back to article iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

Steve Jobs took the iPad to the Wall Street Journal to explain why the paper should drop Adobe's Flash, to a cool reception. The details of Mr. Jobs' presentation to staff at the Journal were revealed by ValleyWag. They included his dismissal of Adobe's Flash technology along with the arguments about why the Journal should …

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  1. Alex Walsh
    Coat

    BBC holds the key

    If Apple are unfriendly to the Been muscling into the commercial newspapers territory with iPhone apps, I'm sure Murdoch would be more willing to tow the line with Apple.

    Mines the one with the black helicopter keys in the left pocket.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I'm sure Flash works in IE 6 with a plugin

    and there's more IE 6 installs than iPads in company offices. I don't see enterprises "simply" moving from IE 6, to a browser that supports HTML5, regardless of how flakey IE 6 really is.

    1. CS3000

      What are you talking about?

      Plug ins? IE 6? Company Offices? What on earth has this to do with the WSJ dropping flash?

  3. StooMonster
    Jobs Horns

    Format conversion tool

    So, what the world needs is some kind of Flash to HTML5 converter tool?

    Is Apple going to provide one, seeing as it's "trivial"?

    1. Rolf Howarth
      Go

      Flash to HTML5

      Don't laugh, but someone has done precisely that. A Flash SWF interpreter written in 100% standards compliant Javascript and HTML, called Gordon. Quite amazing really if you think about it.

  4. Eddy Ito

    Funny

    Apple also has a history of creating the obsolete ports it walks away from. ADB anyone? At least their latest usb connector has balls! Don't believe me, here's the first and last bits of the abstract to US patent 7641498.

    "A Universal Serial Bus socket-equipped arrangement (USB-SEA) configured for mating with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) plug having a plug metal housing and an aperture disposed in the plug metal housing... The spring-loaded mechanism represents one of a spring-loaded ball and a spring-loaded pin."

    1. CS3000

      ADB

      Apple Desktop Bus was a terrific way of hooking up keyboards, mice, tablets, midi keyboards etc back in the early days. Way ahead of the game.

      It was however, purely Apple... not licensable to any other computer maker and thats why it probably died eventually.

      USB was an Intel development and believe it or not Apple was the first company to adopt it.

      I think you will find that there are no other proprietary ports on Apple computers since the introduction of the first iMacs.

  5. Jamie Kitson

    Reception

    Sounds like anything but a "cool reception".

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "don't miss floppy drives"

    Obviously, you don't spend much time mixing up computer parts in an attempt to make functioning machines.

    I miss floppy drives! At least, I would if I didn't have a box full of the things under my desk...

    1. John Gamble

      Assuming You Actually Have A Need For Them

      There are USB floppy drive devices. Searching for "floppy drive usb" will give you a nice list.

      I've had to use one for clients who have ten-year-old or more equipment.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      re: "don't miss floppy drives"

      What? Why are you putting floppies in machines that you're building today? Even scrounging parts to make Frankenboxen, a lot of people stopped putting floppies in things 5+ years ago.

      These days, you're better off putting a cheap (and my goodness, they *are* cheap) dual layer DVD rewriter in, and blanking off any floppy-sized holes. Blank CDs bought in cake packs are insanely cheap- much more so than floppies, and a lot more reliable. Moreover, USB flash drives cover a multitude of sins- and for those BIOSsen which don't boot from USB keys, the optical drive will do the job (if you need to update a BIOS or something).

      Without wishing to be unkind, the year 2000 called, and giggled.

  7. Steve John
    Jobs Horns

    Flash video re-coding...

    ... to what - Quicktime absolutely stinks. As buggy and resource hungry as Flash!

    1. Jerome 0

      HTML5

      To H.264 of course. Heard of a little thing called HTML5?

    2. E Haines

      ...to H.264

      Duh. Which isn't limited to Quicktime. Although Quicktime isn't anywhere near as buggy or resource hungry as Flash...doesn't crash, doesn't use half as much CPU.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      @Steve John

      Come back to us when you've had Quicktime crash your browser.

      (or when Flash allows you to convert movies from one format to another)

    4. CS3000

      "As buggy and resource hungry as Flash!"

      Buggy? Are you sure about that? Cant think of when its crashed on me.

      If I monitor my CPU load when running flash content each processor runs at 75% load. Battery life nosedives. Fans kick in within seconds of playing a flash encoded movie.

      Quicktime? 15% per processor.

  8. bart

    bye bye, firewire

    Apple's trying real hard to drop firewire. Good thing its most loyal customer base has so many of those darned overpriced peripherals that use it.

    I'd fax this to The Reg., but my mac doesn't have a modem built in . . .

    1. David Beeston
      IT Angle

      Fax?

      Fax? Jeez... get with the program. Not hear of email?

  9. Haydies
    Jobs Horns

    Poor Adobe

    Surely this has got to be getting right up the people at Adobe's nose?

    Maybe its even a case for sueing them, definmation? sladner? I don't know, but going around telling people that some one else product is garbage is a bit out of order.

    But then, its apple. They don't like to give any one any choice. Suprised they don't have a 'web protal' and thats the only site you can see with their browser.... after all, surely there is no need to view the hole web, apple.com must be enougth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Out of order?

      Don't you think Jobs has a good reason for being bitter so why not call a spade a spade? It is very true that Adobe's product is complete garbage, and especially so on the Mac. It is also very true that Adobe have been effectively ignoring the Mac platform for the past decade. It is only now that Adobe are faced with obsolescence for one of their key products that they are suddenly pretending to give a fuck about proper support for any of Apple's OSes. Quite rightly, Jobs is telling them to shove it where the sun don't shine and good riddance too. As another poster mentions below, along with Microsoft, Adobe have become one of the worst operated tech companies of the past twenty years.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      re: Poor Adobe

      In a lot of countries, truth is a valid defense to defamation. Try using the poor neglected Linux flash plugin sometime.

      Doesn't crash the machine or browser... but falls over itself a hell of a lot.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      You cannot...

      be put on trail for telling the truth - Flash is crap, always has been and always will be

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What a failtard...

      "Surely this has got to be getting right up the people at Adobe's nose?" I'd imagine that it is. Fuck 'em if the truth hurts. They know what they need to do.

      "Maybe its even a case for sueing them, definmation? sladner?" Seriously, how old are you? Defamation (PLEASE! Get a dictionary or use a browser that has inline spell checking) IS slander! For something to be slanderous the statement has to be proven to be false (i.e. a lie) beyond all reasonable doubt. That's simply not possible because Flash IS buggy and full of holes. FACT. So pointing this out when asked why you aren't supporting it as a company is wholly reasonable and not at all illegal! Lacking class, maybe, but legally fine...

      "I don't know, but going around telling people that some one else product is garbage is a bit out of order." Not really! They all do it!

      "But then, its apple. They don't like to give any one any choice. Suprised they don't have a 'web protal' and thats the only site you can see with their browser.... after all, surely there is no need to view the hole web, apple.com must be enougth." I won't even bother commenting on that assault on my language, suffice to say that you are talking out of your arse!

    5. CS3000

      Poor Adobe?

      If people bothered to find out what Jobs has actually said about Flash and Adobe I am sure they would agree with him.

      Jobs is a man that admires well designed hardware and software no matter where it comes from. He is on record at being upset with Adobe for having such great potential with flash as a product but then putting so little effort into developing it or polishing its code so it runs efficiently... especially on mobile devices.

      He is no less critical of the developers that have worked for him... One of my favourite quotes from him was after a programmer showed him a new version of a product he was working on that did not have a great user interface:

      "You baked a really great cake... too bad you used dog shit for icing".

  10. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Developers are disposable?

    Instead of converting your in-house Flash development staff to Javascript, you toss 'em in the dumpster and buy new ones?

    never mind familiarity with the company culture, they only need to know one thing: it's mean?

    America is a mean place.

    1. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge

      Corporatism in general is mean.

