Steve Jobs Blasts Flash In Meeting With WSJ Editors — Report

Leander Kahney ()

Steve Jobs Blasts Flash In Meeting With WSJ Editors — Report

CC-licensed photo by richdrogpa - http://flic.kr/p/7D9ziS

Steve Jobs unloaded on Flash during a meeting with Wall Street Journal executives last week, according to Gawker.

Jobs met with editors of the Journal to show them the new iPad. The Journal make widespread use of Flash on its website for video, infographics, etc., and editors raised concerns about the absence of Adobe’s plug-in.

According to Gawker: “Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy.”

Jobs then proceeded to eviscerate the technology:

  • He called Flash a “CPU hog.”
  • A source of “security holes.”
  • A dying technology. Jobs reportedly compared Flash to floppy drives, legacy ports and even the CD. “We don’t spend a lot of energy on old technology,” Jobs reportedly said.
  • The iPad’s battery performance would be degraded from 10 hours to 1.5 hours if it had to spend its CPU cycles decoding Flash,” Jobs supposedly said.
  • Ditching Flash would be “trivial,” Jobs told Journal editors.

Gawker says it’s not clear how the Journal’s staff reacted to the meeting, but notes that less than a week later, the paper’s op-ed section said Apple is the new Microsoft and is obsessed with “zero-sum maneuvering.” It’s primary example? Jobs’ decision to keep Flash off the iPad.

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About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, Apple Tablet, iPad, Media, News, Steve Jobs, Top stories |

  • Giraldo

    Yes. It is looking like Apple is starting to get that same mentality Microsoft got when it rised to the top. Now look at MS, they have their own language suite, Visual Studio, and Apple theirs, XCode. Which you can only run on their corresponding operating systems. MS doesn’t like flash because they are trying to push Silverlight and Apple doesn’t because they want more iPhone OS based Apps.

    The reality is, Apple was on the right track with Mac OS X yet with the iPhone OS they have totally gone bonkers. OSX was so open with the terminal, open to run Debian-based software, and cheap. The iPhone OS, on the other hand, is the most selfish, controlled, greedy, limiting environment you could possibly have.

  • Tommy

    I hate to say it, but Jobs is right on the money. It may be a zero sum approach but decisiveness is what is needed to push the internet (and its developers) into the future.

    For the past few months I have been using Click-to-Flash (discretely giving me the choice to see flash content), and I no longer suffer from CPU drains when I have a couple of tabs open. My web browsing experience has been greatly improved.

    I love Adobe products, I use photoshop, lightroom, and illustrator daily, but flash is a labrador puppy killing, soul sucking harpy that needs to go!

  • http://www.thegeeklife.tv Richard Brantley

    If this kills Flash usage everywhere, so be it. Perhaps designers that got lazy and started developing entire web sites in Flash, or putting Flash applets everywhere without any thought about whether it not it was appropriate will have to kick their addiction.

  • Craig Grannell

    Probably worth noting the obvious that nonetheless escapes some people: Flash is not an open tech, and Apple’s not pushing iAnimate (or whatever) as a replacement – instead it IS pushing for open web standards.

  • Alfred

    Flash out, HTML5/CCS3 in.

    Times move on.

  • kenseidave

    Ok I don’t understand. Could someone enlighten me?

    I am a Mac user. Switched from Windows about 3 years ago. I certainly noted that youtube stalls every once in a while is not smooth and whenever flash is being rendered my CPU and fans go crazy.

    Steve: “Flash crashes Macs and is buggy”

    I have never seen my Mac crash. Why do Macs have these problems with flash yet I have noticed these issues with a Windows machine? Has it got something to do with software architecture?

