So Steve Jobs, rather apologetically, writes up a confessional piece explaining why his iToys don’t support flash. If you haven’t read it, here’s the quick summary: Jobs argues that Flash is not an open standard, uses an “old” video codec, is insecure, battery-draining and not specifically targeted at apple devices.

Jobs’ explanation is laughable. Almost all of the criticisms thrown at Adobe apply to Apple as well. The “not an open standard” argument is perhaps the funniest. While it is true that Flash is by no means and open standard, apart from being proprietary and closed source, Apple’s products are no different. He himself admits so:

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. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards.

To add insult to injury, Apple’s preferred video codec, H.264, which it calls an “industry standard”, is in fact no more open than Flash itself. Indeed, it is the source of a corporate dispute that threatens to diminish the HTML5 open standard that Jobs so much praises.

(more…)