Android may force Apple to lift Adobe Flash ban

I for one, who has a Android phone with flash love that flash works. I often use it when I surf on my phone. These web sites have news videos, business sites, shopping sites... etc. It is not a negative user experience. I cannot see what all the fuss is about. Works great for me!! I'll drain my battery way faster using my phone as a GPS navigation unit, but I do not see anyone cal to have that feature removed!
Apple... just get off your high horse and give the users what they want.
Oh... and why in the world would anyone turn off flash on a desktop computer?? I call that application/plug-in bigotry.
Just my 2 cents.

Skyfire had announced that they made over a million dollar selling their app for iphone. This shows that people do want flash. It is true on a benchmark, flash out perform HTML5. Working in the IT field, I hate to being control from what I can do. Adobe, lately has done alot. Almost every month i see some patches update. I think Apple needs to relax their restriction abit.

Adobe claims Flash runs slow on OSX because (until very recently) Apple did not provide access to hardware acceleration for video and graphics via MacOS. Apple's fault. They also claim that Safari/OSX required a complete browser page redraw every time a plugin redraws itself. Again, Apple's fault.

In other words Apple's laziness is what made Flash slow and not problems at Adobe.

Flash is software. Unlike floppy disk drives and other hardware, software evolves. Flash has evolved steadily and continues to improve in performance and features.

Flash and other plugins are explicitly part of the HTML 4 and 5 standards. The object tag is explicitly included to allow browsers to pass handling of content on to plugins.

Apple's decision to not implement parts of HTML 4 and 5 has - to some degree - broken the Web. Over the last dozen years or so people have been posting all sorts of content ranging from educational animations to interactive videos using Flash and other plugins.

Apple's refusal to allow Flash on the iPad has effectively erased other people's work.

I find that outrageous and I am disgusted with Jobs behavior regarding other people's work.

I agreed with Terrell and Jt. As many times, I wish that I have flash on my iphone. So what if flash drains my battery. It's my choice. If I turn my flash on, I know i am draining my batter but that's my CHOICE. I sometimes browse to web chatroom. Guess what? I can't chat because it requires flash. Flash is not about banners and ads only. Sometimes I wishes to watch my dramas online like Megaupload, guess what I can't watch it even if I use skyfire for Frash. That's because megaupload requires you to click on Play button. See what I mean? It doesn't mean that you don't need it you speak for others. To me I felt flash is important to my iphone. I can't get wait for my contract to go over and I'm heading for android phone. Too much restriction on Iphone crap.

Those that bash Flash have either an interest in doing so, career, money, Apple fanatics, etc., or they are ill informed. Flash is a victim of it's own success. There are three main reasons people give for not liking Flash and they can all be connected to it's success.

1. Flash is a resource hog.

Any, ANY, rich content will hog up your battery life. Try running non Flash videos, games, animations on your device all day long and see how long your battery will last. In addition, plenty of tests have been done by developers that show that Flash is at least on par with HTML5 when it comes to the use of device resources when using either technology for rich content. So if Flash is draining your device's battery it's because it's used to create rich content that you see everywhere.

2. Flash has security vulnerabilities.

True, and so does HTML and many fear HTML5 will be even worse. With features like local storage, offline content, geolocation, etc. HTML5 will be a security minefield. And if users in general are so concerned about security why haven't they left services like Facebook in droves? A site, that I might add, is not built on Flash but HTML. The more capabilities a technology has to enhance the user experience the more security vulnerabilities will be created and Flash offers tons of capabilities to developers.

3. Flash runs all those annoying banner ads.

Why do marketers use Flash for their banners? Because Flash is great at doing what marketers want. Which is to deliver rich interactive content across all browsers, platforms and, increasingly in the future, devices. If Flash is ever killed marketers will just find another technology to use. And then all of you Flash bashers will be looking for ways to block those annoying HTML5 banner ads. Instead of attacking the technology that marketers have abused maybe you should attack the marketers.

