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The argument against using Flash is that it's not suitable for a low-powered, long battery-life hand held device. My guess is that Jobs is worried that if Flash

The argument against using Flash is that it's not suitable for a low-powered, long battery-life hand held device. My guess is that Jobs is worried that if Flash were enabled, the average consumer would notice a much shorter battery life. The consumer won't understand that Flash is to blame, and will end up blaming the iPad instead. >Why make people pay when there's FREE games out there online if only flash were supported. There are also many free games on the App store. Also, with the new version of Adobe Flash, it's a relatively trivial process to turn a Flash game into a native iPhone app.

jacquesm 17y ago
The application you have just started uses 'flash' content, this will adversely affect your battery life. Click <ok to continue> or <cancel to save your battery> edit: way to go downmodder, getting modded down for presenting a possible solution to an issue is a new low for HN. Congratulations. Now if you'd be so kind as to explain why you thought that was not a viable solution?
- jstevens85 17y ago
  By removing Flash altogether, Apple is encouraging web developers to upgrade to new web technologies (HTML 5). If the iPhone/iPad had the option of using Flash, then web developers wouldn't have an incentive to produce non-Flash content. I'm guessing that had the iPhone come with Flash at launch, Youtube would never have implemented MP4 and HTML 5 video tags.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Ggp mentioned battery life explicitly, that's why I addressed that. I'm probably one of the largest flash haters on the planet, it took me all of 7 years to convert our video to flash, because I simply can't stand it that for basic functionality like that we need a plug-in. That said, that particular plug in is now so widespread that even people that can't stand it also can't really get around it. HTML5 is not here yet, flash is here today. So, for live content, where downloading and converting is not possible this move by apple limits their users uses of the web. The best way imo would be to show side-by-side the same functionality, have a period of cross-over, dual implementation and to deprecate flash. To simply not support it is not going to convince any developers to make HTML5 content, it's simply going to frustrate a lot of end users. I just got an angry email from some guy ranting at me that since I won't support the iphone he will no longer be frequenting my site. I sympathize, my budget is limited, both in time as well as in funds so he'll have to go his way. I don't like it when choices are forced, choices ought to be free. HTML5 video capable deployment still sucks, flash is, as annoying as it is, at this moment in time the only viable way of getting good coverage on the majority of platforms. Battery life decisions should be up to the user, not up to the manufacturer. If you need or want to see that video and there is no very good technical reason why you can't (and shortening battery life is not a good enough reason, if that were a prime decision factor the display in the iPad would have been a more economical model) then you should simply be able to.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    I'm pretty sure YouTube was going the route of H.264 MP4 anyways. They certainly aren't going to switch H264 just so that small group of people can try out YouTube on their iPhone. That being said, HTML 5 can get people to use it without the help of Apple, by simply being better, not by artificially creating a need for HTML 5.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  I'll bite. I like disagreeing with you! I think I've been rude to you before, but I like a lot of your posts, and you definitely don't deserve a drive-by down mod. Your solution is not viable because the problem is not an interface problem. The problem is that Flash does not actually make the iPhone, iPod, or iPad a better product in any way that matters to Apple. Some potential customers (which Apple surely cares about) may demand it, but they also demand ponies, etc. Whether they would actually buy the product if it had Flash or would like it if they had it is something we can only guess at, but if you had to guess if users would really like poorer performance, poorer battery life, more advertisements, games which run but don't fit on the screen or work well with touch interfaces, choppy video with non-standard controls--well, if that's what Flash support means in practice, it's quite possible that those users really don't know what they want. If this all sounds very paternal and "Steve (and whoever else at Apple) knows best.", well...it is. Good design often is pretty dictatorial. It's not the only way to design a good product, but it has a pretty good track record, and not just for Apple. They've certainly had a pretty good run in declining to support Flash. Is that going to come to a grinding halt over Farmville and Punch The Monkey? Maybe. Probably not. Apple generally doesn't want to soak up any of the credit or blame for technology that they don't have any control and hardly any influence over. If Flash on the iPhone/iPad sucked, it would mean something about the iPhone/iPad sucks, and Apple wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Think about that. Would you want to release a product that not only incorporated a flaw (even potential one) that you couldn't fix, but which you depended on to meet the market's bullet-point test and which you couldn't remove on pain of user revolt? Dreadful scenario. Why not "just" try not to depend on things you can't fix? The Apple story in the past decade has been shrewd application of this rule to very great effect in every case that I can think of, from touchpads to retail. It isn't an ignorance of real world circumstances (like Flash's installed base), it's a refusal to depend on them. Where they can't roll their own or do without, they tend to bring a ton of leverage to the table and leave with a bag of concessions. You may have noticed that Apple has a strong brand. They got that way by trying hard to not release crap. Contrast (say) Microsoft which has a wildly uneven product line ranging from really great to utter trash. Contrast the Android platform, "iPhone Killer"s all, and all striving to escape the pit of their own shared mediocrity. So, they don't want to release crap, and they don't want to depend on anybody else? Now the question is: Do they really have to depend on Flash to make their product great? The thing is, most people outside of Adobe that "want Flash" don't actually want Flash. They want the things that they currently get through Flash, like games and video and rich interfaces. Now that is something that Apple can work on. And they do. And sites that would otherwise depend on Flash do. And native application developers do. And the result in most cases is a better overall experience for their users for each of those things. And there is more of that every day. So even though they're losing a bit to the non-fungible nature of the content (i.e. you can get games but not Farmville...yet; you can get video but not Hulu...yet), what they are gaining in the end is actually a higher-quality result overall. Isn't that what it's all really about in the first place?
chrischen 17y ago
...Preexisting games which still cost $99 to deliver, and which means ultimately a cost passed on to the consumer.