      Employees are expected to be 100% loyal to the company that employs them. In return you receive the smallest paycheque and most minimal benefits the company feels it can get away with. All the while under the constant threat of being downsized/rightsized/laid off/outsourced/asked to take a wage cut to keep your job/etc.

      We are all totally disposable. The only thing that isn’t is short term revenues.

      Heil the cult of the quarterly bonus!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ditto

      Yeah, what he/she/it said. Alas, it seems that right-wing Europe is taking over the shitty traits of the USA.

      Politicians & managers - the second(*) against the wall when the revolution comes.

      (*) Points for knowing who the first are.

      1. BoldMan
        Joke

        Third surely?

        First lawyers, second accountants (after they've counted all the dead lawyers)

  11. Sean Bergeron
    Jobs Halo

    Adobe is legacy everything

    They haven't moved past 32-bit Carbon, nor are they actively developing for anything other than x86 stuff for Flash. It's long past time for Flash, pox on the interwebs that it is, to be officially deprecated. A good portion of my time these days is spent keeping up with Adobe-related security bugs, many of them stemming from the fact that they won't update their development model. How's that 64-bit Linux port, comin', guys? It's only been "alpha" for what, eighteen months now?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      64 bit Windows

      Flash isn't even available for 64 bit Windows - how long is it taking - 2 years so far...

      They are selling Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements - even the latest versions are not supported on any 64 bit Windows platform.

      Jobs said Adobe are Lazy. I think he's making a truthful statement (as opposed to when he said, with the original iPhone, that 3G would not be viable because of decreased battery life).

      1. eugene
        FAIL

        @AC

        @AC regarding flash not being available for 64-bit windows. That is completely incorrect. Flash works perfectly fine on 64-bit windows, just not 64-bit browsers. Good thing pretty much all the popular browsers now are 32-bit.

      2. CS3000

        3G iPhone

        Sorry to pull you up on this but what he actually said was that at the time of the first iPhone the 3G chips available were too power hungry - which was true.

        Sure enough, when more power efficient chips became available they launched the iPhone 3G

        Somehow including this in your post seems irrelevant.

    2. snafu

      Actually...

      …CS5 moves several apps to Cocoa to get 64 bits. They would have done that sooner hadn't Apple produced and then cancelled Carbon 64.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    I'm with Apple on this...

    ...because Adobe, from 2000 onwards, has turned into one of the worst companies in computing history.

  13. Samuel Walker
    WTF?

    CD's?

    Seriously?

    AFAIK the drives in Mac's still play / record CD's to this day. iTunes can certainly import CD's.

    Unless the Mac drives are DVD only. In which case that's even more sucky for a so called 'SuperDrive' that can't even do HD yet.

    Sure, there may not be a dedicated CD drive, but I thought that was only because their DVD drives could handle them perfectly fine.

    Perhaps Steve would care to explain exactly how Apple has ditched CD's?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Welcome

      @CD's?

      > Perhaps Steve would care to explain exactly how Apple has ditched CD's?

      Apple introduced the iPod, which helped move music consumers from CD players to MP3 players. At least I guess that's what he meant.

      Alternatively: The Mac tiny-laptop-whose-name-i-forget doesn't have a CD drive, you use WiFi, a USB key, or an external CD drive. But that one's not exactly mainstream.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      CD's what?

      CD's what?

  14. David Kelly 2

    Die FLASH! Die!

    I wish Steve Jobs the best of luck.

  15. Shell
    Grenade

    RIP Flash

    It wouldn't take much to re-train from Flash to JavaScript y'know: AS3 isn't that different. It's just like JavaScript with classes.

    I wouldn't miss Flash if it died tomorrow - I loved coding for it, but these days I can do so much more with jQuery and JavaScript and never worry about plugins!

  16. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    Stop

    USB-SEA patent.

    The USB-SEA patent mentioned in an earlier post suggests Apple want to make a USB port with a software-eject mechanism.

