Why Do Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod not Use Adobe Flash?

Hi..
Although Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone, Apple is unlikely ever to permit it to appear in the handset’s App Store, no matter how much customers want it.

If you are so anti-Flash how come this page has at least 5 Flash objects embedded in it ?

It would be a million times better if it did support it.

“Why, pray tell, would you expect Apple to put such an unstable piece of software on their operating system?”

This sounds so similar to the anti-IE6 arguments that web developers use to excuse themselves from making it work. At the end of the day, many sites use Flash whether Apple likes it or not. Apple’s righteous choice only hurts iPad users.

Just as a thought. But mayhaps it /is/ Apple’s problem. As a Windows user, I have never, that I remember, had Flash crash on me. Across several browsers. Now, I am neither defending or accusing Adobe on any front. I am merely making an outside observation. Apple ,at least in the past, has /had/ the reputation for not releasing the ‘hooks’ for their software and hardware to outside developers. And, as it has before, this may be coming back to bite them. These, however, are just my thoughts as a non-Apple user and as such, I might be wrong.

I personally think Apple have left off Flash because it would drain the battery. They didn’t want the battery life to be less than 10 hours. They had a choice – make the screen smaller and keep Flash, or have the screen 9.7 inches but onit Flash. They’ve gone for the bigger screen.

[...] Apple has trained its sights on software and Adobe’s ubiquitous media product, Flash, by continuing to omit the Adobe product from all of Apple’s mobile gadgets, including the new [...]

Apple won’t allow Flash on these devices because Flash would allow people to write applications that don’t go through the official App Store. If Apple was truly worried about Flash hurting user experience, then it wouldn’t be allowed in OSX either. It’s not a coincidence that they only exclude Flash from App Store devices.

The lack of flash downgrades the Internet experience, Apple blocks content. If it had flash I would upgrade to the iPhone from the iPod. It doesn’t, so I can’t, which annoys the crap out of me. I live on the BBC website especially the sport, but this piece of crap won’t play any of it’s media. BBC is one of the biggest websites in the UK (it may be the biggest).One operating system gives access to everything and one doesn’t. Bill Gates must be laughing his head off.

How about Nokia N900 which has flash and is very stable, I have been using the iphone since 2007, and I think the safari crashed more than 500 times without flash; specifically when it was version 2.0.

The bottom line is, how can the iPad be ‘the best web experience ever’ without flash? A sad little PeeCee Netbook can render it, so why can’t iPhone OS? I am a long time Mac user and web designer and I am so frustrated that Apple just don’t let us have what we want! If they hate flash so much how come it works on my iMac? Answer, because they know it would make Macs look bad….so how do they think people will look at the iPad?

U suck. You are a phony, you really don’t have an open mind.

“You can disagree with that all you want – I’ll punch holes in every flawed argument you present.” What makes you so impolite and rude?

Your blog post was a big waste of time. No creative content or information at all.

Ryan and ipad fans arguments look more promising though.

Come on pick some holes then you’ve got our info!

You are 100% right.

I’m still a bit confused by your logic there, Chris. I can certainly understand why a software company would refuse to support unstable software. However, why would they take a different approach on different platfoms (ie desktop vs phone vs tablet)? The reason that flash is supported by MacOS is that a significant portion of the internet has flash enabled content. Hell, even ads use flash! The fact that flash is ubiquitous does not change whether the browsing experience is had through a phone, a tablet or a desktop, so why should the browser?

They don’t use Flash because then they can’t control everything that get’s put on the iPad, therefor they don’t make as much money.

Apple is a douchy company, only in it for the profit, they don’t care about advancing technology as they claim, they don’t care about the consumer, they care about money, which as a company they should care about money, but they should also care about advancing their product rather than doing everything just for money. Everything costs money on the iPad, and the iPad itself is overpriced, a simple netbook is faster in every way other than booting up (look on CNet, too lazy to find the actual link) and it can render Flash.

It’s blatantly obvious that Apple is scared of what Flash would do to their App store sales. Imagine being able to develop all these cool games for these popular mobile devices without:
a) having to actually own a mac with the absolute latest version of OSX on it in order to develop for their mobile devices,
b) going through the tedious app approval jungle,
and
c) abiding by nonsensical tyrannical rules

A tightly controlled marketplace like Apple’s may work for the short while in the beginning, but it will lose out in the end.

Furthermore, Apple states (I call BS) various reasons for not doing this. Some of them include stability and battery life. First of all, you can’t use Flash’s stability in a BETA browser (ahem, Google Chrome as stated in your article) as your primary example. Second, shouldn’t it be the consumer’s choice? I mean, hell, we put down enough money for that shiny thing with the Apple logo on it. The least they could do is provide a very small amount of flexibility. Don’t wanna drain the battery? Turn Flash off. Concerned about stability? Turn Flash off. Simple as that.

It’s funny because “you can’t use Flash’s stability in a BETA browser”.
Have you tried using it with firefox? Granted, it often works, but there are some games/apps I have used in firefox that constantly crash my browser. Even facebook has done it.
And to be honest, it means they won’t experience flash advertisements, which are annoying anyway.

Meh. I can’t say too much about the deep programming behind it all, and I am disappointed flash is being dropped, but you have to at least understand why people are upset.

Flash is still a huge portion of the web, and until this debate, flash didn’t really seem to be leaving the picture anytime soon. A lot of techy people who would buy an iPad, or use iPhones, are designers / developers who often work in flash. The iPad sounded perfect for meeting with clients without hauling a computer to the meeting, or even for general use. That is, until we found out that we won’t have access to about a third of the web, and the vast majority of rich media.

I could understand dropping flash a few years down the road, after HTML5 has taken off, but why so soon?

I mean the whole of the internet has spent a large portion of their careers slaving away, trying to make things work in IE. Now apple comes along and, well, why should they have to accommodate for anyone else, when everyone else can just bend over backwards for Apple?

Not there problem? In a ruthless capitalist society that’s true, but I thought we were beyond that now?

I have an iPhone and I’ll probably buy an iPad. What I will say is this. My non-Flash supported iPhone crashes all the time with Apple approved apps. And no my phone is not jailbroken. Apple would like the world to believe that all their products are flawless. That in itself is flawed. My MacBook crashes sometimes too.

Why not allow Flash, but by default have the support turned off. Let me turn it on in the settings for safari if I so choose. When I do this have a stability disclaimer if you want. But let me choose. After all. I am the customer.

Any argument to the contrary is arrogant. The only argument I would accept from a business standpoint from Apple is if they think that their is no ROI in supporting Flash. That I can understand. It doesn’t mean they would necessary be right with that analysis but I could understand it. Any stability argument is nonsense.

Was going to add to the depate, but everything has already been put quite succinctly. Nothing better than watching a matador walk into the ring to fing himself ill equipped to deal with an unexpected cloud of angry bees.

Twat :)

Just commenting to say, well done David Smith there ^ …I think Chris isn’t as open minded as he used to be anyway. Just look at his desk. Apple – everywhere.

I’m not doubting Apple has some big master plan why they don’t want certain things on their devices, but isn’t there one big reason to sum it all up? Apple sucks with software designing, looking past some of the miracles of luck they’ve had in the past. There are millions of flaws with their programs like the iOS itself, Safari, even the Mac OS! Sure, some people “enjoy” the programs, but can’t those same people point out many various flaws with them just the same? Maybe I’m just ranting ’cause I’ve been bent over by the company too many times for my liking but I really just can’t see them being anything more than a greed-driven company. Like a highschool drop-out that now runs a multi-million dollar business, wishing they could go back and retake the classes they so foolishly skipped. That’s all.