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

By: Randall Eller

Randall Eller — Sun, 22 May 2011 03:16:00 +0000

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 250,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

By: Randall Eller

Randall Eller — Sun, 22 May 2011 03:16:00 +0000

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

By: Steve Bruno

Steve Bruno — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:59:20 +0000

Here’s a good argument for putting flash on the device: becuase until they do, I’m not buying one. And if I feel that way, then so do many others. There are entire sites that run on flash.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:01:56 +0000

Many good points above. Where is Chris’s reply? I must have missed it.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:59:23 +0000

You’re right, it’s not their problem. It’s MY problem. I had no idea when I bought an iPhone that flash wasn’t supported… The concept is absurd when u think about. Here is a product that is supposed to represent the leading edge in consumer experience, yet I can’t do many of the things I want to do b/c a sizable portion of the web and it’s functionality is not supported.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 03:55:27 +0000

I wouldn’t accept a dvd burner that won’t read dvd-rw disc.
I wouldn’t accept it when that burner manufacturer sells dvd+rw media and believe an excuse about performance or their being mysterious issues with burn failures on “unsupported media”.

There is a large portion of the web that is in flash. I wish it were an open standard. It’s not. That’s just the way it is.

I want access to that content.

What ever happened to “it just works.”

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:04:25 +0000

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.

By: Sam Horne

Sam Horne — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:27:45 +0000

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.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 01:01:08 +0000

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 :)

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 11 May 2010 19:23:13 +0000

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.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 02 May 2010 04:05:57 +0000

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?

By: alex

alex — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:02:32 +0000

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.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:40:55 +0000

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.

By: Cyrus

Cyrus — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:03:13 +0000

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.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:26:53 +0000

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?