Uh . . . yeah. Right. My bad. :smack:
And wow, coming back to this thread I just realized that I sound like a huge bitch that’s calling you arrogant. I was aiming at Apple, not you, MacSpon.
It *is *amazing. I had heard of the reality distortion field before, but had never experienced it until the shortcomings of the iPhone (and now iPad) were discussed.
If Apple makes a new gadget that is great, but for some reason smells like shit, I expect reasonable people to say:
“You know, it’s a great device, and it has all the features I need, but I just can’t get past the smell of shit. Why can’t they fix that?”
To which, the fanboys will say something like
“Smells like shit? Great! I’ve always wanted a device that smells like shit. In fact, I currently slather some shit on all my devices because it’s something I feel is missing. Go Apple!”
Disclosure: I own an iPhone, an iPod Touch and a MacBook Pro. Overall, I like Apple’s products (they know how to design a User Interface like no one else), but they do have serious shortcomings. The shortcomings are not enough to stop me or millions others from buying their stuff, but they are shortcomings nonetheless.
This discussion has happened before, only it was for cut-and-paste. Most people were saying “For the love of God, how can the iPhone not have cut-and-paste? It would be a really useful thing to have. And how hard can it be to implement it?” To which fanboys responded with “Who needs cut-and-paste on a mobile device? Mine is just fine without it. I don’t think anyone needs it. And it’s impossible to implement: how would you get it to work across applications? Impossible!”. And of course, now that Apple has implemented cut-and-paste, everyone is using it. It is, as had been expected by every sane person, a very useful feature.
Regarding the OP and the question of Flash support, I think it’s stupid to make a device today, ignoring how the web is today, and hoping that the web “sees the light” and goes to HTML5 in a couple of years. If I buy an iPad today, I want to browse the web today, not in a couple of years.
It’s like someone designing a website which does not work with Internet Explorer, because IE is buggy and non-standard compliant. The reality is that if you want to reach ~70% of computer users you need to support IE, no matter how “impure” it is. And Apple needs to support Flash, no matter how “impure” it is. [And if it wants to satisfy people who hate Flash for legitimate reasons, it should provide an on/off button, so that you can turn it on if a website you have to use requires Flash]
I’m eagerly awaiting the release of mobile devices (phones and tablets) that support Flash, to see how well it can run on them. If it runs fine, with a negligible impact on battery life, then that will remove that red herring of an excuse that Apple is giving, and hopefully provide the push they need to get it implemented in their devices.
Personally, I think the reason Flash is not in the iPhone/iPod/iPad has changed over time. Initially, it was technical: The CPU on the original iPhone was too sluggish to run Flash. Now the iPhone has a much faster CPU, but also has 150,000 applications. These applications are a selling point for the iPhone and a barrier to entry for other phones. If these 150,000 apps were written in Flash, then when, say, the Palm Pre comes out, it would instantly have a library of 150,000 apps, and so would more easily compete against the iPhone. Now that those apps are written specifically for the iPhone, new phones have a huge barrier: lack of apps. So, the current reason for lack of Flash support is strategic and not technical.
When, precisely, did they announce they were the “final arbiter” on how everyone needs to do anything at all? I must have missed it. This is the way the iPhone OS works, but if anyone doesn’t like it, they can feel free to get a Chrome or Droid device. (I hear that the performance of Flash really sucks on them, though. Who’d have thought?)
The HTC Evo (with Android 2.1) seems to run Flash just fine.
ETA: One more link with Flash demo (around 5:45 )
Great post, Polerius and it captures perfectly what annoys me so much about Apple and its media coverage even though I think they have come up with some genuinely cool ideas over the decades. I think the real problem is not the Apple fans but the media particularly in the US which seems to act virtually like Apple’s PR service especially when it launches a new product the iPad. This gives consumers a distorted picture of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Apple products versus its competitors.
In the long run it may even hurt Apple which lives inside this bubble of adulation and is too slow to correct the flaws in its products. I think it’s happening in mobile phones where the latest Android phones by HTC, Motorala, Samsung and others are moving ahead rapidly while the iPhone is stagnating with its once-a-year release schedule. I wouldn’t be surprised if Android ends up doing to the iPhone what Windows did to the Mac in the 80’s and 90’s.
It’s possible. The HTC Evo I mention above has an 8 MP camera, a 1.3 MP front-facing camera for video calls, HDMI output, HD video recording, etc. It’s miles ahead of iPhone 3GS. Let’s wait and see what Apple has in store for the next iPhone though.
My name is adhay and I’m a dicewars addict. :o
Do you archive your golden oldie .swfs?
runs around screeching
Everyone is talking about HTML5 and its video abilities in particular as being our savior. It’s not going to happen until the versions of IE that don’t support it are at <5% market share or governments drop it.
Websites getting funding from Heritage Canada still require that all critical parts of a website be accessible without Javascript. Think about this for a second - if you’re serving video available in both official languages, you cannot switch languages via Javascript. If your design relies on dropdown menus, you’re screwed because IE6 needs Javascript.
We can all drool over HTML5, but it’s almost a decade away from becoming a standard we can use.
For me, it’s a big deal because Hulu uses Flash. I don’t own a DVR, and I probably watch about half of my TV shows on Hulu. (The other half I buy from iTunes. I really wonder if that’s why they chose not to implement Flash on the iPad - because many competitors to iTunes use Flash.)
No, that’s not why. Netflix already has a free app for it that enables streaming, ABC already has a free app to stream their shows, and the rumor is a Hulu app is right around the corner.
…
Let’s review:
So you’re saying that Apple believes that websites are better all around if you stick to standard HTML and javascript, and oh, they’ve been proven (to/by themselves) to be right, so their decision to not allow a very common technology to run on their machines is the right one. Even though most of the people who bought from them anyway would gladly take that technology in a heartbeat. Because eventually everyone will admit that Apple’s right and stop using it. Because they want to use Apple’s products.
