Steve Jobs tells the Wall Street Journal to lose Adobe's Flash?

Seth Weintraub
|
February 18, 2010
|
Share

Though he has never come out against it publicly, Steve Jobs seems to be championing a move away from Adobe's Flash technology, the latest action being revealed by Gawker today.  According to their sources, Jobs told the Wall Street Journal executives meeting on the third floor of the News Corp building:

Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy. But he also called Flash a "CPU hog," a source of "security holes" and, in perhaps the most grievous insult an famous innovator can utter, a dying technology. Jobs said of Flash, "We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology." He then compared Flash to other obsolete systems Apple got people to ditch....

... like the floppy drive, famously absent in iMac,
.... old data ports, including even Apple's own FireWire 400, gone from iPods and now all Macbooks,
....LCD screens, now entirely replaced in Apple's lineup by LEDs (except for 30-inch Cinema Displays),
...and even the CD, with Jobs apparently crediting Apple's iPod, iTunes Store, CD-ripping software and "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign with doing in the old music medium (sort of: though CD sales are in free fall, around 300 million were sold last year in the U.S. alone, 80 percent of all albums).

Jobs even claimed the iPad's battery performance would be degraded from 10 hours to 1.5 hours if it had to spend its CPU cycles decoding Flash, we're told.

Jobs supposedly told an Apple Town Hall meeting that Adobe was lazy and Flash was an inferior product last month.  Apple has also kept Adobe's Flash technology out of any of its iPhoneOS software.

Image via TiPb.com

Comments (52)

9to5Mac Bitter Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 11:50am

Technically, LED displays *are* LCD displays. It's only the backlighting that has changed from fluorescent lighting to LED lighting.

And what do you mean by except for this?

admin | February 18, 2010 - 11:58am

yeah, we just quoted Gawker on that. They were referring to the 30-inch Cinema displays

Carl (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:17pm

Isn't Steve Jobs getting a little heavy handed with his authority and being anti-competitive? We all know Microsoft (or Steve Ballmer) wouldn't be able to get away with it if he said something like this.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 7:11pm

huh?! what does that have to do with "anti-competitive"?!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:17pm

Real Player was once on the top of the plug-in market - everyone had the Real Player. They NEEDED it. But over the years Real crapped it up, failed to make necessary updates, and eventually Real Player became something more akin to annoy-ware.

Adobe has been driving Flash down that same road - poor performance, stability and security, in conjunction with horrid privacy controls, lead many people to hate it. And its primary use as an annoying advertising vehicle have led to an entire micro-industry of Flash blockers and Flash "cookie killers".

Hopefully, Adobe's recent statement about their desire to fix its issues have merit. We all hope that they'll address these major problems. But so far there has been virtually nothing from Adobe except these scant few shallow statements.

I don't blame Jobs for repeating what so many others have said. The quoted statements echo the reality of the situation. Unless Adobe steps up to the plate, it will go the way of Real Player and PointCast: into the legacyware trash heap.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:18pm

Ohhhhh Steve Jobs your so funny!

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 9:01pm

you're or you are

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:20pm

Great picture.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:23pm

Go Steve!

Luis Alejandro Masanti (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:25pm

I was in 1 Infinite Loop during WWDC 2001 and between the park and the caffeteria was a short aisle with like 8 or 10 acrillic boxes containing the Apple /, Apple //, the Lisa, the Macintosh... etc., etc.. It was the "Apple Museum"... in an aisle!

Shortly thereafter, Steve sent it out, I think to Stanford.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:45pm

His overall contribution to the tech world will still be legendary but when his story is written years from now - and I don't mean an authorized puff piece he commissions - this will be seen as his hubris era.

simocrak (not verified) | February 19, 2010 - 5:44pm

In the long run, he'll be remembered favorably, I imagine. Much like nobody today says how much of a Jobsian a-hole Thomas Edison was.

xgman (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:49pm

I love apple products, but Mr. jobs is making an ass of himself as far as I'm concerned. Reminds me of Microsoft of old.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:02pm

Why do u think so. These statements that he made about flash are a truth. Just think if your iPhone looses all its battery in 1 hour by playing a flash game. You will blame iPhone not Flash and Apple and dont want to let that happen at any cost.
So if Adobe is doing a heavy campaign against Apple not allowing Flash on iPhone/iPad, Apple has to respond back strongly.

ikir (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 3:22pm

It is right, Jobs is right. Flash is a fail technology. Adobe is improving it now, but html5 and more battery life is the right choice.

