iPad Promotional Video and Images Show Properly-Displayed Flash Content

[Enuratique]

Visualligthbox is cool looking, but offers no content security.
I can still lift the content from an AJAX gallery in a heartbeat.
Pro photographers want their content protected from theft.
Flash is the perfect solution for this.
Short of screen scraping, you are not going to be getting the source images from a Flash based gallery.

Aren't there ways around that too? Watermark the images if you want to preclude theft, or only offer very low resolution versions of the images... Because you're right, if I wanted to steal your pics, I'd just screen scrape which I don't find all that difficult to do.

The fact of life of doing business on the internet is that your crap is going to get jacked whether you want it to or not. If you don't want it stolen, don't publish it in the first place.

 

[spice weasel]

Get over it. If they don't want Flash they don't want it. No reason to make a post such as that due to one piece of Software. What do you want Flash for anyway? Give me a specific reason... If you say Hulu... who cares about Hulu. Ever heard of Torrents. I would rather watch my movies and TV shows without commercials and interruption.

This is one of the most ridiculous comments I've ever read. Lots of people care about Hulu - or, more generally, about the ability to watch free television programming without breaking the law. I'm not saying that Apple should or shouldn't support Flash on the iPad or the iPhone, but your suggestion that we all just go an torrent our tv shows is just plain stupid. Sorry.

As for Flash on the iPad, I like to think of it in terms of a political analogy. During the Bush years, Democrats couldn't wait for the day when he would no longer be in office. But in the meantime, they had to deal with the reality that he was. You can substitute Obama if your political proclivities lean that way.

Flash may suck for a lot of reasons, and we all might cheer the day when it is gone. But it is here for now and will be for a while, and it would be nice if Apple would just accept that fact and deal with it.

 

[THX1139]

Eh... with HTML 5 coming and H.264 video, there won't be much point to Flash in the future. So I'm okay if they keep it standards based.

It's going to take a long time for the majority of websites to adopt HTML 5. In the meantime, all of the sites that have Flash are going to be broken. I don't understand why we can't have both until the standard becomes standard. My guess is that Apple didn't wan to pay the license fee to Adobe. Cheap.

 

[Whorehay]

All of you guys proclaiming "Flash is dead!!!! Long live HTML5" are just completely brainwashed by Apple. Wow. Probably 80 to 90% of the websites you go to have some sort of Flash content. I mean, of all the sites Steve chose, the first one he chose, guess what, had FLASH.

Some person in this thread said said, "I'd rather DOWNLOAD TORRENTS TO WATCH MOVIES INSTEAD OF GOING ON STUPID SITES LIKE HULU!" Yes, and I'd like to steal myself a MacBook Pro from the Apple Store too! Some great arguments.

Fine if the iPhone/iPod touch doesn't have it. A lot of other mobile platforms don't have it either. But when you're touting something as the BEST AND MOST MAGICAL WEB EXPERIENCE OF ANY DEVICE, at least in the current day and age, you need Flash.

 

[cmaier]

U have a nice pc


Are u telling me u actually crashed running flash?

Why don't u go ahead and uninstall the plugin?

U won't because it cripples your web experience

look - u don't have to like flash and I don't like fanboys - but we coexist with one another regardless

apple give us the choice


Stop telling us what we want

Huh? I use flashblock. I once in awhile disable it. So what? And, yes, of course I "actually crashed running flash." Flash crashes my browsers all the time.

 

[TitoC]

You don't get it.

I would agree with your first paragraph. And even your second, but...

You are missing the point.

There are thousands of photographers using Flash-based web galleries to show their work to potential clients. Flash is the only game in town to do this. (And there are similar markets in interior decorating, and similar fields).

They use Flash because they don't need to be a programmer to build the gallery. At most they need to tweak a little XML, and plenty of tools do that for them.

They are NOT going to hire you to build a custom Ruby-on-Rails site for them.

You want to make money? Build a Web 2.0 version of what the Flash tools offer those professionals to display their work, that is as easy to use as the current family of Flash tools are (look at SlideShowPro for example).

Remember, they are professionals in their fields, and not programmers. They are not going to go to AJAX/Ruby/PHP/etc just because Web 2.0 is the future.

It's not that develops are using Flash, it's that everyone else is now.

