1. Skip to Menu
  2. Skip to Content
  3. Skip to Footer>
  • The Paradox of Consumer Choice
    A few years ago I read a book called The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz. His anecdotes were insightful and pointed to truths about the amount of choice the free market has laid on us as consumers. Of course free markets and consumer choice should be good things, but there are certainly experiences I have had where the overwhelming sense of having too many options made it difficult to actually make a decision. I related to much of what the book was saying, particularly with the experience of picking out a DVD to watch from my massive collection. I recall staring at a wall of DVDs and having the most difficult time deciding what to watch. The decision-making process when faced with so many good choices was simply immobilizing.  
  • The Future of PC and Mobile Processors

    I've spent a lot of time with a number of hardware manufacturers recently, trying to get a glimpse into the next generation of processors and the ways in which they'll impact future gadgets and PCs. In all my meetings, one term has arisen time and again: SOC, or system-on-a-chip.

    Traditionally, chips have been created independently and then coupled together to provide multiple computing features. For example, a manufacturer would create a core processor like an Intel Centrino with a built-in Wi-Fi radio, and then attach that to a systems board, perhaps linking it together with a separate graphics co-processor, in order to deliver enhanced PC graphics. Another might take an ARM core processor and then add on additional features like extended graphics to enhance device functionality.

  • Apple's iPad: Live up the Hype? It Will....
    It was interesting to hear all the chatter after last week's iPad launch. Most reactions I heard from other analysts and media were lukewarm at best...which was what I expected. If you think about it, how can anything live up to the kind of hype leading up to this launch? But there was a lot missed in the media about the event and the product that I hope to share in order to maintain our perspective on not only the iPad but on Apple and their products.  
  • Innovation Abounds - CES 2010 Post Show Analysis

    This year's CES was very interesting. I had felt for the past few years that CES was sorely lacking in the innovation department. But this year it looks like things have changed in the technology industry. Technology companies have realized that to reach the consumer the pace of innovation needs to accelerate, and this year's CES was a start in that direction.  Several things stuck out that I'd like to highlight:  

Analysis of Steve Jobs Letter Regarding Flash

Written by Ben Bajarin Thursday, 29 April 2010 22:45

I have been taking calls from reporters this morning as well as receiving a number of client inquiries asking for some thoughts regarding Steve Jobs' letter.  Apple's reasons for not supporting Flash have been greatly speculated upon from only a minimal amount of evidence given that Apple has made only brief remarks. Given that Apple has faced much scrutiny over not supporting Flash, this letter was well planned. There are a number of things to point out of significance in this letter, and I will highlight the few I think to be most significant. 

The first important thing to point out is that the letter references the long history Apple and Adobe have had together. This is important because the media has painted Apple's lack of support as some kind of evil scheme to take Adobe down or that Apple is taking some kind of corporate grudge out on Adobe by choosing to hamper their innovations on their platform. By acknowledging that Apple and Adobe have had a long and respected history, the message clear: this is not about Adobe. Apple's decision to not support Flash is a purely technical one.  
 
The next element comes as Steve Jobs discusses what should be "open" and what is acceptably "closed." 

         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. " - Steve Jobs

This is a very important statement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly because so much criticism of Apple is that elements of their products are "closed". This statement points out the truth that Apple does have proprietary products, but what Apple fundamentally believes is that the web and all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Apple's products are closed for reasons pertaining to competitive advantage. In essence this is why any company chooses to "close" some or all of their intellectual property. Steve Jobs points out that the web should be open and this is true because no one company owns the web therefore no one company should control it.  

Secondly, I thought it was pertinent that "touch computing" was referenced as one of their reasons for not supporting Flash. As I said in my article last month regarding Touch Computing, Apple is clearly trying to innovate around touch and make touch computing central to their mobile device experience. Apple has no say when or how Adobe will support or adjust their architecture to support touch, since Flash is closed. Again from a competitive advantage standpoint, Adobe will always have Adobe's best interest in mind, not Apple's when it comes platform decisions. As the end of the letter pointed out, a proprietary cross development software tool benefits the lowest common hardware denominator not the one striving for innovation.

Lastly the battery life issue. This will continue to be one of the primary issues for OEM's. Battery technology is one of those finite things we are stuck with and we need to be creative about how to give consumers devices that are computing rich yet do not last only a few hours. Flash does use more CPU then most of the average applications out there. I've benchmarked quite a few powerful PCs and standard notebooks always to notice CPU resources spike, CPU heat rises, and CPU fans crank into overdrive while playing a Flash video. This is the challenge of a software decode which is why we are seeing hardware OEM's move to hardware decode in their devices.  Even companies like NVIDIA with their Tegra chip are doing more to provide better encode and decode technologies thus providing better battery life.  H.264 will continue to assist in making decoding more efficient, and as the letter points out, this trend lessens the dependence on Flash as more and more content owners render their content in H.264.   

I think given this letter from Steve Jobs, it is safe to assume that Flash will not run on the iPhone, iPod, iPad any time soon. His appeal for openness regarding the web might resonate with us, but it is an easy statement to make since Apple has nothing to lose.  As for Adobe, it is clear that they have no incentive to give up their competitive advantages, and thus we are back to where we started, albeit a bit wiser this time around.

Comments (1)Add Comment
feedSubscribe to this comment's feed
0
Teacher
written by Brian Davenport, April 30, 2010
Definitely an interesting take on the situation but I see at least one flaw. The fact that Jobs' mentions the shared history does not prove anything as times change. Remember there was a time when Microsoft was the enemy, hated by every Mac fan yet eventually Steve Jobs welcomed Bill Gates (and his 200 million dollar investment) on stage during one of his keynote addresses. While Mac fans were shocked (and more than a few probably offended) times had changed, the business climate had changed. Ultimately any decision like this is business because if it was (only) technological then Apple should set parameters for what Adobe needs to do to put flash on Apple's mobile devices, not fire the equivalent of a broadside. As for "open," I am not sure how much more open Adobe can be. My wife is a yearbook advisor and her publisher has created plugins for Adobe's products so that they do what the publisher's company wants it to do. They even have an online replacement of InDesign (based on and using Adobe products) for school's that want don't want to buy publishing software and they get access to this program for free. Now true, Herff Jones had to pay licensing fees to do this but heck, Linux, which is the "open" OS, has spawned countless companies that manage the "free" OS for hefty fees. In my mind open means the designer, software engineer, or whomever can use a product to do what they want, not have "big brother" tell them how to use a product, even after it has been purchased.

Write comment

security code
Write the displayed characters


busy
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
| More...

Copyright © Creative Strategies, Inc 2009-2010