Adobe Bringing Flash to the iPhone

[!¡ V ¡!]

As a designer, web citizen and developer, I do not understand the argument *for* Flash (on the desktop or iPhone).

The fact is, most implementations of Flash are for five purposes:

1. Stupid Games
2. Stupid Videos
3. Superfluous Graphics
4. Ads
5. Entire Inaccessible Sites

I wholeheartedly embrace Apple's approach to pre-SDK development for iPhone. Use web standards, implement them well, and people will come up with great accessible solutions to most of your requests. (Not to mention not making the users of a revolutionary device deal with the problems "of old." i.e. points 1-5.) In the end, it will make for a better experience for everyone.

I could continue this post, but I'll point you to John Gruber instead.

• News Flash: No Flash
• Flash on iPhone Political Calculus
• Flim-Flash
• Just the Internet

If the updated Safari 3.1 has given us CSS animation, which seems to be a patch solution for Flash or an entire different direction on part to the mobile web.

 

[chim9999]

looking forward to flash. will definitely make the internet experience on the phone more complete (and no more need to worry about restrictions on the work computer - HA! ) !!!

now... if i can only have more alert options for the calendar (i.e. an alert for the first saturday of every month, or to be able to set an alert for a week in advance) and copy/paste, i'll be set.

 

[orbital]

Mms?

First off a short little bit of research will tell you that MMS is usually only available on 3G networks. This makes sense, imagine sending a 100k MMS over AT&T on the iPhone, it would suck. Email is the preferred app on phones these days second only to SMS. I think over all apple is trying to change the culture if phone ot phone communications and opts out of MMS because its redundancy to email.

 

[xUKHCx]

First off a short little bit of research will tell you that MMS is usually only available on 3G networks. This makes sense, imagine sending a 100k MMS over AT&T on the iPhone, it would suck. Email is the preferred app on phones these days second only to SMS. I think over all apple is trying to change the culture if phone ot phone communications and opts out of MMS because its redundancy to email.

That is so wrong. MMS was around for many years before 3G. Where have you ben doing your research. It really doesn't take that long to send an MMS over standard gprs networks.

The issue with email over MMS is that the receiver has to have it setup on their phone and the receiver also incurs data charges, where as to receive MMS it is free and setup by default.

 

[overcast]

First off a short little bit of research will tell you that MMS is usually only available on 3G networks. This makes sense, imagine sending a 100k MMS over AT&T on the iPhone, it would suck. Email is the preferred app on phones these days second only to SMS. I think over all apple is trying to change the culture if phone ot phone communications and opts out of MMS because its redundancy to email.

What the hell are you talking about. Yeh because sending a 100K EMAIL over AT&T on the iPhone is any different? I've been using MMS since the dawn of time on GPRS networks, much slower than EDGE.

 

[michaelrjohnson]

sorry, but that's just a spurious argument. if we're applying some sort of subjective "net benefit" then HTML itself should be banned as well as the vast majority of it is superfluous, advertisements and inaccsesible sites.

flash is a tool just like HTML it simply has far more capabilites than plain HTML and more potential for "bad design", though this is changing with DHTML libraries.

there are thousands of examples of flash being used properly and in ways that would be impossible or unwuse in DHTML.

Sure, I agree with point about Flash just being another "tool" in a designer/developer's arsenal. But the difference is that while there may be equal ability to make bad things with them as with Flash–HTML, DHTML, JavaScript, etc aren't private proprietary languages.

Again, the argument *for* Flash on iPhone is very weak, and I expect Apple to successfully assert their power here. (Thank goodness.)

 

[frankly]

Personally, I think you're wrong. I think if taken to the Supreme Court, Apple (and any other company including Nintendo inside the US) will lose their shirt in regards to this matter of restricting what can run on a publicly available platform. In other words, it comes down to if it's my computer, I can run whatever I want on it. PERIOD. Contracts, protecting $$$ partners, etc. is irrelevant. It's a publicly available platform. It's a computer (even if a mobile one). Software runs on computers. No company has the right to restrict software on a publicly available platform. If they don't want someone to run software on it, they should NOT release it for sale to the public. It's THAT SIMPLE.

