Another nail in Flash's coffin

[fattire357]

Flash on Android doesn't work 100% of the time so I think many have this misperception that flash is this perfect technology just waiting to be released to iPhones.


Yesterday I tried to access an interactive graph on my Android - instead a saw a blank, white screen.


Steve Jobs should have allowed Flash to be released for iOS devices so we can all slowly come to the conclusion that hey wait, this really isn't going to work? It took having an android phone for me to come to that conclusion....

 

[radiogoober]

Don't think once flash video and audio gets replaced by html5 that it will be dead. Flash is all about ultimate user experience and presentations, something that still cant be achieved by html5 and it wont be achieved for at least another 3-5 years.

Flash will live as long as it takes care of itself and its customers.

Tablets that dont support flash are actually pushing users to download application equivalent of the site they want to visit which is nothing but web recycled content. I don't understand how those that have flash also have crippled experience when all iOS users have to download BMW app first in order to get basic info because going to bmw.com tough the browser will take you to super lackluster mobile site.

I'm sure it's an exercise in futility discussing flash with you, given your opinions. There is absolutely nothing that says "ultimate user experience and presentations" in Flash. Flash is a turd. It's ugly. A website has never been *more functional* due to having a flash interface, a flash menu, or anything. It's always made less functional, uglier, and clunkier.

 

[fattire357]

How exactly is Steve bullying anybody. Did he force you to buy an iPad? Did he force people to develop for the iPad?

I can actually see why some people might be put off by Steve's decision to keep flash off the iPad / iPhone.

Personally after seeing flash on the Android I think it was a good idea to boot it off the table, but I'm not sure why he didn't let us figure that out? His decision left a lot of people thinking flash was a great technology because everyone thought it worked the same as their PCs or Macs. I guess we saw a taste of his management style lol

 

[s15119]

he is also forcing site owners to redo everything in order to play in the apple miniverse. .

Only if you don't know what the word "force" means.

He's not forcing anyone to do anything.

 

[Tarzanman]

EXACTLY. It's been around since the '90s. So you guys can take your Sony Walkman and your Flash websites and go play around on Windows 95 all day long.

Did daycare end early today or something? Big people are talking here, kid. Some problems with your analogy:

1. Windows 95 didn't get replaced until the company that made it (Microsoft) decided to replace it with a more modern version (Win98). Even though more advanced competitors existed (Linux, X-Windows, SGI, etc)... it was certainly *not* killed by some competing 3rd party alternative.. and Flash won't be either.

2. Know your history. Sony could have *easily* snared the entire mp3 market while Apple was still licking its wounds from the beating they got in the 90's. The reason why they never developed an mp3 walkman is because their music division was scared sh*tless of people sharing & downloading mp3's without paying $18 for a CD. Years later after the success of the ipod, they realized that their fear is what allowed another company to become the market leader in portable music hardware. The difference with Flash is that Flash isn't a piece of hardware, it is software that updates itself as time passes.

People have already tried to kill off Flash (Silverlight, anyone?). Flash is here now, and unless Apple (or anyone else) publishes a full-featured animation suite for vector & raster, tweened & scripted animation which you can simply drop into a web directory, then Flash won't go anywhere.

Animating in flash is easy enough for kids to use... and ceteris parabis, developers will use whatever gets the job done with the least amount of headache.

Flash will be ubiquitious for at least 5 more years. Maybe by then your ipad 11 support it?

 

[ctbear]

Only if you don't know what the word "force" means.

He's not forcing anyone to do anything.

I think what he meant was by blocking flash on the most popular mobile platform, apple is "forcing" the developers to make the hard choice: lose the huge iOS market, or redo their works without flash. Of course no one wants to give up the market so the developers don't have a choice on that anyways.
I still don't understand why we can't just have the option to use it. If I remember correctly flash is not built in on Android. You have to download it from android market, and enable it on browser. Why can't apple do that?

 

[palpatine]

My word choices really seem to have gotten to some of you. I don't know why, because I think my point throughout this thread has been crystal clear.

