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I rarely run into audio/video content online anymore that iPhone can't play. Winning?

B

Bobby Corwen

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 16, 2010
2,723
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Has Steve Jobs already defeated Adobe in the Flash war?

I was at pitchfork.com and I was browsing content and everything was all playing and I couldn't help think that about 1 yr ago I could rarely play Anything on their site from my phone but now it seems everything is encoded to be iPhone compatible. In general I feel like 4 out of 5 links now seem to work on mobile when it used to be more like 1 out of 5.

It seems everything either has changed to conform to the Chancellors' bidding and if not, there's probably a mobile app alternative to the web. (NBA.com comes to mind where you can't see flash highlights on web, but all those highlights are in their NBA app. Also the Hulu app.)

I thought it would take longer but I am already pretty satisfied about this whole situation. I never though flash as we knew it would be gone so fast... Wow.
 
I don't use flash much even on my macbook pro but the few sites I do stream video or audio uses flash. I recently thought about getting an iPad 2 after a buddy of mine showed me his but I would want flash on a tablet. My phone doesn't bother me with or without flash but tablet and laptop needs it as of now.
 
I think this shift is so powerful that even laptops are becoming obsolete.

Text, audio, video are the only constants because they express the one thing that we will always continue to care about: the human condition.

I for one am getting bored of the Internet and will continue to probably minimize what I actually do on it.

My phone can do all that and more so now this is my primary format and flash isn't on here and I find myself very fickle with my allegiances.

I feel like there are new challenges facing modern sites because the saturation of everything is making everyone bored of everything.

The daily news addiction is one thing but I feel like the Internet itself will make way for communication of the raw elements (videos, words) and everything else is clutter.

Any smart site would not use flash. Peoples alegiences are so fickle that a company can lose it's target audience/customer.
 
Bobby Corwen said:
I thought it would take longer but I am already pretty satisfied about this whole situation. I never though flash as we knew it would be gone so fast... Wow.
Click to expand...

If you think Flash is "gone" you are completely deluded.

While some content is now being made available through use of HTML5's video tag, there are many problems posed by that.

Flash will be around for a VERY long time, and if you look at the amount of people accessing Flash-only content then you are talking about hundreds of millions of users per month.
 
Last edited:
Websites are definitely moving away from Flash but I think it may just be that I don't even bother trying to access those sites that I know don't work on iOS anymore. I wish websites would move away from it even faster though, Flash just has a way of crashing and/or slowing down my browsing/computing experience.
 
Bobby Corwen said:
Has Steve Jobs already defeated Adobe in the Flash war?

I was at pitchfork.com and I was browsing content and everything was all playing and I couldn't help think that about 1 yr ago I could rarely play Anything on their site from my phone but now it seems everything is encoded to be iPhone compatible. In general I feel like 4 out of 5 links now seem to work on mobile when it used to be more like 1 out of 5.

It seems everything either has changed to conform to the Chancellors' bidding and if not, there's probably a mobile app alternative to the web. (NBA.com comes to mind where you can't see flash highlights on web, but all those highlights are in their NBA app. Also the Hulu app.)

I thought it would take longer but I am already pretty satisfied about this whole situation. I never though flash as we knew it would be gone so fast... Wow.
Click to expand...

I challenge you to play 1080p .MKV files with DTS audio... :p
 
iphonepiephone said:
I challenge you to play 1080p .MKV files with DTS audio... :p
Click to expand...

I challenge you to give me a reason why I should? Honestly nothing matters anymore.

I don't know if I feel this way because the content is really changing or if I am not going to the content since I can't. What came first? The chicken or the egg? Or some sort of evolved creature that it mutated from that was half bird half chicken that also laid eggs?

In the end none of it matters, why should I do anything that I can't? And I'm not giving up my iPhone.

Who really cares anyway?
 
While there are more non-flash videos available to be seen on iOS devices or a dedicated app is available, its still very inconvenient for my daily browsing. I still encounter lots of flash videos that i can't view on my iphone and if there is a standalone app that lets me watch videos, its still inconvenient for me.

Case in point, someone tweeted a link to the spectacular incident in the penalty box of the canucks/sharks game last night, but its a flash video, so i can't watch it. I could go to the official nhl app or find a non-flash version to watch it, but why do i have to? very inconvenient.
 