  • kenseidave

    er “never noticed these issues”

  • http://jonathanbaldwin.co.uk Jonathan

    I too use ClicktoFlash and love it. Today my 27 inch iMac, with top specs, struggled to play a simple two-line composition in Garageband while the hard drive whirred and clicked. Everything slowed down. It was only when reading this I remembered: I had some tabs open with embedded video that I’d allowed ClicktoFlash display. Close them, and my iMac becomes a beast again. Two short Flash videos.
    Imagine this problem on the iPhone or iPad? Battery would be gone in minutes.

    kenseidave: yes it’s about architecture but also, as Jobs apparently said, because Adobe are lazy. Other video formats play beautifully on the Mac (e.g. non Flash YouTube and Vimeo, streaming HD trailers through iTunes etc) It’s long been known that Flash was crappy on the Mac and we’ve just had to put up with it. If Adobe had addressed the issue earlier, these arguments wouldn’t be happening.

    As for Apple being “Microsoftian”, as someone has already pointed out, MS tried (try?) to get rid of competing software so they could impose their own solutions as a standard. There is no Apple equivalent of Flash, simply open standards. Anyway it ill-behoves the WSJ, part of the Murdoch empire, to dictate to others anything about business practice…

  • Barry Wood

    @kenseidave – the “crashing” is really Flash crashing Safari, which I’ve seen happen. It’s highly unlikely that Flash can take down the entire OS.

    I have noticed that Flash can be a real CPU and memory hog. With HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript it’s possible to do much of the same thing that Flash allows but you will end up with a web site that’s accessible to people using screen readers and such.

  • nabil2199

    @Jonathan H264 is as open as north korea

  • Alexis

    FLASH SUCKS…battery would be nothing with Flash

  • HandyMac

    Just got around to installing ClickToFlash yesterday, and it has revolutionized my computing experience. For years I’ve been enduring constant fan noise from my MacBook Pros (and PowerBooks previously), which my subconscious mind interprets as a kind of emergency situation, like a siren or ringing phone, causing chronic stress. With ClickToFlash, Activity Monitor shows Safari using ~20% of CPU, where before it was always 60-90% or higher — even when I wasn’t doing anything with it, just had a bunch of windows and tabs open. And I haven’t heard the fans at all. Huge *sigh* of relief.

    I’m no Steve Jobs fanboy — his attitudes and Apple’s (well, that’s redundant, I guess) often annoy me — but I’m with him on this one. Adobe is the real Microsoft emulator: big, fat, and lazy. If Flash were not everything Steve says it is — if it were lean, efficient and reliable — it would have been on the iPhone from the beginning, and none of this “controversy” would have happened.

  • nacra

    Time to move on. Flash is based on legacy technology and it needs to go. We need an open standard, free from royalties, efficient and stable.

    Let the coding wars begin.

  • John

    Flash does not equal online video. There was a time when I preferred video in Flash to the alternative, but not anymore. HTML5 handles all of this nicely.

    Flash is a problem because it is quite often buggy, slow, and hard to navigate. Wait while the flash interface loads so I can navigate your crappy web page? Gimme a break.

  • http://spacecookies.co.uk Wiredfire

    The point often missed is good or bad Flash is popular – give the end user the choice to enjoy as full an internet experience as possible. Nothing wrong with having a browser option to disable Flash if desired – heck even set as off be default if you must with a battery warning if you turn it on but bullying users into your own line of proprietary nonsense is precisely what Apple used to shout down Microsoft over.

    Oh how the tides have turned, Mr Jobs.

  • gb

    Yes, I use clicktoflash as well, and load very few flash elements anymore – much more stable experience. When I DO have a safar element crash, it’s one of the few flash elements I did load…

    Describing Apple as the new Microsoft because they cannot/will not support Flash is not an indication of intelligent thinking, and Im a fan of the WSJ. Apple has generally struck a great balance between open access (for freedom and flexibility) and close control (for stability, security, and superior customer experience), and knowing what a hog (and how generally invasive Flash use is), I would objectively agree that there needs to be better solutions for animated/dynamic/video content, OR, Adobe does need to refocus, if possible, on developing something that works very well in the the confines of mobile environments.

