Report: Jobs says 'don't be evil' mantra is BS
There is something touching about honesty in business. It's heartening when beyond the tittle and the tattle, true feelings emerge.
So you may be moved to utter something of a titter when I tell you of a report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs last week likened Google's "Don't be evil" mantra to the excreta of a bull.
According to Wired, Jobs held a town hall meeting at Apple last week after unveiling the iPad and fielded questions on many different topics. However, he appears to have saved some of his most deep-seated humor for a company that is increasingly becoming a rival: Google.
Wired reports that Jobs aired some strong perspectives about Google to the assembled throng, saying: "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them."
Steve Jobs lounges onstage as he unveils the iPad on January 27.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Apparently animated by this theme, Jobs reportedly added: "This don't be evil mantra: It's bull****."
But Jobs didn't reserve his lack of reserve for those at the Googleplex. Wired reports that Jobs also lobbed some criticism Adobe's way, describing that company as "lazy." He also reportedly said that the new iPad doesn't have Flash because "whenever a Mac crashes, more often than not, it's because of Flash," Wired quotes him as saying. "No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5."
Naturally, it will be interesting to see what reactions such comments might elicit from Google or Adobe.
However, there is little doubt that the Apple CEO seems rather keen to establish that he will approach Apple's future with his customary vehemence and that he doesn't consider too many other companies as Apple's friends.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
You can see Google's Corporate Philosophy at:
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
"Don't be evil" is an exact quote from the Google Investor Relations page regarding Google's Code of Conduct (and it is repeatedly numerous times throughout that document).
http://investor.google.com/conduct.html
Just FYI...I don't have a dog in the fight just trying to keep it real ;)
It's Google right if they want to enter the smart-phone market. If you are the only producer of a certain goods or services, and other people come into the market to provide the same goods, are they being evil? Or are you being a sore loser?
Seems to me that Steve Jobs is a sore loser. Yes, I am a Google fan, and Google won me over. Indeed Apple's products are good, and the iPhone set the standard for all smartphones coming into the market today. But Steve Jobs always seems to me to be a sore loser. Moreover, isn't Steve Jobs being anti-competitive and evil by outing Adobe Flash on its devices? Flash crashes Macs, therefore Adobe is lazy? Is that true, or are Apple Computers lousy? By throwing flak at the other companies, it just makes me think that Steve Jobs is becoming too controlling and too dictator-like, and also being a sore loser.
Apple has the same business model as Sony, they control the content by deliberately crippling their devices. PSP doesn't support Flash until recently - but the Flash supports only up to version 6 which means its not able to decode video or play games. Will Sony let PSP users play free Flash games or watch free movies on their PSP? Will Apple?
And surprisingly, you really rarely see a smartphone with a flash support. And for those few examples, pretty much all user reports are negative - drains battery, crashes, etc.
Flash is a mess. It's time for a clean-up. Only question is whether Adobe would step-up or let the rest of industry to make Flash obsolete with e.g. HTML 5+.
1) Apple distributes free apps. You can access YouTube free.You can watch any free video in a supported format for - that's right - free.
2) Apple controls distribution for quality control: they don't want bad software messing up user experience. They view the device as a product, not a platform. Any experience with it reflects back on them. How many people hate Windows because of self-induced problems?
3) Apple's app store is further controlled because they are liable for what they distribute, be it illegal, offensive, or violating a contract or agreement they have made.
4) Apple always intended to, and still does, support web apps. In fact, that was initially the only way they wanted to let 3rd party sources make software for the iPhone. They gave in to developer pressure. If you've tried Google's web apps for iPhone, you know they can provide a smooth experience. For free.
5) AJAX is a relatively stable and secure web technology. Flash is not. That is why the primary is allowed, and the latter isn't.
Flash is too important to ignore, unlike an iPhone - iPad provides a full screen browsing experience, a browser without Flash support is just insane. Flash will be around for a long time, it is already a web standard. Microsoft tried to compete with their Silverlight for years but failed. Html5 will probably be adopted as a new standard but it will take years for that to happen on all major websites. By then, you will have iPad 2 or 3 - the question is now: the hardware should be adapting to current standards.
