Ask HN: Does the iPhone still need Flash support?
Does the iPhone still need Flash support?
35 comments
The iPhone never did need Flash support.
Flash is used for delivering ads (no thanks) and video (already covered by special-casing sites like YouTube). Flash is used for silly game sites, and we've got enough games on the iPhone (thank you very much (said by someone who has a non-game app (http://grafly.com) that's drowned out by all the game "noise" on the App Store ;-)).
Flash is the proprietary web, undiscoverable, unsearchable.
Flash is owned by entirely by Adobe, who make no bones about trying to build an entirely separate world in Flash to attempt to dominate the web and the desktop (AIR).
No thanks.
Edit: And, as antirez has pointed out, HTML5+JS+CSS are working hard to obviate Flash. With Google and Apple and Mozilla on their side, I think they have a good chance.
Flash is used for delivering ads (no thanks) and video (already covered by special-casing sites like YouTube). Flash is used for silly game sites, and we've got enough games on the iPhone (thank you very much (said by someone who has a non-game app (http://grafly.com) that's drowned out by all the game "noise" on the App Store ;-)).
Flash is the proprietary web, undiscoverable, unsearchable.
Flash is owned by entirely by Adobe, who make no bones about trying to build an entirely separate world in Flash to attempt to dominate the web and the desktop (AIR).
No thanks.
Edit: And, as antirez has pointed out, HTML5+JS+CSS are working hard to obviate Flash. With Google and Apple and Mozilla on their side, I think they have a good chance.
YouTube is not the only site with Flash video on the Internet. The handful of sites you could name and point out special-case apps for still will not cover the set of interesting sites with Flash video on the Internet.
Apparently iPhone apps are undiscoverable as well... or so your comment implies.
Then special casing is not ideal and i'm fairly sure flash does get indexed these days.
Its apparent you don't want it, but does the iPhone need Flash? I don't know - i don't have one, but i would think its only a matter of time.
Then special casing is not ideal and i'm fairly sure flash does get indexed these days.
Its apparent you don't want it, but does the iPhone need Flash? I don't know - i don't have one, but i would think its only a matter of time.
with HTML5 going forward the "flash is needed for videos" idea is going to vanish...
Not only is the "flash is needed for videos" idea going to vanish. The impact of the relentless improvements being made to the JS engines in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are hard to over state. At some point, the combination of HTML5 and high performance JS starts to make me wonder how many other current applications of flash are doomed as well. It won't happen overnight, but I think the writing is certainly on the wall.
The JS improvements in Firefox its called Tamarin tracing and comes from the Flash engine, donated by Adobe, so they also want a fast js in the browser:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
Adobe was also a big proponent of SVG standard (for vectorial graphics) with their very own plugin, until they purchased Macromedia.
Because Macromedia did a incredible, really great job pushing their plugin into the vast majority of browsers (google flash plugin penetration ~ 99%). They accomplished that by making a tool that web developers wanted and people liked, with a smaller plugin and better than any other company: fast animations (remember the pain of making gif89a or a java applet?), mp3 sounds! (remember midi, wav, au, aiff or the BGSOUND tag?), typography, any font! (not just Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Times or Georgia), vector graphics that downloads and renders fast (is there any website using SVG now?), streaming video embeded into the html page (better than real player, quicktime or windows media, because it works almost for everybody, except the iPhone users, except when watching YouTube), microphone and webcam support, and now (with flash 10) they are putting 3d inside their plugin (before anyone could say OpenGL ES).
In an ideal world we would have solid standards, but in this world we have the W3C, and the abandoned XHTML2 or CSS3, unimplemented by the browsers CSS2, SVG, SMIL, and so on...
That is why we have got the propietary Futuresplash-Macromedia-Adobe Flash leading the web to its full potencial, in place of the W3C, or Sun's Java applets, Microsoft's ActiveX or Silverlight, Adobe PDF+scripts, Google nativeclient... but Macromedia did better.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
Adobe was also a big proponent of SVG standard (for vectorial graphics) with their very own plugin, until they purchased Macromedia.
Because Macromedia did a incredible, really great job pushing their plugin into the vast majority of browsers (google flash plugin penetration ~ 99%). They accomplished that by making a tool that web developers wanted and people liked, with a smaller plugin and better than any other company: fast animations (remember the pain of making gif89a or a java applet?), mp3 sounds! (remember midi, wav, au, aiff or the BGSOUND tag?), typography, any font! (not just Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Times or Georgia), vector graphics that downloads and renders fast (is there any website using SVG now?), streaming video embeded into the html page (better than real player, quicktime or windows media, because it works almost for everybody, except the iPhone users, except when watching YouTube), microphone and webcam support, and now (with flash 10) they are putting 3d inside their plugin (before anyone could say OpenGL ES).
In an ideal world we would have solid standards, but in this world we have the W3C, and the abandoned XHTML2 or CSS3, unimplemented by the browsers CSS2, SVG, SMIL, and so on...
That is why we have got the propietary Futuresplash-Macromedia-Adobe Flash leading the web to its full potencial, in place of the W3C, or Sun's Java applets, Microsoft's ActiveX or Silverlight, Adobe PDF+scripts, Google nativeclient... but Macromedia did better.
Wikipedia has a lot of charts and such as SVGs. But I've never seen it anywhere else.
> with HTML5 going forward the "flash is needed for videos" idea is going to vanish...