Right on! I also love how ImageWrangler states "REAL web designers, all the big guns, all the gurus, almost all the ones at conferences and or designing the web for the future, 2.0 to web 3.0, are doing kickass things in javascript, jquery, AJAX, and other languages which pretty much blow flash out of the water for size, effort, and most importantly compliance . . ." Really? Does he mean PROGRAMMERS or DESIGNERS? If he really meant designers, then he knows nothing of what he speaks. Go to Communications Arts website or pick up their Interactive annual that comes out every year and look at all the big wigs in advertising and design. Check out all the winners. 9 out of 10 of the finalists are always done WITH Flash. Period. Same with PRINT magazine and any other leader in the DESIGN world. Same with GRAPHIS. Which "Big" design firms is he talking about? I've been in the design field for over 20 years. ALL of the big design firms do sites in Flash. They are done for a reason: Rich interactive experiences (not just cutesy animations). Check out Favourite Website Awards. Same thing. While I agree that Flash has it many faults (I design with Flash as well as a huge assortment of other media), Flash is used for many reasons. Crappy "child-like" animations is not one of them. Professional, rich interactive experiences is. You might not like it. But, right now. it's the facts.

 

[ma2ha3]

Where are the outrage?

where are the media outrage?

apple manpulate their video to hide the weakness of their product.

people complaint china use lipsyncing in olympic, people complain that fashion magazine paintbrush the figure of their models.

surely this is even more outrage?

 

[lex750]

All I can do is refer you to Microsoft and Internet Explorer from 1995-2010.

A topical fanboi cop out. "Well look at what M$ is doing." Grow up! Just like all those pathetic I'm a mac/pc ads. Instead of focusing on the good aspects of macs, they focus on the shortcomings of the competitor, to make macs looks better. How 3rd grade advertising skills, by a company that is run by a bunch of crying babies. Evil M$, Evil Fla$h. Grow up... Really.

 

[nelmat]

And they won't be drowning in complaints about the little blue brick?

The little blue brick, they have good reasoning for. Professional web developers should be providing alternative content anyway.

To provide a terrible user experience, using a proprietary technology that is not designed for touch interaction (mouseOver, onClick etc. etc.) that drains battery and crashes the device would be unnacceptable.

The blue brick is the lesser of two evils.

The solution is for Apple and Adobe to work together, or to let third party developers come up with a solution (which means Adobe needs to open the source for Flash).

 

[decksnap]

It's not crap if you do the research. Apple is preventing Adobe from finally reaching parity with Windows. You can verify it yourself if you care to find out:

Adobe can spin it any way they want, but that's not the main story, that's a distraction.

What I CAN verify for you is that a dual core G5 or core2duo should not choke up on a 1200kbps low-res flash video. To me that's the end of the story. If you need acceleration to accomplish this task, your code is garbage.

 

[ericinboston]

Apple can clear this up in 10 seconds...place a statement on the Tech Specs area of the iPad website simply stating it supports or does not support Flash. Heck, just put "supports Flash" if they want...and if we do not see that statement, we know it doesn't support it.

Obviously a lot of websites (especially news sites) use Flash for animations and video as well as advertisements...if Apple isn't going to support it, I think Apple really should be forthcoming and state it. Flash has been around for over a decade...and is embedded in almost every website that has more than 1000 visitors a week...support the darn technology in your "browser" or don't bother building a "browser".

-Eric

 

[ZenAmateur]

You are all just upset...

that you can't view your favorite pron site on the iPad.

I installed ClickToFlash on Safari and I don't get any crashes anymore with Safari, and yes - video Flash was the culprit. Most Flash content is advertising I don't want to see, or games I am not interested in. Flash is a great authoring tool, but Adobe is figuring out ways to avoid the plug-in mess themselves.

Apple was castigated when they dropped floppy disks, and again when Serial ports were dropped, and this is a similar story.

 

[THX1139]

Like it or not, from a web designer's standpoint, the best way to put multimedia content on your website which reaches most audiences right now is Flash. If you want to do it the w3c way with html5, you need to encode your content in h264 and ogg, plus provide Flash backup for IE. It's a mess.

This is the reason I'm getting out of web development. No one will take the reins to set a reasonable standard and the content developers are stuck having to develop around the mess. People bitch about Flash, but it's the only player that has been able to consistently deliver across multiple platforms. Now, they are taking it away and I feel like the industry will be taking a huge step backwards.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

I'm just amazed that none of the hackers have figured out a way to incorporate Flash into the iPhone yet. They've managed to add all others kinds of cool features that Apple hasn't given us yet - why not Flash?

I'm actually a little surprised oo, especially since Adobe's got it working on their iPhones. You'd think by now it would have made its way to Installer or Cydia or Ice or whatever they're calling the Jailbreak Appstore by now.

It'll be interesting to see what the iPad can do when the dev team opens it up for grassroots development. Their impact on the iPhones success cannot be overstated. ...still doesn't have a camera tho...

 

[nagromme]

And they won't be drowning in complaints about the little blue brick?

