Steve Jobs doesn't mince words about Google's pose of moral superiority.
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
I like seeing Jobs drive the iPhone to a strong position because if Apple becomes unseated I do not expect any competitor to improve the UI experience as well as Apple does. Now, I like Android and think it might well displace iPhone from the #1 spot due to ubiquity of Android on many hardware platforms. But I'm not sure we'll be best off in the long run with Android in first place.
Before you dismiss Jobs on Flash consider that Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, says Flash causes more Firefox crashes than any other plug-in. I find personally that if I block Flash then Firefox is a lot more stable.
Rather than wait to complete the entire Electrolysis project, Mozilla will instead separate the processes of specific plug-ins -- Adobe's Flash is the lead candidate -- so that if the plug-in crashes, Firefox itself isn't brought to its knees. According to Beltzner, Flash is responsible for more Firefox crashes than any other plug-in.
I am disappointed with Adobe with regard to Flash. It is so widely used. They ought to put greater effort into crash fixes. BTW, you can get an idea of where the Firefox crashes come from by starting at the MozillaWiki CrashKill page. Check out the third party crash list and the list where they are thinking about disallowing the plug-in from even loading. You'll see Flash mentioned more than once.
Update: Mozilla's Fennec browser for mobile disables Flash due to performance considerations.
Two days ago, when it pushed out a third release candidate for Firefox mobile 1.0, Mozilla disabled support for an Adobe plug-in, saying it had "degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn't meet our standards." Instead, the open sourcers urge you to install a YouTube Enabler add-on that will at least let you watch Googlevideos on the browser.
This makes more credible the claim that Apple really has user interests at heart in its refusal to to put Flash on iPhone.
Posted by Randall Parker at January 31, 2010 01:33 PMI block flash and almost all javascript.
It's crazy how many javascripts some sites run for no good or useful purpose. At best, they slow the browser. At worst, they render the site totally unusable. The news sites are the worst.