Try watching that on an android phone that supposedly supports flash. The experience is just terrible. At least that has been my experience with it.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Another nail in Flash's coffin
- Thread starter radiogoober
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
Try watching that on an android phone that supposedly supports flash. The experience is just terrible. At least that has been my experience with it.
I definitely understand your points completely. But what I don't understand is this "hate" (if I may I call it so) of a piece of tech, in this case flash.
Whether anyone agrees with my desire to watch a flash movie or show from megavideo or similar sites without needing to pay itunes is irrelevant to me. Call it pirating. I call it the impatience of waiting for netflix to update its service.
And as far as my post being paradoxical, I agree that it is so. I see that flash drains my battery and that sucks. But at the end of the day what i want to watch can only be found in flash format. And I more than happily deal with the choice of being able to turn flash on and off my MacBook.
I've been searching for an app that will allow me to visit such websites from my iPad but I can't find one that works consistently. Skyfire will only load a few sites in between, and another app for flash videos is "puffin" which loads megavideo videos but does not offer the option to go foward. When it crashes it forces you to restart the video.
I don't hate nor love flash. Or apple, Although I own a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone due to their outstanding quality and service. And I don't want flash to die or survive. At the end of the day I simply want to be able to use tech in a way that satisfies. Isn't that why we all buy tech? I don't know about most of the flash performance on mobile devices as I don't own an android phone or pad, but the one device I have used, a samsung galaxy tab 10 inches was able to play the cited website above and stream video quite as well as puffin.
I'll be shopping for a tablet next year but I'm not sure it will be the iPad3. Of course it would be unimaginably hard giving up on the service, quality and ecosystem offered by apple. At the end of the day I understand that not being able to stream a website on my iPad is not the end of the world. I can do so on my Mac or my ps3.I just wish I had the choice. Bad experience or not. Turn it on or off like I do with the Mac and ps3.
Sorry, but I'm completely unimpressed by your post. You have a MacBook, iPhone, iPad and PS3 (and other gear listed in your signature). And you plan on buying another tablet next year. And your complaint about the iPad is that you can't stream pirated movies and have to use your MacBook while sitting on your bed, all because you're too cheap to rent a movie from iTunes. If you can't afford to rent those movies, who bought all your other gear? Honestly I'm just disgusted.
Did you not notice the huge "sponsored by Samsung" banner in the corner?
Its bad enough to "drink the Koolaid." Its worse when you don't even realize they are pouring it down your throat.
Terrible or not is irrelevant. If I want to have flash content, I want to have a switch for that. If the experience is terrible, and I can live with that, I will leave it on. If it is damaging my brain I will just turn it off. What's wrong with that?
Just leave it off by default so the general public won't suffer from bad experiences, if any.
You can be disgusted all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that Flash is very prevalent on the web, and considering that the other OSes that support it, and their numbers are increasing, it aren't going anywhere, neither is Flash.
To sum up... save it for the walk-off.
Am I missing something about gamespot.com? I went there and the videos all worked fine on my iPad (at least the videos I looked at).
I have noticed that a ton of sites and videos people mention as not working on the iPad actually do work on the iPad, which leaves me to assume the people claiming they don't do not own an iPad.
I have noticed that a ton of sites and videos people mention as not working on the iPad actually do work on the iPad, which leaves me to assume the people claiming they don't do not own an iPad.
well-said. i just want to get stuff done. the ipad is wonderful, but there is a package of things i want a tablet to do, and it is not quite there. when someone reaches that point, i'll definitely get it! so, instead of celebrating death, i am looking forward to a new birth. maybe the ipad 3 with a flash toggle and a few other features i have been waiting for
I used to feel the same way as you, but flash on a mobile device just doesn't work the way you'd expect it to. Just putting in a flash toggle won't do anything... it's a poorly made technology that's unreliable on mobile devices.
try an android for a while and you'll know what i'm talking about...
honeslty its too bad Apple didn't let consumers figure that out on their own. All that flash toggle would do is make consumers direct pressure at web sites to switch from flash to HTML5 rather than direct pressure at Apple to adopt flash
I remember a time when animated .GIFs and big "WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!" and "THIS SITE OPTIMIZED FOR NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR!" were prevalent on the web too.
You are completely mistaken if you truly believe that Flash isn't going anywhere. It's already going away. See below.
DeathChill said:
I think you're right. In this thread or another, a guy was going on and on about his GF loving to watch news on some websites. He was saying how his GF can't use cnn.com on their iPad because it doesn't play video. (he also said she prefers to read on a 7" screen instead of the iPad screen - lol) CNN.com works perfectly fine on the iPad. As does Reuters, Fox News, and MSNBC. I only tested those four, and all work perfectly fine. I just loaded them and watched a video. Basically every single major news site supports HTML5 video. And there are dozens of major news corps with native iOS apps.
