We thought those days were over. Remember back in April, right after the iPad came out, the Apple / Adobe controversy about Flash somehow came back to where it started, The Internet. Hundreds of blog posts and pundits’ rants later, Steve Jobs managed to end the argument with his Thoughts On Flash. If you think about it, the whole Flash story kind of died after Steve Jobs’ “open letter”. Or maybe we just focused on the true meaning of “openness” more.
Anyway, Adobe is bringing the old debate back. Again, yes. Here’s Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch talking to FastCompany:
I just think there’s this negative campaigning going on, and, for whatever reason, Apple is really choosing to incite it, and condone it,” Lynch says. “I think that’s unfortunate. We don’t think it’s good for the web to have aspects closed off–a blockade of certain types of expression. There’s a decade of content out there that you just can’t view on Apple’s device, and I think that’s not only hurtful to Adobe, but hurtful to everyone that created that content.
About Ars Technica’s report that Flash drains battery on the new MacBook Airs:
It’s a false argument to make, of the power usage,” Lynch explains. “When you’re displaying content, any technology will use more power to display, versus not displaying content. If you used HTML5, for example, to display advertisements, that would use as much or more processing power than what Flash uses.
Curious. Last time I checked, Apple didn’t “incite” any campaign, nor did they promote Ars’ much linked blog post in any way. They just made a decision: that of excluding Flash from their own devices. I really didn’t see any campaign going on.
Oh, by the way, this is Steve Jobs concluding his Thoughts On Flash post in April:
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
In the past three weeks, Adobe announced a Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, an HTML5 Video Player widget and the new Edge prototype tool for HTML5.
