Why are people complaining about flash support?

[chisaki]

Without flash, the iPad is useless for internet browsing. I don't even attempt to use it for that. It is an entertainment toy for me. It's great for playing videos, movies and music. Playing games is even limited. The only type of games it will play is those controlled by touch.

Even with all those limitations, I always take my iPad with me when I travel, which is often. I also bring my laptop for serious work.

 

[RAC]

It's pretty simple really, there any lots of pages (not porn) that don't work when I navigate to them, because Flash is not supported in iOS.

Most of us are't interested in what does and does not technically constitute a web page, we just want to be able to access them without hindrance. The same goes for discussions about battery life, security etc. Flash is part of the day to day Web experience that cannot be accessed from the iPad. That's not good.

I have found a work around of sorts, access Flash content via IE on my notebook using Splashtop!!! I don't like to leave my PC online 24/7 on the odd that I might need Flash though. It chews up more power and gets much hotter than the iPad.

 

[hookbill]

Without flash, the iPad is useless for internet browsing. I don't even attempt to use it for that. It is an entertainment toy for me. It's great for playing videos, movies and music. Playing games is even limited. The only type of games it will play is those controlled by touch.

Even with all those limitations, I always take my iPad with me when I travel, which is often. I also bring my laptop for serious work.

I don't know where you go on the internet but so far I only know of one site that I go to that needs flash. If I need to go there I'll use my Droid 2. Or my iMac.

It's not useless for browsing at all, it just depends on what you are browsing for. And as Steve Jobs has pointed out it is highly vulnerable for attack. Adobe knows this and does a great job of keeping it updated but it is a fact.

For my purposes the iPad as is, can browse the internet just fine.

 

[col.bris]

I don't know where you go on the internet but so far I only know of one site that I go to that needs flash. If I need to go there I'll use my Droid 2. Or my iMac.

It's not useless for browsing at all, it just depends on what you are browsing for. And as Steve Jobs has pointed out it is highly vulnerable for attack. Adobe knows this and does a great job of keeping it updated but it is a fact.

For my purposes the iPad as is, can browse the internet just fine.

I totally agree. It is not useless for browsing. Funny thing is there will always be a percentage of uses not satisfied with anything they buy. The real crazy part is most end up with a cupboard full of different computers , phones and gaming machines simply because no one device will satisfy them. The one thing I thought would never happen is my MacBook has not been used for more than 4 months except for backing up my iPhone and iPads ?

 

[DrHouse]

Well...you obviously don't understand me well. You seem to think you do, but you don't.

Now that we have that established. There is no problem, per se. iPad is developed by apple and it will be what apple wants it to be. Consumers should do their homework and apple should tell them exactly what it can't do. Then anyone who buys an iPad will know exactly what it is and what it is not. If both parties did their due diligence, there would be no "problem".

I for one did my due diligence. I told my wife I wanted to want an iPad but based on what I read I could not see it fitting my needs, especially for the price they charge for these things. But guess what she did at Christmas. She got me an iPad. So here I sit trying to figure out how to kale it do things it is not designed to do. And yes, I get frustrated when I can't get my mpeg4 DVD security system to play on the safari browser, and I can't watch the news video I want to watch. I really get disappointed when the 31 page word catalog I use at work crashes when I am showing off this revolutionary device to my compliance officer at work. It has limitations. It is a neat device for simple web browsing and it has certainly soaked me for abut 100 more dollars through the app store. But I see nothing revolutionary about this thing. So when I see a fan boy defend apple for not putting flash on it I get a little testy.

But no, there really is no problem with the iPad. The rest of the world just needs to catch up to their revolution. Meanwhile, I am going to bed so I can snore some more.

Nate ( who really does like his iPad...just being realistic is all)

Darn! You're right, I don't understand you. You're saying that you know that the device is limited, but you get frustrated that it cannot do everything. Sure that when an app is crashing, it's annoying, I give you that. But you're having double talk here.

As for being a fanboy, hmmm, I don't know... I'm just saying that I understand what Apple is trying to do (read me other posts).

One of my friend has a Galaxy S. Great device running on android. But also have limitations and some annoyances. Like skype not being compatible with that smartphone even if it is compatible with android. So should I consider that the Galaxy S is crap?

The revolution is that mobile devices are doing much more than what mobile devices use to do in the past. Nobody ever said that it would do more than what we use to do with computers an laptops.

Anyway, enjoy your iPad as you like, i'll do the same.

 

[Thphilli]

Without flash, the iPad is useless for internet browsing. I don't even attempt to use it for that. It is an entertainment toy for me. It's great for playing videos, movies and music. Playing games is even limited. The only type of games it will play is those controlled by touch.

Even with all those limitations, I always take my iPad with me when I travel, which is often. I also bring my laptop for serious work.

I don't know where you go on the internet but so far I only know of one site that I go to that needs flash. If I need to go there I'll use my Droid 2. Or my iMac.

It's not useless for browsing at all, it just depends on what you are browsing for. And as Steve Jobs has pointed out it is highly vulnerable for attack. Adobe knows this and does a great job of keeping it updated but it is a fact.

For my purposes the iPad as is, can browse the internet just fine.

You obviously dont read the news. Every other article comes with some embedded flash video that wont play on the iPad.

I can't WAIT for Apple to implement Flash and then for everyone on here who to suddenly embrace it fully and completely contradict everything they have been saying for the past year.

