Adobe’s Flash still not on Apple’s iPad, and that’s a good thing

15 years ago

“Just about a year ago I wrote a post here at ITworld titled Flash on iPad wouldn’t solve anything (but would strengthen Adobe’s control of the web),” Peter Smith reports for ITworld.

“Back then the iPad 1 was brand new and Apple and Steve Jobs were catching a lot of flak for not allowing Flash on the device,” Smith reports. “My argument was that having Flash on the iPad wouldn’t matter for anything but video since most Flash apps expect mouse and keyboard input anyway. Further, not having Flash on the iPad could encourage websites to offer video via HTML5.”

Smith reports, “Flash on this [Acer Iconia A500 Android] tablet is a dog. It struggles to run high def Flash video and can’t smoothly scroll a game as simple as Farmville. The tablet is no slouch in terms of performance otherwise, so I’m laying the blame here at Adobe’s feet. Presumably Adobe can fix this as it continues to optimize Flash for the Tegra 2 (and other tablet) chipsets, but for now the combination of dual-core tablets and Android Honeycomb 3.0 just doesn’t have the horsepower to run Flash well… In my opinion, having Flash available on my Android tablet adds very little to the value of the device.”