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Steve Jobs' thoughts about Flash on mobile. All of them bad

Apple's boss spells out his reasons why

Steve Jobs' thoughts about Flash on mobile. All of them bad
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Perhaps aware the conflict surrounding Flash's lack of appearance on iPhone is becomingly increasingly personal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has decided to spell out his concerns regarding Adobe's platform in a more reasonable manner in a post made on the firm's website.

Simply titled "thoughts on Flash", Jobs highlights six key reasons why he believes iPhone and Flash are incompatible, and his commitment to HTML5 is reinforced at almost every turn.

Penny for your thoughts

"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," Jobs says in the entry.

He goes to claim the fact that he regards Flash as a "closed" system as one of its major pitfalls.

Moving on to counter Adobe's claim that by missing out on Flash Apple's iDevices can't access the full web, the meat of the issue begins when Jobs discusses Flash reliability.

"Symantec recently highlights Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009," he states.

"We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash".

Low on energy

Jobs also states that Flash drains battery life and simply doesn't fit in with the touch-based set-up of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

"Many Flash websites rely on rollovers," he adds, "Apple's revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn't use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover."

He continues, "Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Abobe's goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps."

Business thinking

It's this stance that Adobe – while opening up the App Store to even more titles – would enable lower quality apps and games on iPhone that seems to be the main motivation behind Apple's block on Flash.

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform," Jobs concludes.

"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."

You can read the post in full over on Apple's website.

Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.