So… still think Apple should let Flash on the iPhone?

johnnyFIVE said:

not many places use flash too too often that isnt a stupid advertisement.

with the other better options available for flash-like effects, flash is really falling short. not many web designers I know bother with it anymore, also its not google-searchable. thats a pretty big shortcoming since no content in the flash is searchable by a search engine.

I am pretty sure itll be completely phased out within the next year or so.

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Care to put some money on that ? We can put it in escrow and may the winner take the pot. In fact.. I challenge everyone here whom believes the same as you do, to put up or....

Ain't gonna happen.

Secondly, addressing your opinion that only stupid game sites or adverts are used for flash on sites. You're ENTIRELY DEAD WRONG. Period. There are legitimate professional photographers and videographers whom use Flash on their sites to make them more mainstream. I won't start quoting the usage of such said sites, as you can easily investigate such things yourself. Just because you personally have no need for such services, doesn't make them redundant.

But ya know.. I'm not even arguing against the death of Flash. Fine, let it die already.. but you guys haven't the faintest idea of what that means and what it's going to take. You're talking about a total restructuring of the web, as if it can be done over night. And that is my main point which I'll discuss more about down below after the next quoted response.

Kamina said:

Flash should never touch the iPhone...seeing what it does to Mac's.
However i do not blame Apple for not having a solution, i blame Adobe for not being able to release something useful.

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Um... nice FUD there bud. Can you and other's like you try for once to actually prove something without quoting someone else for proof ? "What it does to Mac's?" LOL that's hilarious. Nothing has EVER "happened" to either of my MacBook Pro's while running any sort of Flash site, application etc.. EVER. No slow down's, no huge resource hogging etc... So stop with the repeated mantra which you've been taught and have never even [possibly] experienced. You guys love to pretend that Flash consumes resources to the point of where it's impossible to do anything else while it's running. And you KNOW this is a lie.

And I've yet to have a "security issue" arise as an result from using Flash either.. All of these things may be "attributed" to flash on some level.. but I guarantee that there is more going on than a simple matter of visiting a website which has some Flash on it.

As for my earlier point about Flash dying. Ok, great. Let's say that Flash just totally disappears tomorrow. Now what ? You've got SO many issues to deal with before you can even begin thinking about having an alternative to Flash take over. You have the issue and debate about open source vs proprietary formats (Ogg vs some form of H.264), you have millions of products which will need to have source code (from scratch) whipped up, you've got millions of web sites that need to be re-coded to use which ever format will eventually prevail etcetera ..etcetera ... yada yada..

So... you're all waiting in LIMBO with NOTHING until at the very least, they decide which format it's going to be. And do you think that's going to take less than a year ??! Nice goin'.

In the end it doesn't matter. NONE of you will EVER get what you ask for, and if you do it's not a direct result of you having wanted it. What ever decisions take place in a board room, are made regardless of what you or I think. We have zero control at this point, and you should get used to knowing that. I am. All we can do is bicker about what we think, and it actually gets us nowhere. This is the same exact thread as the other thousand threads covering this topic. Nothing has changed or not changed because of us.

In fact... I think I'm going to vow to never talk about it again until something actually does change.

Doug

its still not google searchable. a flash website on the internet essentially shows up as a zero. most of the better web designers I know have already steered away from it. While its an easy solution to a pretty website for a noob, most I know are using other options to get the same results, that are also google searchable. There will always be some websites that wont update and will stick with flash, however the amount of new websites using it will be a pretty sharp decline.

Also, lots of websites are looking to be mobile friendly, with the market share that Apple has and its stance on flash, I think that will very much so aid in its decline.

Im not trying to control a situation merely commenting and giving my opinion like you are sir. We will see what happens in time. I havent ever had issues with accessing any websites though, I dont really go to many flash sites other than Hulu.

It's An Attitude Thing...

Apple (Steve Jobs) has been successful (and has failed miserably sometimes) by not listening to the market. Adobe Flash for all of its technical flaws is a market leader. Personally, I think Apple should support it, but...

It is his company. If I don't like it, I don't have to buy the product.

johnnyFIVE said:

its still not google searchable.

