What's the deal with Flash?

[Dustin]

Believe me... I love apple stuff. In our house we have 3 iPhones, an apple tv, 24" iMac, & a mac mini.

Why won't apple support flash on the iPad!? I'm a little irritated by the lack of flash content on my iPhone, and the fact that it's not supported on the iPad really sucks.

Many websites have flash content... And were designed to be viewed as such!

What gives?

 

[iVegas702]

Dustin,

Just wondering what web sites are you looking at with the flash you like. Would like to check them out

 

[KiltedTim]

Flash is just a buggy processor hog. I've seen it bring even top of the line systems to their knees, regardless of the underlying processor, OS or browser. The reason it's prevalent is that it's easy to write for. There are now better ways to do what has traditionally been done with flash.

Unfortunately, I honestly believe that the biggest disincentive working against doing away with it altogether, is that the majority of the advertising you find on most web sites is flash based. $$ speak louder than words, or common sense, much of the time.

Personally, I use a flash blocker to cut down on the majority of bloated, often loud, distracting advertising and only disable it when I hit the rare site that actually has content I really want to see that's done in flash. If enough of the population is using devices that don't render flash, eventually, the advertisers will cave.

 

[iPad]

i agree with Dustin. iPad should have flash
someone made a thread explaining why the ipad doesnt have flash but i dont care and that still doesnt change my mind. the ipad needs flash and thats final
So get it done Apple. Thats an order

 

[JohnnyApple]

The iPad and iPhone (and iPod Touch) should all have flash. Apple simply doesn't want to give up control of the device and they are forcing consumers to suffer because of this.

 

[iDan]

I was worried about that at first, but not so much anymore and it certainly won't keep me from purchasing one...

Here's what Steve Jobs had to say about Adobe:

"They are lazy, Jobs says. 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, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5."

 

[Superbike81]

Can you imagine how slow and jittery a flash game would be on an iPhone? HAHAHAHAHA. It would be unplayable! If that happened, people would be complaining how slow the iPhone is, instead of complaining that it doesn't have Flash.

The iPad should be able to handle Flash, but still, for me, most websites I visit regularly don't use Flash. I don't need Flash games either anyways, the App Store has a ton of cool and fun games.

 

[imatt]

Flash is just a buggy processor hog. I've seen it bring even top of the line systems to their knees, regardless of the underlying processor, OS or browser. The reason it's prevalent is that it's easy to write for. There are now better ways to do what has traditionally been done with flash.

Unfortunately, I honestly believe that the biggest disincentive working against doing away with it altogether, is that the majority of the advertising you find on most web sites is flash based. $$ speak louder than words, or common sense, much of the time.

Personally, I use a flash blocker to cut down on the majority of bloated, often loud, distracting advertising and only disable it when I hit the rare site that actually has content I really want to see that's done in flash. If enough of the population is using devices that don't render flash, eventually, the advertisers will cave.

+1

Couldn't have said it better myself. It's an unstable, unsecure, computer hog

 

[JohnnyApple]

I do agree, flash needs some improvements. The only platform it seems to work "OK" on is the PC. It is a CPU hog on my Mac and that is laziness on Adobe's part.

But still, as a consumer, I wish there were an option. I don't like Steve Jobs making the decision for me. I'm a grown adult, give me the choice and let me suffer or gain based on my own decision. Then at least, I only have myself to blame

 

[imatt]

I do agree, flash needs some improvements. The only platform it seems to work "OK" on is the PC. It is a CPU hog on my Mac and that is laziness on Adobe's part.

But still, as a consumer, I wish there were an option. I don't like Steve Jobs making the decision for me. I'm a grown adult, give me the choice and let me suffer or gain based on my own decision. Then at least, I only have myself to blame

You have to remember that the product isn't geared toward the tech savvy. It's supposed to be something of simplicity when it comes to doing basic things and most people don't know what the hell adobe flash is. So if he let flash work on it, you'd have a lot of complaints about things crashing and slowing down and he doesn't want to deal with that headache.

 

[shinelt]

it's so sad if apple wont put flash into an ipad.
But maybe 1.5 month left. crossing my fingers. Maybe they will update
it's until release.

 

[laurenceringrose]

I pad needs flash for netflex and other movies

 

[Dorje]

I pad needs flash for netflex and other movies

Netflex and Hulu, plus various types of YouTube videos. Many of the more popular video streaming sites are unusable on the iPad because Flash is persona non grata. I do agree with Jobs a bit, Flash is buggy, it is a resource hog, and it is mostly Adobes' fault. However HTML5 is still a long way off from being adopted and I'll admit some of the HTML5 stuff I tried on iPod is also slower then a tortoise on a winter night, and did not work well with the touch interface of iPod. Without a strong (and easy to implement) alternative to Flash for protected streaming of video the iPad will not be the media hub Jobs proclaims it to be.

If you really want to get an idea of what's up, dig into HTML5 and how Apple pushed Canvas into that standard.

Then again people said Apple was crazy for not including a Floppy Drive on the first generation of iMacs.... Although missing hardware is a bit different missing software.

 

[Default]

I was worried about that at first, but not so much anymore and it certainly won't keep me from purchasing one...

Here's what Steve Jobs had to say about Adobe:

"They are lazy, Jobs says. 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, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5."

In my opinion he should make a bid to buy that from Adobe Inc.

But back to the main point, most flash content is a waste of time but more importantly it's a piece of crap. Even on the ultra-über fast PC's of today, flash can still bring your browser to a screaming halt. Adobe seems to be stagnating so much lately it's sick :\

 

[AbblePC]

Steve is clearly making his statement and industries are listening.

HTML5 as well as CSS already support video and can replace what most existing flash sites already have.

Safari already supports it so the iPad as well as any updated iPhones and Touches can use it too.

Youtube is already one good example as they are beta testing HTML5 right now. It looks just as good if not better than Flash video and without the resource grabbing hog that Flash is.

Steve is doing this as both a statement to Adobe as well as a forward looking decision that it wont take much for web masters and most of the existing online content industries to switch to HTML5.

I can see it now, being able to see video streaming within apps content and text pages or even e-mail as attachments. You need a flash based player to support it the way it is now.

Just like the idea of seeing news videos within a newspaper app or web page without cumbersome flash.

When Steve talks, everyone listens...:comingsoon: