Steve was right and so was I

Danny Winokur, Adobe vice president of interactive development, posting at blogs.adobe.com, Wednesday 6am:

Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.
However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.
…
We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.
…
These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video. … Flash developers can take advantage of these features, and all that our Flash tooling has to offer, to reach more than a billion PCs through their browsers.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, April 29, 2010:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
…
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Back in February 2008, I wrote about how Apple was trying to discourage Flash on the iPhone and finding work-arounds to having it pre-installed: “Apple is gambling that Adobe needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash.”

Steve Jobs has won last battle. RIP.

At long last, small NookColor improvement

Barnes & Noble released their NookColor 1.2 update on Monday, updating the 7" tablet to Froyo (Android 2.2) and providing a limited app store.

After playing with it for 24 hours, I can say there are two major pieces of good news. One is Flash: I tried it with Google Voice, and was able to listen to my voicemail messages. (Obviously I couldn’t make calls from my NookColor because it lacks a microphone).

The other is a decent email client. It auto-configured for my two Gmail accounts, and seems allow for arbitrary POP and IMAP servers. (One quibble: no "Reply-To" field, important in many organizations.)

A third small but useful change — the Quick Settings popup includes the screen brightness, something I asked for last December.

However, the long overdue app store is a bust. The contact application is still useless: as before, it only picks up email addresses from Gmail, not the phone number, street address, or any other contact information.

And there’s still no calendar app. The 7" screen of my NookColor is larger than my last physical organizer in the 1990s — it would be a great way to schedule and view meetings, again synchronized to Gmail, Exchange or whatever.

Android phones have a decent built-in calendar and a choice of dozens of calendar apps, but the NookColor still has no built-in calendar. The only one in the app store is the Fliq Calendar — criipleware for a paid side-loading application that doesn’t synchronize to the net — an odd choice for a device that’s always on Wi-Fi and rarely on USB.

And that’s the rub: there are only 139 (there were 140 Tuesday night) Nook Apps™ for the NookColor vs. an estimated 150,000 for Android overall. There are only 15 free apps, versus 100,000+ for the iPhone and tens of thousands for the iPad. A dollar for a clock app?

Maybe there’s just a lag in qualifying. B&N is soliciting new developers to join their “qualified” developer program, so perhaps in a few months we’ll have a broader range of applications.

For now, what we have is a tablet that is exactly what was released last November — plus the long-promised Flash.

Still, this is amazing: 15 years after Palm Pilot, we have a 7" PDA that has no calendar and no usable address book. What gives?

Adobe strikes back

To respond to Steve Jobs’ official criticisms of Flash, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen granted an exclusive interview this afternoon to the Wall Street Journal, which promoted it via a blog and its News Hub online video. Note to iPhone owners: News Hub cannot be viewed without Adobe’s Flash.

While most of its responses fairly presented Adobe’s side, Narayen made two comments that bear response:

We are multi-platform.

Actually, Adobe wants the world’s web developers to write for a single platform — Adobe Flash — that is hosted on top of all the other major platforms.

Flash is an open specification.

That doesn’t make it an open platform — if there’s only one implementation, then the firm gains all the benefits of lock-in and economic rents of a proprietary standard (Adobe’s a little more open with PDF, where it supplied its technology for ISO 32000 standardization, through a process known for allowing firms to retain influence and control.)

So if Adobe’s idea of an open specification is one where everyone can implement what it decides, that’s even less open than an open source company that throws dual-license implementations over the wall while using “fishbowl development” processes that don’t allow for open governance and participation.

In his letter, Steve Jobs was reasonably accurate on this point:

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. 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. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. … HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Sharing an implementation provided under a non-viral license (as WebKit is) is today the most open form of platform available. Apple is rarely this open, but for WebKit they deserve credit for sharing code and control, just as IBM shared code and control with Eclipse.

Flash! Steve buries Adobe cash cow

Steve Jobs signed an open letter this morning on six reasons why there is not — and never will be — Flash on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

His first five points:

1. Instead of being open, it’s single-vendor proprietary.
2. It’s got security flaws, it’s slow on mobile devices and is the #1 reason Macs crash.
3. Adobe says that no Flash means not “the full web” — but most video is now available in H.264, and the iPhone has its own games.
4. Battery life is 2x as good using H.264 as using Flash.
5. It’s designed for mice, not a touch interface.