These websites deliver the news. They want to be seen! They want people to access their content. They'd be absolute idiots to not cater to the iPad. And guess what? They're not idiots (well...). They work perfectly well with and stream video to the iPad!
Sure there are some cases where a website doesn't support HTML5 yet, but honestly THOSE are the websites that will get left in the dust. The only news site I've found that doesn't support HTML5 video are crappy local news stations.
Truly, those people are just lying.
Last edited:
Yes, but it is a lot of work to incorporate flash in to systems. The reasons apple gave to leave flash out really make a lot of sense in some ways.
That was me. Yes gamespot.com actually works now, my bad. Last time I remember it didn't play, but that was quite a while ago.
Well it's not up to us, the consumers, to care about how hard it is to incorporate it. If Google can do it, I'm sure Apple can do it as well. Heck, Google didn't even write the flash plugin.
Yes it is a pain. Have you actually TRIED running that Flash on a mobile device? I've done it just now and it's not pretty. Yes it works but it's terribly jerky and lags all over the place. It's painful.
No it's decreasing in one way and increasing in another way. Remember how every interactive animated drop down menu and slideshows were done in Flash? Now Flash is losing fast in those areas and most latest sites are using Javascripts, such as JQuery framework combined with CSS.
Where Flash is important is bigger fancy cross-platform online apps, such as the above 360 photoviewer, full screen newspaper viewer, Blurb book creator, etc. The problem? These Flash apps are mostly unusable on touchscreen based on mobile devices because 1) They aren't touch optimized and 2) They are slow as molasses on mobile devices, just like Piggie's example.
And it happened before in another Flash thread: a poster brought up a big large online Flash app to drum up his argument of "see what iPad is missing!" And when you try it on a mobile device, it's an unusable lagfest.
I've said it before but this is Flash's dilemma on a mobile device. For anything that's simple enough to run on a mobile device - playing video and audio, simple games and animations - you don't need to use Flash and the web is quickly moving away from Flash. On the other hand, the sophisticated cross-platform apps are usually unusable on a mobile phone/tablet. So it's caught in the neither region for these devices.
it's a good thing that the web only has major news sites and entertainment, and that all i use the ipad for is viewing the content of popular sites, because otherwise i might actually find the lack of flash to be a problem. whew! thank goodness. to the billions of other crappy sites out there run by people with small budgets and little web savvy, you are all dead to me...
I think developers will eventually adapt to Apple's system cause you're talking about more than 80 million devices sold annually that won't support your site or service if you exclusively adopt Flash.
Either they will release a dedicated app for their service or even redirect iOS devices to another version of the site like some are already doing
Either they will release a dedicated app for their service or even redirect iOS devices to another version of the site like some are already doing
I'm not taking a philosophical position, but as empirical fact: Flash is going away as a primary format. It will remain around for a long time as a fall back position for people with browsers too old to support html5. It will take a while for html5 to really supplant flash because of how much flash is out there, but make no mistake, companies are moving that way. iOS devices are that prevalent and that important to web traffic. Steve is actually winning this one.
sounds pretty balanced. i don't know where companies are headed, or what the future holds, but i think the op has called the death of flash too early, and i think providing support for the present and future environment is the best way to go. as someone else in this thread said, if flash truly sucked, users wouldn't touch it, and it would die of natural causes anyhow.
I don't recall the OP saying Flash is dead. In fact, the title is "another nail in Flash's coffin" which mirrors my post "another one bites the dust".
Of course Flash isn't dissappearing tomorrow. Nobody has said it would and anybody who thinks that is a fool.
HOWEVER, the iPad was never sold as a full laptop replacement. We all know it has limitations. And when the iPhone was first released, there was a lot of web content it couldn't display. But due to all of the iOS devices that existed, many companies started making plans to accomodate. When the iPad launched there were still limits on what you could view, but not nearly as bad as iPhone users had first experienced. And one model later with the iPad 2, that limited content has shrunk even more. More and more sites that support the largest percentage of web traffic are retiring flash. It's just a matter of time before the smaller sites catch up.
In the meantime, does this mean that Apple should care if they support some firewall's flash UI? Sorry, I don't think so. That is not their target audience. They are not looking to support everyone in every situation, they never have. If this is your expectation, you probably shouldn't be an Apple customer in the first place and your whining on this forum is nothing more than a mosquitoe of the ears of those that are finding the iPad to be a great tool that serves it's intended purpose well. Go buy your Android tablet and complain about the iPad in the Adroid forums (while you secretly wish you had a tablet that worked as fluidly as the iPad).
