

But core to Jobs’ argument stems from Adobe’s move to cease making tools that third party developers use to translate Flash code to run of iPhones and iPads. This means that developers would now need to make two separate versions of apps – one for Apple devices, and one for the rest.

Instead, Apple is leaning towards the HTML5 programming standard that is capable of many similar functions available within Flash.

Meanwhile, Adobe Chief Executive, Shatanu Narayan, has dismissed Apple’s views saying the issues cited were just a ‘smokescreen’.