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And the HTC Desire and Legend actually ship with Flash support built in NOW. .

Actually It's Flash lite that those ship with and if you read about the problems that Flash Lite has it's more of a curse than a blessing. Flash lite isn't even a full fledged version.
 
Sorry, but he is an idiot.

This decision is clearly business-driven.

Some idiot, his company has $41+ Billion in the bank, as a HUGE presence in the smartphone market in less than 3 years and is now selling over 1 million units of a new product in a market niche we weren't even sure existed until the company manufactured the product.

Oh, yeah, and this idiot has made how many of us millionaires?
 
Actually It's Flash lite that those ship with and if you read about the problems that Flash Lite has it's more of a curse than a blessing. Flash lite isn't even a full fledged version.

And even this crappy Flash lite (according to you) outperforms the iPhone 3GS HTML5 implementation by a factor 30.
 
I'm pretty sure he understands it. "Flash video" usually refers to .FLV, using the Sorensen codec, etc. Sure it supports playback of h.264 video now, but so does the browser natively (HTML5), so I guess Steve's point is that if you're going to upgrade your video from .flv to H.264 format anyway, then why do you still need the Flash player container?

Mainly because that's how it's deployed on the web. HTML5 video delivery will work just fine, but that means all the sites that use Flash will have to convert. And not just the big video sites - all the smaller sites, corporate and personal sites will have to to convert - and for what - just to support these devices?

Furthermore, Flash is not closed by Jobs' definition even. Many programs can export to the SWF file format and the SWFobject can be used on the web - free.

I don't think video is really the issue, even tho many people do miss not having access to it. Even if the OS enabled Flash to run in Safari, you wouldn't be able to view the vid in the video app it would remain in the web page. That would suck. To me, it's about other things that Flash does that still doesn't have an HTML5 counterpart.
 
Steve & Co. are smarter than you. They know best, didn't ya know?! This is the sacrifice you must make when buying Apple products.

I'm not sure sacrifice is the word for it. I prefer 'compromise'. If I want to play in a stable system that 'just works' without all the issues this manufacturer identifies as negative to experiencing it's products, then I'll buy iP*.

If I choose the other side of the compromise, then I'm opening myself up to all the buggery that exists in that environment.

But in neither circumstance have I shed blood - at least not yet!
 
I wonder if the underlying reason Jobs will not allow Flash on the devices is emotional. Is there a reason for him to be bitter at Adobe? And the overwhelming vehemence of the fanboy crowd against Flash seems emotion-based as well.

BigRob66, you said a lot of things very well. I thought I would just comment on this one thing. I suspect it's purely financial (why Flash is blocked).

There are tens of thousands of games available for free and coded in Flash. You don't sell games very easily if all those iDevice users can get so many others for free.

There are rich applications coded in Flash to do all kinds of great things (particularly elearning interactive functionality). You don't sell lots of applications if an equivalent is readily available for free.

Apple wants to be in the iAd business. But Flash ads are already well established. Apple makes more money if iAds for mobile devices have to flow through Apple's control/coffers rather than running as they do as Flash ads.

Etc.

Flash is flash. It was fine by Apple for a very long time, then suddenly it was not fine. Coincidently, it became undesirable just about the time that Apple learned how much money it could make by taking a slice of App sales, and in the mobile advertising business.

Blu ray delivers the ultimate video picture as well as massive storage on thin discs. But Apple likes iTunes video download fees, so Blu Ray is "a bag of hurt" (even when the main reasoning for that statement has long since been resolved).

Amazon had the ebook market delivering books to consumers for $9.99- a flat fee model just like Apple's long-term model for delivering music. Amazon became "bad" when Apple decided to enter the ebook space, and we consumers "win" by getting to pay variable (translation mostly higher) prices for the same ebooks Amazon would have sold us for $9.99.

Many fans still see the Apple of old: the rebel fighting against the dictators, monopolists, etc that forced software on us, or forced changes upon us, etc because it was good for their businesses (at the expense of what was best for consumers). Now, Apple does things like this, and some fans are so Apple-centric that they appear to be unable to see that Apple is becoming the same kind of creature against which they were perceived to be rebelling. Our (consumers) reward is an "ultimate Internet device" without a major long-term-standard feature of the Internet, higher ebook prices, and having to deal with AT&T and only AT&T if we want to use an iDevice. Woo hoo!
 
Jobs is an egotistical moron. A smart man would include Flash support until what he wanted was more widely accepted. But not that idiot. Nope, we get greeted with endless Update To The Latest Flash messages on our ipads touches and iPhones. Thanks Steve. You're a clown. Retire please and let someone else takeover. All you're doing now is turning Apple into the company everyone can't wait to see fail.

