Steve Jobs List Reasons Why Apple Hates Adobe

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Steve Jobs took a considerable amount of time out of his busy schedule to sit down and put his thoughts on Flash down on paper. If you think this is going to be just some long drawn out list of reasons why Apple “hates” Adobe, well…you’d be right.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
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Not a bad article... I glanced over most of it but doesn't seem like Steve is hating on Adobe, just stating that Flash doesn't work well with mobile devices.
 
I don't think anybody can deny that apple has produced some pretty decent hardware. It may not be OMG awesome, but it is decent. It helps raise the bar of what we should expect as consumers. This is a good thing. The penalty we pay is their arrogance and the price...but it at least allows us a reasonable trade to make.

I think we can agree that Flash definitely helped "pretty up" the web. It allowed it to be engaging more than a bunch of links and "under construction" images. I don't think anybody can deny though that Adobe has dropped the ball on evolving Flash for the mobile/touch market when they had such a huge window of opportunity to do so. Adobe pretty much pulled a Sony with their arrogance and will now pay the price.
 
most of his arguments can be summed up by saying:

I love money
I love control
Having Flash on apple products takes money and control away from me
Therefore I hate adobe

Also they are poo poo heads.
 
Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues.
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I think any sensible person would believe that it's for both reasons. Apple wants to protect the App Store, but they also want to deliver on a good user experience (performance, interaction, etc.) and be in control of device security. There are two sides to the coin here, and Jobs isn't being fully honest about why Flash doesn't have a place on iPhone OS. His interests are largely self-serving.

Apple wants to control its mobile platform. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Has it hurt iPhone users? To some degree, yeah. But when it comes to shifting the web away from proprietary solutions to open standards, I guess you have to break a few eggs if you want to make that omelet. Personally speaking, I don't miss Flash on my iPhone, and I'm very close to uninstalling Flash on my PCs. The next time I reinstall Windows, it's very unlikely I'll be installing Flash, and I don't think my web experience is going to be all that different.
 
Sikkyu said:
most of his arguments can be summed up by saying:

I love money
I love control
Having Flash on apple products takes money and control away from me
Therefore I hate adobe

Also they are poo poo heads.
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That's not at all what was said. Read it.

Flash is a resource hog, it's missed every deadline so far on mobiles, and it is a layer of proprietary bullshit on top of the web.

I'm not arguing that Apple isn't the master of controlled environments and proprietary nonsense. They are.

That's their prerogative to control their products and the experience the want their consumers to have, but the web is all pervasive and forcing proprietary plugins for everyone that diminishes the experience for everyone isn't good for anyone.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I don't think anybody can deny that apple has produced some pretty decent hardware. It may not be OMG awesome, but it is decent. It helps raise the bar of what we should expect as consumers. This is a good thing. The penalty we pay is their arrogance and the price...but it at least allows us a reasonable trade to make.

I think we can agree that Flash definitely helped "pretty up" the web. It allowed it to be engaging more than a bunch of links and "under construction" images. I don't think anybody can deny though that Adobe has dropped the ball on evolving Flash for the mobile/touch market when they had such a huge window of opportunity to do so. Adobe pretty much pulled a Sony with their arrogance and will now pay the price.
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They could have pulled a Sprint :p
 
adobe should stop developing photoshop for mac. no cs5, not even any 64 bit version lol.
 
We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.
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Sounded pretty reasonable till that line.

Lots of valid points, but in the end he's asking the internet to drop flash and tailor itself to his products. What's he going to do when flash becomes hardware accelerated?
 
niconx said:
So can we see Silverlight on the iPhone instead?
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They won't for the same reasons listed with Flash, but it had been speculated as possible: during the briefly-flaming war between Apple and Google, Apple was maybe going to Bing for default mobile search, and Silverlight was rumoured to go in with it.

Pretty unlikely now that MS is releasing WinPho 7.
 
DeFex said:
adobe should stop developing photoshop for mac. no cs5, not even any 64 bit version lol.
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If Adobe stopped developing Photoshop for OS X, OS X users would just keep using Photoshop CS5. Adobe doesn't exactly introduce a boatload of new, highly-desirable features with each overpriced release. The additions in CS5 are actually the most substantial in recent memory, and I've been a Photoshop user since version 5 (frankly, not that much has changed).

I think Adobe knows that you're not going to be able to pry a Mac out of a Mac user's hands simply by stopping development on the OS X version of Photoshop. I think, generally speaking, the people who buy Macs are going to continue buying Macs regardless of what Adobe does.

niconx said:
So can we see Silverlight on the iPhone instead?
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Yeah, that might be cool. Then we'd be able to use the two or three web applications built with Silverlight so far.
 