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I'm puzzled by this. Back when I worked on coding web sites, you could simply add all the keywords you wanted in the header of the HTML page itself, no matter what the actual page contained.

Is that not used anymore? After all, I stopped working in that area 6 years ago, but still it feels like this statement should be false (though my information is dated, which is why I'm asking)

you can still do that but as I understand it content is given much much more weight.

depending where the content/keywords appear and how useful they are found to be will give you a much better standing than someone who just uses the metas and has it in the head.

I myself am no pro, but Id consider many of my friends to be pretty big deals in the industry. I used to love flash myself years ago and use it for everything until they pretty much steered me away from it and made me understand the downsides.

johnnyFIVE said:

you can still do that but as I understand it content is given much much more weight.

depending where the content/keywords appear and how useful they are found to be will give you a much better standing than someone who just uses the metas and has it in the head.

I myself am no pro, but Id consider many of my friends to be pretty big deals in the industry. I used to love flash myself years ago and use it for everything until they pretty much steered me away from it and made me understand the downsides.

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Keep in mind too that Flash didn't suck nearly as badly as it does now until Adobe bought it. At one point, it was a pretty lightweight plug-in - and that's when it started getting mass adoption. It's only in recent years with the advent of content protected streaming video that we've started to see major resource hogging with Flash.

Personally, I'd like to see Adobe's push into streaming video curtailed, but Flash kept as a medium for dynamic web content.

johnnyFIVE said:

you can still do that but as I understand it content is given much much more weight.

depending where the content/keywords appear and how useful they are found to be will give you a much better standing than someone who just uses the metas and has it in the head.

I myself am no pro, but Id consider many of my friends to be pretty big deals in the industry. I used to love flash myself years ago and use it for everything until they pretty much steered me away from it and made me understand the downsides.

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What you may have over looked, is the fact that a lot of Flash content on a website does not necessarily make the website its self, built from Flash. I personally dislike websites which are built entirely with Flash, they're gaudy and certainly tend to be a pain in the rear to navigate, especially if you're using mouse gestures.

What I was referring to was sites which use Flash slide shows in order to showcase a gallery or certain chosen prints. And most professionals will actually pay to have their website easily found in a Google or any other search, regardless of whether or not a site is using Flash. Keywording also helps, but is only a step in the overall process.

As far as my opining on this subject, vs your not ? Id' say that's being a bit disingenuous. Neither of us know actual facts on this topic since the outcome hasn't arrived yet. We're both speculating based upon incidents which have led up to this particular point. I'm simply challenging your opinions and logic, and am offering a cash settlement in the event that I'm wrong because that's how strongly I feel about being more right than you. ;D

Doug

flash

lifeisabeach said:

... not because we all love it and want it... it's because we NEED it. Far too many websites demand it....

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And therein lies the rub - to me it doesn't matter what the story line is - I just need it to work. When there's info I need on a site that I can't get, I have to go find another machine to get that info. As a toy, it doesn't matter, as a working tool, it matters.

georgylb said:

And therein lies the rub - to me it doesn't matter what the story line is - I just need it to work. When there's info I need on a site that I can't get, I have to go find another machine to get that info. As a toy, it doesn't matter, as a working tool, it matters.

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And that's fine and all, but the reality is that Adobe has yet to ship a working, usable version of Flash for ANY mobile device at this time (barring some odd Motorola something or another some time back). Sure… it's coming to Android 2.2 (after long delays despite Google's interest and active cooperation), but from all indications seen so far, it won't be working particularly smoothly, even on the latest and fastest in hardware. And since no one provides ongoing OS updates for their various Android phones, you will pretty much have to buy a new phone to get at it. So far, everyone apparently has been making do without it, working tool or not, and most will have to continue to make do without.

And more to the point… just how much good will that working tool do anyone if the battery is having the juice sucked out of it because Flash is so power hungry? I just got back from a trip halfway across the country and back. I don't know how the GPS app I was using is compiled, but it actually sucked down the battery faster than it could recharge. I had to switch to my wife's iPhone since she had a different GPS nav app that wasn't such a battery hog.