Flash will die, but it will be a slow death. However, the majority of web traffic is moving away from Flash rapidly due to iOS devices and for this I think Steve Jobs.*
*Call me a fanboy if you like, but anybody who follows me knows otherwise. I'm actually an MS fanboy.
Edit: I should note, that for 4 months demand outpaced supply of the iPad 2. Are any Android devices experiencing this kind of sales? Even if Android surpasses iOS by the predicted 2014 date, by then the volume of iOS devices on the market will still mean that every web developer out there will have to consider the volume of iOS users and if they want them to access their content.
Of course Flash isn't dissappearing tomorrow. Nobody has said it would and anybody who thinks that is a fool.
HOWEVER, the iPad was never sold as a full laptop replacement. We all know it has limitations. And when the iPhone was first released, there was a lot of web content it couldn't display. But due to all of the iOS devices that existed, many companies started making plans to accomodate. When the iPad launched there were still limits on what you could view, but not nearly as bad as iPhone users had first experienced. And one model later with the iPad 2, that limited content has shrunk even more. More and more sites that support the largest percentage of web traffic are retiring flash. It's just a matter of time before the smaller sites catch up.
In the meantime, does this mean that Apple should care if they support some firewall's flash UI? Sorry, I don't think so. That is not their target audience. They are not looking to support everyone in every situation, they never have. If this is your expectation, you probably shouldn't be an Apple customer in the first place and your whining on this forum is nothing more than a mosquitoe of the ears of those that are finding the iPad to be a great tool that serves it's intended purpose well. Go buy your Android tablet and complain about the iPad in the Adroid forums (while you secretly wish you had a tablet that worked as fluidly as the iPad).
Flash will die, but it will be a slow death. However, the majority of web traffic is moving away from Flash rapidly due to iOS devices and for this I think Steve Jobs.*
*Call me a fanboy if you like, but anybody who follows me knows otherwise. I'm actually an MS fanboy.
Edit: I should note, that for 4 months demand outpaced supply of the iPad 2. Are any Android devices experiencing this kind of sales? Even if Android surpasses iOS by the predicted 2014 date, by then the volume of iOS devices on the market will still mean that every web developer out there will have to consider the volume of iOS users and if they want them to access their content.
Last edited:
I agree that Flash will be here for a long, long time, but I do think there will be a tipping point as HTML5 and related technologies replace the basic, simple functions of Flash on the web. Video, short animations, etc. In other words, I think Flash will continue to be viable as a cross platform application runtime, but it's use for creating websites and other content delivery will diminish relatively quickly.
And once it is no longer the default technology for the most popular (and most simple) functions, I think that 99% install base on laptops and desktops will begin to fall. And I don't think it will have to fall very much before it's lack of ubiquity affects its usefulness for cross platform apps.
Last edited by a moderator:
I've been sitting on the sidelines in this discussion as I'm not familiar enough with tech details.
But I'm going to finally jump in after reading so much here.
I've decided to jump on the "iPad/iOS should support Flash" bandwagon.
Now, for my iPad use I don't need Flash, but I suppose it would be good to have it available. So many others do seem to want it, why not support it? Seems a little petty on Apples part to simply dismiss its importance.
Their argument of the bugginess of Flash seams overdone. Flash works just fine on my desktop Mac (can't remember the last time it crashed), so why can't they make it work decently on the iPad/iOS devices?
Just a thought.
But I'm going to finally jump in after reading so much here.
I've decided to jump on the "iPad/iOS should support Flash" bandwagon.
Now, for my iPad use I don't need Flash, but I suppose it would be good to have it available. So many others do seem to want it, why not support it? Seems a little petty on Apples part to simply dismiss its importance.
Their argument of the bugginess of Flash seams overdone. Flash works just fine on my desktop Mac (can't remember the last time it crashed), so why can't they make it work decently on the iPad/iOS devices?
Just a thought.
You are comparing 2 completely different environments. To assume it should work well on one because it works well on another is illogical.
most "Flash should die" bandwagon riders would jump in and say that Flash is very unsecure, crashes, and does not work on mobile devices.
I find Flash to be more or less secure. And on my PC, I believe last time it crashed was about a month ago, when my computer overheated, thanks to NY weather. And Flash security, while I am no expert, is patched fairly fast. Safari by itself is more dangerous than Flash. Sure, Flash does contribute to security issues, but not as much as people make it out to.
