Steve Jobs pens open letter: 'Thoughts on Flash'

Open letter from Apple CEO appears on Apple web site, outlines the company's position on Flash

Steve Jobs has written a letter titled 'Thoughts On Flash' and placed it on the Apple web site. The letter appears to be an attempt by Steve Jobs and Apple to clarify its position with relation to Adobe Flash. Those looking for reconcilliation, however, may need to carry on looking: the letter elaborates on why Apple does not, and will not, include Flash in its mobile devices.

Apple and Adobe's relationship has been rumoured to be strained after Apple refused to allow Adobe's Flash player technology to be integrated into its Safari web application provided in the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices. In February it was reported that Steve Jobs told Apple employees "Adobe is lazy".

Later it was reported that Steve Jobs told representatives from the Wall Street Journal that Adobe Flash was "a CPU hog".

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Steve Jobs has written a letter titled 'Thoughts On Flash' and placed it on the Apple web site. The letter appears to be an attempt by Steve Jobs and Apple to clarify its position with relation to Adobe Flash. Those looking for reconcilliation, however, may need to carry on looking: the letter elaborates on why Apple does not, and will not, include Flash in its mobile devices.

Apple and Adobe's relationship has been rumoured to be strained after Apple refused to allow Adobe's Flash player technology to be integrated into its Safari web application provided in the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad devices. In February it was reported that Steve Jobs told Apple employees "Adobe is lazy".

Later it was reported that Steve Jobs told representatives from the Wall Street Journal that Adobe Flash was "a CPU hog".

Apple's stance has prevented owners of Apple mobile devices from viewing content created in Adobe Flash, including Flash-based video and from playing Flash-based applications (mostly games). Recently Apple went as far as to ban apps that were originally created using Adobe Flash, and re-coded into iPhone apps using technology found in Adobe Flash CS5.

The letter starts by recognising the "long relationship" between Adobe and Apple. Steve Jobs says: "we met Adobe's founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years." He then cools somewhat: "Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers - Mac users buy around half of Adobe's Creative Suite products - but beyond that there are few joint interests."

Steve continues: "I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe's Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven - they say we want to protect our App Store - but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain."

Jobs then outlines six reasons why the company has taken the decision to oppose the presence of Flash on its mobile devices. They are:

1. OpenSteve Jobs states: "Adobe's Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc" He does note that Apple has "many propriety products too" but these are not web-related. "we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript - all open standards."

2. Full web"Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access 'the full web' because 75% of video on the web is in Flash," says Steve Jobs (we have to admit, this is a claim by Adobe that is somewhat borne out in our own experience).