“Since the iPhone debuted in 2007 without any support for Flash, Adobe has begun a revitalized campaign to breathe interest in Flash,” Dilger reports. “This includes the announcement of a new series of Flash 10.1 runtimes for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60/Symbian, Palm WebOS, and Android phones (but not RIM’s Blackberry). This suggests not having Flash will be a problem for the iPad.”
Dilger reports, “[However], Adobe’s arguments for Flash are difficult to support in the mobile realm. The iPhone has been wildly popular since its debut despite its lack of support for Flash. Apple’s smartphone dramatically raised the bar for what customers expected in a mobile web browser. By doing this without Flash, Apple essentially redefined what the web should look like, at least on a mobile device.”
“Interestingly, the history of Flash indicates that Apple isn’t just persecuting [Flash] as a bully,” Dilger reports. “If anything, Apple is just reclaiming its position in media delivery. After all, it was Apple that introduced video, animation, and multimedia on the desktop with QuickTime in 1991, back before Microsoft was even able to get reliable audio playback working across the spectrum of Windows PCs.”
Dilger reports, “Apple’s opposition to Adobe’s Flash isn’t an attack on a popular plugin to limit choice, but really an effort to restore the use of open standards on the web, which creates a real marketplace for consumer choice. If Adobe were really interested in supporting open standards rather than being a gatekeeper wielding proprietary control over multimedia playback on the web, it could have opened up Flash just as it once did with PDF.”
“Adobe would like to pretend that HTML5 is ‘a decade’ away because this offers some window of opportunity for Flash to remain relevant,” Dilger reports. “Apple has proven over the last three years that the iPhone and iPod touch could be wildly successful without Flash. That indicates no real problem for the iPad lacking support for Flash either.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Note: Help kill Adobe’s Flash. Join YouTube’s HTML5 beta here and on Vimeo just click the “Switch to HTML5 player” link below any video.
Flash was a “bad good” move… It seamed a nice web expression… but turns out to be a lame thing.
Just like IE, it’s doomed…
Apple’s opposition to flash has more to do with battery life than open standards. Put click to flash on your notebook and you’ll see what I mean.
It will be interesting to see what other companies latch onto HTML5. Could this be an industry move away from Flash and more towards HTML5 for video? We’ll have to wait and see.
iPad news and updates:
http://iPadLot.com
The majority of Flash usage is equivalent to >blink< tags and just annoys me.
flash or no flash…
http://www.200linx.com will help you use your iPad better.
it has all the internet in one click…
its your next Home Page
no more trying clicking to search what you need, aimply use 200linx and it will make your websearching a lot easier…
Mabe I am just confused, but I noticed that Vimeo’s desktop uploader requires Adobe’s AIR. Now, I know AIR ain’t Flash, but it seems weird that in order to use the Vimeo uploader, I have to install and run AIR. Not what I wanted to do, i.e., give Adobe any more acreage on my drive. Granted, I don’t have to use the Desktop Uploader, but I’m just sayin’.
Apple is not persecuting Flash per se but taking a stand against new proprietary plug-in requirements like Silverlight as well. It is necessary to keep 3rd party security holes from continuing to proliferate.
The idealist in me says that an open web requires open standards. I shouldn’t have to install poor proprietary plugins for content delivery. Hence I think apple’s stand is a good one. It also smacks of smart self-interest: apple wouldn’t want someboedy else like adobe controlling a ‘choke’ point on its device. I certainly woulnd’t if I were calling the shots at apple. Using only open standards for web content makes sence: means apple doesn’t have to do a lot of unnecessary work, nor get locked into proprietary solutions that later come back to bite you the more popular they become and they can also claim compliance and good corporate citizenry. Win-Win. Apple has no obligation to be a ‘booster’ of other people’s products, particularly crappy ones like flash.
@macbones
Apple’s opposition to Flash has to do with the App Store. If you can program with Flash the iPad, there is no reason to use the App Store. All your applications can be as cool as native apps and not be under the scrutiny of Apple’s reviewers. Note that you cannot make cool apps with Javascript or HTML5 alone.The development tools are primitive. Even with regular HTML it is a handcoder’s world. Ever seen Javascript and CSS?
Apple needs to provide a clear alternative and upgrade path if it wants to win this fight, otherwise it will frighten people from its platforms and drive them to the competition.
I dont know if many of you remember Zilog that almost put out Intel out of business. They would have except they made one blatant mistake. They decided to push customers away from Intel’s instruction set towards something more efficient and incomaptible. Well customers decided that maybe they are more efficient, but they had so much invested in software that they didnt want to rewrite. Hope people see the lesson here..
Apple is pushing the evolution of the browser because that will provide an universal platform for apps and the demise of Windows!
Sorry, I don’t believe a word of it, and I am not the one to tell creative people like those in Newgrounds that their hobby is crap.
If someone didn’t want flash, he could simply have an option to disable it, as someone can add in all advance browsers like Chrome & Firefox.
We know very well that the real reason Apple hates & fears Flash, is because it is one step away from creating a true paradigm shifts in the concepts of apps.
Already, Flash is used for a lot more (which HTML5 can’t do) than streaming video and banners. Someone can create full programs (or fronts for programs) in it, or GUI fronts for databases (websites like Converse etc, basically dothat), or games.
