Apple actually talked YouTube into re-coding their video clips in H.264 instead of Flash. See here. That’s what iPhones/iPads can play YouTube vidoes.
YouTube wasn’t created by Google. YouTube was was founded independently in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006.
…snerk…
If you don’t like Flash, you have a personal option to not visit sites using Flash. Or, you use a decent browser such as Firefox with a Firefox extension so you can control your own use of Flash. The power is in your hands.
Apple’s ubiquitous arrogance is another attempt to control what people can, and cannot do, with their electronic gadgets. Apple must have finally realized the Microsoft approach to business really does increase the bottom line, providing you have a thick skin. Is it any wonder that Apple has now beaten Microsoft as a contender for Worst Company in America this year and entered the Sweet Sixteen finals in Consumer Reports annual review?
I always block Flash (using Click to Flash). It’s a major improvement.
What sites are those?
This is amazing. The reality distortion field is very powerful. People are actually saying that the lack of flash support is a feature.
The Ipad does not support flash because flash is a way for people to run programs on the Ipad that are not approved by apple.
He will smile at you
Be a friend to you
Then he’s gonna screw you
Just like that!
Even the SDMB w/flash disabled looses minor functionality. For instance, with Flash disabled the “Forum Jump” requires you to click the “Go” button after you’ve selected the forum you want to jump to from the dropdown box.
With flash enabled the forum you select from the dropdown box will load automatically when selected from the list. Pretty minor, but there are probably other uses of it here. I assume voting on the polls would loose functionality with Flash disabled. Maybe even the login.
vBulletin may conceivably update their software to restore functionality with HTML5 or whatever replaces Flash assuming Apple have their way. Past updates being any indication how long would it take for the SDMB to implement those changes? Months? Years? Not being able to login to the SDMB would be a deal killer for me even if I was considering buying an ipad.
ETA: Just tested diabled Flash and SDMB allowed me to login. Smilies don’t work when you click on them though.
Uh, buddy, are you sure you don’t mean Javascript? I don’t use the forum jump, but the smilies are all Javascript and have nothing to do with Flash.
Edit: Just tested the forum jump, yeah, it’s just Javascript.
Yeah, the jumpbox works just fine for me without Flash.
I don’t play browser games except for Kingdom of Loathing. My replacement for Flash games - is Steam.
Steve Jobs has always been a pathological control freak and Apple is no different than ever. If they weren’t the Worst Company in America before, it’s only because no one was paying any attention to them. (Note: I don’t actually think they’re the Worst Company in America. I don’t think that about Microsoft either.)
Flash and Flash video are not as different as squeegee implies. Flash video is simply using a video player implemented in Flash to load and show a video. It does require a Flash plugin in the browser. If the video is streaming, it requires a server-side component to stream that data. Otherwise, it’s really no different from a newgrounds animation or kongregate game as far as the flash player is concerned.
I do flash development as a hobby and javascript/html as a large portion of my actual job. In my opinion, the “big deal” about flash is from a developer’s perspective. Javascript sucks. It’s untyped, makes object oriented development a headache (but still technically possible), is implemented differently by several different engines, and is interpreted rather than compiled. Libraries like jquery make cross-browser development much easier, but they’re still not perfect. Language/compiler solutions like Haxe or GWT allow you to write in a decent language that then gets compiled to javascript, but that’s a clumsy bandaid at best.
AS3 (the language behind modern flash) on the other hand is a fully object-oriented language with a strong type system that gets compiled to bytecode and interpreted by players which do not diverge from browser to browser. The SWF (flash binary file format) is actually an open standard in the sense that it is well documented and freely available. There is nothing stopping anyone from creating a swf player to compete with Adobe. There are a few open-source projects to this end, though none of them are nearly as advanced as Adobe’s player. The flash/flex compiler is open source too, which means you can develop flash content without paying Adobe a dime. That’s how I do it.
From a user’s perspective, I’ll freely admit that about 95% of flash is used only for video, and html5 will allow that to occur without flash. I doubt that video would have been a feature in html5 if flash hadn’t made it so easy and widespread in the first place.
The main differences for a user between flash and what’s possible with javascript/html5:[ul]
[li]flash requires a separate plugin[/li][li]flash can access the webcam and microphone with the user’s permission. html5/javascript cannot.[/li][li]flash has a consistent player across multiple browsers and OSes[/li][li]html5/javascript is easier, up to a point. At a certain level of complexity, flash is much better.[/li][li]the binary swf file format is somewhat harder to crack open and view than javascript. This is a plus for content developers and a minus for people trying to teach themselves. Not that there’s a lack of teaching material on either side.[/li][/ul]
Barry, Wally, or Jay?
I do flex and Ajax development too. I agree that flex is much easier for anything complex.
But there’s the thing. I think the app store relieves the pressure to do complex things on the web.
I convinced myself that Flex was the next big thing and invested a good amount of time learning it. I thought apple were crazy to not support it on ipad. But now I am not so sure.
I think HTML video kills the main reason for flash. It won’t completely die off. It’ll continue to be used for games on the web but ipad will - if it really takes off - kill off the fluff uses where Ajax works just as well.
I was curious to see if I was missing anything but it looks like video, games and fluff ( menus transitions etc) cover most of the important uses.
As a developer I like flash, but as a user I won’t mourn it’s passing.
As someone who develops games in flash, flash can be a great way of creating fun web & kiosk games, but unfortunately flash is a memory hog.
1.) Flash developers can easily create memory leaks (infinite loops which will not only crash your browser, but your OS) because many people who create things in Flash are not programmers, and do not understand issues such as memory management, or optimizing their code.
2.) Flash in a browser can lead to some security issues - and can even be used as a vector to infect a computer
3.) The flash plugin (since version 10) seems to use quite a bit of memory & the cpu on it own - and seems to use more threads than what it should need.
I’ve always thought it would be better if we went back to Flash 9 or even earlier. Flash 9 runs without problems on a sub 1 GHz processor with only 128MB of memory. I’ve really not seen anything that is really an improvement with Flash 10. Even the security patches seem to make it run slower.
Since you are a developer, I’d be interested in knowing what improvements there actually were.
Considering how slow and buggy Flash is on an Apple system, that may not be far wrong. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I know that when I run into a site that won’t let me avoid using Flash, I breathe a sign of annoyance, and hope that my browser won’t crash.
The iPad (and the iPhone, and the iPod touch) do not support Flash for a bunch of reasons. One, very probably, is as you state. Others involve poor reliability and general resource-hogginess. Apple’s view is that you should be able to do anything with standard HTML, CSS and Javascript, and with only a few exceptions (Flash games, in particular), it turns out that they’re right. And that websites implemented that way are generally more natural to use and more reliable.
And when exactly did Apple become the final arbiter of how everyone needs to program everything? :dubious: (And people wonder why Apple users are often considered arrogant…)