Flash is a great technology that for a long time allowed developers to create the rich content that no other technology could. Now that HTML is finally maturing to be more on par with Flash it just gives more developers more tools to continue creating rich content. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I get so tired of people bashing flash. As someone noted earlier, once you go beyond displaying static text and images to playing animation and video you're going to start using cpu cycles and draining battery life. It doesn't matter what technology platform you use. One of the downsides to flash is that the barrier to entry is low. Thus, you get people that aren't computer scientist making applications.

Flash is a great multimedia platform that's not perfect, but it's not to blame for all the issues you all suggest. First, question the person who developed the application. I'm a software engineer and it doesn't matter what language I'm writing in, if I'm not careful of performance optimization, and memory usage then I'm going to run up the cpu and drain the battery. If an application built in flash is causing you problems stop using it and other products developed by that person or entity.

So, flash on Android works IF you use it in the "click2flash" style. Without that it is roundly criticized, so I think everyone would agree that the only way it is usable on mobile is with the click to opt in to each individual flash element on a site.

Flash is used in 3 primary ways: video embedding, games / utility functions, and ads / banner animations.

No one is going to click on ads to enable them to play. So all those developers who say they want to use flash to develop ads once and have them work on desktop and mobile are going to be disappointed. Sorry, but it just isn't going to work out.

For the games and utilities - they can work on mobile if they are rewritten to NOT need desktop style UI - ie no hover or mouseover events.

For video it works but drains battery life significantly faster than just putting the video in h.264 and using a native player.

The result is that there is a market on mobiles for flash video. If you are a content provider and want to only produce flash then people can see it on Android but not on iOS. For games you will need to write a special version for mobile, so no write once there. For ads forget it - no one will watch them.

I want it. I'm tired of running into sites that I can't access and that my Android friends can.

Great comments here, like I said I totally don't miss flash in any way at all, and have flash disabled on my desktop too. I can't see any reason why Apple would suddenly want flash on their devices, there are just too many reasons not to. If we do see flash, maybe we'll see floppy disc drives making a comeback too.

Not going to happen. Flash on Android is a negative user experience which isn't going to "force" Apple to do anything.

Just make it .... {adobe flash plugin has crashed} ...

... an optional install {adobe flash plugin has crashed} ...

.. so I don't have to deal with that {adobe flash plugin has crashed}

.. amazing piece of software on MY iPhone...

:D

On Android you can have Flash setup to work just like Click2Flash on desktops, so you don't download Flash content (saving bandwidth) and don't take any battery life hit except for embedded apps you want to use (i.e. exclude all flash adverts).

The battery life argument is largely nonsense because the moment you are asking the device to do anything more than just display text and static images the moment the CPU usage jumps up. In some cases, Flash is less efficient than say HTML5, and in other cases Flash is more efficient.

But that's not what this is about - users have largely been conned that it's all about bugs, security or battery life. In the end it's all about Apple maximising the value from the appstore - free Flash games available through the browser obviously hurts that - hence Apple don't want you to be able to use Flash through the browser.

Good article...
I for one hope they do reverse their stance. As many have said, why not allow people the option? If you hate it, fine, don't use it. As a developer I love the develop once approach of Flash and it is evolving MUCH faster than any other technology. Once you dig deeper into JavaScript based animation, jQuery being my favorite, you quickly learn that performance is exponentially worse than Flash particularly with animations longer than a second or two.

Letting the user decide is always the best approach...
Sent from my iPhone :-)

Flash is gaining ground with vendors. But Flash isn't gaining ground with performance. No currently shipped mobile device has everyone saying Flash runs great and doesn't affect battery life and browsing experience.

Adobe should just release Flash for iOS in the jailbreak community. Prove that it works. And that it doesn't slow browsing and scrolling down. Doesn't drain your battery. THEN Adobe can approach Apple.

I really don't see this happening. Apple has continued to take an anti-Flash stance. The company isn't going to reverse that decision anytime soon.