jacquesm 17y ago

The application you have just started uses 'flash' content, this will adversely affect your battery life. Click <ok to continue> or <cancel to save your battery> edit: way to go downmodder, getting modded down for presenting a possible solution to an issue is a new low for HN. Congratulations. Now if you'd be so kind as to explain why you thought that was not a viable solution?

jstevens85 17y ago
By removing Flash altogether, Apple is encouraging web developers to upgrade to new web technologies (HTML 5). If the iPhone/iPad had the option of using Flash, then web developers wouldn't have an incentive to produce non-Flash content. I'm guessing that had the iPhone come with Flash at launch, Youtube would never have implemented MP4 and HTML 5 video tags.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Ggp mentioned battery life explicitly, that's why I addressed that. I'm probably one of the largest flash haters on the planet, it took me all of 7 years to convert our video to flash, because I simply can't stand it that for basic functionality like that we need a plug-in. That said, that particular plug in is now so widespread that even people that can't stand it also can't really get around it. HTML5 is not here yet, flash is here today. So, for live content, where downloading and converting is not possible this move by apple limits their users uses of the web. The best way imo would be to show side-by-side the same functionality, have a period of cross-over, dual implementation and to deprecate flash. To simply not support it is not going to convince any developers to make HTML5 content, it's simply going to frustrate a lot of end users. I just got an angry email from some guy ranting at me that since I won't support the iphone he will no longer be frequenting my site. I sympathize, my budget is limited, both in time as well as in funds so he'll have to go his way. I don't like it when choices are forced, choices ought to be free. HTML5 video capable deployment still sucks, flash is, as annoying as it is, at this moment in time the only viable way of getting good coverage on the majority of platforms. Battery life decisions should be up to the user, not up to the manufacturer. If you need or want to see that video and there is no very good technical reason why you can't (and shortening battery life is not a good enough reason, if that were a prime decision factor the display in the iPad would have been a more economical model) then you should simply be able to.
- chrischen 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure YouTube was going the route of H.264 MP4 anyways. They certainly aren't going to switch H264 just so that small group of people can try out YouTube on their iPhone. That being said, HTML 5 can get people to use it without the help of Apple, by simply being better, not by artificially creating a need for HTML 5.
GHFigs 17y ago
I'll bite. I like disagreeing with you! I think I've been rude to you before, but I like a lot of your posts, and you definitely don't deserve a drive-by down mod. Your solution is not viable because the problem is not an interface problem. The problem is that Flash does not actually make the iPhone, iPod, or iPad a better product in any way that matters to Apple. Some potential customers (which Apple surely cares about) may demand it, but they also demand ponies, etc. Whether they would actually buy the product if it had Flash or would like it if they had it is something we can only guess at, but if you had to guess if users would really like poorer performance, poorer battery life, more advertisements, games which run but don't fit on the screen or work well with touch interfaces, choppy video with non-standard controls--well, if that's what Flash support means in practice, it's quite possible that those users really don't know what they want. If this all sounds very paternal and "Steve (and whoever else at Apple) knows best.", well...it is. Good design often is pretty dictatorial. It's not the only way to design a good product, but it has a pretty good track record, and not just for Apple. They've certainly had a pretty good run in declining to support Flash. Is that going to come to a grinding halt over Farmville and Punch The Monkey? Maybe. Probably not. Apple generally doesn't want to soak up any of the credit or blame for technology that they don't have any control and hardly any influence over. If Flash on the iPhone/iPad sucked, it would mean something about the iPhone/iPad sucks, and Apple wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Think about that. Would you want to release a product that not only incorporated a flaw (even potential one) that you couldn't fix, but which you depended on to meet the market's bullet-point test and which you couldn't remove on pain of user revolt? Dreadful scenario. Why not "just" try not to depend on things you can't fix? The Apple story in the past decade has been shrewd application of this rule to very great effect in every case that I can think of, from touchpads to retail. It isn't an ignorance of real world circumstances (like Flash's installed base), it's a refusal to depend on them. Where they can't roll their own or do without, they tend to bring a ton of leverage to the table and leave with a bag of concessions. You may have noticed that Apple has a strong brand. They got that way by trying hard to not release crap. Contrast (say) Microsoft which has a wildly uneven product line ranging from really great to utter trash. Contrast the Android platform, "iPhone Killer"s all, and all striving to escape the pit of their own shared mediocrity. So, they don't want to release crap, and they don't want to depend on anybody else? Now the question is: Do they really have to depend on Flash to make their product great? The thing is, most people outside of Adobe that "want Flash" don't actually want Flash. They want the things that they currently get through Flash, like games and video and rich interfaces. Now that is something that Apple can work on. And they do. And sites that would otherwise depend on Flash do. And native application developers do. And the result in most cases is a better overall experience for their users for each of those things. And there is more of that every day. So even though they're losing a bit to the non-fungible nature of the content (i.e. you can get games but not Farmville...yet; you can get video but not Hulu...yet), what they are gaining in the end is actually a higher-quality result overall. Isn't that what it's all really about in the first place?

chrischen 17y ago

...Preexisting games which still cost $99 to deliver, and which means ultimately a cost passed on to the consumer.