The man is delusional...

He's a blatant hypocrite multiple times throughout the article, he's outright incorrect on a lot of points, and his conclusions are idealistic but completely unrealistic.
 
It actually wasn't as bad as I expected of an article from apple. I used a school required powerbook in college, the dreaded grey screen of death was the bane of my existence. I think the most useful thing I got out of that is that cs5 has shipped, though.
 
Unknown-One said:
The man is delusional...

He's a blatant hypocrite multiple times throughout the article, he's outright incorrect on a lot of points, and his conclusions are idealistic but completely unrealistic.
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Side effect of living in "The Reality Distortion Field" for so long, I suppose. I question this thread's title however as I didn't detect anything even remotely related to "hate" from Jobs. I mean I know it's probably there but, even so, I would hate to assume anything. :)
 
Sounds like he is trying to leverage HTML 5 and hurt the Flash marketshare. I forsee a batlle ahead.
 
phide said:
I think any sensible person would believe that it's for both reasons. Apple wants to protect the App Store, but they also want to deliver on a good user experience (performance, interaction, etc.) and be in control of device security. There are two sides to the coin here, and Jobs isn't being fully honest about why Flash doesn't have a place on iPhone OS. His interests are largely self-serving.

Apple wants to control its mobile platform. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Has it hurt iPhone users? To some degree, yeah. But when it comes to shifting the web away from proprietary solutions to open standards, I guess you have to break a few eggs if you want to make that omelet. Personally speaking, I don't miss Flash on my iPhone, and I'm very close to uninstalling Flash on my PCs. The next time I reinstall Windows, it's very unlikely I'll be installing Flash, and I don't think my web experience is going to be all that different.
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I agree and in a rather rare change of pace I agree with almost everything Jobs said. Flash is shit, it needs to go away. Abode has shown that they have no interest in making it work correctly or fixing the numerous security holes it has. They have also shown they're ineptitude at getting it out and fully functioning in the mobile arena. I'm not a big fan of Apple, but at least they provide working software and hardware (for the most part). I'll take Apple and all of their BS over Adobe any day. The sooner Flash is eliminated from the web the better.
 
ShadowStriker said:
Flash is the number one reason Macs crash? I beg to differ.
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As of OSX 10.6.3, statistics have been collected. I have no idea of how much data has been collected since, but it isn't unreasonable to think that Apple already has a decent set of data to work with.
Data Collection: Mac OS X v10.6.3 can collect diagnostic and usage information from your Mac and send it to Apple for analysis automatically. The information is only collected with your explicit consent, and is submitted anonymously to Apple. For more details, see this article.
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Good article. It's business. Apple's business. Adobe should manufacture their own phone.
 
Honestly Adobe has gotten more handsey with their products and yeah Im getting a bit tired of it aswell. The minute a company comes out with a required download manager for their products thats when I started backing off and looking for alternatives.
 
Jobs makes a few good points. One thing I don't understand is, how are you going to bring interactive 'Flash like' applications to the iPad, without Flash? Streaming a video is one thing, creating an interactive game is another. Does Jobs want developers to use Java instead?
 
HTML5, JavaScript and the Canvas element, chris. Canvas creates a "drawing canvas" for bitmap images to be animated and controlled with JavaScript. There are a couple games out there right now that run on the iPhone, but the performance on the 3G is a little underwhelming (the 3GS fares better).
 
phide said:
and I've been a Photoshop user since version 5 (frankly, not that much has changed).
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Heh, I got off of 5.5 recently and almost never had any problems using CS tutorials.

Where is 64-bit flash?

Horrible Acrobat reader performance, security holes and a pain-in-the-ass interface?

I'm not a fan of Apple's proprietary, secretive attitude but I can't really blame them for this one.

ShadowStriker said:
Flash is the number one reason Macs crash?
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System Error 3 is the leading cause. Please restart and zap your PRAM... :D
 
honestly... I dont like apple, and I like adobe even less, they totally screwed flash when they bought out macromedia... and 99% of my computer crashes have been related to Adobe products going insane (acrobat is the biggest turd ever compiled)
 
I'm glad Apple isn't interested in adopting Flash... it's a nightmare of a resource whore, and the way it's coded forces everything else to wait till it finishes its redundant tasks.

