Adobe on Flash and the iPad: 'Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices'
posted January 28th 2010 3:34PM
It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple's DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% 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.
Yep, that sounds about right -- and Adobe goes on to point out that the Open Screen Project is bringing Flash to all sorts of other devices. Considering the Nokia N900 runs Flash 9 extremely well on a 600MHz ARM Cortex A8-based TI OMAP 3 processor (and the Palm Pre, which uses the same chip, will be able to run Flash 10.1 when webOS 1.4 comes out) we don't see any reason other than politics that the iPad can't do it on that fancy new 1GHz dual-core Cortex A9-based A4 chip. Turns out people might think "the best way to experience the web" might involve a little Hulu, you know?
i don't get where Apple is coming from here. why don't you want Flash? i know its far from perfect but its so widely used you pretty much have to have it.
@kojo87
They most likely want to lock people into buying games from the App Store. If they support flash, people can just use the browser to access flash games and would probably drop sales on games in the app store.
@kojo87
It conflicts with their multimedia sales business. How many people would buy episodes of their favorite TV shows from iTunes when they can just stream it from one of the hundreds of available sites online for free? Would you buy apps from iTunes when you can play an equivalent game online for free? On top of that, users could theoretically design Flash applications designed to run almost exclusively on the iPad which means Apple loses control of the application market as well.
Of course, all of these activities would be fantastic for the users, but I don't think that matters to them.
@kojo87 Not to mention that they want you to get your video content from iTunes.
@sfox8
or you can say apple wants to keep their users' balls in a vice. same sh!t.
@kojo87 Flash has two big problems: (1) it has a lot of security holes that are difficult to patch. If somebody could exploit them and take control of your iTunes account they could spend a lot of your money on some really crappy TV shows and movies. Also, (2) flash eats battery life much more quickly than HTML5.
@reader1 While I agree that this is purely a money decision, you can't compare it to the Xbox 360. You can say that the Xbox 360 doesn't have a browser, but that's not what it's intended use is. It's marketed as a gaming console, with movies, TV, etc. as secondary options.
The title for the iPad's homepage is: "Apple - iPad - The best way to experience the web, email, and photos." From what I can see, Apple is trying to say the iPad is something that it isn't. Until they include flash, the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad will never be superior to any flash enabled browser.
@EroticCelery like i said Flash is far from perfect but look at the numbers from Adobe. that is an awful lot of missing media from a device that is supposed to deliver a better web experience than any netbook.
@sfox8
They will notice that now they will drop sales on their "iPad" If they don't support flash at some stage.
@reader1 you are a tool
@sfox8
According to Apple's latest earnings call they basically break even on iTunes. This is not about getting you to buy from iTunes for Apple's profit on apps or music or videos. Maybe it is to give developers and content producers to go through iTunes in order to help push Apple devices.
In the end, I think the real reason is much more simple and less devious. I think Apple has a real concern for user experience. It is the same reason they do not allow multitasking on these devices. Not saying it is right or wrong (I think they are right for the iPhone/Touch and wrong for the iPad), but they do not want to sacrifice stability, speed, and battery for Flash and multitasking.
Of course that opinion doesn't work with conspiracy theories and Apple bashing.
@kojo87 That Apple disallows Flash to prevent developers from preempting the AppStore is the cynical reason, and probably correct. Also correct is that Flash is buggy and resource-intensive.
Do you think Flash will be used more or less in the future Web? I think less. Same with Silverlight.
@kojo87 Apple tends to stick to standard formats for the web. SWF and FLV are proprietary. Want to write rich apps? Use the W3C approved HTML and Javascript. Want video? Stream h.264. There no reason to coddle Adobe on the standard web.
@MoonWalkerCTE
For that sales should first start ;D
@reader1
"Cheap produced Junk"... like Hulu?
@kojo87
Most of you are idiots. Apple fully supports HTML 5 which can do everything Flash does, with the advantage of being an actual universal standard. It's not an issue of money. YouTube even has their site running through HTML 5 now, http://www.youtube.com/html5.
You want to know why Apple won't support Flash? Because Flash SUCKS. S-U-C-K-S. It's bloated, it's slow and it's not a standard, and it requires additional software. Hope that clears it up for you.
