CE-Oh no he didn't? Part LXVII: Steve Jobs lashes out at Google, calls Adobe 'lazy'
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted January 31st 2010 2:08PM
posted January 31st 2010 2:08PM
Furthermore Jobs had a handful of choice words for Adobe, calling the company "lazy" and claiming that "Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5." Of course, these amazing nuggets of wisdom come from a source which Engadget cannot verify, so it's possible there are misquotes or items taken out of context, though from the sounds of things, this kind of talk falls right in line with what we'd expect from the man who said Microsoft "had no taste" and makes "really third-rate products." We eagerly await Eric Schmidt's response.
@johnspierce flash sites suck. It was pretty in the year 2000 but now it's just inconvenient.
@johnspierce
Just go to youtube and watch it.
@Ridgecity Yes, yes, I understand - HTML5 is better. But I'm just talking about average Joe wants to see his favorite website. I want the iPad to be the best device for viewing websites today, not 2 years from now. Flash is nearly ubiquitous among popular websites. Do you think they are going to change overnight just because his holiness Jobs has said "make it so"? It will take *YEARS* to change over to HTML5 and that's IF there were as many good development tools available.
@d3sc3nd3ncy Yep, I know - Youtube is rolling out HTML5 and so is Vimeo. That's really just a drop in the bucket though. People who are not techies (i.e. most of the people who will buy an iPad) will be sorely disappointed when they cannot view content on the NYtimes, CNN, MSNBC, Disney, Hulu, Avril Levigne, Paramount Pictures, Lady Gaga, The Blackeyed Peas, virtually any photography website, etc, etc, etc.
@Ridgecity
http://www.thefwa.com/
Flash WAS pretty? Virtually every website in above link uses flash. You want to design something better looking w/o it? That will grab my attention.
@d3sc3nd3ncy
Yes, that seems like the ultimate web experience. "Here is a video I want to watch. Oh, wait, it's Flash - Time to find another copy somewhere else"
What you are proposing is a compromise of the worst degree. It's like a dealer selling a car w/o working hydraulic brakes and saying "Just use the E-brake" That's not a better experience
@ledhed Seriously, where are these statements coming from. Remove flash from the web and your browsing experience will be significantly worse. HTNL5 may replace flash video but Flash itself will still be a huge part of the web, I still don't see the advantage to h.264 over flash, Can someone help with this?
He is right.. Flash gives me a ton of problems on my mac. (really wish they'd fix it)
There's some PC issues as well, if you don't want to take my word for it just play FarmVille on Facebook and check out your CPU usage!
Im an intense apple fan but Im also a pc and I 100% agree with the adobe comment but google is just competing and I dont see one thing wrong with that. Really excited about the "Macs going to the next level" in 2010 statement. So mysterious...
@dhoshman
I really love how Appleheads hang on to every word. What's the next level?
@Oflife
Then on top of that...didn't Google acquire Android in 2005?? So how were they stepping on Apple's toes? Were they supposed to just sit in the back because Apple released a phone 2 yrs later?
Ha! Steve Jobs, I love this man...he's a genius. But he's so full of himself it's hilarious.
@CJisohsocool Stop blaming Flash. It is true that the Mac version of the Flash plugin is typically slower than the PC version, but if a particular Flash is lagging the hell out of your computer then it is the Flash developer's fault for not optimizing the animation or code. You think these problems will go away when everyone eventually switches to HTML4? Hell no. Poor web-development will only move over to that format, and you will still have some web-sties that tend to lag out your browsing experience.
Steve's excuse that crashes are caused by a plugin is really no excuse at all. If your browser is crashing because of a plugin (or god forbid the whole computer) then you have a badly designed browser. Safari needs to catch up to Chrome on this matter.
The comment about Google's tagline is taken way out of context. Google's stance is that what is best for the consumer can also be what is best for the company. Apple may have believed this at one point, but sadly, no longer seems to care much about it's consumers except for what might make them salivate and spend their hard-earned cash. Apple then makes their company look even more petty by insulting the competition at every turn. They have become the rich, but handsome elitist bully on campus. He pulls a crowd, seems to never do wrong, and can say whatever he wants about others regardless of truth. Put simply, if the Apple corporation were a person, he'd be a total asshole.
