Apple CEO Steve Jobs writes another letter on its’ website, this time to tell us why Flash isn’t on their mobile devices and why it won’t be on any i-mobile-devices anytime soon. The timing of this post is suspicious – almost to draw attention away from the situation with Gizmodo. Ignoring my conspiracy theory, Jobs does raise some good points but I have two points to address about this letter.
- Flash as a video format. While many sites are moving to HTML 5 for sharing videos, the majority still use flash for video. Some sites that still use flash: Hulu, TV.com, ESPN3, Comedy Central (I.E. The Daily Show and Colbert Report), Revision 3 and TWiT – not including some minor video streaming sites like Viddler and Vimeo. Apple tried – with the help of Adobe – to develop a version of flash for the iPhone but Apple claims that flash slows down the performance of the phone. Until major websites move to HTML – and some are in the process of moving to the new video standard – flash is still the dominate choice for video.
- The end of flash? The first letter Jobs wrote on Apple’s website was in 2007 about the need to abandon DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions placed on music. It’s widely believed – with the help of Amazon Music store as well – that this letter killed DRM restrictions on music. Could this letter have an effect on flash? Probably, but with the recent announcement that Adobe is working with Google to put flash on the next Android OS, I wouldn’t move flash into the dead pool.