If you haven’t, first go read Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash“.

First, there’s “Open”.
Seriously? Apple is one of the most closed companies in the world. The iPhone & iPad are the most closed and regulated system I have ever seen in my life–by far. I can’t count the # of apps that have been rejected because of ridiculous reasons. I’ve owned 2 different non-iPhone chargers that didn’t work because, according to my iPhone, ”this charging device isn’t supported”. Funny, if I wiggle the device just right so the iPhone doesn’t realize it’s not “genuine”, it works perfectly. If I want to get my stuff into the app store, I HAVE to use Obj C, no alternatives. Around every corner, Apple is the most closed minded, “our way or the highway” company I have ever heard of.

Adobe, on the other hand, has open sourced the ActionScript VM of Flash (Tamarin). And there are multiple efforts to create alternative Flash player’s too: Flirt, Gnash.

For a much better discussion on this, read Serge Jespers “Flash is as open as HTML5” article.

Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Second, there’s the “full web”.
“Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264…” -Steve Jobs

“Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software” -Steve Jobs

So which is it? Most of it is H.264, or most of it is not H.264?

SJ says we should use HTML5, but there are currently so many problems w/ HTML5:

  • The support between browsers is still totally varied and inconsistent. I have to write all sorts of browsers exceptions and include duplicate copies of media in different formats for different browsers (such as mp3 for Safari and ogg for Chrome or Firefox).  And, this is assuming the end user even has the latest browser. The penetration of the latest Flash Player is 98%. But what is the penetration of HTML5 supported browsers? Significantly less. I can’t possibly recommend to our clients that they should target HTML5 if they want to reach the masses (yet).
  • By definition, everything written in HTML5 is public (good old “view source” command). But this becomes a problem when Disney or Nickelodeon pays my company tens of thousands of dollars to make an online game, and they prefer the source to remain private.
  • There are still no designer-friendly tools for creating HTML5. Nor are there timelines for character animations. Nor does HTML5 provide the full feature set currently available to Flash developers. Hopefully this will change someday, but I can’t help but feel like we are taking a huge leap backwards in what can be done on the web right now.
  • Even if a web-based game could be made in either Flash or HTML5 (and there are many that certainly could not), our budget would go WAY up if we had to make it in HTML5 instead of Flash since it would require so many extra hours. Our clients will not be happy to hear this.
  • There is a SIGNIFICANT amount of content on the web today that is done in Flash. Much of this content (most?) will never be redone in HTML5–even if Flash died tomorrow. Many companies can’t or won’t justify re-spending the money to rebuild past projects from scratch using HTML5. There is a large amount of content on the web that I will NEVER be able to access on an iPad. Ever.

Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.
I won’t argue this point: Flash has crashed on me many times. But it’s silly to try and say this is solely Adobe’s fault. Have you ever had an iPhone app crash? This is a regular occurrence for me. So should I switch to Android then because iPhone OS sucks? What a silly thought process. Sometimes the app crash might be Apple’s responsibility, but more often than not, the fault lies on the software developer who has bugs or memory leaks in their apps. I should no more abandon Flash over this than I should abandon iPhone OS over this.

Flash security holes? Sure, no doubt about it. But does Apple really think their software doesn’t have security holes also?

Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Fourth, there’s battery life.
Playing games drains my battery way faster too. So should I quit playing games on my iPhone then? Using 3G, GPS, or Blue Tooth drains my battery way faster too. So should I quit using all of those technologies? No. Leave it up to me how I want to spend my battery. Disable Flash by default if you want and post a warning about battery life as a user tries to enable it. This is more than I can say is done when I turn on my 3G which has an extremely significant impact on my battery life. Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Fifth, there’s Touch.
True enough. But touch has only recently become “main stream”. People will slowly stop using roll overs as touch interfaces become more of “the norm”. In the meantime, I’d rather be able to see the “outdated” content than have it blocked altogether. Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Sixth, the most important reason.
Ignoring the fact that Apple themselves have spotlighted multiple apps in the app store created with 3rd party software, sure, I can’t argue with this one. If I wanted to take advantage of iPhone OS 4′s multitasking features, and I was using Flash CS5 to create my app, I would be at the mercy of an Adobe update. But what you are referring to here is Flash in the app store. But with all of your talk about HTML5 earlier, I thought we were talking about Flash in the browser. HTML5 is not going to allow me access to the multitasking API’s either. In-fact, I’m sure we can agree that HTML6 is a LOOOONG way off. Flash in the browser can continue to push the web further in the meantime (as they have been doing for many years). Give the consumer back the power of choice.

Conclusions, and the real “most important reason”.
Two words: business strategy. This is all about Apple making more money–locking more developers into their ecosystem, their stores, their ad systems, their developer licenses, their hardware, etc. Now, I’m not faulting SJ for this–after all, as a CEO, that’s his job. But it’s too bad that consumers are deceived into thinking that the real “most important reason” their freedom of choice is being taken away, is anything other than the value of AAPL.

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