Damn, I sound like a Microsoft fanboy. But I'm not. I'm just showing you that Silverlight is here to stay. :-)
Adobe certainly is lazy these days. While I love Photoshop and PDF, Flash is just incredibly bad. I hope it goes away soon.
I'm not sure about Google. The not being evil stuff is probably B.S., because I doubt Google defines evil properly, though as a company they certainly aren't a M$ in how they go about things. It's sad to see a gap widening between Apple and Google, and I hope they don't take this too far. He's certainly correct thought that Apple has pretty much supported Google on everything, so Google would be the one at fault here if they are, indeed, trying to compete with phone and OS, etc. That doesn't suddenly change Google's status to evil though... it depends on HOW they compete and what they do with their influence. We'll see I guess.
The <Video> tag does NOT replace games and animation. I love the content on sites like newgrounds.
Why should this die?
Also, I wouldn't get too excited over HTML5. The dominant browser still is IE. Who makes IE:Microsoft. What else does Microsoft make:Silverlight. So, why would Microsoft support HTML5 video?
Why? Because Google does, and Google owns Youtube, and Microsoft's customers use Youtube. As soon as some exclusive feature comes to Youtube that doesn't work with Flash, Microsoft will have to already have adapted their browser, or they'll be leaking IE users like a sieve.
@TWDarkFlame
HTML5 is more than a <video> tag. Its a standard that enables rich online web apps without the use of external, proprietary plugins.
Real audio died a quck death. No you would not have to wait long.
Microsoft learn?
If they did, Vista would have never happened having learned from ME.
I think the general consensus with the iPhone population is that Adobe are lazy anyway, this just re-enforces it to the max.
It will be interesting to see which strategy survives best in the long-term.
heard of Reflexive.com and Yahoo games? they're awesome. you've been missing lots of fun.
@cpopken - Rihanna rules!! Not a place to start this offbeat war, but im also heartbroken to hear her latest album... i like the less talked about singles more.
@cpopken - Rihanna rules!! Not a place to start this offbeat war, but im also heartbroken to hear her latest album... i like the less talked about singles more.
HTML5 is Native and its here now. NO ONE cares about FLASH anymore. I for one, Hate flash since its just a bandwidth monger and it crashes my browser quite a few times specially at work on Windows. But on my mac, it does it worse sometimes. And with all the phissings, viruses and scammers using Flash to get into your files and machines, heavens, I always turn off my javascript to avoid flash anyway.
HTML5 is Native and Apple can control its behaviour natively. Why pay millions to Adobe when they can implement a new national standard, HTML5.
Actually, Google is Evil. Hence, "Dont be Evil" because they already are. Cant steal that title from them. Its their signature...
HTML5 is NOT a "national standard". It's a draft standard that is expected to be final in about 14 years. And there is still disagreement on what format HTML5 video will even be in. Webkit (Safari/Chrome) uses the patentably questionable H.264, Firefox (with far more market share than the two combined) uses the open Ogg format. And Internet Explorer, with the MOST global market share of all browsers) doesn't have any HTML5 video at all.
And while you're throwing "evil" around, let's also add that Microsoft is evil, Apple is evil, and if Google is evil, at least they give me the option of taking my data and going somewhere else. Y'know, without locking me into closed, proprietary "thou shalt only ever use Google to access your data ever again" sort of programs.
If Jobs thinks Google is out to "kill the iPhone", he'd better look at the rest of the market ... because there isn't a phone maker out there that isn't trying to do the same. Or maybe Steve is a little SCARED that Google might just wind up doing it better and steal Apple's thunder. If I was in his shoes, that would be a much bigger concern. We all know how fast Open Source can catch up to and surpass proprietary software.
I am all for the <video> tag, but video was never what flash was supposed to be about. That became its use merely as its install-based raised it was a common platform.
Its still by far the best choice for animation and games, one that <video> dosn't do squat to replace. (and nor should it).