I think it would be a fantastic thing if Flash proved to perform horribly on the latest mobile devices which are advertising its implementation on them. Why ? Because if it is true about what everybody has been saying, and we can prove once and for all that the chatter isn't just FUD meant to dissuade companies from supporting Flash, then Adobe will HAVE to own up to their shoddy workmanship, and get their butts in gear OR just bow out of the game and make room for something that WILL work.

Believe me, I could care less about Adobe's success with Flash if their only intention is pushing a less than ready product on a market which is obviously waiting for 'something'. But therein lies the problem. What else is out there NOW and ready for prime time ? Nothing. While we sit here and wait for patent and copyright pricing negotiations to produce anything which we the consumer can get into, the real salvage continues to sit as it always has, and we have no power or control over that. So again...

If Adobe can prove that Flash CAN work (remember there's no official stable release yet) on the new Android 2.2 OS, then the choice should absolutely be up to the user, seeing as how WE understand what the repercussions may be (battery life etc). I see absolutely zero reason as to why the iPhone or iPad couldn't have something in the general settings menu which was able to toggle Flash on and off.

Doug

Doug b said:

Um... nice FUD there bud. Can you and other's like you try for once to actually prove something without quoting someone else for proof ? "What it does to Mac's?" LOL that's hilarious. Nothing has EVER "happened" to either of my MacBook Pro's while running any sort of Flash site, application etc.. EVER. No slow down's, no huge resource hogging etc... So stop with the repeated mantra which you've been taught and have never even [possibly] experienced. You guys love to pretend that Flash consumes resources to the point of where it's impossible to do anything else while it's running. And you KNOW this is a lie.

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Nice one. You just accused me of saying a lot of things i didnt write in my post. You also accuse me of thinking like some others you might or might not know, that seem to have said things in that direction before.
Furthermore you accuse me of lying.
Well done.

Flash IS eating resources. Of course it doesn't make the system unusable, but it uses enough resources to not be able to watch 720p Videos fluently on 2GB Ram. Since I know it and experienced it and others report it too, I do not need to prove that in any way, and especially not to you.

Play nice, folks. That's rule #1 in the link in my signature.

lifeisabeach said:

Test shows Flash 10.1 bogging down Android 2.2 [video] | Electronista

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Not surprising that a beta application has stability and speed issues. I'd say wait until the final version is out before casting stones at it's performance. That said, any reasonable person should admit that the lack of flash on the iPhone and iPad makes the browsing experience less than complete. HTML5 has not even reached draft stage, and is not expected to be complete until 2022. Tests done so far show that flash performs better than html5 in graphics intensive applications. So all this html5 cheer leading is pretty premature.

dan828 said:

HTML5 has not even reached draft stage, and is not expected to be complete until 2022.

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I hope you meant 2012 ?

I am surprised that anyone here who owns a Mac and has Flash installed on it would want such an unstable, flawed, resource hog of an app running on their iPhone, iPod, or iPad. Yes, please give me a plug-in that will likely crash my browser, drain my battery, open security holes, and diminish performance. That's what I want!

I think we can all agree that that's an accurate description of what you get with Flash. The amazing thing is that if it were any other piece of software with those qualities we would all avoid it like the plague and warn others to do the same. And yet more than a few of us here want to put Flash on our mobile devices. It amazes me.

I really am a glutton.

Kamina said:

Nice one. You just accused me of saying a lot of things i didnt write in my post. You also accuse me of thinking like some others you might or might not know, that seem to have said things in that direction before.
Furthermore you accuse me of lying.
Well done.

Flash IS eating resources. Of course it doesn't make the system unusable, but it uses enough resources to not be able to watch 720p Videos fluently on 2GB Ram. Since I know it and experienced it and others report it too, I do not need to prove that in any way, and especially not to you.

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What are you talking about ? I answered each unsubstantiated point you tried to make, one by one. I didn't misrepresent anything you said. As far as "thinking like others", don't for a minute try and back peddle and pretend that everything you've said doesn't fall in line with what everybody else whom loathes Flash (and only because Apple tells them to) has said. You pretty much just picked and chose things from my response to you and took them out of context with the issue on the whole.

I didn't call YOU a liar, I said:

You guys love to pretend that Flash consumes resources to the point of where it's impossible to do anything else while it's running. And you KNOW this is a lie.

