"Telling them to use HTML5 instead is like asking your car to run on water instead of gas. No really, just use water. It burns cleaner, is better for the environment, and is the wave of the future. Come on people, get real."
No. The better analogy is that you now have a car without a cassette player, and you want to play your Chuck E Cheese Pizza Time Jamboree Band cassette in your new car... But it doesn't have a cassette player. So you have to go with a workaround -- dig out your old Yorx "walkman" (which you bought instead of Sony because it was cheaper and Sony was the evil empire and you are like Bo Gritz over here), plug an FM tansmitter into the headphone jack, and enjoy your pizza parody music. Or you could buy the Chuck E Cheese CD. Or you could transfer your tape to CD, but your KayPro doesn't have a CD burner, but a Winchester drive. Oh, maybe you should ask your car manufacturer to install a Winchester drive in every new car they make. Or a Bernouli Box? Or a 5 1/4" floppy drive? I mean, doesn't everyone want to listen to the Chuck E Cheese band rock out to "Eye of the Pepperoni" on a cassette?
Here's another analogy. You have an old TV and you want to watch Family Feud, but all TV is broadcast in digitial. You were warned, umpteenth times, that analog TV would cease to exist, much like Adobe has said it will stop making the Flash player for mobile devices. But you like your snowy analog TV signal, or more accurately, you cannot handle change. So you bury your head in a hole, much like an ostrich, hoping someone at the FCC will realize this is madness. Even asking you to plug in a converter box? Even with free government coupons... "Well, I know what I like and I like what I know... And Family Feud on my analog TV is all know..."
See, your analogy that Flash is so essential to iOS, it is like gas to a car, is ridiculous. But wait, you can get Flash on iOS, you have to pay $5 for it. It actually works better than the mobile Adobe Flash plugin for Android browsers. Really, it does. But instead, you waste hours comlaining that Apple should provide Flash for free, which demonstrates the value of your time.
Also, as for HTML 5, once again, this is not necessary to replace Flash. Even JQuery with a non html 5 browser can do it. If we are talking about protecting content by locking it in an .swf vault, that can be done in various ways. Ruby on Rails has many ways to stream binary content to individual users, in a way that the assets are protected, as does every other web technology. Oh, and Flash has a history of lots of security vulnerabilities. This latest Mac "virus" was a case of not very smart users being fooled into downloading a Flash plugin. Once again, demonstrating that plugins like Flash are a vector for distributing malware.
It comes down to laziness and multimedia developers being used to one thing and not willing to change. As a java ee developer moving to Ruby on Rails (and who moved from Microsoft COM/ASP to java ee a decade ago), I have no sympathy or understanding for "developers" who think Adobe Creative Suite is going to be their bread and butter for a lifetime. If anything, it shows laziness and a naïvety.
Technologies change. Adobe finally realized what Steve said about Flash is true. Running this huge, bloated stack of technology is bad.
Did anyone bother to look at the two videos I posted of how bad Flash is on even modern Android devices?!?
Photon on iOS is better. So pay $5 for your "cassette adapter" so you can listen to your Chuck E Cheese cassette tape...
Oh, and no one has answered this. WHERE IS AIRPLAY FOR FLASH? That alone, makes QuickTime superior for playing video. For all else, JQuery can do the rest, and if you want some 3D world of wonder, there are native apps. Mobile Flash can't even play a video without massive choppyness, so forget about those 3D rendering capabilities of Flash.
ADOBE STOPPED MAKING FLASH FOR MOBILE DEVICES. GROW UP AND MOVE ON.
And like someone else said, if Flash is so important to you, and you absolutely need the Adobe plugin running in a browser (Photon and other solutions won't do), then don't get an iPad. It is that simple. Sell your iPad, plenty of people will want to buy it. Go get a Samdung. It is like you are going into a car dealership, demanding that they put a cassette deck into not only your car, but every model they make. Go buy a Droid tablet right now, and make sure nothing happens to it, because that is the last mobile device that will run a Flash plugin... Ever. Deal with it. Encase it in carbonite and cherish it like a grilled cheese sandwich that bares a likeness to Jesus.
I personally dislike Flash, and prefer QuickTime. I am watching Railscasts a lot these days. I play it on my iPad, it shows up on my TV, thanks to AirPlay. I am not stuck holding the iPad or looking at a small screen... I watch the Railscasts on my TV, thanks to Apple making a great decision to keep junk off their platform. If my iPad had Flash, I would be forced to watch choppy tutorials. At least I have a choice. If I want an inferior experience, I can fire up Photon, watch Flash based content on their browser (which is better than Flash on Android, FACT!), and have to stare down at my iPad on my lap, or hold it up for hours. Bad experience.
This is not a vendetta against Adobe. I can view PDF files on my iOS devices. It is simply because, as Adobe finally acknowledges, the Flash player is not a suitable technology for mobile devices.
Go look at the videos of the native Flash player on Android. When you have finished, watch them again. Then watch them again. This is what I have seen, personally, on Android devices. This is abysmal. All you are saying, by asking for a Flash plugin for Safari, is that you like crap and have no taste or standards. You really want to watch video that chugs along at seconds per frame? This is not video, but a blocky slide show. Why not go to the local elementary school and snag a film strip projector, eh?