Arguably SVG might one day, but that day is probably a decade away. And even then I wouldnt want the thousands of pieces of art on newgrounds to be lost.
Need I say again, HTML5 is more than a <video> tag. Have you ever heard of canvas?
And, lest you think you can follow this up with a "well, no one INTELLIGENT cares about Flash" statement, be forewarned. You are wrong about that as well. And you clearly don't understand how business is done, or how corporate IT departments who are tasked with writing apps are funded.
And I challenge you to show where Google is evil. Show evidence, not just your own flawed opinions.
I have used Flash on both OSx and Windows for years and have had absolutely no problems at all. Now, I have no doubt that Firefox crashes - I have it crash weekly on both OSx and Windows XP thru 7 on various computers and laptops.
You can see Google's Corporate Philosophy at:
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html
Go on Goog, he called you evil, prove him right.
This sounds like a way to excuse a viable way of running free software on a device that wants you to pay for every little app on their closed store.
The problem with statements like yours is you may or may not have stopped to think how many times you've had to close/kill your active browser, and if you did stop and think about it you'd realize more often than not, there was an adobe app running in that browser, be it an open pdf, or flash, or the like.
there's a reason there seems to be a new article about once a month of a new zero day flaw being found in an adobe piece of software, lazy programming, or bad management on the part of Adobe...
So all those times that Flash locked up your browser? That's what a Mac user would consider "a crash".
I use a winxp and a win7. And I'd have to say my browser very rarely crashes, although occasionally it does use a lot of resources on *some* flash sites, not all of them. Obviously, it's hard to be objective when we're only dealing with anecdotal evidence, but from reading comments, it does seem like Apple browsers are crashing more often than Windoze ones. Although it's not too far fetched to think that the Apple implementation of Flash and other Adobe software is inferior. But you can't really blame Adobe too much, after all since Windows is the dominant OS, it makes sense that it would spend more time improving its Windows implementation than its Apple implementation.
Steve may be calling Adobe lazy, but you shouldn't expect Adobe to spend too much effort on porting its software to a machine that will only have a few million implementations (assuming the iPhone harware isn't capable of supporting Flash at all). As far as I know Adobe makes its money licensing developer kits, not writing custom flash implementations.
The last number I heard of for installed base was close to 100,000,000.
The Windows implementation of Flash is likely superior to the Mac and Unix/Linux versions. Considering the size of the relative markets, this is hardly surprising. But many of my browser issues definitely seem Flash related in both Safari and Firefox. And Steve has made no bones about it, he doesn't like or care for Flash.
As a Web and Graphic designer, I love/hate Flash. I like the lovely visual things you can do with it. But I HATE how much of a time sucking pain in the ASS, developing Flash content can be. And how much more effort integrating flash content into cross platform stable HTML pages is. And as a video format... trés suckage. As Flash uses separate UNSYNCED audio and video data streams, anything short of a muscular processor, plentiful RAM and a recent graphics card... you have slow, jerky, unsynced video.
Adobe's relationship with Apple, definitively has become somewhat adversarial in recent years. But since Adobe ate macromedia (essentially to bulk up vs Microsoft and GET FLASH..) they have had a near monopoly on the Digital Content creation apps that Design pros NEED to survive in the Digital marketplace.
And did you try to write a browser plugin for Safari? Let's not forget, when people say "browser" they almost always mean "Safari" on Mac and "non-Safari" on Windows.
We're comparing apples with oranges here.
2008 showed apple only selling 22 million mac the whole year.. 100 million installed is a pipe dream
Divide and conquer is the style of the military industrial complex.
Just look at the divisive TV add campaigns of Apple.
The "us against the world" mentality is great for generating loyalty.
pathetic
I'm more disturbed by "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them." Do i detect someone that assumes dominance already? Google is available this year on every Major U.S. telecom carrier. Works with multiple platforms. Apple so far sticks to one. Uh, fact check.
Apple might have done this themselves.
Its Android vs iPhone os which is what they are doing. Google wants an open platform for dominance.
