Adobe CTO defends Flash after Steve Jobs attack

by Stevie Smith - Feb 4 2010, 11:58

Adobe’s corporate ears are likely still ringing after Apple CEO Steve Jobs apparently labelled the company as “lazy” after the recent iPad unveiling, before also reportedly accusing its Flash platform of being “buggy” and largely responsible for the majority of crashes suffered by Mac users.

By way of reply, Adobe chief technical officer Kevin Lynch has this week issued a response to the scathing comments, placing particular focus on the claim made by Jobs that the future of Web video lies with HTML5 and not Flash.

“Some have been surprised at the lack of inclusion of Flash Player on a recent magical device,” offered Lynch via an Adobe blog post, before going on to say that Flash “was originally developed for pen computing tablets, about 15 years before that market was ready to take off.”

In defending Flash, Adobe’s CTO was keen to point out that the platform is present on 98 percent of all online computers and is utilised by more than 85 percent of the world’s leading Web destinations.

He also said Flash remains a vital part in the ever-growing smartphone device sector – sending a broadside across the iPhone’s bows by saying Adobe is “on the verge” of delivering Flash Player v10.1 to every smartphone platform on the market… except one.

“So, what about running Flash on Apple devices?” posited Lynch. “We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash.”

“This same solution will work on the iPad as well,” he added. “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.”

In addressing the notion that Flash’s dominance will be someday supplanted by advances made in HTML, Lynch said he thought that outcome to be highly unlikely either now or in the foreseeable future.

“If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass,” he said in reference to the current lack of agreement on a common format across browsers regarding upcoming HTML video implementations.

“The Flash team will drive innovation over the coming years as they have over the past decade to enable experiences that aren’t otherwise possible,” he added. “With this ability to update the majority of Web clients in less than a year, Flash can make this innovation available to our customers much more quickly than HTML across a variety of browsers.” 

Corporate chest beating aside, Lynch proffered something of an olive branch by saying online usage is maximised by applying a blend of both Flash and HTML, which is an approach that enables anyone to benefit from the best possible Web experience by making pragmatic decisions as to the particular strengths of each platform.

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