    Their floppy disk drives used to have a motorized eject mechanism too, so that users couldn't eject the disk themselves: they had to ask the OS to do it for them. This eliminated the whole, "WTF? Where's the floppy disk I was just writing this very important data to?" class of error caused by users ejecting the disk while it was still in use.

    A software-ejectable USB port makes sense for similar reasons. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people forget to manually eject their USB pendrives from a computer before pulling it out of the port. This was a fundamental design error. (Memory card readers have the same problem. The same mistakes have been endlessly repeated. Frankly, it's a miracle optical drives have a software-controlled eject system as standard.)

    Apple's control-freakery is a necessity. If the f*cking IT industry's endless bloody committees, coalitions and associations would bother to put end users *first* when designing new standards, Apple wouldn't have to waste so much money fixing their stupid, stupid mistakes.

    1. Anon999
      Thumb Down

      USB-SEA is typical Apple invention

      @Sean.

      USB-SEA sounds like typical Apple invention, a good idea as long as you accept the limitations it brings.

      If self extraction would be mandatory we would not have cheap passive USB hubs. Also I have my PC in very hard to get location and I have printer and other cables connected to back of the PC.

      It would really suck to eject my printer or USB hub cable by mistake when I want to eject USB stick from the front.

    2. The Indomitable Gall

      Most users...?

      "I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people forget to manually eject their USB pendrives from a computer before pulling it out of the port."

      Most users don't "forget" to do it -- they didn't know in the first place!

      So design error one is making it possible.

      Design error two is that the OS doesn't pop up a great big flashing error every single time you do it, but gives you a small non-descript dialogue box or balloon, and includes a little checkbox saying "don't show this error again".

      Unplugging a device without stopping it first risks data loss, so the user shouldn't be able to ignore it....

  17. Sean Timarco Baggaley

    As for Flash vs. HTML5...

    ...the sooner the former dies, the better. If it takes Apple to get the ball rolling on this, so be it. It might also bring about a speedier wave of browser upgrades among end users. Nobody should be using IE6 today.

    (Hell, nobody should have been using it two years ago.)

  18. Paul E

    98%

    of net connected computers run flash what percentage of those are going to be disenfranchised if they move to html5 just so it will run on the ipad?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      RE: 98%

      Umm, none because HTML5.0 is going to work everywhere and won't be reliant on buggy bloated crap.

      The worst thing that will happen to them is that they'll have to download some software... after that things will work smoothly for a change!

      ...and what the FCK has the iPad got to do with the move to HTML5? Have you been sleeping in class?

    2. James O'Shea
      FAIL

      pay attention

      Assuming, for the moment, that the 98% figure is correct... the answer to your question is 'zero'... if the browser is capable of using HTML5. That list includes Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and... MSIE 8. (Though that last one has only limited HTML5 abilities. Allegedly MSIE 9 will do better.) Anyone who has a modern browser can access HTML5 sites without a problem. And, most important, they _DON'T HAVE TO USE A BUGGY, MEMORY AND CPU HOGGING, SCUM-SUCKING, ABORTION OF A PLUG-IN TO DO IT_.

      Anyone who has WinXP can update to MSIE 8 for free... except for those poor slobs who work for luddites who require MSIE 6. Mickeysoft all but begs users to please, please, PLEASE drop MSIE 6 and at least go to 7, and if you're at MSIE 7, to consider going to 8. They've been trying for _years_ to get people to move on.

      If you don't want to move on, then that's your problem. If you're working for luddites, then what are you doing cruising the Web on a company machine looking for video, anyway?

      Get real, twit.

  19. Lou Gosselin

    Flash is banned because it's an emulator

    Jobs is wrong that Flash and HTML are redundant, there is no viable means to replace all (or even most) applications of flash with HTML. HTML and Javascript, as is, are inadequate and he knows this.

    On the other hand, the same line of argument could have been applied correctly between Flash and Java (the JRE applet kind). The two are redundant (although conversion would still be far from trivial).