 

[Luvmyipad]

First of all if apple is making a product to compete with then it needs to be ahead of the game. Which means it needs to have all resources for us the consumer to use. For those of you coming to this thread and getting pissed off that we want flash, why come here then, didn't you read the heading? We don't need your sarcasm!

 

[iPadCharlie]

First of all if apple is making a product to compete with then it needs to be ahead of the game.

Right now Apple is making the product that the other manufacturers are competing with, not the other way around!

 

[MachThree]

Hi all

Almost every day, someone will ask about flash support on iOS devices and complain about that... Darn, the only thing flash does over the net is showing ads and make some games available... I would say that flash is actually useless. There is no real benefit of using flash technology now that HTML is a lot more powerful than a few years ago.

On some sites, it is used as a video viewer, which actually is a bit useless since all computers already have a native media player plugin on all oses. The only case that flash maybe useful is for webcam capture when you want to broadcast, and even then, there are other solutions that can be used. Have you notice that flash does require a lot of CPU resource when loaded? I really don't want that running on my iPad/iPhone as it would drain the battery so fast.

I hope that Apple will keep it's position and keep working with technology that are power efficient.

I am a longtime Ubuntu user, and now an iOS devices user for the last year. I'm not a fanboy of any kind, but I like my stuffs to be working as expected and being efficient. And flash, for me is just a pain as it is currently used on the net.

So, before complaining, do some reading first, and don't consider that a device is defective if it was not built for the use that you want to give it. There are always limitations that have to be considered, on all kind of devices or even computers.

I wonder why the less knowledgeable are always the loudest in forums. Darn, if you don't even understand how it works, how can you assume that what you are asking for is easy to do and should be done just because you want it?

Ok, feeling better now!

A few comments:

a) The virtues of the respective technologies are besides the point. Today, many, many web sites are crippled or completely unusable without Flash. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to use such sites on our iPads.

b) the idea that Flash consumes too much power, or is buggy, is debatable. What's not debatable is that if I, as a user, want to run flash, and am willing to accept the fact that it might crash or might mean I only get 3 hours on a charge instead of 8 or 9, that should be my choice to make. Not Apple's, and not Steve Jobs's.

I suspect one day Apple will be sorry when Adobe stops making Photoshop, Pagemaker et al for the Mac in retaliation for Apple's stupidity and instead Chrome OS devices sell like hotcakes when Adobe brings its apps to that platform.

 

[nateccnn]

The consumer electronics industry has been talking about these pads for years. Apple hit the market first. That's all they did. It will be a few years before these things are able to do what the industry intended them to do. Right now we are just ginnie pigs feeding at the trough.

Don't get confused by the fact that apple did a great job marketing this thing.

Microsoft or any other company could have got their devices out earlier too.

Nate

 

[USBill]

What's not debatable is that if I, as a user, want to run flash, and am willing to accept the fact that it might crash or might mean I only get 3 hours on a charge instead of 8 or 9, that should be my choice to make. Not Apple's, and not Steve Jobs's.

No one is preventing you from running Flash. It's free. You can install it on any supported platform.

You bought a computer that doesn't support Flash (hopefully knowing that before you chose to purchase the device). It doesn't support 3.5" floppy diskettes either.

Are you suggesting you should be able to tell Apple what to put in their products? Because you can... by not purchasing the product until it has the feature set you want.

 

[USBill]

The consumer electronics industry has been talking about these pads for years. Apple hit the market first. That's all they did. It will be a few years before these things are able to do what the industry intended them to do. Right now we are just ginnie pigs feeding at the trough.

Don't get confused by the fact that apple did a great job marketing this thing.

Microsoft or any other company could have got their devices out earlier too.

Nate,
Don't sell Apple short. It wasn't marketing that made the iPad a hit. It was design.

Microsoft has been making tablets for decades. The first tablet PC I ever used was a Compaq convertible running Windows 3.x on MS-DOS 5. We helped to build an HP laptop that weighed less than the iPad and had Windows 3.11 in ROM. These were before the Apple Newton.

What Apple did with the iPad was to figure out what could be left out, and still have a compelling computer. Palm did it years before. Apple did it even better.

 

[RAC]

Are you suggesting you should be able to tell Apple what to put in their products? Because you can... by not purchasing the product until it has the feature set you want.

Apple has made their choice and the consumers will make theirs. Most people don't ask whether the iPad runs Flash before they buy the their first tablet but you can bet that they will when the time comes to replace it.

It's not a personal attack, but I really don't understand why some are so keen to defend the lack of Flash. It simply means that there are web sites that are off limits to the iPad and it is after all a web device.

As an aside, it has always been the case that you switch to a competitor's device to overcome a shortcoming in the one that you have, only to discover that it has other gaps. The sales and marketing people aren't going to tell you what it doesn't do. "The grass is greener"?

 

[Hasty]

Nice summation UsBill.
All devices are compromises and judgement calls. Apples choice was to omit flash as well as usb, file management, etc., and concentrate on speed portability and batterylife.

As to the ridiculous claim about apples marketing, you've only watch other people playing with your iPad to know apple got something right. My two yearold regards it as his favorite toy and my mother bought her own.....

 

[Luvmyipad]

Right now Apple is making the product that the other manufacturers are competing with, not the other way around!

That's what I meant! Sorry you misunderstood. If apple wants to stay above the competitors they need to satisfy all types of peoples needs or what's the point!