Apple: carta aberta de Steve Jobs sobre a tecnologia Flash

Steve Jobs publicou no site da Apple uma carta aberta onde exprime as razões que levaram a não adoptar a tecnologia Flash na plataforma móvel iPhone OS.

Este assunto tem se tornado numa uma guerra Apple vs Adobe, onde já muitos opinaram sobre a contínua ausência da compatibilidade com o Flash no iPhone, iPod touch e iPad, facto pelo qual não se vislumbra vir sequer a se tornar possível.

Já aqui há uns tempos atrás havia escrito algumas opiniões por aqui sobre esta questão (rever artigo) mas desta vez Steve Jobs dedicou-se a explicar para as razões que levaram a não suportar esta tecnologia.



E enumera-as, ponto por ponto, na sua carta aberta "Thoughts on Flash":

1- "Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true." (...) "While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system."

2- "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." (...) "iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video."

3- "there’s reliability, security and performance." (...) "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."

4- "To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power." (...) "The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained."

5- (esta é a grande razão técnica da inaptidão do Flash no iPhone OS) "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers." (...) "Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?"

6- "We know from painful experience that 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." (...) "Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms." (...) "Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5."

E conclui:
"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.


Steve Jobs
April, 2010"