    That neither of these are available is revealing of apple's actual motivations, java is known to have a good security track record, so why isn't it available?. It seems that the banning of emulators (which flash qualifies) has everything to do with preventing customers from installing anything sufficiently powerful to compete with revenue generating applications purchased from the iStore.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      @Lou Gosselin

      Stay after class and write out ten times on the blackboard "Flash is banned because it's shit, buggy, bloated and can crash your browser"

  20. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Javascript interfaces

    Have you not heard of jQuery?

    There's all manner of nice plugins for all kinds of UI stuff. In fact it makes cross browser javascript easy, makes styling pages easier and reduces the amount of code in your pages.

    I agree with Steve, Flash video was a stop gap hack and the time has come for a more open standards approach.

  21. sleepy

    There is a way to put Flash apps on iPhone

    Even if Adobe fixed the badness of Flash, Apple is never going to allow a third party runtime to dynamically load and execute code of unknown provenance on iPad/iPhone. With 24/7 net connectivity and lowest common denominator users, this platform needs to be highly secure, and so far they've succeeded. Apple's Javascript in Safari is the only way to get you code onto this platform without submitting it through the App store.

    That's why you'll have to translate your Flash solution into a Cocoa application (with Adobe's tools) and submit it to the App store if you ever want to see it on iPhone/iPad. You'll get the benefit of the only properly functioning marketplace for mobile app developers.

    H264 is the obvious alternative to Flash for video, not Quicktime. That's what Youtube, Vimeo and Hulu are implementing. Try enabling youtube.com/html5 and see how nice the videos can be.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      sigh

      Quicktime defines a container, not a codec. A lot of quicktime video already is h.264.

  22. Hashem

    Codec hell

    I just wish apple would stop trying to push h264 as html5s standard video codec, and move to something more open source. I have no problem with h264 except that it isn't really feasible for a lot of browsers to support it considering licensing costs.

    Flash is probably not going to die anytime soon, but I hope using flash for video playback is going to die with html5. Hopefully by then we can have a standard for video encoding as opposed to half using ogg theora and the other half using h264.

  23. Greg J Preece

    Not sure about this

    I mean, yeah, getting rid of Flash would be nice (though I'm one of those that wants to see OGG be improved and used as the video standard in HTML 5). So in that case I agree with Mr Jobs. HTML 5 looks like a very good thing, even if it will take aaaaages before most sites convert to it.

    On the other hand, walking into somewhere and asking them to change their product - at no small expense - so that it works properly on your new product, is a bit cheeky. Well, no. A bit cheeky is making a pass at the receptionist on the way into the meeting. What Mr Steve is asking for is downright brazen. If he tried that where I work, he'd be told "piss off, we'll upgrade to HTML 5 when we're ready, not when it suits you and your marketing company."

    1. Volker Hett

      to flash or not to flash

      - If he tried that where I work, he'd be told "piss off, we'll upgrade to HTML 5 when we're ready, not when it suits you and your marketing company."

      Since the discussion about flash came up I realized that flash is and always was more of a nuisance than a benefit to me. I never missed flash on any of my unsupported devices and avoid flash only sites. There is a reason why "Skip Intro" is one of the most pressed buttons on websites :)

      So from a consumers point of view, I'm fine without flash, if your company can't do without it, I'm probably not one of your customers.

      Just one thing puzzles me, how did all those people cope with their flashless mobile ohones up to now?

      1. Goat Jam

        flash

        "If he tried that where I work, he'd be told "piss off, we'll upgrade to HTML 5 when we're ready, not when it suits you and your marketing company."

        Yes, but I'm willing to bet that your company is not currently clinging to the hope that the iPad will be The Great Saviour of your industry which is currently on the verge of obsolescence.

        Steve knows that and he has the upper hand

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      @Greg J Preece

      "On the other hand, walking into somewhere and asking them to change their product - at no small expense - so that it works properly on your new product, is a bit cheeky."

      ...a bit like advising blacksmiths a hundred years ago that learning to make car parts and making a few less horseshoes might be a good idea?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time for Adobe to step up to the plate

    For me, the most unstable part of my Linux machine is the 64 bit flash development thingy that hasn't been worked on for ages. Yet it is so vital for browsing/video.

