Quotes from work

Thoughts on Flash

Thoughts on Flash is an open letter published by Steve Jobs, co-founder and then-chief executive officer of Apple Inc., on April 29, 2010. The letter criticized Adobe Systems' Flash platform and outlined reasons why the technology would not be allowed on the company's iOS hardware products, specifically iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The letter drew immediate attention, with Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen firing back at Apple, stating that one of the issues in the criticism was due to Apple's own operating system rather than Flash technology, and other criticism was false. At the time, various media publications had different opinions on the topic, with some citing business motivations rather than technological, hypocrisy in the letter despite agreeing with Jobs, and outright accusations of lying. However, retroactively, more publications have agreed with Jobs, with notable mentions of poor performance of Flash on Android devices.That month, Apple had revised its iPhone Developer Agreement, adding new developer restrictions, particularly that only "approved" programming languages would be allowed on App Store. The change impacted a number of companies that had developed tools for porting applications from their respective programming languages into native iPhone apps, with one prominent example being an Adobe-developed "Packager for iPhone" tool. The policy was criticized as anti-competitive, and in May 2010, there were talks about which US government agency would launch an antitrust investigation into the matter. The following September, Apple again revised its policy, removing restrictions on third-party development tools. In November 2011, Adobe announced that it was ceasing development of its Flash Player plug-in for mobile web browsers, and instead shifting its focus towards building tools for developing applications for mobile app stores. The company announced in July 2017 that it would discontinue Flash altogether by the year 2020.