Steve Jobs on Flash…

First, I’m going to preface this post with a disclaimer: I use Adobe products daily. I used to be a Flash designer and developer. I was on the beta test team for Flash 4 back in the day, and have a deep-seated hatred for people like Jakob Nielsen and his arrogant, ignorant perspective on usability (he was right in the 70s, but not much after that… he rested on his laurels and figured he never needed to think ever again. And he’s practiced that since).

Jobs just posted this open letter on why Apple won’t support Flash:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Jobs is trying to take up the role of Jakob Nielsen, attempting to make himself look bigger by insulting a key player. Flash works well when it’s implemented well. I lose more browser time to javascript than I ever did to Flash. By a major amount. And let’s not even talk about ASP.

While the ‘almost all’ comment about h.264 is true, it’s not complete or accurate. The Flash player will PLAY h.264 material. Flash as a tool can export h.264.

Flash is not a standard in terms of W3C boards, but it is a de facto standard. It is amazingly well penetrated, and the current hatred of Flash is from people that are ignorant or have agendas. Or both. It is not a thing of the past, because it has been in continuous development to lead new technologies. And with AIR, Flash authoring continues to lead the way.

In short, Jobs is doing this for market dominance. Since he can’t properly compete with Flash as a tool, he chooses to insult it and Adobe, and to actively take his toys home. I love working on my Macs, but Jobs is an arrogant bastard who is making a stab at social engineering instead of innovative technological competition. He’s doing everything he ever accused Gates of doing, but because he wears a black turtleneck, all the fanbois stand behind his grizzled little beard.

I could go point by point, but I’m not really a player in the Flash world any more, so I don’t have the authoritative information to back up my views. Besides… there are many more out there who will take apart this naked insult and just plain wrong statement about Flash. The summary: Jobs is marketing by being a piss-ant. If he wanted to include Flash, he could. Even better, he would work with Adobe to build a superior solution to anything either company has right now.

But Jobs doesn’t want a better tool. He wants an APPLE tool. Only. He wants to own you, your devices, your information and everything else. And he’s going to have to fight Google to get there.