why there is no flash on iphone or ipad

[Techman]

Flash has too many problems to deal with. It is not the other users or vendors, its is FLASH..

One major problem
There are constant updates all the time on flash. Too many times there are sites with updated flash that will not display onto computers using older flash versions. This is a real pain on mobile units.

The constant downloading of updates is getting out of hand. And worse. The back doors in Flash and it is approaching spyware in its reporting back to a central server without telling the user what is going on behind the scenes.

Another reason..
In face one example is the trouble liveleak is having the last few weeks with too many users not able to view their content.

 

[Joe Diaz]

Yes, that's what I'm saying Joe. Apple told them what needed to be done to run on their platform and they decided not to do it. Apple makes hardware. Without hardware, software is useless. If a hardware manufacturer says this is what we need from you, and you don't deliver it or work with them, then that's your fault.

Yeah Apple makes hardware... hardware that can't playback a widely used format. Why is it that other hardware companies are developing products that support flash (or have been supporting flash for quite some time)? A company as innovative as Apple should be able to provide flash playback on their devices. They chose not to. Then, it is somehow adobe's fault because of their shortcomings .

If by chance html5 does replace flash, it will only be the flash plugin and It won't happen tomorrow, It will take a long time for that switch to happen. Companies with massive budgets can make the changes today, but what about the countless other websites utilizing flash in one way or another? Well... you wont be able to view them on the iPad.

Heck you still have sites being built without css, a widely used practice. It would be similar if Apple built a device that wouldn't display a site using tables and cells for its layout.

The .swf format and the flash plugin may someday in the distant future die out due to html5 or some other way of embedding interactive content. But my opinion is that flash as an application will live on strong. If html5 becomes the norm., I foresee Adobe's Flash being the same great publisher program it has been for years but instead of generating a .swf file that is viewed through a flash plugin, it would generate a html5 document, similar to how Dreamweaver develops html documents. So I doubt Flash is on the downhill.

Regardless of what Adobe does, Apple should be striving to develop products that can display everything the internet has to offer, today, and in the future, not just what they choose. Even if Adobe does exactly what Apple tells them to do. It doesn't change the countless number of flash files already developed and published, and the fact that Apple has created a product that won't be able to view that content until that site owner redevelops that content in html5. And apple can't predict when that will be, so it would be better for them to support flash playback.

 

[Rick]

After Microsoft's comments, it will be interesting to see what Adobe's response is to this... Interesting commentary on the Wall Street Journal about it.

 

[CES020]

Joe, I would compare this way, imagine you designed and built cars for a living. Imagine you sold millions of these cars. Imagine you designed a dash that had the form, fit, and function you worked hard to produce. Now imagine your dash did not accept the standard radio chassis sizes.

You approach a radio manufacturer and they tell you that you can have their base model. You explain your dash layout doesn't accept that, so you'd like to work on a design with them to have them produce a unit that does work. They tell you to stuff it, they aren't going to do it.

Who's fault is it? Your fault for making your vision come to life the way you wanted it? Or is it the radio company's fault for not working with you.

I suppose that it depends on which side you're on as to who's at fault.

Let's be clear, both companies have the ability to make it work on the iphone and ipad. Apple could make it work, but they claim it drains the battery. Adobe could rewrite some code and make it work., but they won't.

I thought Adobe's job was to sell software. If someone invents something new, I'd think it would be in their best interest to make their software work on whatever is invented. Saying "there's a market that's millions of units play in, and we'll just ignore that" seems crazy to me.

Youtube is already using some technology other than flash to get to the iphone and ipad, so something must be working out there.

I still think you'd be making a huge business mistake to bet against apple.

If I sold products to apple, and we offered black, and they wanted red, I'd figure out how to make them in red.

 

[GAC05]

Will HTML5 support vector based animation?
I thought that was Flash's strong suite.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[Joe Diaz]

CES020, You are right Adobe's job is to make software. Software that is used to make interactive movie clips. When you use a program like Adobe Flash CS(X) it creates a .swf, that the webdesigner embeds a script that calls on that flash into the body of a site. The visitor of the site's browser must then have a flash plugin in order to see that embedded flash.

Now let's say that adobe decides to instead make it so when the designer/developer publishes their flash video, it creates the necessary html5 script instead. Great, it will now work on an iPad. The point I've been trying to make is that it won't automatically change every flash file through out the internet, only newer files created to html5.

Meaning Apple either somehow thinks that everyone will quickly covert to html5, or they think their customers won't care that they won't be able to properly see such a large portion of the internet (keep in mind, flash isn't just used on video sites like youtube, it is everywhere.) Based on what I know about how sites are built today, It will take a long time for the majority of the internet to wean its way off of flash. Old methods of building websites are still out there, yet hardware and software companies have managed to provide ways to view that content. Apple has chosen to stop doing that, so they have chosen to blame adobe for that unpopular decision.

 

[CES020]

Joe, I don't disagree with you at all on that. It'll take a long time for everyone to convert to something else, but the big boys are already doing it. News sites are already serving content without flash, so it's heading that direction.

I'm still looking at it from a business standpoint. If Apple told me "you need to change this, this, and this so it'll work on our products", I'd have picked up the phone, called my top engineers in and said "make it happen".

It really is interesting to watch. Clash of the titans for sure. Time will tell who was right and who was wrong.