Daveoc64 said:
If you think Flash is "gone" you are completely deluded.

While some content is now being made available through use of HTML5's video tag, there are many problems posed by that.

Flash will be around for a VERY long time, and if you look at the amount of people accessing Flash-only content then you are talking about hundreds of millions of users per month.
Click to expand...

That isn't entirely true (yes, I'm a developer).

Video delivery is all at the codec level now. If you use H264 then all of your video content can be decoded without Flash. Most iOS-centric websites are now using JS video players with a Flash fallback. Furthermore, Adobe recently announced the inclusion of Apple's HTTP live streaming protocol, meaning that future live video content can also be decoded by iOS devices.

I think between 2009 and now Adobe realized that its job is to deliver video to customers, not to insight platform wars. Nor, I should add, is it the job of the content provider to polarize the industry; content providers are smart to recognize that cutting off iPad owners, for example, makes little practical sense from the standpoint of encouraging content consumption.

There are a few things that Flash does that HTML5 video tag and/or a JS solution cannot do - such as buffering and DRM, but it's only a matter of time until those issues are addressed in some manner. What doesn't make sense, is to preference buffering and DRM over hundreds of millions of users who chose Apple devices, and that's what most competent devs have already figured out.


walie said:
I could go to the official nhl app or find a non-flash version to watch it, but why do i have to? very inconvenient.
Click to expand...

I highly doubt the video you are referring to would be on the NHL app. :D
 
I got my wife the new iPad 2 wifi/3G just last month. She loves it and hardly misses her old laptop anymore. (it died. old pc type)

But whats the first question she has? Why wont this play the web sites I go to? Meaning flash. People still put up flash videos and movies you know?


I just shake my head and hope the apple loving developers out there come to my rescue quickly.
 
Bobby Corwen said:
I challenge you to give me a reason why I should? Honestly nothing matters anymore.

I don't know if I feel this way because the content is really changing or if I am not going to the content since I can't. What came first? The chicken or the egg? Or some sort of evolved creature that it mutated from that was half bird half chicken that also laid eggs?

In the end none of it matters, why should I do anything that I can't? And I'm not giving up my iPhone.

Who really cares anyway?
Click to expand...

Anime and subtitles. While I agree with you one some points, I'm not sure what you're "nothing matters" comment is supposed to mean, other people have other needs, and I use other devices that I can't play on the phone.
 
The iPhone 4 is my favorite phone and the iPad 2 is my favorite tablet.

I think web developers would be foolish not to heed my behavior patterns and respond accordingly --BEFORE I get bored of the very idea of them.

If you are not accessible via phone for me at my every whim, I might never visit your site again.

If you don't respect Apples dominance and popularity and don't take precaution to make it work, (which both video and audio are possible) on iOS, then I won't visit your site. Period.

Webmasters, you have been warned, you better listen to what I say and do what I say or else...

...face obscurity.

The people have spoken.
 
Bobby Corwen said:
The iPhone 4 is my favorite phone and the iPad 2 is my favorite tablet.

I think web developers would be foolish not to heed my behavior patterns and respond accordingly --BEFORE I get bored of the very idea of them.

If you are not accessible via phone for me at my every whim, I might never visit your site again.

If you don't respect Apples dominance and popularity and don't take precaution to make it work, (which both video and audio are possible) on iOS, then I won't visit your site. Period.

Webmasters, you have been warned, you better listen to what I say and do what I say or else...

...face obscurity.

The people have spoken.
Click to expand...

The amount of people using flash related content is still an overwhelming majority.

iOS popularity has been rising but Android's growth spurt has it catching up and rivaling iOS.

The dozens of Android phones allows them to reach a larger , more diverse amount of people while there is only 1 phone that uses iOS.

In a few years when Android will control the majority of the phone market,the inability of iOS to play flash will be irrelevant to consumers as they will have variety of android devices that can.

Flash is still a major component of the internet, the small amount of people that can't play flash is insignificant and it would be a a hassle for developers to devote time to a small amount of users.
 
L I G H T I N G said:
The amount of people using flash related content is still an overwhelming majority.

iOS popularity has been rising but Android's growth spurt has it catching up and rivaling iOS.

The dozens of Android phones allows them to reach a larger , more diverse amount of people while there is only 1 phone that uses iOS.

