Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” Essay
I generally try to keep the pontificating to a minimum here (see my Twitter for all the soapbox screaming you can handle) but I felt that the open letter published on Apple.com today, written by Steve Jobs and detailing his thoughts on the controversy surrounding Apple’s stance on Adobe’s Flash on their iPhone OS devices, was worth posting. Jobs takes an uncharacteristically transparent stance, and calmly outlines several points that collectively sum up Apple’s reasons for disallowing Flash or Flash-based apps into the iPhone OS walled garden.
As a designer and developer who appreciates the value that open standards offer for the future of the web, I think Apple’s stance on this issue is valid. Yes, Flash has performance issues on the Mac, and is vaporware on mobile devices, but that’s not really the point. The point, as pointed out by @benmcdowell on Twitter, is that Flash is this decade’s floppy disk, and Apple has drawn the proverbial line in the sand to say that they no longer wish to support dying technology.
I, like all other web developers, have a real stake in the outcome of this little war, which ultimately is why I’m bringing it up in this context. But my money, and my heart, are on truly open standards coming out on top.