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Why the Apple crowd's completely wrong about Flash

3 points by techiediy 16y ago

benologist 16y ago
Apple's wrong about Flash because they're deciding for everyone based on some pretty narrow vision - Flash on mobile devices is going to take some time, Adobe will eventually get it right and (or?) hardware will improve until it doesn't matter. How much more powerful is the latest iPhone vs. the first generation? How long until they're as powerful as a netbook or cheap laptop? People love Flash games, they play the shit out of them all day every day in a world where games made by little indie developers on $0 budgets are competing with a thousand high technology, high budget things for people's attention. Last month I tracked 3000 YEARS of play time on Flash games. That's about 100 years spent playing Flash games every day, just on the % that I track. The biggest argument for Flash on mobile devices though is why shouldn't we have it? There is nothing automagically "bad" about Flash, it's just a very rich platform that people develop a lot of amazing stuff on and a lot more ugly crap on. That describes a lot of platforms including iOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, .NET, Java, HTML/CSS/JS and countless others. The closed nature of the flash player is obviously not going to last forever - there are already open and close source non-Adobe IDEs for Flash.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
He's right the Apple crowd is wrong, but Apple/Steve Jobs is mostly right. This doesn't seem to be a commonly expressed thought so I'll spell it out plainly. I like the fact that you can get Flash content on Android phones which works about as well as standard web content works on the iPhones (i.e. generally good enough to get the job done while away from a full computer, but with a few hiccups). It's handy and worth considering if it's something you want/need when buying a smartphone. I also like the fact that Apple's anti-Flash stance has effectively ended the Flash Hegemony and you can't just assume it's there. If you're building interactive apps for a kids website you'll still use it, because there's nothing else comparable (yet), but if you're making an interactive graph or chart you'll at least investigate if SVG or Canvas could work just as well. So Adobe loses out, because Flash isn't ubiquitous. Also Apple loses out, because Flash isn't available on their devices. Also Apple users lose out, because they can't access Flash content. But overall the web wins, Apple and their users are taking one for the team and they have my thanks. If they could just stop denying reality on this (and various other issues) in their slightly scary, culty manner, I'd appreciate that too.

3 points by techiediy 16y ago

Apple's wrong about Flash because they're deciding for everyone based on some pretty narrow vision - Flash on mobile devices is going to take some time, Adobe will eventually get it right and (or?) hardware will improve until it doesn't matter. How much more powerful is the latest iPhone vs. the first generation? How long until they're as powerful as a netbook or cheap laptop? People love Flash games, they play the shit out of them all day every day in a world where games made by little indie developers on $0 budgets are competing with a thousand high technology, high budget things for people's attention. Last month I tracked 3000 YEARS of play time on Flash games. That's about 100 years spent playing Flash games every day, just on the % that I track. The biggest argument for Flash on mobile devices though is why shouldn't we have it? There is nothing automagically "bad" about Flash, it's just a very rich platform that people develop a lot of amazing stuff on and a lot more ugly crap on. That describes a lot of platforms including iOS, OSX, Windows, Linux, .NET, Java, HTML/CSS/JS and countless others. The closed nature of the flash player is obviously not going to last forever - there are already open and close source non-Adobe IDEs for Flash.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

He's right the Apple crowd is wrong, but Apple/Steve Jobs is mostly right. This doesn't seem to be a commonly expressed thought so I'll spell it out plainly. I like the fact that you can get Flash content on Android phones which works about as well as standard web content works on the iPhones (i.e. generally good enough to get the job done while away from a full computer, but with a few hiccups). It's handy and worth considering if it's something you want/need when buying a smartphone. I also like the fact that Apple's anti-Flash stance has effectively ended the Flash Hegemony and you can't just assume it's there. If you're building interactive apps for a kids website you'll still use it, because there's nothing else comparable (yet), but if you're making an interactive graph or chart you'll at least investigate if SVG or Canvas could work just as well. So Adobe loses out, because Flash isn't ubiquitous. Also Apple loses out, because Flash isn't available on their devices. Also Apple users lose out, because they can't access Flash content. But overall the web wins, Apple and their users are taking one for the team and they have my thanks. If they could just stop denying reality on this (and various other issues) in their slightly scary, culty manner, I'd appreciate that too.