We’ve all gathered some thoughts on Steve Job’s fight against Flash, feel free to comment.

Sarn’s Thoughts…

Dissecting what Jobs said, he is entirely correct, but it’s not the whole picture.

•Flash saps power.
•It does add a third level of complexity and software to existing frameworks.
•It is slow to adopt enhancement on new platforms.

But this is what happens when you try to create a technology that is cross browser/technology compatible while at the same time able to perform highly complex multimedia functionality.  Flash is filling a niche in the world of online multimedia (games, animation, video, etc..) which isn’t part of a standard yet, thus a third party layer is still needed.

Flash will sap power because is doing added calculations to perform multimedia at a level that is cross compatible with multiple platforms.

Flash won’t adapt to the latest and greatest features until it becomes the majority or standard.  Adobe isn’t going to waste time writing special Flash features for Apple products, especially if the user base is minimal.

One thing I do agree with Jobs is the security drawbacks.  Flash could do a better job with that which could be made possible by handling buffer overflow better, which is the common method of breaking into someone’s computer using Flash.

I just think Jobs has a personal vendetta against Adobe.  If Mac users want to use Flash, give them that option.

Jamie’s Thoughts…

My personal opinion is that it is probably a mistake not to support Flash right now. I agree with Job’s critique of flash to a certain extent, and he has some good reasons for not including it. However, I believe that it is way too soon to start dismissing it as being on its way out. Flash is still very widely used for interactivity on the web. Also, after seeing it at SXSW, HTML5/JS/CSS is much better than flash, especially for video. IE is way behind though in terms of supporting it and meeting standards, which makes it less practical to develop with it quite yet for companies like us that have a majority IE user base. Apple just seems to be limiting themselves too early to me, and developers who want to write something only once will still prefer cross-platform technologies, like Flash.

My Thoughts…

I think Job’s doesn’t like flash because it doesn’t fit well into his plan for the iphone and the ipad. I think it’s unfair for him to demonize flash though, it makes him look like a little crazy, and it really only seems like bad a bad PR move. Adobe and Apple have always been allies which makes this whole thing even more bizarre to me.