Freedom
I want the freedom to choose how to view content on the web and I neither share the op's joy with the marginalization of flash nor his opinion that manufacturers who give their customers the choice of viewing flash are somehow deserving of criticism. it doesn't mean i love flash. it just means i want to view the sites of developers who refuse (usually because of costs) to provide separate ipad-friendly content (like hulu plus). oh, the horror of wanting this choice... Perhaps you have lived too long in the Apple garden and forgot what it is like to break out of jail and feel sunlight on your faces

OK. Let's talk about these provocative words that some of you have latched onto.

Bully
I think Steve's approach to the issue of Flash was a type of bullying. He's using his position as head of one of the largest manufacturers of content consumption devices in the world to push a company he doesn't like out of the mobile device market. Again, why are we cheering Steve's restrictions on our freedom to view content and the harm done to this company? I don't know. If every company acted this way, we'd be back to the vhs/betamax crap that screwed consumers (my family has a betamax somewhere in the closet). There is nothing to cheer here. Steve is also protecting me from the dangers of usb connectors, troublesome slots for additional memory, the bad luck resulting from having 13 apps in a folder, etc. If you want to play in Steve's garden you gotta play by his very, very rigid rules. It's not bullying when things are done for my own good

Force
I don't remember saying Steve forced me to purchase the iPad. Where are you getting this gibberish from? I did say Steve is forcing developers to recode their sites in order to play in the apple miniverse. I don't see why this use of the word force is so troublesome to you. The word can be used in several senses and doesn't necessarily mean that steve has to physically visit your house and give you swirlies until you change your site you know...

Steve has refused to provide support for flash. if you have flash, you cannot be seen on the ipad by the vast majority of users. if you want to play on the apple device, you have to change your site. how is this not forcing them to change?

Would you prefer that I say Steve has imposed an extremely high barrier between flash content and the apple garden, and has encouraged them to change to his preferred format or attempt to scale the wall by inventing a technology that somehow meets his criteria for flash content that isn't flash content? I guess it is more wordy, and sounds suitably fawning to our overlord. It's not force when Steve smiles and encourages you to submit to his will

 

[s15119]

Animating in flash is easy enough for kids to use...

And judging from most websites that rely on it - that's who's doing the aminating.

 

[s15119]

My word choices really seem to have gotten to some of you. I don't know why, because I think my point throughout this thread has been crystal clear.

Freedom
I want the freedom to choose how to view content on the web .

You have that freedom. Go and enjoy.

 

[DeathChill]

The Flash supporters in here make it sound like Flash has always been sitting there waiting for Apple to allow it on iOS. The reality is that the first BETA wasn't released until around three years later. Four years later and it still doesn't work very well on ANY mobile platform.

I am not against Flash; if it could be made to work adequately on mobile that'd be fine. However, it runs poorly from everything I've read.

 

[palpatine]

The Flash supporters in here make it sound like Flash has always been sitting there waiting for Apple to allow it on iOS. The reality is that the first BETA wasn't released until around three years later. Four years later and it still doesn't work very well on ANY mobile platform.

I am not against Flash; if it could be made to work adequately on mobile that'd be fine. However, it runs poorly from everything I've read.

flash supporters? just make sure you don't put me in that group. i am pro-choice. that's all. flash sucks. i don't even like it. but, it exists. making it more difficult for me to view it won't make it go away for the forseeable future. criticizing other companies for giving customers choice (as the op did) seems wrongheaded to me.

 

[DeathChill]

flash supporters? just make sure you don't put me in that group. i am pro-choice. that's all. flash sucks. i don't even like it. but, it exists. making it more difficult for me to view it won't make it go away for the forseeable future. criticizing other companies for giving customers choice (as the op did) seems wrongheaded to me.

You do have a choice: you can buy one of the multitude of tablets that do support Flash. Unfortunately every mobile Flash implementation seems to have issues. It's up to you to decide if your need for Flash outweigh the positives of the iPad.

The very reason the iPad shines is because Apple doesn't want to implement half measures. Currently mobile Flash is a half measure.

 

[BaldiMac]

My word choices really seem to have gotten to some of you. I don't know why, because I think my point throughout this thread has been crystal clear.