The operative difference is that these work in either Windows or OSX. In other words flash represents already an OS independent technology. The next step from that, is simply allowing it to run in Android, WM7, pre’s and such at the same time. And if that included the iphone, then adobe would have in its hand a technology capable of delivered (through nothing more than the internet, and perhaps a website like your, aka apple store independent) apps to all platforms at once.
A market which can claim that through it an app can be accessed by all mobile OSes simultaneously and completely independant from the app store.
Why doesn’t Apple just buy Adobe and begin to phase out Flash? That way instead of trying to get rid of Flash by this slow and frustrating boycott, which in the meantime can be rather frustrating for iPad and iPhone users, it could hasten the process AND give iPad users the ability to turn on Flash (under Settings) without fear that it would encourage Adobe again.
Business opposition masquerading as technical arguments. Plain and simple. This irrational hatred is a hallmark of what is now the Apple fan base.
15 years ago, I was a huge Adobe fan. I built my business on Photoshop and Illustrator.
But I held at Photoshop 3 until the Intel requirement came in to play.
Now I use Pixelmator instead of the hugely bloated, feature crazy versions of Photoshop, which are now Microsoft Office-like in how they have hundreds of obscure features that very few people use, even in professional environments.
You want to race, use a race car, not a Mercedes 4 dr sedan with 43 separate computers, heaven help you if you need to understand it or fix it.
Not a perfect analogy but it works for me.
@zeta
you’re talking about something that Java has been able to do for years. Write once, run anywhere. You still need an OS underneath flash and a browser. So where’s the point or the gain? You have a three layered system (well more, but we’ll skip the kernel), just as with java: OS, JVM, GUI. Apart from prettyfying the interface, what does flash give me that something like java doesn’t? Java seems a much better option, given the vast amount of libraries available and the stuff it does really well. So again, why flash?
I’ve noticed that since Jobs expressed his views on Flash – Adobe started to be very serious about reaching Mac users.
Once I downloaded trial version of PS (it was more than a year ago) and since then I didn’t get any e-mails from them. Now suddenly I got already 3!!! one newsletter in english (Feb 2010) and two e-mails in norwegian: how to make designer work easier & some 10% off CS4. And it all happened in three days (two 16.02 and the last one 18.02)
I think they start to sh!t their pants…
The transition from a Flash world to a non-Flash world will take at least 5-10 years. In the end, all interactive sites will have to account for people who don’t upgrade their browsers for years.
I hope Adobe goes to hell for their disdain for Director, the best multimedia tool ever.
Flash in the pan…and good riddance, IMO. My Mac and I will both be much happier when Flash and Microsoft Office (and, especially, Entourage) wither away and disappear. They served a purpose, then became bloated and buggy and an obstruction in the way of useful and effective open web standards.
Before you tell me about iWork, etc., please understand that I have no control over the “standard load” of software on my work computer. I just have to be grateful that I am allowed to run that standard load on a Mac.
Just went to Vimeo and played a little of the movie “Apricot”… why when expanded to Full Screen does the HTML version have a lot of skips, freeze frames and off sync and the Flash version Full Screen doesn’t?
I need to be enlighten Mr. Jobs? Anyone?? Is it because HTML5 is in Beta or something? Hard to say I want HTML5 when I see it in “action”…
I’ll go check out another movie or two to see if I still have a poor HTML5 experience regarding smoothness of video playback…
Still waiting for Apple to publish instructions on “How to move your Flash presentation to HTML5”, especially since Safari and Safari Mobile still don’t properly support image filters and other things that Flash can handle with no problem.
Help us out here, Apple. I’m ready to replace Flash with HTML5 when your browser is capable of handling it.
One reason I’m ready to dump Flash is that it doesn’t work right on my Mac Pro. I can’t even look at the Adobe.com online store. Ditto for Google Maps Street View. I have no idea who to contact at Adobe to find a solution.
So bring on the HTML5. Oh, it’s not ready yet either.
HTML 5 is in beta and works pretty good for me.
I don’t really neat Flash.
“Apple’s opposition to Flash has to do with the App Store.”
No. It. Doesn’t. I guess this is the myth Adobe is trying to spread now to make Flash look like a far bigger deal than it really is.
The truth is HTML5 web apps can accomplish everything Flash can, so the fact that Apple supports it in Mobile Safari makes the idea they’re afraid of Flash laying waste to the App Store laughable. If they were afraid of that, they wouldn’t support HTML5 either.
“Note that you cannot make cool apps with Javascript or HTML5 alone.”
Really? Name one reason why you can’t. But don’t try too hard, because there are plenty of cool HTML5 apps that already prove you can. Like these two:
http://9elements.com/io/?p=153
http://www.dzone.com/links/amazing_html5_paint_app.html?ref=ps
Funnily enough, the particle engine for the first one was actually ported from Flash. Really goes to show how HTML5 is so much less capable, eh? And that’s not even getting into WebGL. Or SVG.
Now that Adobe’s horrible little plugin is replaceable with far better things, it makes absolutely no sense to NOT replace it. Unless you have a vested commercial interest in it or something.
Hmm… Your real name isn’t Kevin Lynch, is it?
Mu name is not Kevin Lynch, Would you be Steve Jobs though?
Now go to the link below with your Safari Mac browser and right click on their home page. Firefox they turned it off the right click.
http://9elements.com/
And by the way, coding in html.css takes 10 times as long as coding with Flash and Actionscript.