Some Thoughts on Apple, Adobe, Flash and the iPhone

If you clicked on this link then chances are you know about the recent Adobe/Apple spat over the iPhone's incapacity to play "Flash" video. (See "Thoughts on Flash" by Steve Jobs)

So what about customer choice?

Here is what I mean, if you're like me, then you love tech, gadgets and proudly profess your nerdish tendencies without shame. If you're even more like me you don't know exactly how Flash works, but you do know that you need it to watch your beloved Hulu and to play stupid free online games etc...

Yet, despite Flash being all but necessary to view a wide array of "full internet" sites, Apple has intentionally declined to adapt and rise to the challenge of integration. Heck, Apple has gone beyond passive opposition to Flash and has actively prevented virtually all forms of flash from entering its oh so special "App Store".

The Technical Flame War:

The nerdlings on the various tech blogs bravely flame back and forth about HTML5 and H "dot" this and that. They prattle on and on about how program X is not going to work on iGadget Y. Frankly, its all quite overwhelming until you realize one simple thing. It really shouldn't be Apple's call whether you want to burn your battery down or brave a processor hiccup or two. That should be left to the only group of people who really matter. I.e. the consumers stupid! After all, we do that every day on our PCs, so why not on our iPhones?

Apple, and specifically Steve Jobs have all but said that we (the consumers) have enough choice as it is and that because Jobs/Apple doesn't like Flash, that we won't have the opportunity to decide for ourselves whether to use it or not.

I'm really not being overly dramatic here, Jobs said that we "...aren't missing much video" because he and Apple have allowed in several video apps that they've deemed worthy. To be fair many of these apps are quite worthy, but that's not what's bugging me.

What's bugging me is that Jobs has made the decision for me and all the while yammering on about how closed Flash is...talk about irony! Further, in an apparent contradiction of the Jobsian spiel, Adobe has recently released Flash 10.1 which seems to run just fine on a mobile platform. At least that's what this video of a Nexus One seems to be showing. So, despite apparently contradictory evidence, Jobs uses claims of sufficient choice, battery life, security and the risk of stalling from third party developers to excuse his decision to lock out the largest facilitator of online video.

I'm not an engineer and I know about 1 millionth the amount of tech knowledge that Jobs has undoubtedly accumulated in is long career. However, I strongly suspect that there are ways to allow the consumer to see flash based sites and not compromise the security or performance of the idevice. How do I know this? Well, the above video of the Nexus One is a start and in addition there is "Skyfire" which is a web browser that does the work from the Skyfire servers so your phone doesn't have to. Most relevantly, it allows Flash videos to be viewed just fine.

Smokescreen maybe?

Frankly, it seems to me that Flash based content poses a considerable financial threat to Apple's walled "garden O apps". The threat may be so big that Apple has done its best to come up with a giant smoke screen to mask the true reasons for denying Flash entry. Seriously, the Nexus One video showed a guy playing a game that I might have otherwise paid for in the Apple app store. It seems to me that this newfangled Flash could give Apple a run for its money. From my vantage point, technical jargon aside, Apple seems to be doing its darnedest to squash this competitive threat. The recent FTC/ DOJ decision to make a preliminary anti trust inquiry into Apple suggests that perhaps others have concluded the same thing.

Jobs has points when he talks of why he doesn't like Flash, but I say, leave the decision about whether to take the risks associated with Flash to me!

-End rant