    I mean, Flash allows this:

    http://www.jimcarrey.com/

    How in the world would any mobile device deal with this? A truly mobile flash solution would have to institute limits as to what was acceptable from a battery, processor, and graphics performance for mobile devices.

    As an aside, that site merrily chews up about 35 to 45% of my total quad core Xeon Mac Pro processing capability with 8 GB of memory – (just the landing page)

  • iGenius
  • Anon

    Since Flash is an antiquated technology that is killing all of your computers, I suggest all of you go into your browser settings and uninstall the flash plugin. This way you won’t have to depend on another plugin such as clicktoflash and can experience what surfing the web on the iPad will be like.

  • gb

    “gb – maybe a better computer would help. Check this out:”

    The Mac I have is incredibly fast – so no need to change for one piece of inefficient software.

    To check out the other side, after being a past Vista, XP, and 2000 users, I also recently built a brand new Intel i7 1366 socket Windows 7 64-bit system to act as a media server, and despite the new eye candy Windows 7 offers.

    I was dismayed to see the same old nonsense of millions of different drivers, from different sources, with different compatibility issues, wuth a myriad of third party hardware “choices,” joint functionality of which escapes even seasoned users.

    It is as incomprehensible a mess for the masses as previous versions of Windows.

    Which driver? Use ATI’s not Realtek, but wait – Realtek has an ATI HDMI audio driver. Why? (but don’t use that one) – Does your estata support port replicators? What? Why does my computer intermittently emit a long beep when it boots? (but then seems to operate ok) Gigabyte doesn’t know – try disconnecting fans. No? Not sure…

    Install a Windows 7 compatible eSata Raid card – locks up on software install – wait, the installer is old, download the new one – that locks up too. Every sixth or seventh shutdown, Windows just says “Shutting Down” and never does anything. Play a DVD with 5.1 DTS surround, and the side surround channels are mismapped to the rear speakers in a 7.1 setup – Arcsoft, ATI, and Microsoft blame each other, (but the problem’s been known about for years and remains unfixed) – oh and make sure yo disable Aero, Windows Search, and indexing features (according to the wisest of Windows Media Center experts) among other functionality, because they are resource hogs. Ad nauseum…..

    This is only after a week….Any objective person who has legitimately used both Macs and PCs will tell you the Mac is miles ahead in terms of stability, usability, and performance. My experiment is becoming a nightmare…

  • iGenius

    “My experiment is becoming a nightmare…”

    I guess that sticking with a Mac is your best bet.

    Personally, I’ve never experienced any of the problems you have. And I’ve built/modified/upgraded/hacked many WinBoxen over the years.

    Nowadays, I use my new Dell i7 quad core and (so far) I’m happy with it. It has a faster chip than any MacBook and a 1080p screen and BluRay and FireWire and wireless-n and … it plays Flash with little effort.

    And it was significantly cheaper than the MacBook.

    To each his own, I suppose.

  • mlahero

    The internet would be a boring place without Flash. The level of creativity it offers designers over bog-standard HTML/CSS is amazing. Lots of people herald HTML5 and CSS3 as great alternatives to Flash but they simply don’t offer the interactive capability that Flash offers. jQuery still has nothing on Flash.

    Some say Flash is an antiquated technology but that just smacks of jumping on the anti-flash bandwagon. Its obvious to me that Jobs doesnt want Flash on his machines because it would hurt Apple’s profit margins through the lack of app sales. It’s incredible that so many people think Jobs has anything but Apple’s profit margins as his top priority and eat up his rhetoric so readily.

  • annoying

    The actual problem is between apple and google. There is nothing else. Steve jobs does not like google launching phone and chrome os. Look at this way adobe flash been in the market for so long and no complaints from anybody users or software companies why suddenly Steve Jobs comes out and says this stuff?. I think its not good but hey once you have the power you exercise it does not matter good or bad

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