No. A little blue brick is a relatively minor pain, especially when it’s usually an ad Minor compared to dead batteries, crashes, games that play too slowly, video that freezes, and the fact that most Flash sites COULD NEVER work without a mouse pointer because they must distinguish clicks from rollovers.

To argue that lack of Flash will kill the iPad, you’d have to show that it drives people away from browsing the Web on iPhone and iPod. It doesn’t. People LOVE the iPhone/iPod, and the resulting mobile browser share is huge.

Lack of Flash drives a FEW vocal tech enthusiasts away, puzzles a big chunk of non-savvy regular users who shrug and move on, truly aggravates a tiny number of people who NEED(?) some certain site (and then go buy an app instead and forget about it), and is entirely overlooked by the rest of the masses who focus on the sites that work (which is most) and enjoy YouTube.

The "demand for Flash” is real, I agree, but there’s not as much fire behind the smoke as you might think from tech forums like this.

 

[freeny]

Get over it. If they don't want Flash they don't want it. No reason to make a post such as that due to one piece of Software. What do you want Flash for anyway? Give me a specific reason... If you say Hulu... who cares about Hulu. Ever heard of Torrents. I would rather watch my movies and TV shows without commercials and interruption.

1- Games (iPad will NEVER be a serious or even lite gaming device without it and end up just being a gimmick)
2- Video
3- just about every website my kids goto
sesamestreet.com nick.com pbskids.com scholastic.com
I could list about 15-20 more but i think you get the point

Its their device i suppose and they can make it do whatever they want or not do whatever they want. I would buy the iPad as a gaming device to spend time with my son. But without Flash it leaves out 80% of the content we use...

I dont really complain too much on the lack of Flash on my iPhone, but the iPad is a completely different story. Without Flash its just not all that intriguing... Ill stick to my laptop.

 

[alent1234]

You’ll get Caprica and your cartoons, for free, on iPhone/iPad, with no interference from Apple. Just as soon as Hulu and others post their own player apps (like the YouTube one and others—it WILL happen) OR move to HTML5 (which I don’t expect to happen, not for expensive secured content).

Hulu is supposedly working on such an app (could you imagine them not?) and the next-generation Flash tools from Adobe will make this kind of thing even easier: Flash won’t be on a Web page, just in an individual executable app.

Instead of wishing Apple would allow Flash (with all those problems you can’t make go away), wish for the Flash providers to move faster on offering a non-Flash solution. Sooner or later, they will.

Meanwhile, Hulu COULD NOT work on an iPad even if it ran full desktop Flash. How would you make the timeline appear? Touch the screen? No, that pauses the video. Hulu is coded for a mouse, with rollovers and the like. So are most other Flash sites. Touch is not a mouse, and never will be. If you had Hulu on your iPad as it now stands, you’d hate it. It wouldn’t work right at all. It would embarrass both Apple and Hulu.

You’d still be waiting to enjoy Caprica on a native Hulu app, just like I am.



The warning would have to say:

Use of this option may cause your browser, other apps, or your entire iPad to crash regularly. Most Flash sites will fail to work because they require mouse-overs and clicks instead of touches and swipes. Battery life may be greatly reduced. Security may be compromised: visit this Adobe Tech Note to keep up with the latest Flash security warnings and patches. Flash content may play very slowly or freeze. But your device will get pleasantly hot. Do you wish to enable Flash?

And then everyone would, and they’d all say the iPad is slow, crashy, gets 30 minutes on a charge, and that Flash doesn’t even work! (because you CANNOT get around the mouseover issue)

it's not that easy

the content creators are using watching on the PC as the razor and giving it away for free on the website or Hulu. the blades or the profit is buying the content on DVD or iTunes or Amazon.

Hulu already blocked the PS3 from playing back content even though it supports flash. There is Playon, but I think it also requires flash and it's a clumsy solution if it works with the iphone. i think it does.

From what i can tell the HP Slate is going to ship with a full version of Windows 7 making it a true tablet that can do anything a laptop can and still be a tablet. the iPad on the other hand seems crippled with all kinds of Apple imposed restrictions where there might be a solution but it's clumsy and will cost more money

 

[RMo]

Ok so what program can I make websites in with that level of animation and interactivity? Please inform me. Just don't spout off html5 or ajax, I am not a programmer. Is there a program like Flash CS that will let creative artists create content at same level as flash?

Eventually, there probably will be applications that allow to you more fully utilize HTML5 and CSS at levels approaching Flash without having to write as much code youself. (Although HTML and CSS really aren't "programming.") Either way, you have to learn something, though--whether it's a tool that creates Flash files, a tool that creates HTML+CSS, or whether it's writing the code youself or hiring someone to do it for you.