Personally, I'd rather have Apple work on their music playback tech, as their MP3 playback quality is far inferior to RIM... I've listened to songs on both an Ipod touch and a Blackberry Curve with the same pair of headphones, and the Curve beat it easily.

Until the sound quality improves I'm not buying an Apple product.
 
Hmm.... Just have not seen the Full Web on the iPhone or the iPad. Strongest point he makes is video which is not a strong argument. Not a single site Iv made can be seen correctly or at all on any mobile Apple device. If it was not for Adobe, Apple really would have gone out along time ago. They are biting the hand that fed them. Jobs talks of open standards, but as a whole, Apple is one of the most closed off proprietary its our way or the highway type of companies. In the last couple of months Iv seen Jobs eat his own words and contradict himself over and over. I think he should do some research on the very things he has said and stood by in the past.

I chalk this one up in one way sorta like how Jobs for years bashed Intel and said that the PowerPC ship was faster and superior. Uh Oh yield issues and no real speed bumps to a chip that was twice as fast and they switch to Intel....all of a sudden the Mac is twice as fast as the old PowerPC using Macs. Thats just plain Bi Polar!
 
tweeted this irony lol (5secondnews)

almost all industry mac users are only using macs for adobe product purposes lol
 
DoggyDaddi said:
I'm glad Apple isn't interested in adopting Flash... it's a nightmare of a resource whore, and the way it's coded forces everything else to wait till it finishes its redundant tasks.

Personally, I'd rather have Apple work on their music playback tech, as their MP3 playback quality is far inferior to RIM... I've listened to songs on both an Ipod touch and a Blackberry Curve with the same pair of headphones, and the Curve beat it easily.

Until the sound quality improves I'm not buying an Apple product.
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Which modelCurve? iPod Touch uses the same Wolfson DAC as the Zune, and it provides excellent sound quality in both devices. It's not Red Wine grade, but it's very acceptable.
 
They ARE protecting the app store. It's all about $$$$$!!!! Why would I buy songs from the app store or listen to random repeating pandora music when I could create a playlist on something like grooveshark and listen to whatever I want.

They don't want flash on their mobile devices because to much stuff would become, you know, FREE.

BTW, I have an iPhone3G and it missing flash support is the number one thing I hate. #2 is the fact they are screwing 3G users out of the multitasking update that comes with OS 4.0.

As much as I loved my iPhone at first, I see the predictions are true. "You'll love it at first, but then realise it becomes a love/hate relationship."
 
...that was basically a load of tripe written from the perspective of the CEO. Every single thing that Jobs said might have been true. (It wasn't, but it might have been.) Regardless, should not end users, after having weighed the pluses and the minuses of Flash, be able to make the decision for themselves as to whether or not they want to install and use this software? Why does Jobs get to take that decision away from the people who purchased the product? Why SHOULD Jobs have that power? Can you imagine if MS had forbidden end users to install the initial buggy releases of Firefox? Of Chrome? Of Flash?

Think different apparently means "conform to the wishes of Jobs."

I used to really, really like Apple. That would be back in the day when Apple produced its computers and devices somewhere besides sweatshops...and when Jobs was telling Apple fans that it was wrong to be under the control of a corporation.

Apple? As far as I'm concerned, under the direction of Jobs, they have become...evil.
 
Bah I hate flash as well. I think Steve had some good points although a lot of his point would be accurate if be replaced "Adobe" with "Apple" :p
 
Two things:

There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.
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I don't like the way he uses "in the world". Sounds like deceptive marketing spin to me. Maybe it's technically true, but when you put it in perspective, how is it as a gaming platform compared to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony?

For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?
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CSS has :hover and Javascript has onmouseover. Those didn't need to be rewritten for touch. They can ignore it for Flash as well.
 
masamune said:
how is it as a gaming platform compared to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony?
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Are you referring to the GBA/DS and PSP? You included Microsoft, so I'm unsure if you're trying to compare high powered consoles to handheld gaming devices.
 
So what about the entire industry that is built around developing Flash based content? Is that going to just go away without a fight? C'mon a lot of you guys are in the IT industry as well and know full well how difficult it can be to get anyone say, V.P. or higher to accept anything newer than what they're own limited knowledge of technology is already aware of. Flash has been around longer than the love for Apple based products in the business environment (with limited exceptions of course).

Flash is going nowhere, Adobe systems is also not going to just disappear as much as Steve "cult leader #1 " Jobs would like.

from some of the videos I've watched about PS CS5 the auto fill looks pretty freaking impressive to me.. I'd say that that is still on the "innovation" side of the coin.
 
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