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What Steve Jobs really thinks about Flash

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In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn’t a big fan of Adobe Flash, a multimedia platform that is popular for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. And in an online post (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/) he tells why — and why he doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

“I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads,” Jobs says. “Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store — but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.”

You can read his entire post for details, but here’s a summary of his anti-Flash arguments:

° Flash products are 100% proprietary.

° 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, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

° “Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.”

° Flash is hard on battery life.

° Most Flash web sites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

° Letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

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