Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife
by Volker Weber
Holier-than-thou, an adjective, meaning "marked by an air of superior piety or morality". Everybody has moments in their life where they get into a "holier-than-thou" attitude, and I think Steve Jobs' open letter regarding Adobe, and Flash in particular, really fits the bill. There are three specific points I want to address to illustrate just how holier-than-thou, hypocritical, and misleading this letter really is.
Comments
He does not get the point - he takes the examples out and trys to trash them without considering that this is not the point:
- "Carbon" - Steve's point is that he is not willing to accept the dependence of app developers on the feature adoption by Adobe.
-"H264" - Steve's point is that you do not need Flash for video in the web. He does not state that H264 is open - just modern and most videos are available.
- "iTunes" - here I really do not understand what Thom is sayin'. iTunes on Windows sucks and that's why Apple sucks? Again: Steve's point is why he does not allow flash on his iDevices. No one is forced to buy an iDevice if he does not want to use the environment.
Martin, you may want to have a look at Jesse Warden's response too... more to the point in my eyes. And I don't like Flash very much either.
Good link, Jan. Thanks for sharing.
Martin,
to quote Jobs: "we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open."
If H264 is supposed to be the future of video on the web I think it should be included in this group of standards, not just HTML5, CSS and Javascript. HTML5 on its own won't play video.
I have been more or less happy with all Apple products and services over the years. I can't say that about any of the Adobe products in the last years. Usability, stability, service and especially pricing policy of Adobe products are just ridiculous. Adobe has a quasi monopoly and I can't see any mayor improvements in what they do. And I thank Jobs, that we will get rid of all these pseudo cool flash websites of pseudo cool ad agencies, which some of my clients like so much.