You don't have the slightest clue as to what's going on... do you? :rolleyes:

You just want to post a petulant reaction based on . . . on what, confusion? :D

Are you just a frustrated Flash developer? Or, is there some actual point you have to make... which anyone reading here should give two frogs about? :confused:
 
And even this crappy Flash lite (according to you) outperforms the iPhone 3GS HTML5 implementation by a factor 30.

Check These out then about the flash lite problems
http://bloggy.kuneri.net/2008/05/13/the-pain-of-flash-lite-30/

And this http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/05/steve_jobs_pans_flash_on_the_iphone.html

On the one from apple insider and i Quote

It's noteworthy that Adobe has moved away from attempting to port the full Flash runtime to other mobile phones. Instead, the company developed Flash Lite, a simplified scripting runtime designed to provide a user interface layer of interactivity that could be used to design basic phone interfaces. Flash Lite doesn't run any of the Flash content found on websites, rendering it worthless to iPhone users End Quote

So your precious flash lite can't even render correctly on mobile web pages

Checkmate
 
Mainly because that's how it's deployed on the web. HTML5 video delivery will work just fine, but that means all the sites that use Flash will have to convert. And not just the big video sites - all the smaller sites, corporate and personal sites will have to to convert - and for what - just to support these devices?

That's really minor ... most Flash videos are h264 underneath. All it takes 4KB of JavaScript and you have a site that loads an HTML5 video in modern browsers and Flash in older browsers. I've been working on a site using this technique and it's been very smooth and easy.
 
that the advice on how to develop the software comes from the CEO of a company notorious for having the worst software development tools in the industry :D

Most people I work with feel the oposite; their OS X and iPhone OS developer tools, support, and community make Apple platforms very enjoyable to develop for.
 
OK, and I can appreciate your points. But let's be real. Forbidding Flash on the small percentage of web using devices as these 3 products from Apple is but a blip on the scope of all web using devices. I can't imagine it adding much acceleration to the adoption of HTML5, etc. As a developer, it does make one think about HTML5, but only as added work if a client wants something they've got going via Flash to also work on iDevices.

One can't go either-or, as HTML5 is scantly supported now outside of Safari, so a developer can't embrace HTML5 in lieu of Flash until all the major browsers fully support HTML5, etc in a unified way. The impact of this is that a bit of interactive programming that would classically get done in Flash can still get done in Flash (and still play on about 97% of the worlds computers), OR the company the developer works for can pay more and/or wait longer for a version to ALSO be created in HTML5, etc in support of the tiny percentage of users capable of correctly displaying content created that way. Just because "Apple says so" doesn't work well when it comes down to paying more for substitution functionality for a tiny percentage of devices that can handle it.

The problem is I don't think big-media sees it as a small percentage of devices... The ultraportable computing platform (read: smartphones) is currently exploding - with lots of room to grow... Browsing the internet on your phone, in lieu of your desktop, is becoming the standard... Many people who can't afford computers rely on their phones for internet connections. Apple is trying to get its way while it is perceived as the leader.

I think it's disingenuous to compare all web-enabled devices together... To me there is a distinct division between desktop web clients and mobile web clients. In the mobile web client world, Apple is currently king - and they're striking while the iron is hot... Is it good for consumers in the short run? Definitely not... I would argue, though, it's better in the long run though to have the mobile web built on open standards (H.264 notwithstanding... I'm hoping, in their infinite wisdom and benevolence, will buy the rights to H.264 and release it for free before 2016) - even if it is inconvenient in the short time.

I also feel like where there is an obvious need, an enterprising person or persons will develop a killer HTML5 design studio and will do it quickly...
 
I guess the future is better tomorrow?

I'm still on 768/384 kbps.

That's why he said the *future*.

Your connection speed is crap - you and everyone else should have decent down and upload speeds, no matter where you are (and not at exorbitant prices!).
 
So your precious flash lite can't even render correctly on mobile web pages

Checkmate

Com'on man. Flash Lite is an attempt to get some Flash functionality on a wide variety of (mostly) smart(?) phones. That doesn’t have to be sole incarnation of Flash on an iDevice. The iDevices are built on a good chunk of OS X. Adobe already has Flash coded to run on OS X. Sure there are some things to adjust... and sure there is plenty of room to optimize Flash to run much smoother, better and more efficiently... but it is not a big leap to imagine that a "Flash Lite" created for iDevices could be a "wow" version of mobile Flash.

They don't have to start from scratch, and they don't have to directly port the Flash Lite to which you refer. Maybe it would be called iFlash or something, but that version would be optimized for iDevices, probably drawing down from Flash 10.X already coded for full OS X. Adobe would know that it would have to "wow" to save face; they wouldn't want to roll out something that would very tangibly prove Apple right, as judged by end users (that care about Flash functionality).

