Ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad, it seems like the world has been divided into two - One group comprising of those who adore the iPad and the other group that hates it. For the moment, it appears like even a lot of traditional Apple fanboys have chosen to take the latter stance and the reason is not too hard to guess - lack of important features makes the iPad look simply incomplete.
Among the downsides on the software front, the biggest gripe has been the lack of Flash support. It has been hotly debated in the past, whether Flash is indeed something that makes the internet much more colorful or is something that is grossly hyped. Those who side with Apple on the war against Flash had often argued upon the heavy resource consumption of Flash applications and how HTML5 is the technology of the future. But all said and done, Flash is still the one application that makes graphics technology available to thousands of users today and without Flash, we simply would lose a massive chunk of graphics on the web.
The fight between Apple and Adobe on this issue is a well documented one. However, this is not about Apple trying to choke Adobe's growth by such measures. In fact, as Adrian Ludwig from Adobe notes, technologies like PDF and ePub that Apple has promoted on the iPad platform all have their roots in Adobe.
So, why is Flash not available on the iPad then? When the iPhone was released, and it didn't support Flash, Steve Jobs had stated that Flash Lite for mobile was not full featured enough, while the full version of Flash would not run well on the iPhone due to the limited resources available. When Apple announced iPad, a more powerful device on the iPhone OS platform, which also won't support Flash, Steve Jobs has given a different reason for not supporting Flash. According to him, Apple doesn't support Flash because it is too buggy. Though this could be a valid reason as Apple is extremely particular about user experience, the reasons could also be a lot more strategic.
To understand that, we will have to first see how Apple's app economy operates. Though Apple doesn't make a lot of money (in relative terms to hardware) by selling iPhone apps, the iPhone apps help in increasing the stickiness of the iPhone platform, which is invaluable. So when an iPhone user is planning to upgrade to a new mobile phone, one of the things he or she will always think about is the money already spent in buying the iPhone apps or games.
But, by allowing Flash to run on the iPhone or iPad, Apple could be shooting itself in the foot as it could then mean the availability of a third party interface for users to play games and could even start a parallel app economy, which is independent of the device. How many casual gamers do you think would continue purchasing games from the App Store when they are able to access the hundreds of Flash based gaming websites on Safari's web browser? The answers to these questions will probably tell us why Apple refuses to let Flash run on the iPhone OS platform. If the same games and apps can be used on another smartphone then the chances of users jumping ship would be even higher.
Is it wrong for Apple to adopt this strategy? It's their platform and they have the freedom to do, what is in their best interest.
Robert Scobleizer and John Gruber of Daring Fireball believe that it won't matter if iPhone OS supports or doesn't support Adobe Flash as it is dead since "based on talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer".
Let us know your views in the comments.
Apple is in a bad spot… and the only way they are going to survive this is if flash runs poorly on all the android phones..
Like Steve said, we just need to ditch Flash all together and move to HTML5. Flash is the biggest piece of junk. Yes its sad that the iPad doesn't support it, but whats more sad is how dependent people have become on such shotty technology and coding.
I think Steve is smart in doing his part in trying to push HTML5 more into the mainstream to replace Flash.
HTML probably wont replace adobe flash anytime soon tho, too many sites use flash already and are probably to lazy to upgrade just for mac. They used to say Blueray would replace DVDs and here we are.
well, so far i have enjoyed reading all news and comments,i visit this site several times a day.Come on people show a little class.How could you be so low and sick to say something like that.Let's concentrate on commenting and giving an opinion about the news not behaving like crazy shitty heads like "Death"
Completely agree, such comments are unacceptable.
We're here to have a healthy discussion.
This isn't about making a statement about whether flash is good or bad for the web. This is really about controlling content and making sure Apple gets it's piece of it.
With Flash you have hulu and sites of that ilk. Apple doesn't want hulu on the iphone/ipad. It eats at store revenue. Plain and simple, Flash circumvents the app store. Apple doesn't want that.
Unfortunately, this is bad for Apple and consumers.
GOOD POINT STOP THE BABY CRYING ON IPHONE HACKS. ALL I HERE IS WANNNNNNAA NO FLASH CRY CRY NO CAMERA. Grow up children i agree that the ipad is lacking but bitching about it is not gona fix it any time soon. The ipad is apples 500$ kindle that does vid mp3 web email, im, and 140,000 apps that no EBOOK can add up to. NO it is not the dream of a 1000$ mac tablet running os 10 with vid chat and flash support. But for real would u buy a 1000$ laptop or a 1000$ tables. Objective opinions that have real world applications would be better in this fourm.
I agree with Devilsh,
What are the chances of flash running poorly on other smart phones though? Perhaps some of Apple's claims are true and it simply isn't practical to run Flash, because at the end of the day, Apple knows that eventually even HTML5 will pose a threat to itunes sales just as Flash does right now.
either way Apple can't keep the consumer from accessing "FREE" content forever…
Apple is dumb for not supporting flash..
competition is competition..
face it and not run away from it!
For now, ipods/iphones needs to support flash. The majority of web content includes flash, so make a device that supports it.
When websites start changing over and flash is less and less prominent, then drop flash support. It's really annoying right now not being able to view flash content on so many popular sites.
If the concern is speed, then include a setting that lets us disable flash when browsing.
I'm a web designer. I started with HTML, dabbled in Flash, learned CSS, did a little Java, and came back to Flash.
It's not a hog, but it can be if used improperly.
It's not buggy. In actuality, HTML/CSS/JAVA implementation across browsers poses a much greater issue.
Which leads to HTML5. Flash is consistent across all browsers because Adobe controls it.
Jobs in this case has no idea what he's talking about.
Flash works perfectly fine on my HTC Hero, why wouldn't it run smoothly on my 3gs?????
sounds like apples want to protect profit margins
I have two business web site based upon a flash gallery:
http://www.wedding-photographer.it/ and http://www.fotografo-matrimonio.biz/ the war beteween Apple and Adobe is pushing me to find a new way to build photo galleries for my sites. In the last year I had a lot of contacts coming from mobile device and in particular from IPHONE. It will be better if they found an agreement.
Cloud browse app can be used to browse flash websites on iphone
It really is too bad – as a hardware provider, they're choosing not to allow their users to see 100% of the internet.
I think we should tell them otherwise! ForkInApple.com is a site to build a strong petition and present it to Apple – show them us Apple lovers WANT to continue to love them
We'll also provide code for websites with flash to detect iPhone and iPad users and tell them that Apple has decided not to support Flash – regardless of the reason – we wanna see it!
As a RIA developer in the Flex framework, creating business/enterprise class software applications which run on AS3 as Flash, I cannot support/promote any device that attempts to limit what content you can access. The iphone is not China, but it is censoring content over illegitimate concerns in the same way that communist state limits access to content as "unsafe". The internet is about innovation, not inhibition. Until the iphone development people accepts that ALL content is worthy of end-user access, I simply do not have any tolerance for such a device.
Best solution is to get iPhone for apps and get a good netbook which will let you sync your idevice play your iTunes content and surf the whole Internet. For the cost of the highest priced iPad you could get the sweetest netbook ever made. Or if you're rich get a Mac book air. Easy fix. Oh and iPhone has links to tons of web apps already on it. They are free play on HTML5 friendly devices so what's this rubbish about jobs being afraid about having web based apps as a competitor? Html5 server the same purpose? This was a dumb read!