Flash Soon to Hit the iPad?

[jafingi]

Almost every exploit that has been on iOS was through... You guessed it: Adobe products (PDF).

Flash is one of the huge security holes in Android, it drains the battery, doesn't run very well.

It just isn't meant to be on a touch-based mobile device.

I don't miss all those blinking advertisements when I browse the web.

Just my cent. 

 

[wesrk]

Today was the first time I read that memo from Steve Jobs regarding flash and iOS products. I have to say I never once considered the fifth point he made, titled touch. Made a whole lo of sense to me.

 

[BaldiMac]

Almost every exploit that has been on iOS was through... You guessed it: Adobe products (PDF).

Apple implements it's own PDF engine in iOS. Adobe has nothing to do with the security holes.

 

[shandyman]

There are two opportunities for Flash developers. One is to take exemplary Flash apps and cross-compile them for the iOS App Store. The second is to contact website owners that are hosting legacy Flash code and work with them to have their websites serve up HTML5.

exactly. Actually a few of my friends are web designers in London for some big companies and they've actually stopped using Flash for websites they create, these are companies that do sites for big name companies.

Like my mates said to me, Flash is in the twilight of its lifespan.

 

[FloatingBones]

@floatingbones you don't even own an ipad but think you should be able to criticize owners and their complaints about a full internet experience.

I own an iPad and think his points are defensible and warrant a response. Just pretend I wrote what he did and respond to them, then.

Don't hold your breath. @henchman's argument doesn't really add up: why should only a subset of participants here be entitled to comment on Adobe's concept of a "full web experience"? Would it make any difference if I drove out and bought an iPad tonight? Do you think he would start responding to facts and reasoning in the discussion? I think not.

Adobe Flash has fundamental accessibility problems. Flash ignores the accessibility aids; it shuts out those needing such widgets Flash apps. By banning Flash from iOS browsers, Apple will accelerate the conversion from Flash to HTML5 on all websites. This conversion will finally open up the "full web experience" to those users. I wonder if anyone at Adobe and the enthusiasts of Flash have ever pondered that irony of Adobe's marketing phrase.

Apple implements it's own PDF engine in iOS. Adobe has nothing to do with the security holes.

This is correct. Apple owns all of the mission-critical rendering code in iOS.

There is something instructive from the example of the Adobe Reader for the PC and Mac. Historically, Adobe's PDF engine has included the ability to include Javascript in the PDF file (Adobe talks about that capability here). As Steve Gibson has repeatedly noted on his "Security Now!" podcast, scripting has been a long-standing security problem in PDF files. Gibson has strongly recommended that Apple laptop and desktop users completely pull the Adobe Reader from their machines and use Apple's native PDF engine (which is part of Apple Preview). This is good security advice for any Mac user: unless you have a compelling reason to use it, get rid of Adobe Reader.

Since Adobe Reader is not part of iOS, this has no direct bearing on operation of iOS devices. It does point to a historical problem in Adobe software: Adobe's priority has been the addition of features at the expense of less secure software.