@reader1
your such a muppet! will you be giving Steve a good night kiss tonight?
I'm not against apple or anything, but the people its affecting is us, the consumer. With 70% of websites having flash content, well that's a whole lot of sites that i cant fully view.
It does make me laugh sometimes the amount of restrictions Apple put on things.
@kojo87 What, so we should all kowtow to a Flash-shacked Web ad infinitum? Seriously, why should Adobe be allowed a stranglehold on the Web?
Bring on HTML5, please. And if Apple's refusal to put Flash on its portable devices helps move the process along, I say hooray.
@EroticCelery What security holes? No more than the browsers themselves have had. Just like you need to update your browser, you probably want to update your plugins (and not just Flash).
Updating Flash takes all of 2 minutes and it pretty much completely automated. It even updates itself these days.
@reader1
Your logic does not hold. Apple's sales do not indicate that people don’t want Flash on the iPhone. Apples sales simply indicate that it is selling well prior to the availability of Flash 10.1. Once Flash 10.1 becomes available, the negative publicity may eat into some of the iPhone sales – not necessarily in the mass market, but at least among those people interested in having the best browsing experience on their smartphone.
For years people did not have any option, the only real smartphone game in town was the iPhone. Now that the competition is heating up with the Palm Pre (webOS) and Android phones, there is choice. I love technology, flexibility, and openness - that is why I bought the Palm Pre last June 2009. I am definitely looking forward to Flash 10.1 coming to the Palm Pre next month (February 2010).
@reader1 PS3 runs flash, and has a store.
Guess they ain't trippen huh, since sales are way up and all.
@cashmonee Hey, i also have a bridge to sell you. Corporations are in business to make money, I'm going to believe the money making aspect of the argument, more than I'm going to buy that Apple cares about people.
@avinash240
So when Apple says in an earnings call that iTunes is a break even product, they are lying? May want to contact the SEC. They would love to have that info.
@reader1: actually, Hulu has started to make money, if you were paying attention. In the case of their most popular content, they started charging more per advertising minute than the network broadcast, and it's worth it for the advertisers.
The reason they can do this is that viewer demographics are both more accurate and granular than the Nielsen household model.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=atKGiQOMco.Y
@Jack If Apple's real reason were just to make sure that the web were a better place, they wouldn't allow flash plug-ins in desktop Safari. Get your thinking straight. This is simply about potential revenue loss from the app store.
You as well as I know, that if they implemented it, and it ran smoothly, you'd be congratulating their "innovation" so please, stop dreaming, and wake up.
As many have said, it does have to do with Flash acting as its own OS to play games or applications without going through the app store.
But historically, Apple and Adobe soured on their relationship long ago.
Look up the font wars of 1991. Apple switched to the TrueType font format to stop having to pay Adobe.
Look up how Adobe yanked Premiere off the Mac platform when Apple's Final Cut took over the market.
Look how Apple and Adobe went head to head on Light Room and Aperture.
Look at how Adobe took a long time before porting apps over to OS X (and Quark didn't).
Look at how the FLV format has almost completely killed the QT MOV format.
What's really ironic about all this is that YouTube is almost 100% FLV videos. You can't play them through the iPhone Safari browser. But Apple put a YouTube application on the iPhone from day one so that people could see Flash content.
Flash content doesn't really bother Apple. They just want control of it.
@reader1 Including flash may reduce app store sales somewhat, but they will lose money with this device most noticeably as there are laptops hundreds of dollars cheaper that does almost everything else, has a webcam AND flash. . .
If this was the reason, it's not very smart because without flash people just walk away. It's better to have some income rather than very little, right?
@MoonWalkerCTE
dosent hurt iphone sales not having flash
@kojo87
Do you also think that they have to have a JRE? If not, why not? Also I know of a lot of great browser plugins and addons for viewing 3d content (vrml, models, etc). Should Apple have to have all of those as well?
Atleast Java is opensource. Flash is not. It is more logical for Apple to have Java (which can btw render flash files on its own).
But they will not. It would make more sense for them to support the latest build of QuickTime (which along with many other things can also render flash).