In a few years when Android will control the majority of the phone market,the inability of iOS to play flash will be irrelevant to consumers as they will have variety of android devices that can.

Flash is still a major component of the internet, the small amount of people that can't play flash is insignificant and it would be a a hassle for developers to devote time to a small amount of users.
Click to expand...

Bobby Corwen from Earth calling...

Wish U were here
 
Not to bring porn into this, but here another very real and relevant example:

One of the first sites to include early adoption of mobile Phone video (it ends in Hub) has recently overtaken the Bang Bros Network as the most popular adult entertainment site on the web simply because it was mobile.

Now it's the site that guys at parties might name drop, and it got there just because of smart phones.

So literally the former site was overtaken in popularity and lost it's place at the top because it didn't have flash and there were alternatives that did.

This and other examples are changes I see. They are fairly recent; within the last few months.
 
Bobby Corwen said:
If you don't respect Apples dominance and popularity and don't take precaution to make it work, (which both video and audio are possible) on iOS, then I won't visit your site. Period.
Click to expand...

What dominance would that be?

If you're talking about mobile web usage (not just smartphone sales) then Apple lags far behind the (Flash enabled) competition.
 
Daveoc64 said:
What dominance would that be?

If you're talking about mobile web usage (not just smartphone sales) then Apple lags far behind the (Flash enabled) competition.
Click to expand...

It's not about quantity it's about quality.

The question is not how many, but whom? Who? is sporting the iPhone?

All the cool demographics...

The ones advertisers want...
 
walie said:
While there are more non-flash videos available to be seen on iOS devices or a dedicated app is available, its still very inconvenient for my daily browsing. I still encounter lots of flash videos that i can't view on my iphone and if there is a standalone app that lets me watch videos, its still inconvenient for me.

Case in point, someone tweeted a link to the spectacular incident in the penalty box of the canucks/sharks game last night, but its a flash video, so i can't watch it. I could go to the official nhl app or find a non-flash version to watch it, but why do i have to? very inconvenient.
Click to expand...

I have been searching around for a flash workaround on the iPad 2 and came accross an app called iSwifter, the walk through vid on YouTube looked great! You could always give these sorts of workarounds a try if flash based videos are a must. In terms of flash content, why not just VNC if you have a need to view flash based web sites? :D
 
You guys are all forgetting about the technical, e-Learning sights that are ALL done in Flash out of necessity. Apple, in it's bull-headedness, has excluded all iOS devices from this very useful and in demand industry.

I was at such a conference a week ago and while everyone was impressed with my iPad, I had to tuck my tail between my legs and admit it was nearly worthless in the professional realm.

I wish Jobs would get past this pissing match of his with Adobe. It's not all about dumbass flash videos and menus, kids.
 
BlindMellon said:
You guys are all forgetting about the technical, e-Learning sights that are ALL done in Flash out of necessity. Apple, in it's bull-headedness, has excluded all iOS devices from this very useful and in demand industry.

I was at such a conference a week ago and while everyone was impressed with my iPad, I had to tuck my tail between my legs and admit it was nearly worthless in the professional realm.

I wish Jobs would get past this pissing match of his with Adobe. It's not all about dumbass flash videos and menus, kids.
Click to expand...

Anything that requires a lot of interaction is likely going to be better as an app as it will most likely need to be remade for mobile anyway.

I think the fact that you say that the iPad is worthless in the professional realm because of lack of Flash is hilarious; check out the number of companies and corporations adopting the iPad right now. Regardless, are any tablet devices really good in the professional realm if Flash is a requirement?
 
DeathChill said:
Anything that requires a lot of interaction is likely going to be better as an app as it will most likely need to be remade for mobile anyway.

I think the fact that you say that the iPad is worthless in the professional realm because of lack of Flash is hilarious; check out the number of companies and corporations adopting the iPad right now. Regardless, are any tablet devices really good in the professional realm if Flash is a requirement?
Click to expand...

Exactly..

Hahahahahaha
 
i've come across two instances where i wanted to play a flash video and could not - in the last couple years. i'll enjoy double the battery life, no crashes, and no flash vulnerabilities, thank you very much.

there is no flash on the latest build on my laptop, and haven't missed anything yet. i might remove it from my workstation when it get upgraded to 10.7.
 
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