And as a nerd, I am against this kind of behavior.
@mrmcq2u "so what can flash give me that webgl, javascript and the html5 draft cannot?"
my reason why flash won't be gone as quickly as WE would all like.
it's actually very simple... flash is relatively simple. you don't need to know webgl, js and html5 to do what you can in flash. most flash developers that i know are actually just graphic designers who picked up flash and now say 'oh, i can do that,' instead 'wait, we need someone who can script.`
it's just the easy factor.
@jstevens
No, the reason flash won't die that fast is because web-developers are LAZY. And companies are cheap. They are not going to update to HTML 5 unless either flash support dies or HTML 5 market goes "boom" (up very fast)
@d3sc3nd3ncy
I agree. that's actually part of my point. Companies are lazy and cheap. They're not going to update their sites just because there is something better out there. Also using flash is simple and cheap; and partly why it's so successful.
@Oflife meanwhile, Gates & Ballmer are drinking champagne back in Microsoft Island texting "LOL" from their pink phones!
Tell it like it is! Hope this means they're coming out with a bad ass iPhone. And fuk adobe, that shit sucks ass.
it's apple's o/s 10 that doesn't handle flash well ... all my windows 7 computers handle it no problem. My Dell Mini 9, single core athlon Ins. C521, and Quad core Ins. 530 all handle flash with no problem.
@(Unverified)
My P.O.S. P4 handles it just fine. But then again, it runs Windows... not OS X
I wonder what will happen to Apple when Jobs isn't around anymore?
I mean, if you listen to everything in the press, he alone makes every decision about everything at Apple.
@slipdisc
the emperor definitely needs an heir, a protege, to take his throne if apple were to carry on without him, otherwise I'm afraid apple may become like another sony.
@CJisohsocool Watch an Html5 youtube video and monitor your cpu usage, Then do the same with quicktime. It's not just flash that is cpu intensive. Flash may not be perfect but no better alternatives currently exist, Other then Shockwave. IMHO
Why don't you enter the search engine business too Jobs? You can name it "iSearch".
@Yeria
Or iSuckAss
@Oflife Everyone should read John Gruber's article on Apple and Flash. It puts it pretty succinctly.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash
Steve has lost the magic.
Hey Steve... iPad. Kettle. Black.
He is talking future..we saying NOW. Right now I can't live without flash. Who knows what the future would bring.
Last time I checked macbooks have flash.
wow adobe is lazy.. and their product is pretty much the internet standard for how many years now.. and u wont put something that 99.99999999 % of the internet uses in your product, i would say that is lazy and pretty much not smart.
and the world is going to html 5? the last time i checked i have to install quicktime to watch anything on your website... and trust me that is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY worse than flash
google is evil??? ok so apple is not????
wow he sounds like a kid making excuses for everything that does not go his way....
Steve Blow Jobs STFU
@dirtballrotten I agree, as much as I despise Flash and wish it to die and be replaced by HTML5, I understand the necessity for now. Quicktime on the other hand can't die soon enough in my opinion. about 12 months ago I finally decided nothing in Quicktime is worth watching. I will not install it under any condition, and my systems have thanked me for it.
@Jon Rubinstein
Lol! Man, and I just ordered that phone.
I love Steve Jobs
@tmfair
Generally I do too. I think he's managed one of the best companies on the market. While their products are typically expensive, they are usually high quality, high end products. I buy PCs and usually never touch apple stuff, but thanks to Apple, the products I buy are typically higher quality. I think his leadership in the market has helped a lot of people out. I know trolls and fanboys can't accept this, but he's a great innovator and talent getter. Plus he's a great speaker/presenter in terms of CEOs. I was going to be sad if he died from cancer because quite frankly, I'm not sure Apple has another Steve Jobs in their company. I'm not sure anyone does really.
He has officially lost it.
called it
@LGH
Here's my rebuttal on how flash runs on macs and jobs's comments:
You should try running quicktime on a windows computer...