@kojo87
Apple wants to control the entire ecosystem of their iPod, iPhone, and iPad devices. Flash allows arbitrary code to be executed on devices, completely relies on Adobe for development, and gives up alot of control that Apple is not willing to give up. Apple is also working hard on HTML5, and with Google/Youtube in the same bed Apple has a pretty strong hand in ignoring Flash. Flash will also eat into iTunes, App Store sales. Watching the event yesterday, it seems that several points in the presentation were calculated, deliberate, and very political. Showing the missing plugin for Flash would be one, omitting McGraw from the partnered publishers would be another.
IMHO, Flash was a good idea at first, but rapidly became something else, is detrimental to the web experience as a whole, and should be avoided like the plague. Adding Flash might appease the whiners for about 2 seconds, but long term it will be a support nightmare. Kudos to Apple for having the guts and clout to avoid Flash!
@cashmonee
You're absolutely correct. Consume pressure is harsh though. Look at all these people guessing wrong except what? You, me, and John Gruber? It's about the battery life and user experience, sillies! Yes, I know the whole "let the consumer decide" mentality. They decide by not buying whatever Apple is selling in my book. Apple is thinking different, and for all the NOISE over "flash", I don't see ANY device doing it so well that anyone is particularly thrilled to point to it and say "Because this has Flash, we shall crown you KING." Instead, Adobe is only NOW finishing a multi-touch enabled version of Flash and no one wants to consider Apple's concerns about being able to move quickly between different processor architectures without being held back by a heavily used plugin that needs recompiling. Meh. I get it... "MUST HATE APPLE..." If Flash was an OPEN standard anyone could create/compile their own plugin to play, this whole issue would not exist.
@reader1
"There's no such thing as high-quality Flash content."
Have you ever even used Hulu? It is simply amazing, with great quality and a huge selection. HTML5 may be the future, but Flash is the NOW, so the iPad sucks NOW.
@sfox8 That makes sense. That is the one major thing I hate about my iPod Touch is the fact I can't watch Flash videos. Pretty much makes porn videos not at all accessible and last I heard internet porn was still quite popular.
But it isn't just porn of course - College Humor, Hulu, so much more could be available and it isn't.
@reader1
I agree with you, but I find it interesting that they have introduced it by saying "What kind of tasks? Browsing the web...." and "It's the best web experience you've ever had." yet it is missing an important piece of todays web experience.
I do see how Apple could lose money from having Flash...they have to cut losses somewhere, right? (personally, I haven't seen that polished of Flash games like I have seen games on the iPhone/ iPT). But I don't see Xbox saying it has the best gaming experience you've ever had and then exclude game makers like EA or Epic.
Your friendly neighbourhood,
Smccullough
@reader1
You say a lot of out of touch and ignorant things, but this one takes the cake: "Get used to it. Technology is advancing rapidly and the web browser has no future."
Brainiac - how the hell would someone know what app to look at for say tech news without a web browser in the first place to learn of it. Web browsing cannot be completely destroyed by apps. That's a pathetic thing to believe. Maybe you think that we should only look at information Apple tells us to look at, because freedom of information scares you.
Oh, this quote: "The movies and games are both better than Flash. Flash content is mostly cheaply produced junk." is a good example of your stupidity as well. Flash is a program that allows anyone with a pc to produce and display - what the hell does quality have to do with their final product's accessibility; its about being able to see and access what others make...without restriction. Entire websites in some cases. You know - seeing the world through your own eyes rather than the filter of Apple. You're a twit.
@erik87
There is a difference though. On the iPhone, watching Falsh media is nowhere near as attractive as it is be on this one. Also a major selling point of this device is that it is supposed to give you a good surfing experience, but since so much of the web is Flash-based, your experience will be limited.
@reader1
It's not what people want! People want freedom Apple has none in their devices at all! Especially with all its crappy OS and apps where you have to buy everything almost! At least when you have windows you have more freedom of free BSD, Linux etc
@kojo87 in other words, why does Apple hate mankind
@reader1
Okay... so why does Safari support flash?
@kojo87 the same reason there's no USB on the iPad, it's not their standard and it opens up a universe of options that are not under their thumb.