Freedom
I want the freedom to choose how to view content on the web and I neither share the op's joy with the marginalization of flash nor his opinion that manufacturers who give their customers the choice of viewing flash are somehow deserving of criticism. it doesn't mean i love flash. it just means i want to view the sites of developers who refuse (usually because of costs) to provide separate ipad-friendly content (like hulu plus). oh, the horror of wanting this choice... Perhaps you have lived too long in the Apple garden and forgot what it is like to break out of jail and feel sunlight on your faces

OK. Let's talk about these provocative words that some of you have latched onto.

Bully
I think Steve's approach to the issue of Flash was a type of bullying. He's using his position as head of one of the largest manufacturers of content consumption devices in the world to push a company he doesn't like out of the mobile device market. Again, why are we cheering Steve's restrictions on our freedom to view content and the harm done to this company? I don't know. If every company acted this way, we'd be back to the vhs/betamax crap that screwed consumers (my family has a betamax somewhere in the closet). There is nothing to cheer here. Steve is also protecting me from the dangers of usb connectors, troublesome slots for additional memory, the bad luck resulting from having 13 apps in a folder, etc. If you want to play in Steve's garden you gotta play by his very, very rigid rules. It's not bullying when things are done for my own good

Force
I don't remember saying Steve forced me to purchase the iPad. Where are you getting this gibberish from? I did say Steve is forcing developers to recode their sites in order to play in the apple miniverse. I don't see why this use of the word force is so troublesome to you. The word can be used in several senses and doesn't necessarily mean that steve has to physically visit your house and give you swirlies until you change your site you know...

Steve has refused to provide support for flash. if you have flash, you cannot be seen on the ipad by the vast majority of users. if you want to play on the apple device, you have to change your site. how is this not forcing them to change?

Would you prefer that I say Steve has imposed an extremely high barrier between flash content and the apple garden, and has encouraged them to change to his preferred format or attempt to scale the wall by inventing a technology that somehow meets his criteria for flash content that isn't flash content? I guess it is more wordy, and sounds suitably fawning to our overlord. It's not force when Steve smiles and encourages you to submit to his will

The problem that people have with your use of the word force is that your using it as a loaded term to exaggerate your point. Adobe "forces" everyone to create content in the Flash format to access the Flash platform. Having so much web content locked in a proprietary format is much worse than Apple "forcing" the use of open standards.

Freedom doesn't mean people and companies have to do whatever you want or whatever you "need". Apple made a choice to not allow Flash (any plugins for that matter) in their mobile browser. What about their freedom? Why should they be "forced" to support a format that they don't believe in? Apple's customers as a whole sure don't seem to care. Either do most of the competition's users for that matter.

It's just so disingenuous that people keep using Adobe as the foil to Apple's "walled garden" and "lock in." Being that one of Adobe Flash's biggest values for content distribution is it's proprietary DRM (which creates exactly the same walled garden and lock in.)

 

[Carouser]

Freedom doesn't mean people and companies have to do whatever you want or whatever you "need". Apple made a choice to not allow Flash (any plugins for that matter) in their mobile browser. What about their freedom? Why should they be "forced" to support a format that they don't believe in? Apple's customers as a whole sure don't seem to care.

Bingo. But even if the contrary position is correct, that Apple has no good reasons for not having a Flash option in Safari; that it's absent only in order to product App store profits and because of the CEO's terrible personality, so what? How does this change anything? I have no idea why being correct about this would matter to anybody. Flash isn't there, for whatever reason, and you can (1) decide whether this is important to you and get on with whatever you are doing, (2) gnash your teeth in anger at having to buy something which doesn't do something it never purported to do, or (3) feel smug in knowing that Apple isn't that smart after all, ha-ha! I, the consumer, know they aren't justified in doing what they are doing, take that Mr. Steve Jobs, I see through you!