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That is not calling YOU a liar. Sorry if you misunderstood, because this is a big difference to me.

Yeah, of course Flash eats up resources. Its integration as a plug in relies on the cooperation of every browser developer to provide the tools it needs to work with properly. I've only been able to site one example where Flash has been a shoddy piece of work, but can also admit that it's because the developer of the software which it runs on has done a poor job in coding. Otherwise, as I've said before... not once have I witnessed any security flaws/holes, browser crashes yada yada and more yada.

J.Fo said:

I think we can all agree that that's an accurate description of what you get with Flash.

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I beg to differ. What amazes me, is the amount of people who feel the need to exaggerate in order to defend Apple's every move which only serves Apple, and not the people during tumultuous times such as this.

Again, I'm all for the death of Flash. Just give me something NOW which can replace it, or just stop spreading half truthes, and falsities [Apple].

Doug

Flash? No thanks! I've been EXCELLENT without it for the past year…I'm not missing anything. Anyways, look at the problems people are having android, who were the one's who made fun of apple for not supporting flash, and also said that their flash would be great….guess they spoke too soon!

Doug b said:

I beg to differ. What amazes me, is the amount of people who feel the need to exaggerate in order to defend Apple's every move which only serves Apple, and not the people during tumultuous times such as this.

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I'm not exaggerating at all. Flash is a resource hog of the first degree. No where is this more apparent than on my late 2007 MacBook. If I visit a site that uses Flash, I guarantee that in a minute or two, the CPU temperature will skyrocket due to the added workload, causing the fans will kick in to overdrive, and suddenly the three to four hours of battery life I had been enjoying drops in half. Why? Because I decided to play a video running in standard definition. If that doesn't exemplify how awful Flash is, I don't know what does.

idrinorbarsaku said:

Flash? No thanks! I've been EXCELLENT without it for the past year…I'm not missing anything. Anyways, look at the problems people are having android, who were the one's who made fun of apple for not supporting flash, and also said that their flash would be great….guess they spoke too soon!

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I guess I'm the only one with Android 2.2 that hasn't had any problems with flash.

J.Fo said:

I'm not exaggerating at all. Flash is a resource hog of the first degree. No where is this more apparent than on my late 2007 MacBook. If I visit a site that uses Flash, I guarantee that in a minute or two, the CPU temperature will skyrocket due to the added workload, causing the fans will kick in to overdrive, and suddenly the three to four hours of battery life I had been enjoying drops in half. Why? Because I decided to play a video running in standard definition. If that doesn't exemplify how awful Flash is, I don't know what does.

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Well, fair enough. I can't speak to your experiences with your older Macbook. But what you must understand is that there's a flip side to the coin. My 2008 and 2009 MacBook Pro's never exhibit such performance woes when faced with the same scenario's. I've also never experienced the issues you've sited when using any of my friend's iMac's or MacBooks. Some of them use Chrome, others Opera or Firefox.

Me personally, I use Firefox (and Opera) because I really get a lot of use from a couple extensions. Safari to me is just so inefficient compared to FF simply because of mouse gestures alone, never mind the other very useful extensions. I dunno man, ya have to believe me when I say that if I was experiencing your issues with Flash on my browsers of choice, I'd find it just as loathsome, but this isn't the case.

Flash works fine for me on Chrome, Opera and FF. I don't like Safari, so I can't tell you about its performance with it. I don't really use Chrome anymore either though, since I find Opera to be superior, and the only reason I use Opera at all, is for when I'm working on my web page and need to be logged into it with one browser, and logged out on the other in order to view it as a 'user'. And in both instances, I've usually got Flash running as either a slide show for the home page, or just have separate Flash elements.

In any case, I just find it rather ODD that I'm what.. the ONLY person on this forum who has absolutely zero issues with Flash running on multiple browsers (minus Safari) ? And if Safari is the problem, I'd suggest ditching it. Pretty simple IMO. But yeah, that won't happen, I know. It would undermine everything that Steve is working to achieve apparently. Which seems to be the hopes that everybody on the planet will take up Safari and ditch any other browser. Because really when you look at that silly new HTML 5 web page on the Apple website, that's pretty much the message he's sending out. Anyway.. guess that's all I can say on this matter.

Doug