Last month Steve
Jobs wrote about what Apple though of Adobe's Photoshop and why Apple
did not feature the Flash technology in any of the handheld devices
of it (iPhone, iPod, or iPad). The article mentioned some strong
reasons to back its claim that Apple is better off without Flash.
Hence an iPhone developer cannot implement the Flash technology
during iPhone development. Apple still allows the developers to
integrate the Flash technology to build on the Mac platform though.
It is not because of any ego clashes that Apple does not allow Flash
to run on the iPhone devices.
it is because of some genuine technical
reasons. These are:
1.Open vs.
Proprietary. Even with the wide availability of Adobe Photoshop
products, the Flash itself is not open. Flash is still under Adobe's
proprietary, i.e. Adobe alone has rights to enhance the technology in
the future and price it. Apple believes that all web standards should
be open to all iPhone developers and hence encourages the use of
HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to develop high performance apps.
2.Full Web Access.
It is majorly believed that more than 75% of the Internet's videos
are Photoshop based, but actually these videos are also available in
other modern formats like the H.264 that is viewable on the iPhones,
iPods, and iPads. Another point that Apple mentions is that the
absence of Flash based games on the handheld devices is filled in by
the growing number (50,000 and still counting) of the games available
for the iPhone OS.
3.Reliability,
Security, and Performance. Apple has had a bad experience of Adove
Flash player on its Mac platform as Flash is the number one reason
for the Macs to crash. Apple, clearly, does not want to carry the
unreliability of Flash on to their iPhones, iPods, and iPads and
compromise their performance.
4.The Battery Life.
It has been proven that running a software based program consumes
more battery than a program utilizing the hardware directly. Adobe
Flash Player is a software on its own that runs on the hardware, i.e.
any video running on the Adobe Photoshop platform needs to be decoded
on Flash (which in turn uses the processor). Apple believes why not
use the processor to decode the videos than do it through any other
software. Hence using the H.264 format that is compatible with the
modern processors Apple mobile devices save up to half of the battery
life while viewing any videos.
5.Touch vs. Mice.
This is the most interesting debate of them all. It is widely known
that Flash was introduced to improve the user experience of the PCs.
Hence nice little cute gestures were implemented for mouse rollover
and popup menus. The fact that iPhones, iPods, and iPads use human
touch and not a mouse says it all for itself. Modern technologies
like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript support touch-based interactions and
hence Apple encourages the iPhone developer to implement them in
iPhone development.
6.Third-party
Integration. Including Flash would result in Adobe controlling the
iPhone developers' progress. If any technology like Flash comes in
between the device and the iPhone developer, the developers need to
rely on the libraries of the technology to utilize the device
features during iPhone development. What if the device was updated,
but the middle technologies refused to adopt those updates? To avoid
this scary scenario, Apple avoids any third-party integration
completely so that the developers can fully take the advantage of the
device and utilize its features optimally through iPhone development.
Apple mentions that
there has to be a direct connection between the platform provided by
Apple and its developers so that they can jointly produce the best
apps that the world has seen and hence everyone wins - Apple sells
more products, and the developers reach a wider audience. This post
is surely aimed for the critics and Adobe Photoshop helpline number itself that Apple
is missing out on something by not including Adobe Flash player on
its platform.