As to why aren't they on this already? If Apple told me that my application would not be installed on any Apple iDevices, I wouldn't waste time & money coding it either.
 
Could this be done in non-flash site?

Load time is pretty good

http://labs.dragoninteractive.com/di09/

Hint: it is not a flash site

I'm surprised that you didn't get more bites with this one!

BigRob66, you said a lot of things very well. I thought I would just comment on this one thing. I suspect it's purely financial (why Flash is blocked).

There are tens of thousands of games available for free and coded in Flash. You don't sell games very easily if all those iDevice users can get so many others for free.

There are rich applications coded in Flash to do all kinds of great things (particularly elearning interactive functionality). You don't sell lots of applications if an equivalent is readily available for free.

Those same games could be available for free from the app store or on the web using open standards. In fact, thousands of them already are. This part of your argument doesn't seem too well though out.

Flash is flash. It was fine by Apple for a very long time, then suddenly it was not fine. Coincidently, it became undesirable just about the time that Apple learned how much money it could make by taking a slice of App sales, and in the mobile advertising business.

It was not fine a year before the app store even existed. It was not fine 3 years before they decided to enter the mobile advertising business.
 
If you want a device that plays Flash, buy a portable device - not a mobile device.

I.e Laptop not phone, or media device etc. :)

I don't understand the fuss, what Steve has said sounds legit!
 
Com'on man. Flash Lite is an attempt to get some Flash functionality on a wide variety of (mostly) smart(?) phones. That doesn’t have to be sole incarnation of Flash on an iDevice. The iDevices are built on a good chunk of OS X. Adobe already has Flash coded to run on OS X. Sure there are some things to adjust... and sure there is plenty of room to optimize Flash to run much smoother, better and more efficiently... but it is not a big leap to imagine that a "Flash Lite" created for iDevices could be a "wow" version of mobile Flash.

They don't have to start from scratch, and they don't have to directly port the Flash Lite to which you refer. Maybe it would be called iFlash or something, but that version would be optimized for iDevices, probably drawing down from Flash 10.X already coded for full OS X. Adobe would know that it would have to "wow" to save face; they wouldn't want to roll out something that would very tangibly prove Apple right, as judged by end users (that care about Flash functionality).

As to why aren't they on this already? If Apple told me that my application would not be installed on any Apple iDevices, I wouldn't waste time & money coding it either.

Sounds like you need to do some research because you know nothing about Flash Lite.
 
If you want to control the masses, you frame your communications such that you come up with any reasoning that supports your view. If the reasoning sounds good enough, chunks of the masses will blindly accept it, even argue it as evidence that it is not about control, but good for end users.

You are very right! In this case though, we're just talking about good products that work and in order to maintain functionality, sometimes thing need to be extracted or never incorporated. This is tech, not a take over so some things do conflict with other things and these types of decisions need to be made in order to be productive. For me I have a great phone and computer that work with no problems. Now if we were talking about life altering topics then yes, I couldn't agree with you more.
 
Hi
Steve is just trying to push Adobe to take Flash and innovate it further, because honestly... it's been piece of s* for too long, on Windows AND Mac!

It's time to step up Adobe!
Basically... Flash does suck on any platform. It's buggy, terribly inefficient ( performance ), and proprietary.

Adobe did gain a huge stronghold with the web community for a number of years when Flash was introduced but there are much better alternatives now. It's a gamble on Adobe's part. Same as RIM, Microsoft, Palm, etc. They hope their huge initial grasp will hold without having to do anything further about it ( actually improve their product / service ) and sometimes you can succeed and sometimes it's a complete flop. Apple has done the same a number of times and has failed as well. Adobe better watch their ass with this approach, it's gotten even more brutal.
 
BigRob66, you said a lot of things very well. I thought I would just comment on this one thing. I suspect it's purely financial (why Flash is blocked).

There are tens of thousands of games available for free and coded in Flash. You don't sell games very easily if all those iDevice users can get so many others for free.

There are rich applications coded in Flash to do all kinds of great things (particularly elearning interactive functionality). You don't sell lots of applications if an equivalent is readily available for free.

Apple wants to be in the iAd business. But Flash ads are already well established. Apple makes more money if iAds for mobile devices have to flow through Apple's control/coffers rather than running as they do as Flash ads.

Etc.

Flash is flash. It was fine by Apple for a very long time, then suddenly it was not fine. Coincidently, it became undesirable just about the time that Apple learned how much money it could make by taking a slice of App sales, and in the mobile advertising business.

Blu ray delivers the ultimate video picture as well as massive storage on thin discs. But Apple likes iTunes video download fees, so Blu Ray is "a bag of hurt" (even when the main reasoning for that statement has long since been resolved).