But, he concludes with the argument that many of us suspected but Apple never stated explicitly:

Sixth, the most important reason.
…
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.

Jobs concludes — with his usual élan — by suggesting that Flash should be consigned to the dustbin of history in a speech:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

To my ear, this seems reminiscent of Mark Antony in Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar (“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”)

Whether one agrees with Jobs on the specifics — and a few examples seem stretched to make a point — the entire posting is a clear articulation of why Apple is not only blocking Flash on its platform, but seeking help from others to replace it with open standards where it controls the implementation.

Note to readers: Normally I avoid posting two major articles in one day, but the recent Apple and HP announcements were too important to ignore.

Adobe says those grapes were sour anyway

After being blocked by Apple’s new SDK policies, Adobe seems to have officially abandoned efforts to bring Flash to the iPhone and iPad:

Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store.

We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.

In the rest of the post, Adobe emphasizes all the benefits to Adobe (but not Apple) of Flash portability:

Because this is Flash, it is rather trivial to port games created with Flash that target the iPhone to target other operating systems, such as Android. … There have already been a couple of of developers who have moved their Flash based content from the iPhone to Flash on Android (couple of examples below) and I expect that this is a trend we will be seeing more and more of.

This comes the same day that Apple stock hit a new record price — and analysts boosted price targets — after quarterly profits rose 90% due (in large part) to a 131% jump iPhone sales. (The iPad hit after March 27.)

iPhone sales in the next quarter (its fiscal year Q3) may be a little soft due to the pre-announced iPhone 4. But otherwise, the rest of the year should bring additional growth and record sales for the iPhone platform — both 3.5" and 9.7" size — of users happy to buy Apple’s latest product without Flash. There is a small opportunity for Microsoft on the iPhone with its limited version of Silverlight.

Apple seems to be OK with open data format standards (such as the H.264 used by YouTube and Microsoft) but not proprietary middleware APIs (either by Adobe or Microsoft). The popularity of the iPhone and now iPad makes it unlikely that website owners will be willing to ignore this major market, thus encouraging them to find alternate solutions (as YouTube did) for getting their Flash content before users.

What to me is the most interesting will be Google’s reaction. On the one hand, they want to promote Android over the iPhone at every opportunity. On the other hand, both legal (i.e. antitrust law) and market (customer demand) forces limit how much they can punish Apple or reward tying of their mobile platform to their search empire. There is also the issue that Google has no horse in the Flash vs. anti-Flash smackdown.

So will Google promulgate additional Flash-dependent content? Or will it continue to find work-arounds (as with YouTube) for those without Flash?

Cornered Adobe comes out swinging

While a dog that didn’t bark helped Sherlock Holmes solve a case, normally something not happening is not news. However, the saga of Apple not allowing Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone (and now the iPad) seems to provide no shortage of fodder for bloggers, reporters and industry analysts.

Adobe has been seeking a work-around by creating a cross-compiler from Flash to the iPhone. However, on Thursday Apple unveiled its new SDK with a clause that banned such cross-compilers.

As I have argued, Flash needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash. Apple wants Flash to provide portability between the iPhone and its rivals about as much as Microsoft wanted Java to provide portability between Mac and Windows.

The frustration of Adobe being shut out from the popular smartphone bubbled over a blog entry Friday by Flash platform evangelist Lee Brimelow. The headlines are over Brimelow’s final sentence: “Go screw yourself Apple.”

Brimelow argued:

What is clear is that Apple has timed this purposely to hurt sales of CS5. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.

(Brimelow was told to redact the first sentence by his Adobe bosses, but it was captured by various news sites.)

The nominal reason for Apple to ban Flash is that it’s a buggy, and a resource pig. In a pointed and often funny posting blasting the “Flash Brigade,” Daniel Dilger argues on RoughlyDrafted that Flash for mobile phones requires computing power beyond 2 of the 3 iPhone models shipped to date. (Update: In another posting, Dilger theorizes that the prohibition relates to the iPhone 4.0 implementation of multitasking.)