As for the "Does not work well on mobile devices" is simply a myth. I have Evo 3D, a dual core phone, with graphics faster than iPhone 4 and iPad 2. On that device, Flash works without even a hiccup. Browser does load up Flash elements as the last thing on the page, but once it's loaded, it functions well. On my previous device, a single core HTC Evo, Flash took a bit longer to load and framerate was somewhat suffering, but hey, it worked, if was very functional.
The Flash on iOS is more of a power move by Apple. Flash will slowly eat into Apple's App Store profits, and will have people use web pages instead of dedicated apps for content. Apple wants to have a smooth User Experience, and by forcing content providers to code an app instead of using flash, they will make it more or less uniform user experience. Not a bad move for Apple, but not a great move for consumer.
I find Flash to be more or less secure. And on my PC, I believe last time it crashed was about a month ago, when my computer overheated, thanks to NY weather. And Flash security, while I am no expert, is patched fairly fast. Safari by itself is more dangerous than Flash. Sure, Flash does contribute to security issues, but not as much as people make it out to.
As for the "Does not work well on mobile devices" is simply a myth. I have Evo 3D, a dual core phone, with graphics faster than iPhone 4 and iPad 2. On that device, Flash works without even a hiccup. Browser does load up Flash elements as the last thing on the page, but once it's loaded, it functions well. On my previous device, a single core HTC Evo, Flash took a bit longer to load and framerate was somewhat suffering, but hey, it worked, if was very functional.
The Flash on iOS is more of a power move by Apple. Flash will slowly eat into Apple's App Store profits, and will have people use web pages instead of dedicated apps for content. Apple wants to have a smooth User Experience, and by forcing content providers to code an app instead of using flash, they will make it more or less uniform user experience. Not a bad move for Apple, but not a great move for consumer.
While this did pass through my mind when writing, I still think they can do it, and do it well. They're just pushing a particular agenda.
One of Apples big concerns is how buggy it is on OSX systems, implying it would be so on iOS systems. Isn't that thought process just as illogical - they're comparing two different environments?
And we are using your judgement because? Sorry, but the security issues are well documented....just becuase you "find Flash to be more or less secure" doesn't make it so. Just do a little Googling.
When did Apple say it was buggy?
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
"But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short."
Last edited:
Not really.
One reason for bugs is inexperience with exactly how a system operates. Code can be written in a way that works on one system, but it doesn't translate to another system. Or code is written incorrectly, and it accidentally works on one system, while failing on another system.
Those kinds of bugs are gradually eliminated as experience is gained on the new system, and as more time and testing occurs.
Whatever bugs a piece of software has, moving it to another system is much more likely to increase the number of bugs, rather than decrease it. There may be a few bugs that go away, but that doesn't necessarily mean the code is correct. It just means it's accidentally working as expected. Those kinds of bugs can be very hard to find.
I think it's obvious that my original post, and the theme of the thread, is that Flash is on it's way out. Yes, it is still very prevalent, but major websites are dropping support for it. It's a big thing that Pandora is being coded in HTML5 and not using Flash. It's a big thing that all of the major news sites support HTML5 now and don't rely solely on Flash.
BTW did you see this?
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/18/cnn-streaming-24-hours-a-day-to-browsers-ipad-and-iphone-apps/
I wish someone would take a survey of MAJOR internet websites that don't use HTML5 now, and then look at them again in six months.
I agree with you. I think it's a good point that Flash may have some use for cross platform applications, but I still think only for the short term. Ie, a single poster stated that Flash is used for their router's configuration page. Most likely Flash was used there as a simple crutch in lieu of coding something more complicated using JavaScript/AJAX. The same thing for university BlackBoard systems (which, incidentally, are horrid to use.)
--
Question: What on earth is compelling people to defend Flash? Ie, not defend the ability to use it on a device, but to defend it as a technology that should still be present in the future? You have to admit that it's inefficient. It has to load up an entire application (Flash player) just to be able to use it. It's coded by one company. So the entire future of Flash player relies on Adobe to update it and innovate. And let's be honest. Adobe isn't known for really doing much of that. Also, Flash isn't "open." Why not embrace open web standards? Why not embrace HTML5 and know that you'll never have to rely on a single company to provide basics?
I refuse to believe that you guys are Luddites. But I can't understand why you want a crappy technology to remain prevalent. I really believe, that for most of you (at least the ones that own Android devices), you defend Flash because playing Flash videos, etc, is essentially the only thing your device can do that an iPad can't. You feel compelled to act like Flash matters just because your device can do it. Without Flash, Android is just another "me too!" platform.
Last edited:
- Status