Flash Developer Responds to Steve Jobs

As soon as Steve Jobs rejected Flash on the iPhone and iPad, he had lots of 'splainin' to do. This week, in an open letter to everyone, he does just that, pointing out exactly why he thinks Flash is so lame.

If you'd like to read the lengthy letter from Jobs, here it is, but if you're not up for that, allow us to editorialize while we quickly sum up this self-serving and ironic diatribe from Jobs: Flash doesn't let Apple control everything, it crashes Apple's products, and it runs batteries down too quickly.

We asked Syfy.com's Flash developer, Donovan Adams, what he thought of all this, and he wrote an open letter of his own in the form of a detailed blog post. Starting out calling Apple's decision "a logical choice," Adams goes on to say he's "grown disenchanted with Apple." And he thinks HTML 5 — one of Jobs' cited candidates as a Flash substitute — is weak compared to Flash:

"Ahhhh HTML 5... Why did you get dragged into this mess? Well the quick answer is that a certain someone has poised HTML5 to be the "Flash Killer"... I'll simply say incredibly unlikely that HTML5 would ever fully replace Flash."

Ultimately, Adams is saying goodbye to his iPhone:

"Apple has taken on a totalitarian dictatorship on what can be put in the device and what can't. I don't believe Apple should dictate what I do with my phone. How would the world react if they did this with our computers? It seems as though Apple has lost sight of its loyal customers that have been around since the earlier days ... Apple has built a box outside of the box. Because of this, I'm saying good bye to my iPhone."

My take: I'm not about to abandon my iPhone, but I sure would like it a lot more if it was as open as Android. And I'm not so hypnotized to believe the iPhone/pad/pod is "open" just because Steve Jobs says so.

Via Apple and Hydrotik

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