Mawgablog

I’ve been mulling over all this Flash-iPhone, Apple v Adobe stuff for a while now, and then lo and behold, Steve Jobs writes an open letter about it on the Apple website. So, I got some posh stationery and wrote all these thoughts out, longhand, about what he said. I’m not Mr Gadget developer guy, but, this is what I made of it all.

So, here’s pretty much what I stuck in my giant Paperchase journal for all time, using my WH Smith cartridge pen.

Let’s see. Steve’s decided to silence all the jibber-jabber surrounding Adobe and Apple as regards iPhone development. Adobe’s been shut out of the process for quite some time — the process of iPhone development. The iPhone, of course, doesn’t support Flash.

Actually, Jobs is pretty much right about a lot of the stuff he says in his essay. What does he say?

Well, his first point is this: Flash is proprietary. Jobs wants iPhone/iPad to be based on open standards – HTML5, CSS and Javascript. I reckon that’s laudable.

His second point is about the fullness of experience available on iPhone. That is, answering that lack of Flash support denies the chance to view around 75 per cent of video on the Web.

Phooey, says Jobs. Loads of video content has been converted into H.264, which is “a more modern format”. And anyone who’s anyone uses it, implies our Steve. That’s people like Vimeo, YouTube, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and so on. “iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video,” he says.

Ditto games. Sod ‘em if they’re Flash. The App Store has loads of games, more than any other platform in the world. Good point.

What I guess will stick in many a craw is that, yeah, but, we want the choice. It’s well and good you saying there’s loads available, but maybe people want the option, the choice of what games to watch, or to see video on sites that aren’t giant corporates. The hardware is not chap, and for him to say, you’ll take what you’re given and you’ll like it is more than a little authoritarian, to put it mildly.

Reliability. That’s next up. Flash has security issues and it crashes Macs, says Jobs. Fair enough. But surely Microsoft Office, with its macro viruses was and is to some extent, very much vulnerable to attack, cross platform. Jobs was all too keen to court Microsoft in the late 1990s when he returned to an almost dead Apple. He needed Mac:Office then. Obviously, he’s sure he doesn’t need, or doesn’t trust Adobe. Or both. He’s got a bee in his bonnet.

Fourth comes battery life. Flash is processor-intensive and drains batteries quickly. Maybe, but Apple’s not the best one to go on about issues of battery life. To paraphrase that parable from the New Testament, you talk of a speck in your brother’s eye, yet you cannot see the plank of wood in your own eye. Would Flash tests highlight deficiencies in Apple’s batteries? Furthermore, surely GPS is also rather heavy on power.

I can’t argue against discussions about touch. He’s spot on in saying that Flash is based on a mouse and click model that’s insufficient and inappropriate for a touch-based device. Indeed. Somehow, I can’t help thinking that could be solved by innovation. But, as things stand now, he’s got a good point.

His final point is very iffy to me. He’s talking directly about Packager for iPhone. Adobe created a way develop iPhone apps in Flash, exporting them as iPhone-native code.

Jobs reckons that’s not good enough. “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,” he claims “from painful experience.”

I think that’s poppycock of the highest order. Certainly it can result in sub-standard development, but so too can ineptitude. Furthermore, it’s for Apple and its politburo to approve apps. If an app is good and works as promised, surely it matters not a jot how it was made?

Furthermore, developers will police tools. If your software shoots out dodgy code, developers — serious developers — will go elsewhere. They’ll vote with their feet and with their blogs, Twitter feeds and so on. Jobs is talking tripe on that one.

Adobe has given Apple the “forget you, dude” bird flip this week. Jobs’ reaction reminds me of the scene in Good Fellas when Spider gets shot after telling Tommy “why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

Apple’s winding up a lot of developers here, developers who will go with whatever’s hot at the time. It’s their job. Right now, that’s iPhone. But times change. Apple, I think, is painting itself into a box here. Okay, I can’t promise massive tech head insight into the ins and outs of Objective C as rendered by Packager for iPhone, but it seemed a good compromise. If it turns out shit apps, Apple needn’t approve them, developers would get frustrated, Adobe would raise its game. Adobe’s big and powerful, but they’re keen as mustard to get on iPhone. They’d make their wrong right. And it would be a nice compromise. A bit of detente, perhaps. But Tommy felt Spider too sassy. Bang, bang.

And as Jobs’ parting shot: “Perhaps Adobe should focus on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Maybe he should just have said: “Your mama!”