(Flash is a resource pig even on a personal computer. My laptop browser crashed frequently until I installed ClickToFlash freeware).

Brimelow expresses surprise at the Apple move:

Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone.

I think this is silly at best, and disingenuous at worst. Apple and Adobe haven’t been friends for a decade, and really haven’t seriously helped each other in 20 years.

In speaking to my class on Monday, Michael Mace thinks Apple has a bad taste from helping Adobe get where it is today — a company that until very recently made most of its money on Windows. (Mace was Director of Competitive Analysis and Director of Mac Platform Marketing for Apple in the early 1990s.)

Mace recalled that in the late 1980s, Apple spent millions promoting early Macintosh applications — including Adobe’s first major application, Adobe Illustrator. Then it woke up one morning and found all found these applications (and companies) that it had helped promote were now selling on Windows.

I have my own vivid memory of how Apple suffered here, almost 20 years later. In the summer of 2001, I went to the Big Island of Hawai‘i to participate in the Macintosh Technology and Issues conference. In a room full of the leading Mac developers, someone (perhaps host Jerry Borrell or co-host David Ushijima) asked who was developing for Windows: I was the only person to not raise my hand.

Almost everyone in the room had gotten into the software business as Mac developers, and (with Windows 3.0) they were all shifting over to Windows.

Apple knows that the same process will repeat itself, with many iPhone developers targeting Android as well. But Apple has no reason to eliminate switching costs to its rivals: as long as that’s Adobe’s goal, it’s childish to expect Apple will want to help someone slit its throat.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball came to a similar conclusion when he analyzed the logic of Apple’s strategy — an analysis Steve Jobs himself endorsed.

So what Apple does not want is for some other company to establish a de facto standard software platform on top of Cocoa Touch. Not Adobe’s Flash. Not .NET (through MonoTouch). If that were to happen, there’s no lock-in advantage. If, say, a mobile Flash software platform — which encompassed multiple lower-level platforms, running on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry — were established, that app market would not give people a reason to prefer the iPhone.

Fortunately, there are still some grownups at Adobe. Responding to Apple’s licensing move, CTO Kevin Lynch wrote:

First of all, the ability to package an application for the iPhone or iPad is one feature in one product in Creative Suite. CS5 consists of 15 industry-leading applications, which contain hundreds of new capabilities and a ton of innovation. We intend to still deliver this capability in CS5 and it is up to Apple whether they choose to allow or disallow applications as their rules shift over time.

Apple is not going to put Adobe out of business, even if it slows its growth. At best, Apple can accelerate the adoption of HTML5 as a substitute for Flash, but any significant impact on Adobe’s revenues is years off.

Flash-free iPad: leading or trailing edge?

For three years, Apple has been intentionally strong-arming Adobe’s efforts to bring Flash to the iPhone. Of course, a Flash-free iPhone also means no Flash on the iPod Touch and now the iPad too.

With Flash 10.1 due Real Soon Now on every major smartphone platform except Apple’s phone/PDA/tablet OS, does that make the iPhone OS a laggard? Or is it the leading edge of a larger trend?

The controversy flared up in the past week in an (indirect) exchange between Apple’s CEO and Adobe’s CTO.

An internal (and presumably confidential) speech at Apple last week by Steve Jobs was reported Saturday by Wired — which quotes an (obviously) unnamed employee (or contractor) providing this paraphrase:

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

In response, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch wrote a detailed justification for why the world needs Flash, how most of the world has it, and the iPhone (and iPad) could have it too if only Apple would be nice:

We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.

Why is Steve being so mean? It’s silly to say “there’s no technical reason” Flash is not on the iPhone. Of course there are technical reasons: Flash is a resource pig and is buggy — it’s the only thing that crashes the browser on my laptop. As Microsoft did with Windows 4,5 and 6, Adobe’s priority has been adding features rather than solving the complexity/reliability problems.

On the other hand, is bugginess enough reason to rule out Flash permanently? Of course not.

At one point, it might have been possible to conclude that Apple was trying to extract leverage — as when Steve Jobs claimed two years ago that Apple wanted a new version of Flash between Flash and Flash Lite, that played Flash websites with less demands than the desktop Flash.

