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Ipad - Flash Player

Do You know why the ipad can't have adobe flash player but android does?


And do you know if one days ipad will have it?

iPad 2, iOS 4

Posted on May 17, 2011 1:01 PM

Reply
30 replies

May 17, 2011 1:10 PM in response to max1996

Not while Steve Jobs lives!


Seriously, the main reasons I have been able to glean about why Steve doesn't like Flash for things like the iPad are quite sensible - it is unstable technology, sluggish, has the potential to drain the battery like stink, and is potentially a back door for viruses and other nasties.


Apple vet everything that goes on the iPad (in theory), Android is a free-for-all platform so you take the good with the bad (viruses included). I for one am quite happy that Apple have kept it a closed platform - no need to worry about viruses or other nasty stuff.


It is apparently the same for Java - Steve Jobs hates it, I actually quite like it but then I'm just a consumer so what do I know? Apple make some brave decisions that might seem foolish at first, but six months down the line and it all starts to make sense - they didn't put USB 3 on their iMacs, if they had then we would probably all have gone out and bought USB 3 devices, now there's Thunderbird which is reported to be miles better than USB 3 and I can believe it, so we are once again ahead and leading the charge.

Maybe there are better technologies just around the corner that will make Flash and Java obsolete, HTML 5 for example, we need a company such as Apple to introduce these technologies; if it was up to Microsoft I'm sure we'd be stuck on HTM 2.0 (yes, HTM, because Microsoft didn't and still don't do HTML files).


Rant over!

May 17, 2011 2:05 PM in response to pvonk

Thunderbolt, sorry!


I guess my point is that Flash is akin to USB - old, superceeded by newer and better things, yet people still cling on to it.


Adobe have a terrible track record that is known to anyone in the design industry - it has taken them only about ten years to bring their flagship applications up to speed on what has traditionally been their primary platform - Mac OS. Since they acquired Macromedia (and thus Flash) things have only seemed to get worse. Photoshop still crashes, Flash is still unstable; frankly I expected a lot more from Adobe for the money their industry-leading software costs. I have switched to using GIMP and Inkscape, as they are totally free I have no expectations of them and yet they perform admirably, in some ways far better than Photoshop or Illustrator. Flash? I'll stick with the much more widely supported HTML standards thanks, which also happen to be free as well.

May 24, 2011 3:01 PM in response to King_Penguin

I've read Steve Jobs' April 2010 comments about why Apple does not support Flash on iPad and iPhone; and while he makes some very valid points, I think he is choosing his arguments very selectively. He fails to mention probably the most important benefit of Flash - websites using Flash as a primary platform for displaying content. The Blackberry PlayBook makes good use of this fact in their latest TV ad. Plus the fact that Flash websites make up the largest percentage of commercial websites is an important distinction for the value of supporting that platform. I think Apple is a clever enough company to get around the technical limitations of the touch interface, security concerns (c'mon Apple, you can come up with some virus software for that, can't you?), and battery drain issues - or why not just let the user have the choice of viewing Flash websites and dealing with those limitations? Jobs' ego of wanting to be responsible for crushing the Flash platform cannot be ruled out as a deciding factor, but aside from that, I wonder if a larger market-share by supporting Flash would not be a better business move?

May 24, 2011 3:16 PM in response to scattitude

scattitude wrote:

I think Apple is a clever enough company to get around the technical limitations of the touch interface, security concerns (c'mon Apple, you can come up with some virus software for that, can't you?), and battery drain issues

All these issues are because of Flash, not iOS. They need to be solved by Adobe.

wonder if a larger market-share by supporting Flash would not be a better business move?

Larger than what?

The iPad market is already like +10 times all other tablets combined.

And they are selling every single iPad they can manufacture. How could they get a "larger market-share"?

May 24, 2011 4:31 PM in response to Chris CA

I think you are missing the larger point. Apple is a company that was founded upon the idea that its users and their input and requests drive the innovations that Apple has created. The very fact that so many users are requesting Flash support, and the fact that it is added value to the product to support Flash is enough of a reason for them to pursue a solution. If the demand were not there, you would not see 3rd party Apps answering the problem or users jailbreaking their devices to enable this feature. Regardless of whether Apple or Adobe solves the problem, it is a net benefit to users to offer this feature, even if folks like you don't want or need it.

May 24, 2011 5:09 PM in response to scattitude

You obviously have a different company in mind if you think Apple was "founded upon the idea that it's users and their input and requests that drive the innovations". Apple has over and over made decisions that flew in the face of what people said the wanted. Jobs, especially, is a man of singular vision who seems quite certain that he knows better than the users what they should have. He's right often enough to have changed the technological landscape. I think back to the press the original iPod got. People thought he was out of his mind, that no one would spend $500 on an music player. No, Apple has, when it's been at it's best, been about the innovations driven by Jobs's input and requests.

Ipad - Flash Player

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