 

[radiogoober]

Personally after seeing flash on the Android I think it was a good idea to boot it off the table, but I'm not sure why he didn't let us figure that out? His decision left a lot of people thinking flash was a great technology because everyone thought it worked the same as their PCs or Macs. I guess we saw a taste of his management style lol

Let's be honest: Joe User is reasonably uninformed. We all know Flash sucks ass on desktops/laptops, and totally blows on mobile devices. If Apple had allowed Flash on, and everyone sits there and loads up their crappy flash pages and the browser starts sucking, people would be saying "Oh my god Safari sucks!!! Apple sucks because Flash doesn't work!" *We* know the problem is with Adobe. It's not Android, iOS, or webOS's fault that Flash sucks. It's Adobe's fault and the entire Flash technology that sucks. There's just no reason for Apple to let a completely ****** technology on their device that could risk making it suck.

You don't buy a Porsche and let a homeless guy diarrhea in it. Likewise, you don't make the best tablet on earth and put a slow, ancient, clunky, ugly technology like Flash in it. It'd be like Apple putting a 5.25" floppy disk drive in it.

 

[andrewlgm]

Pandora has rebuilt it's front-end in super fast HTML5, dropping support for antiquated Flash.

http://www.pandora.com/newpandora

Another nail in Flash's coffin. The more that this happens, the better.

I still stand by my statement: any competing mobile OS that brags about supporting Flash is in fact advertising a negative feature. Flash is a step backwards and supporting Flash is merely a diversion so people can overlook your poorly designed OS. Concentrate on the user experience and quit trying to tack on "features" that are really just distractors.

Silly argumentation. I bought the Ipad and I love it. But to say flash is unnecessary is absurd. I will probably be buying a new tablet this coming year and it won't be an ipad 3 simply because it lacks flash. I'll give the original ipad to my niece and go with a flash based one. Not because I hate apple. Or because I love android, or WP7, or whatever. But because I can't use the ipad at school (it will not work with most of the sites I'm required to use), it will not load my own restaurant's webpage. And because I don't always want to spend $4.99 to see a movie once which I will never see again. So instead of carrying my macbook to bed to watch that movie from a flash based website, I'd like to use the iPad. But that's not currently possible. None of the flash-supporting apps in the appstore fully solve the problem that is lacking flash.

 

[Carouser]

I don't always want to spend $4.99 to see a movie once which I will never see again. So instead of carrying my macbook to bed to watch that movie from a flash based website, I'd like to use the iPad.

What movie can you watch in Flash that otherwise costs $4.99 through Apple with no other alternatives?

 

[colinmack]

I'll provide you my definitions:

Freedom: I had the freedom to purchase an iPhone or iPad, with full knowledge of the technology pros/cons, or go with an Android-based device instead - with that freedom of choice, I chose the better platform

Bully: Apple didn't bully anybody, one more time for those that are history/fact-challenged - Apple had no choice, a viable iPhone Flash plug-in did not exist, despite them reaching out to Adobe and asking them to develop something - Adobe is well-documented to have basically dropped support for Mac (according to reports, despite roughly 50/50 sales between Windows/Mac, they shifted resources and put 8 times the staff on Windows development, resulting in extremely buggy and unstable Mac Flash code and the #1 source for OSX system crashes) - so despite owing half their revenue to Apple, Adobe certainly played the bully first - they were offered the option to develop a working plugin, they made a choice not to assign resources and pursue it due to their pre-existing resource bias towards Windows (a choice that in retrospect was seriously short-sighted, and I'm sure they regret)

Force: again, nobody is forced by anyone - customers aren't forced to buy anything, and developers aren't force to target any platform, everyone gets to make the choice that is in their best interests - and again Steve didn't twist anyone's arm or refuse to adopt Flash, Apple approached Adobe first and Adobe wouldn't support it, it was only in the aftermath that everyone dug their heels in and started to spin things (on both sides)

My word choices really seem to have gotten to some of you. I don't know why, because I think my point throughout this thread has been crystal clear.

Freedom
...
Bully
...
Force

 

[colinmack]

...You don't buy a Porsche and let a homeless guy diarrhea in it...

That made me laugh.