Now, of course, it’s pretty clear that all that is window dressing, and basically what we have is a repeat of the Windows vs. Java platform war, with Apple trying to prevent Flash from layering itself on top of its existing platform.

Last time, much of the world was cheering on Sun’s efforts to promulgate Java as a cross-platform standard. Today, Google, Microsoft, the Free Software Foundation (and most of the Chinese software industry) share Apple’s goal to create a world where an enhanced open standard HTML (HTML5? HTML9?) obviates the need for Adobe’s proprietary, royalty-bearing de facto standard. This is a noble goal if the majority of the world’s Internet users will be using mobile phones — but it isn’t going to be a reality any time soon.

Still — unlike the PDF standard that Adobe (mostly) controls — there will be increasing alternatives to Flash in the future (and not just Silverlight). For three years Apple has been gambling that Flash needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash: so far it has been right.

What’s different this year is the rising market share of Android — and Flash coming to both it and North America’s most popular smartphone platform, the BlackBerry. That’s market pressure that the Jesus phone hasn’t faced before — but if I had to guess, I’d (make a small) wager that the iPhone (and iPad) will end 2010 the same way they began: Flash-free.

Penultimate Flash holdout falls

On Monday, Adobe announced Flash 10.1 (not Flash Lite) will be available in beta form Windows Mobile and webOS in 2009, and Android, BlackBerry and Symbian in 2010. Adding support for the Research in Motion platform to the previously announced list leaves only one smartphone conspicuously absent.

Apple has been conspicuously rejecting Flash for a variety of reasons, both implicitly and by explicit Steve Jobs pronouncements. It uses its terms of service to ban such technologies. PC World argues that Apple is fighting Flash to protect its App Store business model against encroachments by direct Flash downloads.

In the Apple vs. Adobe battle of wills, Adobe seems to have blinked first: also on Monday, Adobe announced it is making a Flash to iPhone App translator, so that individual applications can be translated one at a time. This solves the iPhone performance issue but does not provide Flash-infested websites for iPhone/iPod Touch owners.

I once predicted that Apple could say no to Flash as long as RIM stood with it; by this time next year, iPhone users will stand alone. Will Apple announce Flash for the iPhone by then? If it’s a performance issue, eventually Apple will say yes. I think the odds are 1:3 that the iPhone still won’t have Flash on its 5th anniversary.

iPhone, Android ride the rising tide

The latest AdMob statistics show that the iPhone share of global mobile web browsing has risen from 33 to 40%. Interestingly, its share in Western Europe (67%) and Oceana is higher than in North America (52%).

By eyeballing it, the iPhone’s impact is diluted due an impressive 13% share here for Android. (Android is only 6% in Western Europe). Since February, Android has jumped from 2% to 7% worldwide, in part due to the new HTC myTouch (Magic).

Palm’s webOS jumped from 0 to 4% in the same period, or 9% in North America, which suggests that North America is 45% of the sample.

GigaOM and others have analyzed the data. Here’s a few points I haven’t seen.

First, market share data doesn’t capture the effect of growing the market. Windows, Symbian and RIM have lost share, but I don’t think this means fewer Blackberry owners are surfing the web. The AdMob data said that mobile web page requests grew 9% from July to August, translating to a 180% annualized growth rate.

After many years of hopes and predictions, the mobile Internet is growing rapidly, and that growth is coming from the most exciting devices — the various incarnations of the iPhone, and the more recent (and more limited) Android and webOS choices. As others have noted, the latter two platforms seem to have lots of potential for growth.

This reinforces the point that Mike Mace and I made two years ago — that the iPhone found a way to deliver the mobile web that everyone was waiting for). Apple got their first, by recognizing the failings of early offerings (see: WAP). By the way, this cements the dominance of WebKit — these three hot platforms are all WebKit, and when you add in Symbian (mostly WebKit S60), that’s 85% of all mobile web browsing in this samle.

The data are somewhat distorted by the fact that these three growing platforms are being sold (at least in the US) with a bundled data plan at an additional $40-50/month — while it’s still possible to buy a Nokia or Windows Mobile (or Treo) smartphone without such a data bundle. There is a selection effect: the only people who buy these devices are those who expect to use the Internet enough to make that cost worthwhile.

