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Sep 30, 08 - 04:48 pm Comment from: Mr. Reeee

It better be small.
It better be FAST.
Ot it be DEAD before it even gets NEAR the App Store.

Will it be snappier AND flashier?

Useless resource hog. iPhone would be much better off without it.

Flash on the Beach - sounds naughty.

Sep 30, 08 - 04:56 pm Comment from: Logan

I would love to see Flash be less prominent on the web. It's not the best solution for video, period. And once you figure that out, it becomes much less of a "necessity" for anything on the web. Flash sites are stupid, slow, unintuitive, etc.

About the only thing it does well is games and cartoons. Stick with that Adobe. Better yet, die. Or make some really great, fast, unbloated, reasonably priced applications.

It will not be dead before it gets to the app store as it is developed by professionals and not little kid whack and hacks. It is agreed though that flash is useless.

@ freddwer
I think that MDN would be better off without you. Oops! I hate when I try to force my opinions upon others. My bad.

@ stephengulr
Why do you say it is useless? If a lot of people want it, it is not useless. I'm sure that they'll have the option to turn it off therefore you and freddwer will not lose sleep worrying that Flash has compromised your battery life.

Adobe reminds us of that other useless Stuffit application. Flash was made to compete with animated gifs on a junk pc.

Hope they refuse it. That's the only hope to see other forms of video on the web in the foreseeable future. As for flash's other uses, again, there is a chance that non-proprietary things might get some exposure and consequent improvement. At the moment, any improvement relies on Adobe, and that's not good because their priority is Adobe, not web development. And Microsoft's competing crap, if it takes off, will be just like another burger king to compete with all the other crap.

We need innovation and improvement maybe, but just things that work in the existing evolving web structure without breaking it would be better than Adobe and Microsoft's efforts so far.

Sep 30, 08 - 05:36 pm Comment from: obtusegoose

Like it or not, Flash is needed on the iPhone. It's used on a huge number of websites to deliver video. Not to mention the ton of video games available. Which probably explains why Apple doesn't want Flash. It will cut into game sales at the App Store.

Web standards and Javascript engine speeds are progressing to the point where Flash will no longer be needed. The upcoming HTML5 (some of which is being phased in even now) includes dedicated, standardized video and audio tags. Plugins could still be used to play back the audio or video content, but the use of standard media codecs (mp3, H.264, etc.) would eliminate the reliance on one specific plugin and its non-standard media formats.

Hopefully, Apple will continue their push for open standards, instead of Adobe's (or Microsoft's, or anyone else's) closed, proprietary solutions.

Apple has always viewed flash like another junk windows media player, floppy drive, real player etc. Useless and outdated technology that serves no purpose just like java. So don't be offended, java blows too.

@obtusegoose

Your name fits you well. The earliest apps for Apple's iPhone (which Apple heartily promoted, mind you) were web-based apps and games, which Apple made no profit from. Those games used normal HTML standards, instead of Adobe's proprietary plugin, so Flash clearly isn't really *needed* for web games.

And Flash was pressed into duty as a video platform because it was the least-common-denominator video player which worked on all platforms (since Microsoft was too busy trying to gimp Quicktime on Windows to pay attention to Adobe quietly nipping off in the other direction).

This status quo sadly won't be changing anytime soon, but there's a broader push to use H.264 for video on the internet, instead of Adobe's proprietary .flv format. Since Adobe is no doubt using the status quo to attempt to push their influence further, I sincerely hope Apple continues to shun Flash for the iPhone (and considering Google isn't too keen on Flash either, they have at least one ally in that fight).

Sep 30, 08 - 05:56 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

If you don't have Flash, you don't have "the whole internet."

I would welcome Flash on my iPhone, but of course, I would also want the option to be able to turn it off.

I don't care if it comes from the app store, or Cydia. Either way, it's better than no option at all.

This is still all about Flash LITE, essentially a WAPized version of Flash. There is NO PHONE that has Flash (only Flash LITE). On a phone that renders the WHOLE internet, if Adobe isn't ready to step up to the plate with the WHOLE Flash, they need to go back to the drawing board.

You can't define the internet like that. Otherwise, there is NO device/computer anywhere capable of displaying "the whole internet". Somewhere, there is some content that any given device (including computer's running XP or Vista) won't be able to display or interact with.