And about flash being replaced by HTML5:
You mean like how apple.com/trailers is not using quicktime instead of HTML5 right?
Or the disney sites (including pixar) aren't all 100% flash, and you are the biggest stockholder in disney and the chairman of disney.
As convincing as an ipad.
@CJisohsocool 80% CPU usage? Sounds like iTunes.
@Maximina
IM NOT USING A MAC FFS IM ON A PC.
@Aristaeus Jobs definitely does have a bit of a God complex. His words seem to imply that "competing" (a basic tenet of free-market theory) with the iPhone is morally wrong. Apple could get into the search and advertising business if they really wanted to.
Apple should be scared of Google. Android is becoming very powerful. When it was just on HTC hardware, it wasn't much of a threat, but if Apple thinks they can take on Samsung, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, LG and HTC with just one phone, then they are in for a nasty surprise.
Even with its advantages, the iPhone is not evolving all that fast. The more Apple mocks Google, the tougher the disappointment will be for them when Android becomes the nr.1 mobile OS in the world.
@scoobydooby
HTC + Google + Microsoft = wtfpwn
@scoobydooby
The iphone would be the #1 smartphone on ANY carrier it is made available on in the US. The luckiest break for Android now is that it is the poor mans iphone on non ATT networks. Everyone knows that. The geek market is a tiny, irrelevant slice. LOL.
@jaffreywali You're obviously not too bright. I have an iPhone and have a Nexus One and prefer my Nexus One over my iPhone. My ATT contract will be up soon and bye bye iPhone for good.
@Why should I have all the fun “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
—Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Apple currently considers essentialness of design in a way that no other company would dare. The result is a relatively spartan feature-set with laserlike focus on the features they choose to include. In some markets, they have been richly rewarded by this approach (iPod, iPhone), in others, they stripped the product so bare that people couldn't quite figure out what to do with it (AppleTV, and I suspect the 3rd gen Shuffle, although I don't know the sales numbers for it.).
The point is that Apple gambles in this way, and EVERY time they release something, people cry about how many "essential" features are missing right before Apple makes billions of dollars off of it. In other words, I would consider the intent of the design rather than looking at the result in terms of what we've already seen, because this constantly referential perspective limits your vision and prohibits the recognition and adoption of truly innovative design.
When people start using the iPad, and knowing exactly what it offers, then we'll know if flash, or multitasking truly presents a deal-breaker or not.
People predicted that the Pre's multitasking would allow it to bury the iPhone. As it happens, no such population inversion has occurred in the userbase, and the iPhone continues to dominate. With your backwards looking perspective, from such a result, we would *have* to conclude that these problems would not hinder the iPad, after all, it is simply a large iPhone. When we consider that the iPad is a new device, with new features, different strengths and different alternatives, that is when the criticisms can be fully appreciated, and validly concluded.
Hey Steve,
Make compelling products continually and it won't matter about the rest of them.
Sincerely,
ohpleaseno
@Sabrage He's not wrong about Flash, but it still should be added to the iPad/iPhone. HTML5 is the future. Flash is a resource hog, and it does cause security/stability problems on some platforms. So?
It's the de-facto standard. You can't just ignore it because you don't like it. And while HTML5 will replace flash in many ways, it won't replace it entirely simply because Flash allows for DRM. Hulu will never go HTML because it would be trivial to rip video content from them.
You think that with as much money as Steve Jobs has, he could
afford to put on a belt and look a little more professional...Talk about LAZY!
Well my mac just crashed epically a few minutes ago, so steve, don't be blaming it all on everyone else.
@cds5193
You are a LIAR. It's not the macs fault that it crashed. If YOU hadn't turned it on and used it, it wouldn't have crashed. Ergo, your fault.
Apple wont support flash because it interferes with their plans to be the monopoly for all digital content. Jobs calling them out on the do no evil comment is comical when Apple makes all its money by overcharging for hardware by double and suing you into oblivion when you install a 30.00 copy of OSX on a home brew box. Apple is just as evil, money grubbing and even more controlling than the companies Jobs is mocking here.
@lobento
Well said. +1