The US carriers will eventually run out of people who want to permanently increase their phone bills $600 a month, so they will either have to loosen up on tethering (allowing 20-somethings to cancel their cable or DSL), cut their prices, or expect a cap in the growth of their growth in 3G data usage.

In fact, one place where Android (so far) is not playing is the PDA market. The iPod Touch is about 40% of the total iPhone OS market share, and while they’re not being used to surf the web out in the national parks, they can be used to surf the web at home, work, a college campus or public library. The Zune HD has won good reviews — will this bring up the share of Windows Mobile more than any phone?

Finally, what is the future of Flash for the mobile web? Apple remains adamantly opposed, even if most of its rivals (save RIM) have embraced Adobe’s ubiquitous multimedia platform.

Personally, I’m hoping Apple wins this fight. At least as implemented by Adobe and used by web designers, Flash is an abomination — the single worst thing about the Internet. A computer, web browser and cable modem that would otherwise zip through the web suddenly grind to a halt because of some idiot’s self-centered effort to create catchy graphics in a futile hope of distinguishing their website. Phones have even slower connections and processors, so the last thing we need is to waste that limited bandwidth on websites that benefit the website owner rather than the web visitor.

Who wants Flash?

When Flash 10 comes to mobile phones in the fall, it will be available for Android, the Palm Pre, Symbian S60 and even Windows Mobile. This leaves out the BlackBerry and iPhone — roughly 30% of the world market (and the majority of the US market).

Obviously this is not a technical issue — the ARM processors on the missing phones are no less capable than those that will have Flash. In the long-running iPhone saga, Steve Jobs has been explicit in rejecting the need for Flash.

This obviously slows Adobe’s efforts to make Flash a ubiquitous cross-platform mobile phone media platform, building upon its success delivering annoying animated ads (as well as YouTube videos) to desktop owners.

Will phone buyers prefer a phone that has Flash over a phone that doesn’t? So far, there’s no evidence of that Flash matters that much, but my hunch is if either RIM or Apple gives in to Adobe, the other will have to follow.

Meanwhile, economists and pundits crow about the importance of open standards, but then developers take the lazy way out and use a proprietary platform like Flash because it is powerful with good tools. (Like all proprietary systems, it’s partly open — in this case not being died to any particular hardware.)

So it’s fine to say that, all things being equal, developers and users and MIS managers prefer open standards over proprietary standards. The problem with that claim is that all things are never equal: the creator of a mostly proprietary standard has financial resources rarely available to more open standards (with their more limited options for appropriation).

Adobe has done a good job of re-investing the rents provided by its control of Flash to continuously advance the platform. In doing so, it builds upon the successful efforts by Macromedia since it bought FutureWave Splash in December 1996. (Ironically, Adobe founder John Warnock turned down the opportunity to buy Splash the year before).

Flash is still not alive on the iPhone

InfoWorld updates a long-running story with today’s post: “No Java, Flash for iPhone this Christmas.”

There is still a little time left, but it doesn't look like Apple iPhone users will see Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems get Flash and Java up and running on Apple's handheld device by Christmas.

Although both Sun and Adobe have expressed a desire to back the iPhone for nearly a year, neither the Flash Player nor Java Virtual Machine run on the device. And it appears that little to no progress is being made. Sun and Adobe, the chief proponents of the Java and Flash platforms, respectively, repeat what they've said all year: that they are still working to get their software platforms running on the trendy phone.

Paul Krill chalks this up to technical difficulties, rather than a conspiracy by Apple to block competing platforms. (OTOH, Apple wasn’t willing to comment).

So various rumors (in Fall, Spring, Winter) that iPhone Flash was due Real Soon Now appear to have been premature, as were rumors of Java implementations.

It doesn’t make sense to introduce something like this in December anyway. Perhaps this is something Steve will announce at his keynote on Jan. 6.

NB: Although it would make for a better metaphor, it didn’t seem fair to say “iPhone Java is still dead” since it’s never been alive yet.

iPhone Flash due Real Soon Now

Apparently Adobe has finished the long-rumored Flash for the iPhone, and is awaiting Apple approval to distribute it. Apple front man Steve Jobs has been diss’ing Flash for months. The case for Apple to endorse Flash for the iPhone is no more compelling than it was eight months ago.

