Recently Walt Mossberg sat down with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen to discuss Flash and the animosity between Adobe and Apple for All Things D. Steve Jobs, if you recall, was interviewed similarly last year by Mossberg, and at the time he said that Apple had chosen not to go with Flash because it was trying to pick technologies that were “on the ascendancy,” and it felt HTML 5 was that technology.
Narayen, in his interview, deflected the criticisms about Flash and instead reframed the argument as one of an issue of business model. He feels that Apple’s reason for not accepting Flash was based on control over apps, and that Apple wants to make developers develop for their “proprietary” platform.
Of course, Apple has since allowed developers to use Adobe AIR to run Flash based apps on iOS. And Adobe itself released an AIR to HTML5 conversion tool in its Labs. The issue of performance, however, seemed to catch Adobe’s CEO off guard. When Mossberg claimed that he had yet to see Flash performing well on an Android device, Narayen answered by saying they had been working on it, and that the PlayBook from RIM demonstrated great Flash performance. Of course, the PlayBook doesn’t run Android, and is flawed in other ways, but that’s not the point. Getting Flash to perform well on handheld devices without compromising processor performance and battery life is still an issue.
Apple has long held the position that developing apps natively for the platform results in a better app, and I tend to agree. The code once, deliver to multiple platform promise of Flash might sound like a good thing, but just like a fine suit, something that is custom tailored will fit better than something off the rack. One size doesn’t always fit all.
Article Via Engadget
