Skip to Content

Steve Jobs at Apple Town Hall meeting: Harsh words for Google, Adobe

Steve Jobs recently held a Town Hall meeting for Apple employees, and according to Wired, he had some very choice words for both Google and Adobe. While these likely aren't direct, word-for-word quotes, as they come from employees who spoke to Wired and MacRumors on condition of anonymity, if they're even in the ballpark of what Jobs said, Apple's response to both Google and Adobe can be summed up in two words: "Bring it."

On Google: "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 [...] This don't be evil mantra? It's bullshit."

Snap. Maybe a tad belligerent there at the end, Mr. Jobs? I wonder what brought that on?
On Adobe: "They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5." Sounds like the petitions can stop now. If that's really what Apple's CEO thinks of Flash, then make no mistake: Flash is never coming to Apple's mobile devices.

Some other tasty tidbits from the Town Hall courtesy of the folks at MacRumors:

- Jobs considers the iPad on a par with the iPhone and Mac as one of the most important products he's worked on
- Apple acquired Lala because they wanted to bring Lala's people to the iTunes team
- The next iPhone is "an A+ update" that Android won't be able to keep up with
- New Macs this year will take Apple "to the next level"
- Apple is still playing "wait and see" with regards to Blu-Ray, and won't implement it until/unless Blu-Ray sales take off

Steve Jobs recently held a Town Hall meeting for Apple employees, and according to Wired, he had some very choice words for both Google and...
 

Add a Comment

*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

56 Comments

Filter by:
Robert

If all buggy software was banned by OS manufacturers, iTunes would certainly have been banned from running on Windows a long time ago.....

February 03 2010 at 1:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ethan

Also think about it....Blueray movies are usually like 10gigs usually? But when iTunes has there about 1.46gb a movie in there iTunes store and there servers running at full capacity anyways who would want to download a 10gig movie just for better quality? When itunes will have a good enough quality to have the download faster instead of waiting like 10 hours for a stupid blueray movie to download...I use bittorrent at times to get movies but when they decide to download for like 5 hours straight i just say screw it and buy the movie on itunes.

February 01 2010 at 12:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Ethan's comment
pax copia

The HD movies at the playstation store (which are more hd than what itunes offers as HD) can stream (play while downloading).

February 01 2010 at 12:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ivanpertsev

I wanna bring up one more point though. I hate flash myself but we gonna have to realize that most people dont care as long as it works for them when they browse the internet, etc.

But GOOD news is incoming of course: Flash 10.1 which is in Beta is gonna be GPU accelerated and will not suck CPU power as much anymore and will run much smoother. (Thats how adobe plans to run Flash on mobile devices - GPU acceleration for: Win Mo, Android, Symbian, WebOS)

So in the end, we gonna continue hating flash but at least with the full release of 10.1 we aint gonna have too much CPU usage and overheating anymore.

February 01 2010 at 12:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to ivanpertsev's comment
pax copia

most people think that flash means they will have hulu which is simply not true:

http://gizmodo.com/5315896/hulu-speaks-on-ps3-blocking-its-the-content-providers

February 01 2010 at 12:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dace england

it's 100% true adobe are a lazy company and responsible for making the internet a worse place. It'll be a great day when they are no longer required and can be thrown out like the trash they are

February 01 2010 at 12:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pax copia

to those that are clueless about blu ray:

the media is very inexpensive making it one of the best formats to backup data on and to share hd content with. if you can create and edit HD video on a mac you should be able to back it up on something more contemporary than a pile of DVDs.

the PS3 has a "itunes store" called the playstation store that sells, rents, and streams HD and SD content (which by the way is more HD than what itunes offers) also the PS3 has netflix all of which is successful while having the blu-ray drive so the argument about itunes getting the squeeze on a mac is beyond daft.

the truth is probably something along the lines of apple having a huge stockpile of drives that they need to get rid of first and this is why they often ship with such antiquated technologies (blu-ray has been available for 4yrs now)

February 01 2010 at 12:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brad Kozak

How quickly we all forget...

Flash became the de facto standard on the web, because it WORKED...it not only worked well, but everything it did was consistent from browser to browser, regardless of the platform. (Remember when the Linux guys bewailed the absence of a Flash plug-in for Unix?) Inappropriate uses of Flash may abound, but then again, there's a lot of bad design/apps/interfaces on the web that have nothing to do with Flash. And Flash IS ubiquitous...except on the iPhone. THAT drives me nuts, because my own site is dependent on Flash - as are a LOT of sites out there. If Flash is a poorly written memory pig (no argument there) make Adobe FIX IT. But cutting Flash off from the iPhone is wrong - and just as evil as killing Google Voice apps in the AppStore, or any other activity where Apple attempts to use the courts, their own quasi-monopoly status, or their financial prowess to nuke anyone they perceive to be a threat to their hegemony.

Oh, and by the way, Apple is no more guilty than Microsoft or Google in the way they are behaving. It's the nature of Capitalism, and the way the game is played. What I DO object to, is Apple portraying themselves as somehow above all that, just as Google is full of it with their "do no evil" mantra. At least Microsoft doesn't pretend to be anything but a corporation out for their own benefit. And I say that as somebody that just abandoned Windows for a Mac and a Windows phone for an iPhone after 20 years as a Microsoft-centric programmer.

February 01 2010 at 9:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Brad Kozak's comment
pax copia

defacto? no and the fact is that Java is much more prevalent (and it is opensource).

Many find flash to be highly incendiary and for good reason, its "flash cookies" are privacy and security nightmares and Adobe needs to correct these things before others implement them.

I am very happy that Apple is being is cautious with Flash.

February 01 2010 at 12:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Richard

Apple buy Adobe?????

You are joking right? This would be the end of the world (ok maybe a slight exaggeration but it would not be good).

I am no fan boy of MS or Apple

I use both mac and pc with a lot of adobe's software and having the software developed by an independent of the OS's is by far the best thing.

At the end of the day Apple rely on other companies to make their products what they are. The majority of mac users in the UK are design and print companies that use Adobe software but there is less and less reason to stick with the expensive, "controlled" mac when the cheaper more customisable alternatives do the same job.

On another note why arn't Apple been slapped by the courts for anti-competitive behaviour like MS has been. Last time I checked OSX didnt give you a choice of browser/media player (you have to go and find other software to install yourself just like on windows).

Also what's with the lack of multitasking on the iPad? The iPhone I can understand to a certain extent but the Pad, I mean come on. It look pretty, but you get net books at a fraction of the price that can do more.

February 01 2010 at 5:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Norman

Just visit this Adobe site [1] and watch it eat CPU cycles. For the added benefit of what exactly?

[1] http://www.openscreenproject.org/

February 01 2010 at 3:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buzz

Yo, Steve,

BUY ADOBE.

Not kidding. Not exaggerating. Not messing with your head.

Just BUY it and FIX it.

Everybody wins.

-iNova

February 01 2010 at 1:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dave

Put these comments into context. They were not public comments, they were comments to rally the troops. "We'll stomp the competition, before the competition stomps us" kind of thing, at least the Google comments. I mean all the pundits are calling Android the iPhone killer.... so he is lighting the fire, and saying they won't rest on their laurels.

As for the Adobe comments, same thing. The pundits are saying that the iPhone and iPad will never reach their full potential until they support flash... so again he's reassuring the troops that flash is on its way out anyway...

February 01 2010 at 12:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.