Never mind the fact that you will have to go forward about 10 years before most browsers support HTML5 in it's entirety.
Never mind the fact that you will have to go forward about 10 years before most browsers support HTML5 in it's entirety.
Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome, four of the top five browsers, now support the video tag. Despite the codec war, it can be argued that most browsers today do in fact support HTML5 enough to support the parent's comment.
Most people do not use browsers which support the video tag. Those people that do use a browser that does - well each of those browsers implements it differently.
FWIW, if the iPhone ever does get flash, I may stop having an iPhone. Do not want.
Why? It will be easy to disable.
That seems like an unwarranted assumption, but I'm going to be an optimist and agree with you.
The mere fact they include it would make me really question their taste and ideals.
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video is already covered by special-casing sites like YouTube
Is that a good solution? it has the consequence that in order to make your new video startup site successful (on the iPhone), you have to first pay off Apple. That sounds to much like the anti-net-neutrality stuff for me.
And I can't then embed video on a blog post, or somewhere else that isn't a "special case site" for video.
Is that a good solution? it has the consequence that in order to make your new video startup site successful (on the iPhone), you have to first pay off Apple. That sounds to much like the anti-net-neutrality stuff for me.
And I can't then embed video on a blog post, or somewhere else that isn't a "special case site" for video.
"...first pay off Apple."
...or write an app yourself that specializes in playing your video (you can register third-party apps to handle custom URL's, without any special treatment from Apple) and use it as a marketing tool to bring attention to your startup (which could use a way to set itself apart from the many other video startups).
I'm not sure where you're going with your "net-neutrality" comment, but feel free to enlighten me.
...or write an app yourself that specializes in playing your video (you can register third-party apps to handle custom URL's, without any special treatment from Apple) and use it as a marketing tool to bring attention to your startup (which could use a way to set itself apart from the many other video startups).
I'm not sure where you're going with your "net-neutrality" comment, but feel free to enlighten me.
You have to pay off x to get your site on the internet, where x is ISPs in the no-net-neutrality scenario, and Apple in yours, but is bad and wrong either way
We fear what we do not understand and cannot control.
I don't think rehashing the flash argument in terms of "it's a proprietary technology" is necessary. I'm writing this comment from my iPhone. I can't remember any time in the last 2 years I have needed Flash on this thing for something mission critical. If anything, I am annoyed by the numerous warnings from various sites that make popup alerts saying I need it. The only time it was annoying not to have it was trying to read various links here on HN that were from scribd. Now they have iPhone friendly versions of their documents and that grievance is gone.
So no, the iPhone doesn't need flash and I would disable it even were it available.
So no, the iPhone doesn't need flash and I would disable it even were it available.
What I love of the iPhone not supporting it (and in one year of using the iPhone every day I never needed flash) is that it is a good argument against flash, to be used with people not understanding the other, more sensible, arguments against flash. So: We can't use flash! Otherwise we have a problem with iPhone users.
Personally, I've had a phone for two years, and ran into non-youtube video quite frequently.
Yep it happens, but most videos are also viewable searching for the title into Youtube. And as I said I really hope that HTML5 will remove this last problem... The only left problem is P0RN of course... but there is http://pornhub.com that is iPhone ready.
I've had mine two years and I've never found a need for flash. We could sit here and trade anecdotes all day if you like.
As someone whose business primarily consists of Flash-based web sites and development, I was initially disappointed by the initial lack of Flash support and subsequent delays.
Now, I couldn't care less. In fact, I'd probably prefer the iPhone didn't have Flash support. For what we do at least, rendering Flash on the iPhone would be a usability nightmare. It's not hard to detect a visitor using an iPhone and render a much friendlier version.
Now, I couldn't care less. In fact, I'd probably prefer the iPhone didn't have Flash support. For what we do at least, rendering Flash on the iPhone would be a usability nightmare. It's not hard to detect a visitor using an iPhone and render a much friendlier version.
I think users would love to have the option to access millions more apps/sites/content.
Flash is indeed searchable, and indexed since flashplayer 9.
Flash is indeed searchable, and indexed since flashplayer 9.
It's not about whether Flash is good or bad; or whether at some point in the future it's going to be outmoded. It's about the _fact_ that there are plenty of websites out there that do use Flash right now, and it would be, I don't know, kind of nice to be able to use them.
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Apple has many competitive products to Adobe. Of course they're not going to try and help Adobe.
It's also why they aren't supporting an open video tag. They have competitive products to it.
It's also why they aren't supporting an open video tag. They have competitive products to it.
Of course it does. There's a ton of apps and services built upon the Flash framework.
But hey. Flash is bad. Rarr. Objective-C good. Woot.
But hey. Flash is bad. Rarr. Objective-C good. Woot.
it's not that flash is bad per se, but rather adobe's stewardship of it. they're doing their best to create another microsoft-like monopoly around it.
and it can't help that the flash plugin on macs has always been abysmal. it uses way too much cpu time. any flash website i go to makes the fans spin on my older powerbook. hardly surprising, then, that the powers that be at apple are not too crazy about it. in fact, flash pretty much sucks on all platforms except windows.
and it can't help that the flash plugin on macs has always been abysmal. it uses way too much cpu time. any flash website i go to makes the fans spin on my older powerbook. hardly surprising, then, that the powers that be at apple are not too crazy about it. in fact, flash pretty much sucks on all platforms except windows.
No.