In a long letter on Apple’s website, entitled "Thoughts on Flash", Steve Jobs fiercely expressed his issues with Adobe, the producer of Flash which is a technology that is used to play movies and games on the internet. Apple’s CEO explains why his company does not support Adobe Flash on its iPhones, iPod touch, and iPads. He believes that Flash is meant for computers and not for mobile phones with a touch screen. The implementation of Flash on such devices would slow down the device and demands a lot of the battery which causes it to be drained rapidly. In addition, Steve Jobs claims that Adobe Flash is the main reason why Apple Macs crash. In this letter, the CEO also stresses the fact that Flash is not Open Source software. He explains that, this way Adobe can always determine the price and with what conditions other producers are allowed to utilize Flash.
In a reaction to Steve Jobs, Adobe Chief Executive Santanu Narayen said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the attacks are just “a smokescreen.” To mention a few things from the interview: About the battery issue, the chief replied with “patently false”. On the open source comment, he said that Flash is an “open specification”. And, about the Apple Mac crashes, his comment was that it has “to do with the Apple operating system.”
Shortly after Steve shared his thoughts on Flash, Microsoft came forth with their issues with Flash. Dean Hachamovitch, responsible for Internet Explorer, announced on IEBlog that the upcoming IE9 will fully support HTML5 also due to problems with Flash. According to the General Manager, HTML5 is the future; “HTML5 will be very important in advancing rich, interactive web applications and site design.” In addition, due to the better quality pictures and faster download, playback of H.264-videos with HTML5 will be supported in the next version of Internet Explorer. He continues by acknowledging some issues that Flash has concerning reliability, security, and performance. However, “Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.”
HTML5 is said to possess similar capabilities as Flash, but demands lesser CPU to function. Some of you might know from personal experiences with Flash movies and Flash games that it can be quite demanding on the computer, especially in HD-quality one might experience the computer slowing down, a high number in CPU usage, or other or no effects.
Watch the following videos to see a comparison between HTML5 and Flash.
There are mixed opinions to be found on the internet. However, one should keep in mind that the development of HTML5 is not completed yet while Flash has undergone numerous updates throughout the years.
Adobe could view these issues/critiques as a sign to improve the technology, especially now that YouTube has started experimenting with HTML5. Go to the following address if you want to try out the beta version: http://www.youtube.com/html5.
What are your thoughts on this? Will the release of HTML5 slowly eliminate Flash? Share them here.
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