Steve Jobs pens open letter about Flash

attention seeking marketing gibberish

Karl Johnston wrote in post #10234580
attention seeking marketing gibberish

I think it was attention diverting marketing gibberish. Got some attention away from the next-gen iphone gestapo tactics.

tkbslc wrote in post #10234400
Does Apple pretend to be open? I have always considered Apple products to be the most "closed" of any on the planet - which is why I avoid them like the plague.

It's not about open source, it's about open standards. There's a difference. HTML5 and h.264 are open standards, Flash is not.

tkbslc wrote in post #10234400
Does Apple pretend to be open? I have always considered Apple products to be the most "closed" of any on the planet - which is why I avoid them like the plague.

I agree with them being very closed and constricted.

This is not about closed vs open source or hardware or whatever. This is about the open standards on the internet, not to mention a standard that doesn't crash the device it's on. The internet is not an Apple product.

toxic wrote in post #10239730
This is about the open standards on the internet

Actually, no it isn't. It's about killing proper Flash support before it reaches mobile devices and protecting the Apple App Store ecosystem. There are perhaps better banners to lead the charge into more open standards on the internet, which are fine by the way. The issue is the mechanism for video delivered over websites, which up until now was handed off to plug-ins, of which Flash simply became dominant.

lhughey wrote in post #10239606
I agree with them being very closed and constricted.

Hear, hear!

Apple is just trying to push the market in their direction. When a mobile windows based smart phone starts to support Flash Apple will have less leverage. Time will tell. The copyright protection on flash files is one of their benefits over some of the other options especially when displaying photos.

butterfly2937 wrote in post #10262636
When a mobile windows based smart phone starts to support Flash Apple will have less leverage.

Except that Microsoft and Apple are on the same page with this: HTML5 and h.264.

Tony-S wrote in post #10262652
Except that Microsoft and Apple are on the same page with this: HTML5 and h.264.

I was not aware of that. I thought Adobe had a pretty good relationship with Microsoft. Adobe does not seem to be dumping Flash though.

Well their may be some hope if this Google browser adopts Flash:
http://www.zdnet.com …-hope-for-the-future/1909

I didn't read through the entire thread so perhaps this was touched on already but as someone who has used Adobe products since school and my entire career on Macs I can confirm Jobs' last point. Adobe programs use to feel very at home on a Mac. Very stable and the entire experience was very Mac-like. Somewhere along the line Adobe moved it's development to being Windows-based and write-once-deploy-everywhere. While I'm sure the experience didn't suffer on Windows PC's it took a dive on Macs. Are the programs useable on a Mac. Definitely. Is it the same Mac-like experience it used to be. Definitely not.

Yeah, I think Flash is a lost cause on mobile devices. It is being replaced. The argument is just how soon, not really "if".

Apple says it's happening now. Others are waiting for awhile.

In my opinion, that is all there is to this. It's made funny, by the fact that everyone is pissing and moaning about lack of support for a product that doesn't even exist yet. It might be coming, but it still requires the absolute latest tech to run (so it won't run worth crap on 98% of most people who are whining about this issue.)

To sum it up, by the time Flash gets worked out to work well on a mobile space, HTML 5 will have caught up in most categories - and will have replaced it's usage for those. The main thing that it probably won't have replaced, is complicated animations - which, really... how often do you need that? (besides,it will come in time)

Even Adobe has stated that it is working on HTML5 tools - so even they know that their own stuff has a limited shelf life, at least on the web.

[Shrugs]

HTML5 is a marker up language, not a video codec. The proper comparison is to H.264 (or VP8 from Google) or pick you favorite codec.

chantu wrote in post #10275410
HTML5 is a marker up language, not a video codec. The proper comparison is to H.264 (or VP8 from Google) or pick you favorite codec.

W3C is most likely going to approve h.264 for its video element of HTML5.