Talk:Thoughts on Flash

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John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation [1] had this to say about Jobs' letter:

Jobs has hit the nail on the head when describing the problems with Adobe, but not until after smashing his own thumb. Every criticism he makes of Adobe's proprietary approach applies equally to Apple

Forbes later published an article mostly regurgitating the memo under the title "Adobe's Flash Surrender Proves Steve Jobs And Apple Were Right All Along With HTML5" [2].

Also in retrospective, TechCrunch said [3]:

It turns out Jobs was right. When Flash finally did ship on Android devices, it didn’t provide users with the full web, as was promised. Android users who wished to watch videos on Hulu through the Flash browser, for instance, were met with a message saying that the content wasn’t available on the mobile web. Same thing for users who tried to access most premium video sites on Google TV, which also supported Flash. More importantly, even when those videos or interactive Flash elements did appear on Android devices, they were often wonky or didn’t perform well, even on high-powered phones.

The end result was that users stopped seeing Flash on mobile devices as a good thing, and developers quit trying to support the framework on those devices.

Yet this Wikipedia entry just cheerleads the Adobe side of the disagreement and focuses on the responses that accuse Jobs of lying. It is therefore non-neutral by being extremely selective. — 38.122.7.190 (talk) 20:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That swings both ways. For example, the press quote "Android users who wished to watch videos on Hulu through the Flash browser, for instance, were met with a message saying that the content wasn’t available on the mobile web" implies that it was a technical problem, but in truth Hulu specifically blocked the use of mobile Flash because it wanted people to use its subscription-only Hulu Plus app instead. When you tricked the website into thinking you were browsing from a desktop computer, Hulu loaded up and actually worked quite well on mobile Flash Player (this is from my personal experience, I would never suggest including it in this article).

This isn't to argue mobile Flash Player was always a great experience (most Flash content wasn't designed for mobile, so a lot of it did run poorly), but that example (and the press quote that misinterpreted it) strengthens the argument that Jobs' critics were making, that Flash was blocked for business reasons.

Like all fanboy arguments, it's hard to judge what "neutral" is. But experts who understand the tech (not the journalists who wrote about the drama) agree that, at least, Jobs was mistaken in parts, and it's more than fair to say he had notable conflicting interests, which is why so much was written about that fact. I think the article actually gives him the benefit of the doubt. 73.185.164.59 (talk) 08:33, 21 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Google also agree with Steve Jobs. They blocked Flash because it had so many security problems. The Hacking Team was selling repressive governments around the world spy kits based on Flash exploits. And now Google have stopped Flash autoplaying on their browser Google Chrome because it uses the batteries up so much. Which was Steve Jobs' main complaint. "Flash is a bloated, insecure battery hog, and it deserves to die."^[1]QuentinUK (talk) 22:28, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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