 

[nelmat]

All of you guys proclaiming "Flash is dead!!!! Long live HTML5" are just completely brainwashed by Apple. Wow. Probably 80 to 90% of the websites you go to have some sort of Flash content. I mean, of all the sites Steve chose, the first one he chose, guess what, had FLASH.

Some person in this thread said said, "I'd rather DOWNLOAD TORRENTS TO WATCH MOVIES INSTEAD OF GOING ON STUPID SITES LIKE HULU!" Yes, and I'd like to steal myself a MacBook Pro from the Apple Store too! Some great arguments.

Fine if the iPhone/iPod touch doesn't have it. A lot of other mobile platforms don't have it either. But when you're touting something as the BEST AND MOST MAGICAL WEB EXPERIENCE OF ANY DEVICE, at least in the current day and age, you need Flash.

yes, and that flash content (first web site browsed) was an advert, along with 60% of all flash content i see highlighted with click2flash. If i provided a web experience for my clients in flash, with no alternative content, I'd be laughed out of the industry.

The lack of flash on this device is NOT Apple's fault - it is Adobe's - go shout at them and tell them to fix their flakey software. If I was a car manufacturer, i wouldn't let my vehicles run on gas that was known to mess up the engine. Exactly the same logic applies. If silverlight can run fine on my mac, why can't flash without hanging, crashing and monopolising processor power?

There are some great flash sites out there - but they are not scalable, not able to interact in a rollover/click fashion using touch screen technology - they wouldn't work on a touch screen mobile device with or without the flash plug in. it is the authors that need to change their lazy practices, not the technology that needs to suffer because of bad software legacies.

My android phone HAS flash - guess what - Hulu and most of my favourite flash sites WON'T WORK ON IT.

 

[Vertical]

Im sorry, but most all of my family and friends are addicted to farmtown, and all they do are:

Check email 8%
Read News 2%
Play FarmTown on Facebook. 90%

So without flash, none of them will be buying these. Apple is just cheating themselves out of selling these by not adding flash.

I mean add an option to ENABLE / DISABLE flash in the settings. If it drains the battery and heats up the tablet then allot of people will disable it and so content publishers and webmasters will still have to develop an HTML 5 alternative so that they can reach the larger audience. Heck, ship the tablet with it disabled by default. The option would still allow people that tether their tablet or who are at home on WiFi and able to re-charge the battery at any point to still use flash if they like.

 

[johnwarrenod]

Eh... with HTML 5 coming and H.264 video, there won't be much point to Flash in the future. So I'm okay if they keep it standards based.

There are a ton of RIA's that use flash. No flash, no function, no buy for many people.

JW

 

[ChazUK]

My android phone HAS flash - guess what - Hulu and most of my favourite flash sites WON'T WORK ON IT.

Correction - Your Android phone has "Flash Lite". I suspect with the release of Flash 10.1, Flash compatibility will increase.

 

[sishaw]

Im sorry, but most all of my family and friends are addicted to farmtown, and all they do are:

Check email 8%
Read News 2%
Play FarmTown on Facebook. 90%

So without flash, none of them will be buying these.

Yes they will. There will totally be an app for Facebook (there already is, of course, for the iPhone) and Farmtown. That one's obvious. Other content sites that use Flash and would be competing with the iTunes store--not so obvious.

 

[SubtltzSir]

Why Not?

Why not enable flash for the iPhone/Touch/iPad and simply add a browser setting to disable it? Then (at the very least) folks could experiment with trying both and how it affects their battery life. Even Explorer gives you the option of turning it on or off (as a "security" issue), or just for the particular page you're on.

Adobe wants to provide support and code for all the iThingys (great), but speculating on what "might" be to blame is silly. When enough people see for themselves what Apple has been saying all along, then maybe Adobe will be seen to be the problem and do something about it.

Flash is a hog, even in Safari on my MBP (iStatpro and my laptop fans freak every time). Well, let Adobe have their way, and with enough folks complaining it might just get THEM to figure out a way to redo the code and internals so it doesn't draw enough power to create a black hole. Alternately, there might just be a stampede to HTML5 by web creators to unseat Flash's "ubiquitous" presence.

By not including it, there is no actual proof to the user as to just how badly it affects battery life. Unless of course, even alternatives (H264, etc.) perform just as badly. Maybe mom (SJ) does know best...

Second thought - perhaps the "disable of Flash" should be put into a new "Power" settings group on the iThingy settings panel. Then non-techies would know what to look for when trying to prolong their battery life.

 

[Peace]

There are a ton of RIA's that use flash. No flash, no function, no buy for many people.

JW

The lack of Flash doesn't seem to have hurt the sales of the iPhone so I don't think it will hurt the sales of the iPad either.