Adobe whinges about ‘missing’ iPad Flash
From the delusional thinking department comes Adobe’s response — was one required? — to the blessed absence of Flash on Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and, now, just-introduced iPad. And, no, the graphics software maker doesn’t offer a lick of contrition for the security and resource issues their “technology” causes.
Apple’s stand against Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and, now, iPad is really starting to hurt Adobe and you can tell by the truly outlandish claims that company is making.
It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers … without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70 percent of games and 75 percent of video on the web. If I want to use the iPad to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab — not to mention the millions of other sites on the web — I’ll be out of luck. — Adrian Ludwig, Flash group manager, Adobe.
Who wants this on their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad?
Wow, if blocking Adobe’s Flash — a CPU killing, resource hoarding, security nightmare — constitutes the imposition of restrictions, I want more. Seriously, Apple’s providing the preventive medicine that some antivirus vendor would like to sell us, no thanks.
And, look at the claims Ludwig makes about the things Apple mobile users are “missing out on” — 70 percent of games and 75 percent of video. I’m guessing he believes that YouTube and Vimeo, which are both in the process of dumping Flash and moving to HTML5, account for about 25 percent of web video — unbelievable.
Also, where does he pull the 70 percent of games number from? When thinking about mobile games, it’s not Android, Symbian or Windows Mobile that people think of first — the iPhone and iPod touch own mobile gaming. Further, Apple has accomplished this level of dominance in less than three years without Flash.
I’ve already blocked Flash in the browsers I run (Safari, Firefox, Chrome) and I’m glad I didn’t have to make the same effort on our family’s iPod touches.
Thereupon, I’m looking forward to the blessed quiet and relative security of a Flash-free iPad, as well…
What’s your take?
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January 29th, 2010
Hi Ronald,
I presume that you have never looked at the error logs underlying the Safari browser on the iPhone. In there you’ll find huge volumes of browser crashes, all silently transmitted to Apple via iTunes.
Flash plugin crashes are not always the result of the plugin, in fact I’d give it a 50/50 mix between plugin, browser and host OS.
Think about it, why don’t Windows users have many issues? You would imagine that given 96% of computers run Windows, that we’d see many more problems but we don’t.
The 70% numbers are pulled from our own Internet studies, we scan the net regularly to determine the volumes of content and their type. We do not make these numbers up, and as a corporate citizen we’d be liable if they were incorrect.
These numbers do not include mobile applications, and are comparable because the iPad is not a mobile phone.
Regards,
Mark Doherty
Adobe
January 29th, 2010
Here’s a thought on why Windows users have less Flash issues.
Abode puts more resources behind their Windows products.
Where is the 64 bit version of Photoshop for 10.6? How long have Mac users had to wait for Adobe products to be updated for OS X? It seems every time there is an OS update, Abode takes years to get their products updated, while the Windows versions get the newer features first.
Flash seems to bog down my browser constantly. Most of my Safari crashes on 10.6 are from flash embedded in web pages. I can’t blame Apple for not supporting it.
January 29th, 2010
Ronald, you might find this interesting:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/sympathy_for_the_devil.html
I believe the iPad will be a great multifunctional machine, but it’s usefulness as a web device (as opposed to an app/paid-for media consumption device) is severely restricted by the failure to support Flash.
January 29th, 2010
“The 70% numbers are pulled from our own Internet studies, we scan the net regularly to determine the volumes of content and their type. We do not make these numbers up, and as a corporate citizen we’d be liable if they were incorrect.”
Independent metrics show YouTube at around half of web video and they’re dumping you. So, it’s pretty obvious you are making them up (“our own studies”) and you’re being called out on that.
January 29th, 2010
If Adobe would just make their Mac offerings equal to their Windows offerings, or netter yet revert to their start where the Mac was their primary machine, things would be a lot more quiet and productive. Adobe has been dissing their first platform for years and everyone else is suffering for it, including Windoze users. Drop the whining and just make good software, once again!
Or become the next Microsoft…
January 29th, 2010
No Flash = Good. I’m glad that Apple won’t be supporting Flash content. I detest the way Adobe’s Flash junk causes onscreen action that distracts from the actual content of the page and hogs the computer processor. Besides, Adobe stole the name Flash which was the name of the Flash Magazine http://FlashMag.com which I published from the 1980′s, 1990′s, etc. If Adobe wants CPU space they need to play nice.
January 30th, 2010
The Firefox web browser is immensely popular because people can install a plug-in specifically to get rid of annoying Flash animations on web pages.
Rather than asking why isn’t Adobe’s proprietary Flash on the iPhone, we should be asking why Microsoft, with its Windows Mobile, refuses to support HTML5 (which does a lot of the same things Flash does.)
February 1st, 2010
No Flash = No Sale for me.
It will be many years before the web is converted to HTML5 ( or any other standard ). I do not want to have a very limited web experience until then.
I also rarely have any trouble with Flash on my Macbook Pro or my MacMini that I have attached to my 52″ TV. Mac Fanboys are blowing the problems with Flash WAY out of proportion….
February 3rd, 2010
Yeah, Flash sucks so badly no one uses it.You can file that with the belief the world is full of BSODing and virus infected computers that fall apart in two months and are only there because corporate IT uses them for job security.
Good luck on the whole “I’ll just blow off the ability to watch millions of videos, I’ll show them” thing.
Let me guess, you were glad the original iPhone didn’t come with 3G because it burned up the battery time too fast and you couldn’t swap it out.
February 24th, 2010
Interested in what you said about mac.
March 28th, 2010
I understand everyone complaints and malcontent with the thought of flash for Apples mobile products. However, wouldn’t the simple solution be an on/off switch for flash? Why not? You don’t like it? Turn it off. If you want to use it just turn it on. This will not be a sure fire way to remove security problems but for a single knowledgeable user it’s the best way to keep you safe and have the option of experiencing the web to the fullest.
September 28th, 2010
Hello and let me start by saying that while I respect your opinion, you are an idiot.
I’ve been working with Flash for ten years and while Adobe indeed failed to optimize the player, they’re slowly recovering from their mistakes. We will be looking at major rewrite of the player eventually, and while it will break a lot of things, given the vast experience and resources Adobe has I can see it having a major edge over any other commercial competitor.
Youtube will NOT switch to HTML5 video. Not until it starts supporting subtitles, overlay comments, favourites and all the functionality the current player has – including subtle things like perfect and identical functioning on different platforms and browsers and no need to ever download additional codecs.
The issues you mentioned with Flash are issues caused by poor programming skill, a bad approach (where graphic artists and designers try to write code), extremely low budgets and expectations as to the code quality, meaning low resource usage, graceful error handling or no memory leaks.
Flash is a powerful tool that can be misused, and like all such tools it will be. The solution isn’t to ban people from having knives just because a lot of people have accidents or deaths involving their use.
You failing to understand that the misuse of any similar, competitive technology, like JS or Silverlight will result in the same poorly-written, buggy messes we have today shows that you are an idiot – you see the trees but the forest eludes you.
September 29th, 2010
“We will be looking at major rewrite of the player eventually…”
Please feel free to start holding your breath right now.