Comments on: Why Apple Doesn’t Want Flash on the iPhone

By: Shawnta Cheroki

Shawnta Cheroki — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:59:00 +0000

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By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:21:25 +0000

How do you create animations i.e. walking, talking and lip-synched characters with Ajax and HTML5?

That’s right, you fu@%ing can’t.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash and Internet Explorer doesn’t support HTML5. WTF, people?!?! It’s like we’ve gone back to the dark days of the browser wars!

I’ve noticed that people who hate Flash tend to be the same people who aren’t programmers and the programmers who hate Flash tend to be the same people who don’t know how to draw. Quit whining and learn how to fu@%ing draw. I learned how to program so if I can do that, then you can at least learn how to draw some stick figures and all of a sudden realize the usefulness of Flash. But you’re probably not going to do that because you took some computer classes in college; you’re not going to sit here and let some artist tell you what a dumb-ass you are.

In all seriousness, Flash isn’t buggy at all, I’ve never detected a single bug and some of my sites run on nothing but code.

If you want to kill Flash, be my guest but first show me a decent replacement to Flash. I ditched Photoshop and now use GIMP exclusively – yippee! And I’m happy about that so bring on the Flash GNU!!! Back up the truck, I’m all for it, baby!

Oops…I forgot…there is no alternative to Flash yet.

I guess I got a little ahead of myself there.

But we should kill Flash now, right?

Wait…wouldn’t that be considered “bad programming”? I mean wouldn’t that be like removing a function that will be called later on over and over again by millions of users…

You know what? Nevermind, I know I’m wasting my time with you people.

By: Michael Klurfeld

Michael Klurfeld — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:24:17 +0000

I think this is a good question. It’s because right now, the iPhone is still a closed development platform whereas Apple was forced to open up the Mac some time ago. Apple has always been a closed company with what they put out initially, but eventually the market compels them to do otherwise.

By: James Katt

James Katt — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:52:00 +0000

The iPhone is a cell phone – and thus a controlled environment that doesn’t lead to crashes is necessary.
The Mac is a personal computer – thus crashes due to third party software is allowed to occur.
They are two different environments despite the common operating system.

Flash sucks on the Mac. Adobe is a very poor programmer. Flash is a resource hog, is buggy. Flash crashes the Mac MORE THAN ANY OTHER SOFTWARE.

Why, oh why would Apple want a decidedly buggy piece of crap software from a company that hardly cares about Apple, on the iPhone?

Yeah. Apple decidedly does not want Flash on the iPhone.

As the iPhone and iPod gain larger and larger mindshare, companies will realize that they have to design their sites WITHOUT FLASH OR SILVERLIGHT. They will decide to use OPEN WEB STANDARDS to do the very thing that Flash and Silverlight are attempting to do, but in a much more sane and stable manner.

The iPhone does not need Flash.

Even on the Mac, I block Flash using Click-to-Flash in order to speed up and stabilize web browsing. It is fantastic how much quieter and smoother and crashless web browsing is without Flash.

By: Neil Anderson

Neil Anderson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:21:48 +0000

Flash is slow, buggy, and a memory hog that would eat up system resources and battery life on the iPhone at a frightening clip.

By: The Digital Alchemist

The Digital Alchemist — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:50:21 +0000

I have the same problem on my ancient computer. I suspected it had something to do with Flash. Thanks for the confirmation!

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:26:38 +0000

If your thesis is true (Apple excludes Flash from the iPhone so that they can make money), why doesn’t Apple exclude Flash from the Macintosh?

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:22:14 +0000

I already have problems on my computer when browsing web sites containing Flash. If I use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll a page. It stops responding as soon as Flash content is beneath the cursor. Flash wants to trap user events that occur within its rectangle.

This type of conflict would be further exacerbated with a touch screen interface.

On the iPhone, you can double-click an area of a web page to zoom it in or out to fit the screen. Would that still work for zooming a flash application, or would Flash interpret the gesture as a selection within the application?

Would a drag started inside the Flash app be able to scroll the web page as it would if you did it anywhere else on the page? If not, could you ever scroll away from the flash app once it filled the screen? Or if Flash ignored drags (allowing the page to scroll normally), wouldn’t that break certain apps that rely on a dragging gesture?

Would standard text editing (the new cut copy and paste) be available inside Flash?

Would pinch zooming (in or out) work inside a flash app?

Even if these problems were surmountable, there is no enforced UI uniformity within Flash Applications. I suspect that UI incompatibilities would compromise the modelessness that makes the iPhone such a joy to use. This doesn’t fit in with Apple’s ideals of what the iPhone user experience should be.

Furthermore, Apple is loathe to license (and be dependent on) other company’s technology– especially when there are open source alternatives on the horizon. Flash’s days are numbered. Rich interactive content will soon be possibly using only the standard HTML and Javascript built right into every browser.

By: Marcos

Marcos — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:26:15 +0000

Can someone name a popular phone/browser that actually supports full Flash? (not flash lite) Android doesn’t (yet). Apple is pushing HTML 5 specifically so they can avoid Flash, is my guess. Flash is slow on old laptops, and it’s going to be slow on phones that relatively small amounts of ram and slow CPUs.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090616/tc_infoworld/79291

Exactly what is the need for flash on the iphone? Sites can do perfectly fine with AJAX/HTML, etc. Sites with specific video content can make their own app (witness MLB At Bat)

I don’t see FLash coming any time soon… if it’s on Apple’s to-do list it’s toward the bottom.

By: mark

mark — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:21:14 +0000

Games, video, and music absolutely does NOT make “Apple a hefty profit in sales.” Apple has always said that it “breaks even” or makes “little profit” on content sales via iTunes. And proof of it is that five years in and not a single content Store competitor has been able to make a profit in the content store business, given Apple’s ceiling on content pricing (i.e. formerly 99 cents), and middleman margin (i.e. 30%).

Apple’s main purpose for iTunes was to ensure that its gadgets had music (and video) content since at the time, Windows Media (and even Real) was dominant. The music label mandated-DRM gave Apple a second purpose in that it allowed its gadgets to be more sticky. These same reasons now apply to the Apps Store, except now it serves as a significant barrier to entry by competitors into the market.