If you don't agree or don't like it, I don't care. It WILL be fought sooner or later and they will lose because SOCIETY is ultimately what matters and countries like the US are SUPPOSED to protect the citizens of their country, NOT legal entities like corporations. And that will continue to come to the forefront as people get sick and tired of corporations controlling their lives, getting tax perks to move jobs overseas and generally ruin people's lives over making more profits for a select few shareholders. If the Supreme Court does their job and protects "We The People" and NOT "We the privileged few" then Apple would LOSE. Imagine if all the printing presses refused to print anything except what some big corporation wanted. Imagine if the Internet only allowed select people to have access or WRITE data (e.g. post mesages, host sites, etc.) Imagine trying to justify that because some companies own the ISPs and all agree you shouldn't have access unless you're on their approved list. Imagine if that approved list didn't includes certain ethnic groups, certain political affiliations or certain financial classes. But it's OK because they own the servers you use. They don't HAVE to allow you to use it! That's called discrimination and it's ILLEGAL. I don't see not allowing software on a publicly available platform as being one bit different. If I buy a product, it's my right to use it as I see fit. And that's a fair use issue that is going to continue to get worse as time goes on and companies try to force you to do only what they want as part of the contract or license agreement. Things like copyrights are privileges. They exist so someone can make money off their ideas. They were never designed so companies can control every aspect of your life.

It should not matter whether the software is Windows or MacOSX or PalmOS. If it's sold to the public for public usage, it should be open to the public for public usage. It's one thing to charge to use something like AT&T's network. It's quite another to say certain people aren't ALLOWED to use their network because they're not on our 'approved list'. And THAT is what Apple is doing. They can say we don't want certain apps on OUR STORE, but they cannot then in turn say you can ONLY USE OUR STORE. That's then discrimination and it should be fought, IMO. And no, I don't think someone like Nintendo should be able to do that either. Ultimately, Apple will have problems as they get more popular because they are trying to control both the software AND the hardware. Microsoft keeps getting into trouble for just ONE of those. It's only a matter of time, really....

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read on this topic yet. Keep in mind that this is your opinion and not really based in reality.

 

[FakeWozniak]

What planet have you been on for the past year?

Either you think he's lying or you think he's literally been on another planet for the last year. Uranus maybe?! Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

I tend to believe him. Not only is the processor sucking the juice, but the fan has suck more to keep the laptop from flaming up. Granted, he might have been on the edge of the fan kicking in and flash put him over the edge.

Check your processor load running flash sometime and compare with a site that has no flash. I get between 10% and 30% utilization for Safari (via top) for cnn.com (laden with flash ads) compared to 0% when I look at any non-flash page (MacMini Core Solo 1.83Ghz).

 

[frankly]

Yes, and of course, automatically, everyone on the web started doing just that. Because Apple said so. At least, that's how you perfectionists wished the world worked. Meanwhile, in the real world, outside the RDF, we may finally be getting "the real Internet", as Apple fraudluently claims, on the iPhone after all. Rejoice!

Are you locked in a cave somewhere? There have been tons of sites rewritten specifically for the iPhone and as the number of iPhones sold increases and the percentage of iPhone users accessing the Internet from their phones continues to SIGNIFICANTLY outpace the rest of the industry we would see MORE AND MORE pages written using these standards. It won't happen overnight but the iPhone has the numbers (units sold and percentage of people accessing the Internet from them) to influence it a great deal.

The numbers being released regarding percentage of devices accessing the Internet have been so incredible that Google actually went back and checked their information twice because they didn't believe it at first.

Frank

 

[frankly]

sorry, but that's just a spurious argument. if we're applying some sort of subjective "net benefit" then HTML itself should be banned as well as the vast majority of it is superfluous, advertisements and inaccsesible sites.

flash is a tool just like HTML it simply has far more capabilites than plain HTML and more potential for "bad design", though this is changing with DHTML libraries.

there are thousands of examples of flash being used properly and in ways that would be impossible or unwuse in DHTML.

Perhaps, but the HTML sites won't drain your battery faster. That is the main point of why Flash would suck on the iPhone.

 

[FakeWozniak]

If the updated Safari 3.1 has given us CSS animation, which seems to be a patch solution for Flash or an entire different direction on part to the mobile web.

I thought the changes for HTML5 + CSS animation were only for the desktop version of Safari, not the mobile version, right? I would expect the mobile version to handle HTML5, but maybe not actually display CSS animation. The font download would be nice.