It seems inevitable that Flash will come to the iPhone, unless of course Apple is waiting to establish the SproutCore web application framework as a Flash substitute.

Of course, SproutCore is based on Apple’s idiosyncratic Cocoa APIs, instead of Adobe’s Flash APIs. So clearly Apple prefers programmers to develop skills for their technologies rather than Adobe’s competing proprietary (cross-platform) solution.

Latest iPhone Flash rumors

This week brings the latest iteration of the Flash-coming-to-iPhone rumors (based on an analyst question to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen). Adobe is allegedly developing its own implementation, despite Apple’s longstanding antipathy to the platform. Of course, the rumors of Flash on the iPhone were rampant in March, February and even last July.

Another rumor is that Apple is developing its own Flash competitor called “SproutCore.” It appears that SproutCore is an JavaScript/Ajax framework and a way to access Mobile Me (née DotMac). The rumors seem tied to a WWDC session last Friday, and claim that the solution brings Cocoa APIs to Windows and the Web using JavaScript.

This seems more plausible, given Jobs’ history. NeXT opted to bypass a licensed implementation of Adobe’s Display Postscript to develop its own. OS X has shipped its own version of a PDF reader so that Acrobat is largely superfluous for Mac owners. (Apple has also sought to bypass Microsoft implementations for its file formats).

I have no horse in this race: I dislike Flash but am also unlikely to buy a SBC-provisioned iPhone. Still, if I had to bet, I’d bet on Apple bypassing Adobe again to provide its own mechanism for playing all those confounded SWF files.

Unlike Apple, Qualcomm embraces Flash

Apple thus far has refused to support Flash on the iPhone, but this week Qualcomm announced that it finally will.

Qualcomm has its own proprietary cell phone platform called BREW (vs. Java, get it?) that is used by Verizon, Alltel, Japan’s KDDI and several other carriers around the world. It differs from other mobile phone platforms in that it includes an integrated business model for third party software vendors, incorporating distribution, fulfillment and payment. Qualcomm made the announcement at its annual developer’s conference.

Clearly BREW lacks the momentum of the iPhone, but with the prior cooperation of many of the industry’s heavyweights, helps Adobe’s ongoing push towards providing a (relatively) seamless cross-platform multimedia delivery platform.

Flash in the phone

Flash is coming to Windows Mobile devices, and now Engadget speculates Adobe will develop it for the iPhone even though Apple has said no and remains unenthusiastic. Adobe later backed down on their prediction of imminent Flash for the iPhone.

The most compelling explanation for Apple’s reluctance is that Flash would open a new site of APIs with new applications that Apple doesn’t want. However, Flash would also require a change to Apple’s ban on interpreted languages, which are a potential security hole.

Many Flashaholics have said that Apple now can’t resist the inevitability of Flash for the iPhone, but that’s hope and not economic reality. Apple’s biggest rival in North America is Research in Motion, and the BlackBerry also lacks Flash.

The one place where I do think Apple needs Flash (actually Flash Lite) is Japan, where 80% of the current Nokia phones run some form of Flash. Of course, if Apple adopts, endorses or enables Flash for Japanese websites (or even bundles it), then it would be hard not to make it a use download worldwide.

Will it blend?

I am heading up the science fair committee for our local elementary school, and we had a meeting today about planning our April 11 event for a hundred kids ages 5-10. (Yesterday I served as an IEEE judge for the Santa Clara County science fair, the championship for kids ages 11-18).

Today I heard that one of our fourth graders is doing a project about blending money — which brought the observation from another parent that he must spend too much time watching “Will It Blend?”

Sure enough, browsing to the “Will It Blend?” website, the featured video clip is “The iPhone. Will It Blend?” This was an absolutely fascinating video — eliciting a wide range of feelings from curiosity, ghoulish humor, and scientific reflection. The ending — when they pour out the results of the iPhone smoothie — is not to be missed.

The videos hosted by Tom Dickson (a crazy combination of Mr. Science and cable TV ginzu salesman) are segregated into two categories: try this at home and don’t try this at home. The latter category (which includes the iPhone) features the most outrageous and popular of the genre.

