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Scott Frazer, the technical chief for a company called Portico Systems, wrote Steve on another obscure issue — about rumors that Apple would stop bundling a Java plugin with its Mac operating system. Steve wrote: “Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it.”

Steve Jobs could talk passionately and at length on an unlikely smattering of topics that he “cared deeply about,” a phrase he often used to explain why Apple ventured into the music industry or did not try to do Web search. Steve wrote thousand-plus-word missives on topics such as digital-music copy protection and Adobe Systems Inc.’s Flash online video protocol, which were called “Thoughts on Music” and “Thoughts on Flash,” respectively. The music industry concurred with the proposal to drop copy protection, but some record executives said it was their idea, not Steve’s, and the reasoning was that Apple was locking customers into iTunes and iPods; they say Steve repurposed the mission to make himself look like the savior. By the time Steve had written “Thoughts on Music,” Amazon.com Inc. was well underway in negotiating its DRM-free music store, which launched in September 2007, and Steve rushed to release iTunes Plus in 2007. Apple would not completely do away with DRM in its store’s catalog until 2009. In regards to Steve’s Flash bashing, Adobe neither agreed with, nor saw eye-to-eye with him on the issue, and it strained the companies’ relationship. Steve tried to communicate that his concerns with Flash weren’t personal; for example, in an e-mail to Josh Cheney, a fan who contacted him frequently, Steve wrote: “I respect and admire Adobe. We just chose to not have Flash on our devices.”

In rare cases, Steve would defer to another industry commenter’s opinion on a topic, rather than write his own essay. When Greg Slepak, the founder of software developer Tao Effect, e-mailed Steve about changes to Apple’s developer agreement that eliminated program-language translators, like those from Adobe, Steve shot back, “We think John Gruber’s post is very insightful and not negative,” and provided a link to that blog post. John is the author of a blog called Daring Fireball, which is influential within the Apple community and within Apple itself. Steve and other executives read it regularly. That particular post, as are most of Daring Fireball’s essays, was kind to Apple, although it made assertions that part of Apple’s motivation may have involved the challenge that Flash and other cross-platform initiatives pose to the App Store’s competitive advantages. In other words, if video providers can offer copy-protected movies through Flash, they don’t need to use Apple’s store or pay the company royalties. Steve apparently did not dispute this. Greg replied to Steve’s e-mail saying he disagreed with John Gruber and that he disagreed with Apple’s decisions. Three minutes later, Steve returned: “We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.”

Similarly, when asked about a video codec called VP8 (also called WebM) that Google was promoting, Steve responded only with a link to a report from Jason Garrett-Glaser, a video-codec programmer who worked directly with H.264. “Overall, VP8 appears to be significantly weaker than H.264 compression-wise,” Jason wrote in his verdict. H.264 is the industry standard video compression technology used by television broadcasters. It’s used in Blu-ray, Flash, Windows and Apple’s QuickTime software. “It’s the best video-compression technology on the planet,” Steve said in 2005.

Another critic, Hugo Roy, pressed Steve on Apple’s adoption of H.264 versus an open standard that could be more widely adopted. Steve countered: “All video codecs are covered by