Apple CEO Steve Jobs released an open letter Thursday outlining why Adobe System’s Flash technology is not available on the company’s iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Adobe has characterized Apple’s ban as primarily a business decision to protect Apple’s App Store, Jobs said, but the decision is based on technology.
“Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true,” Jobs wrote. “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.”
Adopting Open Standards
Instead of depending on Flash, Jobs said Apple has elected to adopt several web technologies for its mobile products that are based on high-performance, low-power implementations of open standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript and HTML5.
He also countered the implication that Apple’s customers are being shortchanged because 75 percent of all web videos are offered 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,” Jobs wrote.
Though Jobs admitted that Apple’s devices cannot play Flash games, he said more than 50,000 games and entertainment titles are available for download at Apple’s App Store, including many that are free. He also charged that Flash suffers from major security issues and consumes too much power from mobile-device batteries because Flash decodes video in software rather than in hardware.
However, Apple’s CEO said the most important reason for banning Flash is the concern that if the company allowed a third-party layer of software to come between the platform and the developer, it would ultimately result in substandard apps as well as hinder the enhancement and progress of the platform. “We cannot be…