Like someone else pointed out before, there is no animation on the mobile Safari currently. A single movie must be opened in a separate "window" (I suspect the video processor that handles H.264 does not support embedding potentially multiple animations in other windows like a full blown graphics card would).

 

[frankly]

I am not sure how many people realize Flash doesn't do that on Windows. There is something wrong with Flash on OS X. Does Adobe write Flash for OS X or does Apple? I don't ever remember having to install Flash or even upgrade it.

Adobe writes it and it sucks really bad under OS X. In fact, it is single-handedly responsible for crashing Safari on my machine at least once a day.

 

[frankly]

Use 3 fingers to open up the contextual menu and you have your solution.

Unless you have really small fingers, which of those three fingers should the phone assume is pointing the the thing you want to right-click? Also, how do you see the item you want to right-click half the time if you have three fingers covering the screen?

 

[frankly]

If the updated Safari 3.1 has given us CSS animation, which seems to be a patch solution for Flash or an entire different direction on part to the mobile web.

That isn't an Apple thing. Any browser can implement those features if they choose too. I'm sure Firefox will be next to do it, if they haven't already in their latest beta.

 

[frankly]

First off a short little bit of research will tell you that MMS is usually only available on 3G networks. This makes sense, imagine sending a 100k MMS over AT&T on the iPhone, it would suck. Email is the preferred app on phones these days second only to SMS. I think over all apple is trying to change the culture if phone ot phone communications and opts out of MMS because its redundancy to email.

Wow, this would look bad enough if you had just posted this opinion. However, when you added at the beginning that "a short little bit of research will tell you..." it made you look really uninformed (to put it nicely).

 

[frankly]

I think John Gruber of http://daringfireball.net said it best when he said "Adobe Smoking Same Dope as Sun"

There is no evidence that Adobe will be able to do this based on the current SDK agreement.

 

[frankly]

I think John Gruber of http://daringfireball.net said it best when he said "Adobe Smoking Same Dope as Sun"

There is no evidence that Adobe will be able to do this based on the current SDK agreement.

In fact, it almost seems like they are announcing this publicly, having done NO CODING, to try to sway public opinion in their direction. IOW, if after this announcement they can point to the public wanting Flash then maybe they can get Apple to adopt it.

Personally, I think it will backfire when they don't deliver.

 

[Yvan256]

You're all missing the big picture

Please note: I am not talking about any particular person here, these are just general comments. Keep that in mind as I am not trying to start a flame war. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, including myself.

---

If you want Flash for the ability to play videos:
- HTML5 Media Support

We could assume the same support will be included in a future version of Safari for iPhone/iPod touch. Using Flash to embed videos is because we lacked a standard, cross-browser way to do it (yes I remember the old EMBED tag, and the whole Netscape/IE implementations mess).

Of course, its use won't be widespread for a number of years (or at least until IE supports it), however if the iPhone/iPod touch supports it, it will help since a lot of users will ask support for it from their favorite websites. A lot of people underestimate what a real browser-in-the-pocket really means, in terms of future marketshare. After all, we're already seeing some websites adding MPEG-4/H.264 videos with links to the file for these users (which also happens to work for people on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc - just not embedded into the page).

edit: it seems the current build for Opera (Windows version) also supports the HTML5 "video" tag, with other operating systems planned. I'm guessing Firefox support will not be far behind, leaving only Internet Explorer as requiring Flash to put videos into web pages.


If you are complaining about websites which requires Flash:
- this is what happens when websites aren't done with web standards and use proprietary plug-ins (it doesn't matter if it's Flash, Quicktime or something else)
- complain to the webmasters/owners of the website in question that you can't use their website and can't install plug-ins (which is also true of some computers in the workplace, i.e. locked-down, can't install anything)


To those who say "Flash is used on the majority of websites":
- it's not.

Really, Flash isn't that widespread. Please continue reading instead of hitting "reply" because I do have an argument, not only an opinion.

Maybe the websites YOU visit use Flash because you like Flash content (games and "designer/concept" websites), but otherwise Flash isn't that popular in the real-world apart from games and annoying banners. I repeat "annoying banners" because for most of us, that's the only thing we see Flash used for, apart from embedding videos or music into webpages.

I could very well say the same thing, after all: "most websites are either online catalogs of electronic components or Mac-related" since I've been visiting Digi-Key.ca, Mouser.com, 123Macmini.com and MacRumors.com every day in the last month. ;-)

And yes, I know that Ajax can't do 95% of the things Flash can do. But a "website" done in Flash isn't a website any more than a "website" done as a PDF document with links inside it. Or a website done as huge GIFs or JPEGs images with the content embedded into the image and links as imagemaps.