    However, I think the real kingpin to this will be Google and their YouTube system; not Apple. The breadth of user base on You Tube is much greater than the followers of Jobs. With Google's aquisition of that codec company, I think that the switch to HTML5 will happen some time this year, for sure.

    Adobe either has to step up to the plate ... or step asside.

  25. Gilbo
    Megaphone

    Bottom Line

    Nobody cares about flashy adverts, few people care about flash games and lots of people get thoroughly annoyed with slow, clunky and monstrous flash-only websites that take 4 minutes to load.

    There's only one real practical use of Flash that your average user truely cares about and that's video. Sadly all you have to do is look at the Vorbis / H.264 arguments going on at the moment to realise that we're still a long, long way off from defining a standard for HTML5, if there ever is one.

    Firefox and Opera can't support H.264 due to licensing costs unless it's given away. Apple will never support OGG due to patent uncertainty and the amount they've already invested in H.264 for Quicktime and the iPhone. Meanwhile Google sits on the fence supporting both, rubbing their hands together knowing damn well that whatever they switch YouTube over to will most likely become the defacto standard overnight., and it's not going to be Vorbis.

    It's going to be H.264, which keeps Apple happy and by extension will have to be omitted from all open-source browsers derived from Chromium, making them effectively useless and unable to compete whilst still portraying Google as being all nice and open-sourcey.

    1. Lance 3
      Thumb Down

      Not really

      Then why did Google buy On2? If they want to support H.264, then why spend the money or On2? Also, Apple and Google have split ways. They compete in the browser side and the phone side. Apple also bought a mobile ad company. So they are competing with Google on that front as well.

      I doubt it will be H.264. Apple and Google were already under scrutiny.

    2. Renato
      Alert

      Add-on

      If Mozilla/Opera isn't bundling a h264 decoder on their browsers, how about using the underlying OS libraries? I mean, you got QuickTime on MacOS X (and Apple pays MPEGLA the licence), DirectShow (or the name Microsoft named that nowadays, and also paid the licence -- if not, there are plenty of codecs to be used). If the user is running Linux or another OS, assume he/she paid the licence to use libavcodec (or another lib) to decode the h264 stream, just don't bundle it with the browser.

      Hell, the bloody technology ALREADY EXISTS, FFS! Just implement it! Don't reinvent the wheel! Simple as that!

  26. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    @Rolf Howarth

    "A Flash SWF interpreter written in 100% standards compliant Javascript and HTML, called Gordon. Quite amazing really if you think about it."

    Astonishing. But I thought part of the SWF format is still proprietary and hence not publicaly available? However if you're serving up these pages would you not prefer some kind of 1 time only converter to batch convert them all in 1 go?

    Odd name though. Did anybody ask is Gordon a moron of an idea?

  27. DZ-Jay

    Re: Not sure about this

    @Greg J Preece:

    Oh, please! If Steve Jobs ever went into your offices and try to talk to some if its executives to propose something like this, the company officers would immediately be blinded by the dollar-signs in their eyes, not to mention overcome by the realisation that Mr. Jobs deemed it worthwhile to pick *them* for such an endeavor. They would probably roll-over and wait for the loot to trickle down from the Apple Heaven.

    I'd expect resistance from a large and well-positioned corporation like the Wall Street Journal (which, by the way, they didn't!), but random, unknown tech companies are hardly peers.

    -dZ.

  28. Bear Features
    Jobs Horns

    Sure

    So let's create less than useful products and make everyone else fall in line.

    Is it not politically correct to call Jobby an idiot? Just because he has done great things, it doesn't mean he doesn't have stupid ideas.

    I'd tell him to go whistle. iPad, iHype.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    I wonder why...

    I wonder why some people are pitching this as Apple being the baddies and that somehow flash is great when in reality flash is an insecure, CPU hogging, proprietary technology and a money-spinner for Adobe and "Apple's vision of the future", namely open standards and HTML 5.0 would actually improve most peoples web experience.