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:55pm

Adobe's Flash isn't just used for video and online ads. Speaking from experience, developing a game like (cringe) Farmville or any other "rich media experience" has been made possible because of Flash. Face it, HTML5 won't save us from online ads and poorly made website "experiences". It will just give designers/developers another technology avenue. I've been developing with Macromedia/Adobe Flash for almost 10 years now and am nearly as proficient in DHTML/Javascript and I cannot imagine creating some of the things I have without Flash.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:12pm

I think the WSJ doesn't really traffic much in Farmville. I think the WSJ primarily uses Flash for adverts and limited video - something easily accomplished in HTML.

Enter name here (not verified) | February 20, 2010 - 10:20am

You are likely just unfamiliar and clinging to existing techniques (and perhaps as jobs claims "obsolete" technology)
That is generally not a plan in a rapidly developing technology based business (like web app development) It pays (literally) to stay nimble. Do yourself a favor and read up a bit on HTML5 and AJAX (or just google "ajax apps" to see examples)

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:56pm

Adobe's Flash isn't just used for video and online ads. Speaking from experience, developing a game like (cringe) Farmville or any other "rich media experience" has been made possible because of Flash. Face it, HTML5 won't save us from online ads and poorly made website "experiences". It will just give designers/developers another technology avenue. I've been developing with Macromedia/Adobe Flash for almost 10 years now and am nearly as proficient in DHTML/Javascript and I cannot imagine creating some of the things I have without Flash.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 8:48pm

This would have more merit if their had'nt of been so many games created with html5 and javascript, hell theirs even an nes emulator written using html5 and javascript.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 19, 2010 - 10:24am

This would have more merit if THERE HADN'T of been so many games created with html5 and javascript, hell THERE'S even an nes emulator written using html5 and javascript.

there, fixed it for you. now learn some basic spelling and grammar! :)

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:57pm

Adobe's Flash isn't just used for video and online ads. Speaking from experience, developing a game like (cringe) Farmville or any other "rich media experience" has been made possible because of Flash. Face it, HTML5 won't save us from online ads and poorly made website "experiences". It will just give designers/developers another technology avenue. I've been developing with Macromedia/Adobe Flash for almost 10 years now and am nearly as proficient in DHTML/Javascript and I cannot imagine creating some of the things I have without Flash.

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 12:58pm

Adobe's Flash isn't just used for video and online ads. Speaking from experience, developing a game like (cringe) Farmville or any other "rich media experience" has been made possible because of Flash. Face it, HTML5 won't save us from online ads and poorly made website "experiences". It will just give designers/developers another technology avenue. I've been developing with Macromedia/Adobe Flash for almost 10 years now and am nearly as proficient in DHTML/Javascript and I cannot imagine creating some of the things I have without Flash.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:04pm

I dont know why would you post same comment 4 times.

Flash games might be a good thing on desktops. But if a flash game on iPhone is going to eat all the battery in one hour, i believe you would not want to play that game.

daytonnaz (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:58pm

"I dont know why would you post same comment 4 times."

Stephano is probably new to this site. The first time I used it to make comment, I entered the same comment three times, because nothing happened right away and it appeared that one needed to click the button again. Maybe we should give people the benefit of the doubt before jumping on them for silly things like this.

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 2:17pm

Agreed. I'm just tired of reading the same nonsense over and over about "HTML5 killing Flash" by people that have never tried using an alternative to Flash. I've gone down the AJAX/DHTML/Javascript road and it's a nightmare in compatibility and consistency across browsers.

Yes we know its a resource hog and Adobe should be called out on that, for which I'm grateful to Steve Jobs for bringing that to light. Something us developer's have been complaining about for years.

Lastly, keep in mind that how a flash application is written has a huge impact on how resource intensive it is the same with any other application (including iPhone apps). A poor programmer is a poor programmer no matter what syntax he/she is using.

Like it or not, there are still a good number of people out there that are still on ancient browsers and those people don't care about Steve Jobs and his vendetta against Adobe. To those people (which make up the majority of web traffic) they'll just want to know why the $500 device they just bought doesn't display web content the same way it does on their desktop or laptop. Why they can't play Farmville on Facebook, or watch video posted in the blogs they visit. Apple can't expect the entire internet to retool their content for the iPhone OS.

9to5Mac sno(o)b (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:09pm

Some "developers" never heard of caching a website... ;)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:19pm

This must have been posted with a flash plugin!

Stefano (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:49pm

That'll teach me for using Safari.

crtaylor (not verified) | February 18, 2010 - 1:09pm

I don't blame Steve for doing anything bad here. Flash is simply a piece of Junk. It is the lazy way for people to put stuff on the web. The worst part is that it only benefits Adobe, not the average user. HTML 5 and CSS2 technologies are totally gonna rip Adobe a new one. Flash is dying, just like Steve Jobs said.