Flash is just another proprietary executable format that enables Adobe to continue dumbing down the internet to Adobe's level.

Adobe has been crapping on the Mac platform for forever with their second-rate implementation of their plugin compared with the Windows version. Why would the iPhone version be any better?

do you turn off the flash web site designers?

Didn't Adobe screw Apple over at some point? Don't they hold back innovating the mac version to wait for windows capabilities to catch up? Didn't Adobe drag their feet on the OS X version of their software?

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Screw Adobe.

I hope apple blocks Flash until Adobe cries. Flash is ugly and horrible technology.

"Like it or not, Flash is needed on the iPhone"

No it's not. I don't need it now and I don't need it tomorrow, or the next day. OR EVER. Sorry.

Will it be a separate application? Why can't they just send it to  and have them integrate it with Safari. If it's a whole separate browser then I won't buy it.

Sep 30, 08 - 08:29 pm Comment from: theloniousMac

A lot of you guys truly are MacDorks. A better phrase could not have been coined.

No, Flash isn't needed on the iPhone. Nor is it needed on the Mac. In fact, while we're at it, let's get rid of any technology not specifically created by Apple...

mp1
mp2
mp3
mp4
jpeg
tiff
avi
wmv
gif
divx
png

I mean, why even have a browser on the Mac or iPhone? We don't need this crap! Get rid of Safari!!!! Get rid of all the other browsers for the Mac. We Mac users want to live in an isolated, proprietary, little world where we are suckled by Steve Jobs and we don't care what anyone else might have to say.

This will be hard.

1) iPhones battery is bad enough. Flash would kill it.
2) Apple would bring this out via a software upgrade. Enhancing existing applications with framework additions is not supported with the tools from the App Store.

Sep 30, 08 - 10:19 pm Comment from: alansky

@theloniusMac:

You really need to chill, dude.

I'm sure that keeping Flash off the iPhone is going to cause web developers to abandon it in droves. I know that if I used Flash, and so my web site was only accessible to more than 99% of all Internet users, I'd see that as an insurmountable problem.

I'm equally sure Adobe will also feel suitably chastised.

So great is the power of the iPhone...

Adobe:
Purveyor of overpriced, bloated, spaghetti-coded crap.

Flash winds up processor cycles like it's Call of Duty 4. Did I mention that it's a browser plug-in?

IMO:

- Flash should be available for iPhone.

- There should absolutely be an on/off switch for it.

- And while I'm adding my $.02 about Flash...Apple needs to add an Ad Blocker for Safari on iPhone. Many of the web pages I visit get hung up trying to load ads (iPhone 1.0 Edge). And I don't like that bandwidth-draining, flashing crap any more on my iPhone than I do on my desktops/laptops.

There's an interesting piece by John Gruber at Daring Fireball about why Flash will not make it to the iPhone.

I think he's spot on.

Oct 01, 08 - 02:36 am Comment from: studentrights

@nobodi

Oh, thanks for the link.

@Logan.

Actually, your understanding is a bit limited. You may be right, in that Flash is crap for video, but for thin client business applications, Flex (the business app version of Flash - and is implemented via the Flash player) is fantastic and craps on both Javascript and Silverlight.

So, bringing Flash to the iPhone would be advantageous to Apple and the industry. However, whether Apple accept that other companies do produce some good technology is yet to be seen.

@studentrights ... Want someone to wipe your ass for you as well?

@theloniousMac ... "But MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14) is based ISO/IEC 14496-12:2005 which is directly based upon Apple’s QuickTime container format".

That truth aside, your post, eloquently demonstrates your perpetual choler here at MDN.

Oct 01, 08 - 07:56 am Comment from: mks1

Here's the link for John Gruber's piece on flash...http://daringfireball.net/

Oct 01, 08 - 08:03 am Comment from: Macdoc

No Flash, Thank You.

like it or not flash is a major part of the web, until something better comes along that is universally adopted flash is needed for the iPhone, period.

Yes flash is a major part of the web - the part that REALLY SUCKS.

Thanks.

I guess some people haven't heard that "Google is your friend."

Besides, what kind of Machead doesn't know about Daring Fireball?

It will not be dead before it gets to the app store as it is developed by professionals and not little kid whack and hacks. It is agreed though that flash is useless.mobile games & mini game