Everything iPad

Generally, after an Apple event, Steve Jobs hosts his All-Hands Town Hall styled Q&A, where he gives employees of Apple, who may not have been part of the next phase in hardware/software development, a chance to pick his brain. Questions regarding just announced products are generally the key of the meeting, and it’s generally meant as a way to bring the rest of the Apple employees up to speed about what’s happening.

Apple hasn’t been the biggest fan of Adobe’s Flash Player in quite awhile, dating further back than the iPhone’s release in 2007, but it wasn’t truly prominent until the handset made browsing on the mobile web something worth doing. Boasting the best mobile web experience, it wasn’t long until people started realizing that some (or a lot, depending on your browsing tendencies) of the features on their favorite websites simply weren’t working. And, perhaps worse, there was a blue block in the place of their videos, or littered around webpages that carried Flash-based advertisements. Apple stated then, back in 2007, that they had no intention of supporting Adobe’s Flash Player, and that hasn’t changed. Even with the launch of Apple’s newest product, the iPad, Jobs and company are remaining resolute in their Flash-less path.

Perhaps that is why this report from Wired makes a lot of sense. While some might say Flash is necessary, Apple sees it differently. (And they aren’t the only ones.) And Jobs is known for not pulling any punches. According to a source that could not be named, Jobs went off on a tangent regarding Flash, and why Apple won’t support it now, or any time in the future. According to Jobs, Apple won’t support Flash because it is buggy, and they are lazy, with the potential to do interesting things, but refuse to do it. Furthermore, he emphasized that the world is heading towards HTML5, and that Flash is going out the door.

Not surprisingly, Jobs’ scorn wasn’t aimed primarily at Adobe’s Flash Player. He had plenty of comments regarding Google, too, the company primed to be Apple’s main competitor. Considering Google has their own Operating System, Chrome, set to launch some time by the end of the year on netbooks (and probably tablets), and already have Android launching on tablets and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) right now, they are Apple’s main contender. But Jobs doesn’t seem phased at all. In fact, he seems emboldened by the entire experience. When asked, Jobs had this to say about Google: We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone. But we won’t let them. Jobs added that Google’s mantra “Don’t be evil” is nothing less than “bullshit.”

Steve Jobs is known for speaking his mind, but considering that these are all second-hand reports, there’s no real way of being absolutely sure of what was said. Truth be told, we could all be playing the telephone game, and the posted comments could just be the work of an over-imagination. It is worth mentioning that, since the release of these comments, even more information made its way out of the town hall meeting. To the point, if these updates are to be believed as much as the original comments (those grains of salt probably ran out ages ago), then Jobs was not referring to Google in its entirety, but strictly to the teams responsible for the development of Android. And, with regards to that mantra of Google’s, apparently the correct wording was, “Don’t be evil is a load of crap.”

It’s possible that Steve Jobs knew he’d get a lot of flack for unveiling the iPad without Flash, and had just reached a point where hearing about it was getting old. This could be the result of that, where three years later he’s being told that Flash is still pertinent, even if he doesn’t believe it is. Is the iPad truly hindered by not having any Flash support? And, does Android really play a competitive role to Apple’s new tablet device? Truth be told, it could be boiled down to personal preference. But just around the corner, when the iPad goes on sale, we can expect the masses to give us an answer one way or another.

[via Wired]