Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone
blog.wired.com
blog.wired.com
1. Flash is slow and clunky and sucks battery life -- much like it does on a full-powered Mac.
2. Flash works great and developers use it to sidestep the App Store, bypassing both Apple's stewardship and profitability.
I've never seen any indication whatsoever (outside of hungry-for-pageviews rumormongering) that Apple is in the least bit interested in letting Flash on the iPhone.
Wrong. Badly coded flash content is slow.A bad developer churns out bad resource hogging code. Its not Flash's fault.
Whatever the reason, the flash plugin is a nightmare and I cannot wait to wake up.
By comparison, JavaScript is abused less because it's less appealing to beginners (it lacks the wow-factor).
Some users are affected far more than others, and I have noticed very little correlation between particular sites and performance problems. The only constant seems to be: if the site uses flash (and most sites do), there's a high chance browser CPU usage will spike to 90%+ and stay there until it is killed. I think it happens less-often with firefox only because I've got adblock set up and it stops a lot of it from ever being loaded.
I really don't think the symptoms would be like that if this was simply a case of developers misusing the platform. Some sites would rarely have issues, others would fail all the time. It's mostly a gut instinct at this point and I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
It seems as though your experience leads you to your conclusions, but I'd bet rather confidently that your conclusions are conjectural rather than empirical with respect to the experiences of everyone else.
By contrast, I work at a major media outlet where a lot of folks with no coding experience are creating Flash interactives that are being viewed by (pushed on) a large number of people. It's painful.
Then there's the fact that 99%+ of all obtrusive advertisements are written in Flash.
Consider Flash video. While it would be nice, is it the most power-efficient way to display video? Ditto for games, or anything else that Flash is used for.
There is also the very real problem that Flash is abused for things that people don't want. Pointless intros, advertising, expensive animations...all consuming CPU in a way that is largely beyond the user's control. From the article: "websites that use Flash to render content or navigation won't work on the iPhone"...fine by me, I have never seen a site that did Flash navigation in a way that was more useful than default web navigation (instead, it was just...flashy).
And interpreted languages can run nearly as efficiently as compiled ones for many user-oriented tasks, because most of the time the application is in an idle state waiting for user input. This is why there is interpreted Java bytecode running on nearly every other phone.
And the phone already interprets Javascript, which is even less efficient than Flash. If Apple is willing to let the user choose whether or not to waste their cycles browsing Javascript-heavy pages, why not give them the same option to run wasteful applications?
No, this is entirely about controlling the routes of execution.
There are cases where you really do want to ship code-- not merely to get around a license restriction, but because that's the right way to build something.
"This is not a watered down version of the Internet, or the mobile version of the Internet, or the kinda sorta looks like the Internet Internet. It’s just the Internet."
Unless Apple allows all plugins freely, the commercial was a lie, and Apple is liable for misleading viewers.
If Apple is concerned about resource hungry apps burning away battery life, they should have an inbuilt mechanism which warns users of every such instance.The choice of avoiding Flash and saving battery life should belong to end user.
http://ajaxian.com/archives/html5-media-support-video-and-au...
(I don't know if the iPhone supports this yet, but I'm guessing it will).
That is probably the most trivial issue preventing Flash from running on the iPhone. Companies negotiate and renegotiate agreements all the time.
Everyone else commenting seems to be pointing out the technical hurdles / problems with a flash installation, but they are ignoring the huge business problem with NOT implementing it: customers want it.
Eventually, phones are going to come along that allow free apps, your own music, flash, similar browsing experience, and a real keyboard... and smart people will start to switch back.
In other words, the technical hurdles here are less important than the business ones. This is Jobs trying to have his iron grip, but in the long run, I dont see it working out.
I think the massive innovation on the Internet is due to the fact that it's easy to see the code for everything (HTML, CSS, Javascript).
Flash (and Silverlight, etc.) are all attempts to hijack the Internet as we know it. They do offer a better experience, but at a cost (freedom, more code, less innovation, licensing fees, patents, higher costs).
i personally don't like flash. i think adobe has done a poor job of managing it, and that they are a bad steward of what has become the de facto multimedia platform of the web. based on his actions, it's possible to assume that steven p. jobs feels the same way.
flash is very entrenched on the desktop, but it has yet to gain much of a foothold in the mobile world. by making the iphone a great big hairy obstacle to adoption, jobs just might derail a mobile future that is similarly dominated by flash. personally, i hope he succeeds!
That was my point. It is about whether you get to operate your phone the way you want. It is about the percentage of existing and future innovation you will be able to access. Without this the value of the platform will deteriorate.
> i personally don't like flash.
So you think you or Steve Jobs should get to decide if anyone else can use it. What sort of totalitarian utopia do you have in mind?
flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there.
By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
flash has always been a terrible experience on the mac. It sucks up ridiculous amounts of CPU, far worse than on Windows. Given the iPhones limited CPU, it would like be even worse there.
By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
I don't agree that it is a good idea to let him decide what you are allowed to run on 'your' phone.
> By not giving in to adobe now, jobs is holding out for faster, better alternatives to emerge.
'But he is benign dictator so it's OK'.
Why not let the customers choose? What if he started doing that with your computer with other plugins, platforms and standards? Maybe they could start to decide that other standards are no good and ban them too. Why not ban mp3's or divX? Where does it stop?
If and when jobs retires and the reality distortion field starts to wear off people are going to see this for what it really is.
and no, jobs won't be respected any less after he's gone. apple is the only major tech company ever to be near death for years and then be brought back to the top of the heap. that's steve jobs' work, and it makes him a unique individual among unique individuals.
This couldn't be more wrong. Hacker News allows anyone to sign up and submit pretty much any article they want. Then people vote on what gets to the front page. This is in fact an example of democracy in action.
> democracy leads to mediocrity, every time.
Your true colours are revealed. Why not also 'Freedom is slavery'... Look it up.
> and no, jobs won't be respected any less after he's gone.
We where talking about apple and the future of one of their products. You seem to be more interested in jobs. Enough said.
Look at some of the awesome things going on with javascript+html5 - being able to do multitouch, canvas, video tag etc. That is the future, flash is likely to go the same way as Java applets IMHO
Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks.
Not particularly no. The point is that new technologies come along all the time and if you they are going to ban anything they don't like they are going to miss out on a substantial proportion of interesting software.
> Who wants java applets on their iphone browser? not me thanks.
Me. Why not? I'd also like to able to run whatever the F* I like. Why should you or anyone else tell me what I can or can't run?
"Adobe's recent announcement that it is working on a version of Flash for Windows Mobile..."
Which phones currently support Flash? I know a certain amount of phones support Flashlite? And I openly welcomed Flashlite when I was dealing with terrible mobile browsers and MIDP app development. Now? I don't particularly care for it...