    A flash-content producing colleague was flabbergasted when I pointed out that his computer was going full-tilt when he reviewed his output. He had never made the connection with bad performance, poor multi-tasking and the constantly whirring fans.

    Perhaps clinging to flash is purely down to ignorance and fear of the future.

    Mind you the newspaper industry is also showing just how conservative and unable to handle change it is. I wouldn't be surprised that flash will continue to be a problem for years to come...

    1. Gulfie
      Grenade

      Simples...

      The omission of Flash is not a technology decision. Its a control decision. Allow Flash (and Java) and you cede control of the platform and lose control over what people can run on it.

      When the iPhone App Store was launched, the line we were fed was about controlling the quality of product, giving us security, blah blah blah. As that argument got undermined (high quality products being barred for none of these reasons), others were trotted out and the old ones quietly forgotten.

      Think for a moment - If you could cache and run Flash on the iPhone, most of the crappy games in the App Store wouldn't exist. And Apple would be collecting 30% of a lot less money.

      It's wrong to argue about the technical merits or dismerits of Flash - But I'm sure Apple loves the continuation of the FUD it has started.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    It makes sense?

    It seems to make sense from Mr Murdoch's perspective to leapfrog to a newer and emerging technology (get in early, influence early, maintain reasonable PR, ... ) as opposed to something that has potential to wane?

  31. Watashi

    Flash is crap... but not THAT crap

    It's not WSJ's fault that Apple can't write a decent web browser.

  32. jim 45
    Happy

    the Register should run a pool...

    ... where we each get to pick the date when Jobs has to back off on this nonsense and let Apple announce Flash support for all their devices.

  33. Daedalus
    Happy

    Dirty Digger in re-engineering shock horror sensation

    Since Murdoch is the owner of the Wall St. Journal, if they drop Flash then one of his products will indeed have been re-engineered.

  34. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Poor Coco

      Oh, FFS.

      Apple didn't drop floppies because "Mac users couldn't use them"; they dropped them because floppies have tiny capacity and they are spectacularly fail-prone.

      In fact, they are so bad that, at the pre-press shop I worked at in 1994, we set up a dial-up First Class BBS so (a) a client whose floppy had cratered wouldn't have to drive (or courier) a replacement disk across town and (b) they wouldn't need to send one in the first place for small jobs. The BBS was not a small expense for us (we needed another phone line, and it used up a machine on our network) but floppies were such a PITA that it was worthwhile to us, purely in terms of reduced aggravation on our end.

      And I'm not even mentioning the time (in 2001, at another pre-press joint) I tried to set up Linux on an Apple Network Server 700 machine, a large part of which *had* to be done using floppies, because my boss was convinced that Linux (as opposed to AIX, which was already on there!) would magically make it run fast. I spent two months of graveyard shifts fighting with it futilely... that was a Very Long Period Of Floppy Disk Hell. I never succeeded --- and, frankly, I doubt you would either. Even if you are a non-Mac-kind-of-'tard.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  35. Absent

    @Sean Timarco Baggaley

    I've never lost any data pulling usb pens straight out of the socket, ever. But then that's on Windows.

  36. Adrian Esdaile
    Thumb Up

    Sound business sense

    Ditching the current favourite vulnerability on most systems?

    Ridding ourselves of the software that causes the most crashes on ANY system, not just OSX?

    Sticking it to Adobe for providing tatty bug-ridden software at simply hilarious prices?

    Sounds like a win all round to me!

    Make the change, - uninstall Flash and see how nice your system behaves!

  37. John 62
    Jobs Halo

    Murdoch is excited with the iPad

    Can't remember where in the series of 5 videos Murdoch mentions it, but he did mention a few times that Steve Jobs showed him the iPad personally.

    http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=Mjc4M2E3OGRkNzIxZjJlNmUxOTBjNjU4OTY1MWIzOWM=

    Sorry about suggesting you watch Peter Robinson, he's a bit patchy as an interviewer, more Jim Naughty-lite than Justin Webb or Evan Davies

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