I kind of feel like Steve Jobs has done a bit of a Gordon Brown guffaw, however unlike Mr Browns throwaway comments caught on ‘tape’ Mr Jobs’ is an extremely considered article on why Apple mobile products are not going to support Adobe Flash.
Clearly Jobs felt the backlash required an in depth letter! I mean seriously, he really wanted to make his point. The mere fact that he felt it required that kind of response is exactly the reason why I think he may have shot himself in the foot…
Listen, when you have a bunch of such loyal customers like Apple do (and if you know me, you know I’m not one of them) you shouldn’t be dictating to them what content they can or cannot see! The fact that the web is littered with Flash content – WHY prevent those loyal customers from seeing it?!
Jobs does makes some valid points – yes Flash is resource heavy, yes Flash has always been slow on Apple products, but that is not your customers problem: it’s Apples.
Mr Jobs can’t sit on his pedestal and criticise Flash for being proprietary – the majority of Apple software isn’t ‘Open’ either!! Apple dictate what apps go on the store, you cannot install your apps onto your iPap product without the Apple store, and I bet if a 3rd party wrote a Flash viewing app, it’d get rejected!!
He criticises Adobe for being old fashioned, but Jobs’ view on the world is far more archaic. The public do not like to be dictated to. It reminds me of when Yahoo felt that they had enough of a user base to start making money by sticking adverts all over their homepage. Subsequently we all started using Google. How much do you think it would be worth to Google (in terms of money) if they allowed 1 banner on their homepage? But they don’t. Because their users wouldn’t like it.
OK, I’m not a massive Apple fan – however I was starting to shine to the idea of an iPad, but this ‘article’ by Jobs today has really put me off. I’m sure I won’t be the only potential or existing customer who is not going to let Jobs dictate to me what content I can or cannot see…
Mr Jobs - you muppet