@cashmonee I think in addition, they lock things down a little more on their devices to get content providers to pony up the goods for sale. Look at Apple's track record versus Microsoft's. Microsoft Vista is locked down for DRM even more than OSX.... all of the Microsoft DRM schemes (including xbox) lock media to your hardware, and if it dies without performing a special dance your media is lost. Most windows games (and all DLC) lock to your hardware with one-time-use serial numbers now. Lastly Apple has been doing the same thing for quite a while now.... how many DRM schemes has Microsoft gone thru, how many shops selling Microsoft DRM are gone?
@kojo87: lots of history behind the answer to your question. Back in the days when Apple was the only GUI game in town, Adobe's efforts were focussed on the applications on that platform, and life was rosy.
When the IBM-PC revolution reached the GUI stage with Windows 3.1 and later 9x, Adobe started to focus its efforts there, on the basis of majority rules. As one pundit put it, Adobe "stopped their car, bundled Apple and others into the boot (trunk) and graciously welcomed Microsoft into the front seat". Basically, Adobe stopped putting any extra performance into Apple's versions of its software and kept it on a par with Windows versions, in the belief that the Apple Mac's low market share vis-a-vis PCs wasn't worth the effort. This attitude seems to have persisted into modern times, with Flash on the Mac now being the major cause of browser crashes, as well as its infamous thirst for CPU cycles which causes Mac laptops to overheat.
Naturally, Apple has said "sod this for a lark, we'll roll our own" and has ploughed its own furrow ever since.
Don't expect this to change anytime soon.
@hastings Yes, cause you *feel* good when you buy something.
You either feel gratitude when you get something for free, or you feel good that you saved money to go *buy something* else.
Face it consumerism == buying == Apple == why they are winning the game currently.
omg.. reader1 actually believes their own statements.
There's nothing high quality, but yet you'd have to compete with it to sell your product.. you sir, are a masterful troll.
@kojo87
You know what the absence of flash tells me? That steve jobs himself doesn't use an ipad to surf the web.
Think about it, would a billionaire like him walk around with a device that can't do half of the stuff on the web? I don't buy that.
@kojo87 There are many reasons why apple doesn't want to have their iDevices, geting a flash.. Some reasons which won't be disclosed fully to the public. But, yes I concur, that somehow flash should be embrace by apple.. I mean, there are so many times I want to view/play flash media on my iPhone, but can't because of this lack. More details: http://bit.ly/apple-ipad-advantages
@Wwhat If Flash is so great why are there plugins for browsers that block flash content. I have one installed on my Firefox browser. Flash advertisements annoy me no end. Popping over the content that I want to get at, defaulting with audio enabled, when I am trying to browse quietly at home late at night or in the public library where I do not wish to disturb other patrons... Don't get me wrong Flash has its very limited use and I believe that its use will continue to fall out of favor as designers embrace HTML5 which is supported now on Safari, Chrome, and a few other browsers.
@kojo87
I have two ideas. Adobe in recent years has really made flash player on the mac very difficult to work with. I have a first gen macbook and whenever I run flash it uses 100% cpu. Another is product management, if the iPhone crashes often while watching Flash, most people will not blame Adobe, but Apple. Flash 10.1 is a big improvement, but it is not a fully-stable product just yet. A lot of Flash 10.1 is just adding extra horsepower(using the GPU to run). That helps offload a lot on the processor, but it does not make Flash more efficient. Adobe has to make things more efficient. Also I think Flash complaining can be coming to an end soon with the release of Flash CS5.
Another thing removing Flash in general seems to be the goal of a lot of big companies now adays. Google,Microsoft, and Apple all want it off the face of the earth, whatever reasons they might have. So it might be just that. I will say one thing I don't think any technology exists that can replace Flash in some aspects, and that is web special effects, like some portfolio sites are just amazing because of Flash.
@kojo87
Flash support? Sorry you will have to wait for "iPad F" in 2011.
Multitasking? "iPad M" in 2012.
@kojo87 Apple is against open development. Allowing Flash would allow any developer to create apps that could be accessed in the browser while bypassing the strict limitations of the App Store.