When Will Apple Cave And Accept Flash? Maybe When It Doesn’t Suck | Hacker News Reader

When Will Apple Cave And Accept Flash? Maybe When It Doesn’t Suck

techcrunch.com

10 pointsatrevisan10 comments

Having been a Flash developer and now an iOS developer, I find most of these opinion pieces to be agenda driven. Apple's camp doesn't care or what to know the gritty facts pro-Adobe, and pro-Adobe/Flash users think Steve Jobs is a dictator.

No matter what side you sit on, make sure your argument is beyond skin-deep. It's common to see an Apple zealot post about Flash as a proprietary sand trap, while they are essentially using entirely proprietary, closed software to do so. The Flash camp isn't much better, claiming a mishmash of mobile efforts as ready to ship - and we've yet to see something stable come forth.

You're spot on there. I feel like the odd-man-out in a lot of Apple/Flash discussions. I understand the reasons why Apple doesn't want Flash on their devices, but I see the hypocrisy in the "open" arguments. On the flip side of the coin, I'm not crazy about Flash, but I do miss being able to view Flash-based websites. I think it's a bit disingenuous of the author to suggest he never encounters this problem. I browse the web a lot on my iPad. We've been shopping furniture over the last couple of weeks, and IKEA's website uses Flash. They have an iOS app, but it's formatted for the iPhone, thus I am unable to shop IKEA furniture on my iPad. Boooooo :(

The fundamental problem is that flash sucks, in these ways:

1. No or "only when the designer feels like it" accessibility. Go ask a blind person how much they love Flash websites. I've been recommending against flash since the late 90's for this reason alone.

2. The performance sucks, and has historically sucked on non-Windows platforms.

3. It goes outside the browser security model. Flash cookies anyone?

4. Every change must go through the designer with the original files, unless you've decompiled everything (which may or may not work). God help you if you inherit a site with no source files and someone wants you to change something.

Not a fan, never have been, even before iOS was out. Fix the above

It's not about flash sucking or not. It's about Apple wanting to have more control over their destiny than they used to. I think the bad years when Adobe decided to abandon the Mac platform left a bitter taste in Apple's mouth, and now that they don't have to kowtow to anybody they're making sure they do things their way.

I have been using my iPhone for years and my iPad for one year. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a Web site that wouldn’t load because I didn’t have Flash installed.

This seems self-selecting. I use Flashblock with win and lin desktops and are constantly coming across sites "missing bits" or "missing everything" because of blocked flash. Half the time this is advertising - I love my Flashblock - but there's a lot of content blocked as well,

Keep in mind many popular sites assume desktop users have Flash and mobile users don’t.

I use flashblock, too, and see “missing bits” frequently as well — but on my iPhone, this is indeed relatively rare. Does it happen? Yeah, but in the literal sense, I can’t remember the last time it did.

Anyway — flagged this article, it’s not HN caliber and nothing more than fanboy shouting at this point.

Flash could end world poverty and somehow increase battery life at the same time, Apple would still not include it. While I am sure performance doesn't help, Apple's Flash policy reasoning is very similar to its subscription policy. Either you are made by Apple or you take a back seat.

Why would Flash sucking or not influence Apple's decision?

I suspect that some of the problems with Flash are Apple's fault.

Here is the evidence. Flash crashes in Safari but not in Firefox, using the same computer and Flash installation.

Personally, I've found Flash crashes every browser on my Mac including Firefox.

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