They dont want every app approved by Apple before its use. They dont care who's phone they run on, just so long as they can run.
One reason Google is in the phone business is because by not being in the business, they have to put up with Apple's biased app review process regarding putting their stuff such their new voice application on the iPhone. If they have their own OS, then they can innovate all they like. Same reason for Chrome OS. Google doesn't have to rely on Microsoft and Apple, but can innovate on a free platform. Doing this increases the chances that their stuff will find its way on the iPhone and Windows because by not doing it, people will have to use Android or Chrome to use Google's stuff and their competitors cannot afford to let that happen.
So as it might feel evil to Steve Jobs, it is a great thing for the consumer.
I don't know if this lopsided ratio will hold up over time, but I suspect it will be close and I have 60-90 days to decide. Since the iPad requires another computer to sync to, I won't be giving away my PowerBook even if I do buy an iPad, so I will still retain all of its current functionality. What's exciting to me is the additional features the iPad will provide. With the iPad I will no longer have to decide whether to bring my laptop on a trip involving air travel. I've leaving the laptop at home, but miss the ease of internet browsing it provides. My iPhone works for that in a pinch, but I'd prefer a larger screen. I've also been reading books from my iPhone using the Kindle app. I really have no complaints, as I have completely adapted and now prefer the iPhone + Kindle app over physical books, but I'm curious to try the iPad to see if it adds anything to the experience.
I'm excited to see what the App Store will bring specifically for the iPad that will enhance its desirability factor and I suspect that I'll put off buying a new MacBook Air (my previous plan) and get the iPad instead. I'll have to replace my PowerBook sooner rather then later, so maybe an iMac in another year?
And the iPad will never have the market penetration of the iPhone to force web creators to cater to it.
It makes sense for phones and any platform, because Flash is unstable, and AJAX, especially with HTML5, can offer the richer web experience you're referring to, without the overhead.
except it isn't a ratified standard
except all code is exposed (not everyone wants 'open')
except implementations will vary for years
except anything with a timeline is awkward as hell
and so on.
Flash may die eventually. But not yet. Not for a long time.
For Jobs to be badmouthing a company that even today is the leading developer for his platform is just bizarre.
When you're still a small player in a big pond, like Apple, you have to be careful that the toes you step on aren't the ones that keep your users loyal.
And I dont BOTHER setting foot in an Apple Store from Labor Day to Christmas, when the place becomes iPod central and full of windows 'Pod users who can't figure out how to sync iTunes or lost their music libraries... Oh. the. pain.
Us pro users are out in the cold... go drop $7500 on a Mac Pro and shut up and sit down.
Apple would buy Adobe.
Apple woulld buy Adobe as they did to lala.com??
You're probably right about that, but.... once upon a time, Adobe was a great company with great products. Adobe Acrobat was awesome, and PDFs were the way of the future! But then, it became bloated, and non-Adobe PDF readers became the way to go. Maybe buying Macromedia was too much for them, maybe some other thing happened that made Adobe less than the amazing, wonderful company it once was. I don't know, I wasn't paying too much attention to when Adobe software became synonymous with bloat (probably around the time I really started using PCs, come to think of it). But if Apple were in the same situation today, I don't think Adobe would be keeping Apple afloat, and that's probably why Jobs doesn't feel he has to like them in public.
jobs is and has always been an idiot! now that jon rubinstein has left apple for palm, it's time for jobs to bring mac apple down to it's kneww like he did until gates and rubinstein saved apple from shuttering it's doors.
Or could it possibly be that it just seems like it crashes all of your stuff all of the time because Jobs said so?
Its great on pc's by comparison.
- by El_Oso_Grande January 31, 2010 11:10 AM PST
- Flash sucks, sorry.... it does.
- Like this Reply to this comment 3 people like this comment
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- by SteveW928 January 31, 2010 6:56 PM PST
- It's kind of like the floppy drive, only worse. Someone has to lead the charge to get rid of it. However, just like the floppy drive, I'm sure it will linger around in the underbelly of the Windows world for a long time yet.
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