Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Thursday his company and Adobe have “grown apart” as he claims the Cupertino, Calif. company moves beyond the PC era into an age of mobility. In an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Flash,” the co-founder of the computer company outlined his reasons for breaking away from the traditional Web animation application.
Jobs said his objections to Flash center on six issues, including openness, reliability and security.
The Apple CEO restated his position that Flash is “100 percent proprietary.” Although Apple has released a number of proprietary products, the company has also adopted open standards, such as HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Adobe is critical of Apple’s decision to drop support of Flash “for leaving the past behind,” Jobs writes. The adoption of HTML5 by YouTube, Netflix and others means owners of Apple products “aren’t missing much video” and “Flash is no longer necessary” to watch video or other multimedia, he argues.
“Flash is the number one reason Macs crash,” Jobs charges. He said translating Flash applications to run on the iPhone creates “sub-standard apps.”
Jobs charged Apple would not allow its developers to “be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available.” He noted only Adobe only recently adopted Cocoa (the Mac OS X user interface), although it has been available for nearly a decade.
The charismatic Apple leader denigrated Flash as an application “created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. But the mobile era is about low-powered devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where flash falls short,” Jobs concludes.
[via AppleInsider and 9to5Mac]