In addition to entertainment, it’s also a brilliant business model — as clever an advertorial as I’ve ever seen. The site is run by Blendtec, a maker of consumer and commercial blenders, which promotes the website (and vice versa) for both types of blenders.

They swear they use one of their consumer blenders (the “Total Blender”), which is the low end of their consumer product line (let alone commercial), but at $600 list ($400 street) would be considered a luxury blender by Wal-Mart or Costco standards.

There’s no explicit ad, but everything is an implicit testimonial: the videos can be embedded in websites, reposted to YouTube, or otherwise promoted via word of mouth. If ever there was a way to position a premium-priced product, this is it.

Like YouTube and most other short clip services, it uses Flash — good for Macromedia, bad for iPhone users. Dickson said the iPhone smoothie was by request of his YouTube fans, so expect to see it among the YouTube most viewed videos soon.

The dog that didn't bark

As Sherlock Holmes noted back in 1892, sometimes it’s just as interesting when a dog doesn’t bark as when it does.

Last month I asked whether this week’s iPhone SDK would bring Flash support. It didn’t, and in almost all the coverage of the SDK intro nothing was said about this major gap (for Apple? for Adobe?) in platform compatibility.

Despite what Adobe boosters claim, Steve Jobs still feels that Adobe needs Apple more than Apple needs Adobe. Various accounts quoted him as telling shareholders Tuesday that PC-based Flash is too slow and Flash Lite is not capable enough to support today’s web. It’s not clear if Steve is being sincere, or merely sending a message diss’ing (or even promising?) Flash support. Adobe this week was noncommittal.

Interestingly, Sun took a quick look at the iPhone SDK and then promised to bring Java to the iPhone. That’s what I expected Adobe to do, so maybe Steve is right: the current Flash is suitable for the current iPhone hardware.

iPhone Flashpoint

Although I no longer read the daily WSJ, Larry Gagnon of ZDNet pointed me to an interesting article today on the WSJ website (by former CNET reporter Ben Charny) about Flash on the iPhone.

Adobe has successfully created a new platform with Flash, Adobe wants the iPhone to ship Flash. Mobile platforms are a strategically important source of growth for Adobe. As of last October, it had 300 million installs on 430 phone models and 140 device models, and mobile/device revenues (for both Flash and Acrobat) were $52.5 million, up 40%.

So far Apple isn’t cooperating, and went so far as to use a work-around to get YouTube on the iPhone without providing Flash. Today Adobe needs Apple’s cooperation because Apple tightly controls third party apps on the iPhone; even on the ISV-friendly OS X, Apple retains some control such as for apps that require low-level interfaces.

Once the new SDK ships (this month?), the iPhone will become a feasible target for a wider range of third-party apps. At that point, Apple’s attitudes could range from

1. bundle it and pay a royalty
2. bundle it if it can get out of a royalty (not very likely)
3. treat Flash as a strategically important application and help Adobe develop a Flash port for the iPhone — which it then can distribute as it sees fit
4. treat Adobe like any other ISV (which is to say, not go out of its way to support a very popular application)
5. do what it can to discourage/prevent Flash for the iPhone, such as by changing APIs or allowing it on its redistribution site.

The WSJ makes it seem like Apple is at #4 or #5.

Neither side is talking, but the key issues would appear to be:

• Processor usage. Flash is a resource pig, although Flash Lite supposedly runs on a 150 MHz ARM chip. The iPhone has a 620 MHz ARM chip, but that chip is severely taxed right now.
• Royalties. Adobe gets 20¢ per phone for preloaded software, but nothing if the software is downloaded by the user (e.g. for Symbian or Windows Mobile).
• Platform control. Flash is a classic closed standard — even more closed than Windows — in that Adobe controls the APIs and no third party implementations are available. By comparison, Apple supports Adobe’s PDF standard on OS X but has its own implementation of a PDF reader that lags Adobe’s by several generations but for most purposes is good enough.

IMHO this last point is the most important one. Flash is a prerequisite to using an increasing number of websites, as I found trying to go without for several years. (Still, it was only GrandCentral that caused me to finally install it). Apple is gambling that Adobe needs the iPhone more than the iPhone needs Flash.