But that’s not Apple trying to arbitrate how the internet should be programmed.
OK.
But isn’t this taking a step backwards in terms of technology?
- Can you imagine all the work that goes into making an app for the iPhone, an app for Android, an app for Blackberry, an app for Windows mobile, etc? Compare that to making just one website, e.g. hulu.com, that everyone with a web browser can experience.
a) While it may be OK for big companies to waste many man-months on creating an app for each of the most popular mobile devices, this means that the little guys are at a huge disadvantage.
As an independent developer, I would like an iPhone app, an Android app, a Blackberry app, etc, for my website, but I just don’t have the time or money to develop for all of these.
If something is widely available via the web browser (e.g. HTML/Javascript or Flash), a developer only needs to write it once and he can reach any platform.
b) Not to mention the crappy situation that each platform uses a different language: Objective-C for iPhone, Java (I believe) for Android, etc. In addition to different APIs (which I guess is unavoidable), I need to learn a lot of new programming languages just to be able to develop on all these platforms
- Even if we ignore the developers, from the user’s point of view, I have to have 100 different apps for the 100 media-rich websites I visit (cluttering my mobile “desktop”), instead of having 100 bookmarks to these sites in my browser.
In addition, compare the ease of: “Hey Joe, check out this new website: http://hulu.com” which you click and go there in an instant and experience in an instant, versus: “Hey Joe, download and install the Hulu app, and check it out”
The rumor I heard is that the Hulu app will be subscription-based, not ad-supported. The Netflix app may be free, but I assume it requires a Netflix subscription?
I agree with this completely. Even for larger development houses getting an app out there can take quite a bit of time. First you have to develop the app, and then submit it for approval, which from what I have read on the web is a somewhat time consuming, confusing and sometimes arbitrary process. Apple has rejected apps from BIG companies such as google, removed apps for seemingly no reason at all, and according to many developers, it takes forever to approve.
I know of one company that took nearly a year to get a small app in the store, despite that the initial development only lasted 6 weeks. The majority of the time was waiting for approval or rejection - and explaining to apple that they had misunderstood certain aspects of the functionality. The same functionality was replicated on their website using flash - and was live in days.
I know many people HATE Flash. Flash can be more than just annoying bling filled intros - Flash can be used for rich internet applications, games, video & audio. Flash is not the enemy - people who use Flash for intros are the enemy! Creating a flash application which works in the browser means it will work on Macs, Linux, & Windows, regardless of the browser, it works exactly the same and looks exactly the same. If some of the games and apps I have built were done in html/javascript/ajax, because of issues with IE6,7,8 and Firefox & Safari, and other browsers, there would be 2 to 4 times the amount of code & testing required to have the same functionality.
That being said, the biggest issue with Apple rejecting flash on the iPhone in the browser, is that Apple is providing a crippled browser without an opportunity to upgrade that browser to another or even to add a flash plugin.
When Microsoft provided the IE browser with windows - there were anti-trust lawsuits! Why when Apple is locking people into the crippled iPhone version of Safari is there no anti-trust lawsuits? True - it is their device, their OS, but they are making things prohibitive for many companies to be able to deploy applications via the web in Flash and making it difficult by requiring these sites to develop alternate apps which may or may not be approved in a timely manner. If Microsoft had done this with their own OS, and not permitted people to download Netscape (or any other browser) - they may have lost more cases.
Flash CS5 will permit users to package applications for the iPhone using flash by the look of things - so why not in the browser?
Although Flash has issues (mainly from the fact many people building flash are not programmers and creating bad code), Adobe has been trying to work out bugs with memory management and garbage collection, but it is as if Apple doesn’t want to even give Adobe an inch in the browser - and is instead pushing HTML5 - which considering that somewhere around 10% of internet surfers are still using IE6 - will take 10 years to become a standard.
What is Apple’s real agenda if they are permitting Flash Applications in the app store? They can’t be trying to dictate how the web should work (HTML5). Pushing a new technology to developers is easy, but dictating it to end users when the iPhone is only a small percentage of web traffic won’t work.
On the majority of sites my work has developed (sans Flash, and with stylesheets for mobile (WM, Android, blackberry & iphone are supported), the stats for traffic are approximately:
IE8: ~40%
IE7: ~30%
IE6: ~10%
FF(ALL): ~15%
CHROME: ~2%
Safari: ~2%
All mobile devices: > 1%
Of all the mobile devices, iPhone accounts for 70% of the traffic - but that is still only 0.7% of all web traffic.
A platform with that little of the traffic share does not have enough market share to drive technology.
It must be that Flash in the browser is still too much of a memory hog, and the plugin is not sandboxed well enough not to tax the whole device.
My guess is that Adobe is working on it and Apple has told them what is required to be approved but Adobe isn’t there yet - the Flash 10 player came out with promises that it would work better on mobile devices, yet it seems to be more of a memory hog & garbage collection hasn’t gotten any better. Adobe really needs to improve the flash player - period! My hope is that this is the real reason why there is no flash yet on the iPhone - because any other reason would be either petty or filled with hubris, and EVERY flash developer would be very happy if the Flash player was far less of a memory vampire! And every user would be happier if the flash player was sandboxed better so that programmer errors causing memory leaks couldn’t take you down so easily.
Looks like it maybe just is a personal vendetta, Apple has just banned cross compilers on the eve of Adobe launching Flash CS5.
Netflix
YouTube
other sites with tube in the name 
Here’s a great one
(Emphasis Original)
That’s not the only hope actually. You could buy a product which supports multitasking whatever app(s) you happen to want to run.
Enjoy,
Steven
This is, of course, already Yesterday’s News.