Thoughts on Apple, Flash developer responds to Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Flash

From Stephane Beladaci, to Steve Jobs, Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Apple vs Flash Player, a war on the browser, mailed-by gmail.com

Dear Steve,

I did not really prepare this email and will make it quick cause you are busy recovering and I am busy bringing the public’s and media’s attention on what I believe to be Apple’s true motives regarding the ban of Flash.

I believe the ban of Flash Player, Silverlight and Java in the browser on iPhone, iPad and iPod was motivated by corporate agenda.

Once the mobile market is going to explode under the impulse of China and a smartphone will cost $10, you know as much as I do that whoever controls application markets will run the show, not the fancy device maker, not the biggest carrier but the largest application marketplace.

Also, you know as much as I do that there is nothing bigger than the web. Therefore, by banning Flash, Silverlight and Java while faking to replace it with HTML5 (a masquerade in itself), you are pretty much ensuring that the web will be commercially useless for years to come on iOS devices and will present no threat to AppStore and iTunes, which in turn will insure the dominance of your devices.

I believe your consumers have been mislead to believe that Flash is all kind of bad things for them. You also simultaneously attempted to destroy the relevance of the Adobe Creative Suite 5, used to build device agnostic applications, by changing the iOS terms of service for developers and banning the port of Flash app to iOS, pushing as far as requiring developers to develop iOS applications on a Mac, for iOS first and iOS only. I must say it was an impressively smart strategy but unfortunately it failed.

Fortunately for us all, the regulators around the world gave you a reality check and diplomatically constrained the company to reverse its TOS in order to avoid a full blown antitrust investigation. The European Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia actually went public about it and took credit for it, claiming you avoided a full blow investigation by complying.

Now that your attempt to destroy Flash Platform and CS5 failed, Adobe is catching up and finally offers the ability to build applications once, then deploy those applications everywhere on all screens, platforms, operating systems and browsers. That ongoing process will be completed by the end of 2011, and it is increasingly difficult for your company and armada of fanbois to keep the lies up.

As a Flex architect and engineer, I build web applications also called Rich Internet Applications or RIA, apps that I intend to work everywhere, including in iOS browser. Therefore, I decided to team up with communication and legal experts in order to start a series of actions, efforts, operations and campaigns aimed at informing the public, your consumers, the media, the developers and demanding a freedom of choice regarding Flash Player into the browser on iOS.

We demand Flash player in the browser on iOS and demand the right to turn Flash on and off as we please in order to freely access Flash rich internet applications and content on iPhone, iPad and iPod. Those applications, when meant to be web based, should not be forced to be native proprietary applications you control and tax on all revenue at an outrageous rate of 30%.

Kind Regards,
Stephane

Video by Rob Rackstraw

If you miss Flash in the browser on iPad, iPhone or iPod, join the fight on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?viewMembers=&gid=3888327