John Gruber has a long post about why he believes Apple will not help bring Flash to the iPhone. It appears that we don’t agree on much, but we agree here:

Apple doesn’t control the HTML/CSS/JavaScript web standards, but neither does anyone else. And Apple does control and own WebKit, which is by anyone’s measure the best mobile implementation of these standards today.

Flash, on the other hand, is (from Apple’s perspective) the wrong sort of proprietary — owned and controlled by another company.

Gruber notes (correctly) that Flash may have won on the desktop, but the mobile web is still wide open.

The iPhone has an opportunity to influence those mobile standards far out of proportion to its market share (of about 6% of new smartphone sales). As Google told the Financial Times last week, Google “had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset”.

My bet is that for 2008, Apple will continue to promulgate WebKit and work with Google (Ajax etc.) to make websites work well with the iPhone using open standards. I also expect Adobe to ship its own Flash player (with or without Apple’s help) in Q2 or Q3 of this year.

The real issue is whether mobile-oriented websites will develop assuming a Flash player, and then require iPhone users to download a copy of Flash Lite — or whether they will follow the Google-iPhone web application model.

Is Flash the new Java?

A decade ago, Netscape decided to kick the giant in the shins and say “we plan to put you out of business.” Of course, Netscape as a product is long since gone, as is nearly all of the economic value it might have created for its shareholders.

But today, Flash is close to accomplishing what Java never did — a ubiquitous API layer on top of a wide range of platforms. At 3GSM, Adobe issued a contorted press release bragging about the ubiquity of Flash on mobile phones. They have hit 200 million “shipments” (in 2006?), which could mean 20% share on new cellphones, but apparently they don’t think that the exact numbers are flattering enough to be worth sharing.

I have decidedly mixed feelings about Flash. On the one hand, it evokes sentimental memories: before it was released, I was rooting heavily for FutureWave’s Splash because I knew Charlie Jackson, one of the FutureWave founders. (Some of the accounts are misleading — although Jonathan Gay was the technical brains, FutureWave was co-founded by Gay, Michelle (Welsh) Alsip and Charlie, their former Silicon Beach boss).

On the other hand, when I considered last year how Flash was being used on websites, it seemed like a net negative. What I saw was:

• ads that are 10x as obnoxious as self-looping GIFs;
• glitzy website intros because the webmaster snowed his boss into thinking that it makes for more effective advertising;
• some relatively unimportant content (e.g., YouTube);
• some useful content that can be had otherwise (such as the new Yahoo maps); and
• some useful content that is not available any other way (e.g. Zillow or quite a few online radio stations.)

So about a year ago, I removed Flash from my primary machine (a PowerBook). Since it’s pre-installed on Mac OS X, I have to do it every time I do an OS upgrade.

I rarely miss it. Most good sites have a non-Flash version of the page; most websites that insist on Flash for the intro can be bypassed to get to the real content. For Yahoo, I either use the original UI (which is much faster over a cable modem and has a more intuitive interface) or just go to the Ajax-based Google. For emergencies, my desktop at home has Flash installed, but I find myself using that less than once a week.

People rant about how DVD scrambling (DeCSS) is a closed standard (controlled by a multivendor trade association) that forces buyers to abide by the seller’s rules. But no one seems to complain that the Flash is a single-vendor standard that forces us to sit through ads and other obnoxious stuff, whether we want to or not. Even PDF is more open than Flash.

Technical capabilities aside, Java would have made a better open platform for users and the rest of the industry. If not for Sun’s enemies, it would have been an open standard, it has multiple implementations, and now Sun has released it under a dual-license strategy.

Steve Jobs claims that the iPhone — no great paragon of openness — can get by without Java or Flash. Can a web-surfing device exist without it? Ajax only requires XHTML and Javascript, so that’s is a start.

Sun and Netscape wanted to make Java a computer platform that spanned Unix, Windows and the Mac, but it turned out that the world didn’t care (since nearly everyone runs Windows). But having a platform that spans PCs, smartphones and maybe even feature phones — if Java or Flash didn’t do it, we’d have to invent something else.

Technorati Tags: Adobe, mobile phones, open standards, platforms, Flash