A real website should allow us to do the following:
- change the size of the text (Opera does it best IMHO, as it changes the size of the whole page, including images)
- index all pages by search engines
- bookmark a page (please spare me those "Flash websites" which reload a different HTML page and restart the whole Flash thing every time you click a link, that goes against the nature of Flash itself)
- use the scrollwheel on both the content and the scrollbars
- print (screen capture doesn't count)
- select/copy the content (including images)
- be used by people with disabilities
- be used by people with slow connections or older browsers (you can disable images and even CSS for slower connections, slower computers and older browser versions).

And a website made with CSS degrades for older browsers - it's not as pretty but the navigation works and the content is accessible.

Yes, a lot of these things can be added to Flash content by the author (I've seen scrollwheel support and the ability to select text). But that's my point: it's not built-in, it has to be added/coded by every author.

And you're SOL anyway if your platform doesn't have Flash to begin with, which is what this whole debate is all about.


To everyone else:
- can someone please tell me what this "Plug-Ins" on/off switch is supposed to be doing in Safari on iPhone/iPod touch? (really, I have no idea - does it has built-in Quicktime or what? There has to be something, Apple wouldn't put a switch that does nothing... would they?)
- I'm thinking that maybe Apple could start adding Flash-style capabilities into Quicktime (which wouldn't fix anything IMHO as Quicktime is as proprietary as Flash. Sames goes for Microsoft's Silverlight)


Ok, now you can hit "Reply".

 

[pubius]

Adobe writes it and it sucks really bad under OS X. In fact, it is single-handedly responsible for crashing Safari on my machine at least once a day.

what mac os/safari/flash player are you running? my safari never crashes due to flash. it's time to upgrade from that 128k of memory brotha.

and for the millionth time, a lot of you people don't go to flash sites because they aren't within your industry or surf rotation. in the creative industry, which i am in (and the industry that built apple/kept it alive), they are an absolute necessity. i go to them every day. and this is not for entertainment, these are photographer sites, modeling agencies, cgi houses, graphic houses, etc. etc. etc. so, to the self centered posters... don't download flash. i will, and then choose to drain my battery or not. you don't have to.

 

[pubius]

I think John Gruber of http://daringfireball.net said it best when he said "Adobe Smoking Same Dope as Sun"

There is no evidence that Adobe will be able to do this based on the current SDK agreement.

I'm positive that adobe would not sink a ton of time and money (and announce it!) into this if they didn't think it would go anywhere.

 

[EagerDragon]

Both Java and Flash are huge security risks.

They both allow an external piece of code to be loaded from an external web site and executed in the device. Unless something changes this may not be acceptable.
BTW, flash is more than video, you can write a full application including graphics and networking using flash. Both can easily become vectors for malware.

I do find it hard to believe that Apple will not trump these guys, looks to me that Adobe and Sun are just trying to get a big rush of people to demand it and get Apple to bend.

 

[pubius]

Both Java and Flash are huge security risks.

They both allow an external piece of code to be loaded from an external web site and executed in the device. Unless something changes this may not be acceptable.
BTW, flash is more than video, you can write a full application including graphics and networking using flash. Both can easily become vectors for malware.

Has flash been a huge security risk on your home computer too (assuming you run a mac)? It's crazy, how much many times flash has breeched the mac os security. Yeah right.

Please take this as sarcasm.

 

[skinnylegs]

Adobe writes it and it sucks really bad under OS X. In fact, it is single-handedly responsible for crashing Safari on my machine at least once a day.

Me too. There is a site i frequent on a daily basis that uses Flash and if I leave it up and running, it crashes every single time.

 

[EagerDragon]

Has flash been a huge security risk on your home computer too (assuming you run a mac)? It's crazy, how much many times flash has breeched the mac os security. Yeah right.

Please take this as sarcasm.

Maybe you should leave your doors open when you go on vacation since nobody has broken into your home.

I can see you do not work in the security field.

 

[skinnylegs]

what mac os/safari/flash player are you running? my safari never crashes due to flash. it's time to upgrade from that 128k of memory brotha.

I can't speak for the other dude but I have 2 gigs of RAM.