Amazon had the ebook market delivering books to consumers for $9.99- a flat fee model just like Apple's long-term model for delivering music. Amazon became "bad" when Apple decided to enter the ebook space, and we consumers "win" by getting to pay variable (translation mostly higher) prices for the same ebooks Amazon would have sold us for $9.99.

Many fans still see the Apple of old: the rebel fighting against the dictators, monopolists, etc that forced software on us, or forced changes upon us, etc because it was good for their businesses (at the expense of what was best for consumers). Now, Apple does things like this, and some fans are so Apple-centric that they appear to be unable to see that Apple is becoming the same kind of creature against which they were perceived to be rebelling. Our (consumers) reward is an "ultimate Internet device" without a major long-term-standard feature of the Internet, higher ebook prices, and having to deal with AT&T and only AT&T if we want to use an iDevice. Woo hoo!

I think the very fact that anyone saw Apple as something other than a business to start with is wrong. The whole 1984 commercial, is exactly that, a commercial to get your business just like any other commercial is today.

I think what I like as an Apple fan myself is that I now have a total solution of iMac, iPhone, and iPad. Anyone else here try syncing their Blackberries or Sprint Treo's to their macs? Not exactly the best user experience and these were were phones I bought from well to do companies that should have been able to create syncing software that was alot more seamless than what it was.

What am I giving up with this soluton I have now? For me, not much, and I think the problem is people like to speak like they're speaking for the entire population of users. I completely understand that this solution is not for everyone. Just like Tivo isn't a solution for other people when "everyone" could hook up a media PC and have Tivo + the internet and games.

Everything is a business though, whether it's Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, whoever. All they want is your money, all we want who argue for Apple or Microsoft is to feel good about the purchases we made.

And I'm feeling pretty good.
 
The problem that all the blind falks here do not see is that THE IPHONE AND IPAD ARE MINE!!!! AND I AM SUPOSED TO DO WHAT EVER I WANT WITH IT!!!!.

So, pay $99 for your developer certificate (or break your device's OS security by other means), write any app you want, compile and install it on your device.

Non-developers get a $99 discount (no dev certificate), and a more secure device as a result. (e.g. You can't easily install your spy/malware on my device.)
 
The problem that all the blind falks here do not see is that THE IPHONE AND IPAD ARE MINE!!!! AND I AM SUPOSED TO DO WHAT EVER I WANT WITH IT!!!!.

The problem that you here do not see is that THE IPHONE AND IPAD ARE APPLE'S UNTIL YOU CHOOSE TO PURCHASE IT FROM THEM!!!! AND THEY ARE SUPOSED TO DO WHAT EVER THEY WANT WITH IT!!!!.

The ned consumer has the right to choose what he wants for the device he adquire.

Where did they get that right from?
 
If you use this kind of logic to support why those interested should not even have an OPTION for Flash, it should apply to every single App in the App store too. Basically, anything outside of Apple's control has some potential to crash Safari and/or Mac OS X. Perhaps, using this logic, EVERYTHING not created by Apple's own hands should be blocked per this same reasoning?

And frankly, my own Macs will crash from time to time, but I never deem it a "piece of $#!t". But I might be in that "savvy" group. My Mom's Mac crashes from time to time, but she doesn't deem it a "piece" either. Even the average Joe understands that computing devices crash from time to time. As long as they can get rebooted, they deal with it and move on. It's hard to picture them holding it against a device forever, nor putting the device down to all their friends & family. Play that scenario with an iDevice crash, have them gripe about it to their friends, and those friends will be quick to say, "I run Windows, and you're griping about a crash?";)

I suppose some could argue that taking this to its logical conclusion, only Apple software should run on the device but there is a difference between an app submitted to the app store, and put through some kind of analysis before it is allowed to be sold to the public and a "plug-in" for a web browser. An applications limits for robustness can be more easily determined than a plugin whose behavior is dependent on the content it receives from a web site.

Let's face it, if it were easy to make the plugin robust, Adobe would have made Flash robust along time ago and there would be no need for this entire thread.

And while I agree with you many people would not refer to their computer as a "piece" because an application crashed, I hear that kind of talk from people about their personal devices like phones, media players, etc. regularly. I don't pretend to know why people treat their phones, PDAs, media players differently. Maybe the fact they spent $200 vs. $1200 for a computer puts the device into a "disposable" category and it's a lot easier to call such an item a "piece" when it does not perform.
 
Most people I work with feel the oposite; their OS X and iPhone OS developer tools, support, and community make Apple platforms very enjoyable to develop for.

I really don't think so. XCode can't come close to being compared to Visual Studio (and yes i develop in both).
 
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