 

[spiderman0616]

Let's be honest: Joe User is reasonably uninformed. We all know Flash sucks ass on desktops/laptops, and totally blows on mobile devices. If Apple had allowed Flash on, and everyone sits there and loads up their crappy flash pages and the browser starts sucking, people would be saying "Oh my god Safari sucks!!! Apple sucks because Flash doesn't work!" *We* know the problem is with Adobe. It's not Android, iOS, or webOS's fault that Flash sucks. It's Adobe's fault and the entire Flash technology that sucks. There's just no reason for Apple to let a completely ****** technology on their device that could risk making it suck.

You don't buy a Porsche and let a homeless guy diarrhea in it. Likewise, you don't make the best tablet on earth and put a slow, ancient, clunky, ugly technology like Flash in it. It'd be like Apple putting a 5.25" floppy disk drive in it.

That's an explanation I can go along with.

 

[BaldiMac]

But because I can't use the ipad at school (it will not work with most of the sites I'm required to use),

I'd bet that statement is an exaggeration unless you are talking about something besides Flash.

it will not load my own restaurant's webpage.

Seems like it would be cheaper and better business to redesign your website without flash. Doesn't it bother you that over 150 million iOS users can't see your website? Not to mention all of the millions of other mobile devices that don't have Flash even though it's available. Adobe only expects it to be on 20% or so of smartphone by the end of the year

 

[MonkeySee....]

Let's be honest: Joe User is reasonably uninformed. We all know Flash sucks ass on desktops/laptops, and totally blows on mobile devices. If Apple had allowed Flash on, and everyone sits there and loads up their crappy flash pages and the browser starts sucking, people would be saying "Oh my god Safari sucks!!! Apple sucks because Flash doesn't work!" *We* know the problem is with Adobe. It's not Android, iOS, or webOS's fault that Flash sucks. It's Adobe's fault and the entire Flash technology that sucks. There's just no reason for Apple to let a completely ****** technology on their device that could risk making it suck.

You don't buy a Porsche and let a homeless guy diarrhea in it. Likewise, you don't make the best tablet on earth and put a slow, ancient, clunky, ugly technology like Flash in it. It'd be like Apple putting a 5.25" floppy disk drive in it.

I liked that :lol:

If anyone is bothered stick a Flash Block extension on your browser and go about your day as normal.

Apart from youtube (which is already converted) I doubt you'll even notice/miss having flash at all.

 

[mattraehl]

This whole Flash thing will be a complete non-discussion in about 1 year, 2 tops. No Flash isn't going away, but the reality is that HTML5 adoption is skyrocketing, the number of iOS devices out there are growing by millions each month, and Flash still sucks on the mobile devices that do run it anyways. I suspect most people talking game about switching tablets just for Flash haven't actually used Flash on a tablet yet.

As a side note, anything that leads to the demise of over-animated, image-bloated Flash restaurant sites is a win in my book. I would support Kim Jong-il himself for president if he ran primarily on a platform of elimination of Flash from restaurant websites.

 

[taipan61]

As a side note, anything that leads to the demise of over-animated, image-bloated Flash restaurant sites is a win in my book. I would support Kim Jong-il himself for president if he ran primarily on a platform of elimination of Flash from restaurant websites.

thank you for making me laugh...made my day

 

[palpatine]

You do have a choice: you can buy one of the multitude of tablets that do support Flash. Unfortunately every mobile Flash implementation seems to have issues. It's up to you to decide if your need for Flash outweigh the positives of the iPad.

The very reason the iPad shines is because Apple doesn't want to implement half measures. Currently mobile Flash is a half measure.

yep. like i said, the pros far outweigh the cons today. tomorrow may be different. i disagree about the reasons why the iPad shines, but that would take us somewhere else.

as for the continuing criticism about my word choices, i guess i have said all i can about it. thanks for the discussion, but i don't agree.

i feel like many people keep polishing that turd in the hopes that they can turn restrictive policies into "freedom," lack of support for content on the internet into a "shining" experience, and customer-friendly efforts by other companies into foolishness.

i guess the consensus here is that it is a great moment for us as consumers when flash gets dropped, and that companies who offer flash in their products are bad (as the op stated). we'll just have to agree to disagree about this.