“When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad on Wednesday, his live demonstrations with the device clearly showed the Safari browser was not capable of playing Adobe Flash. However, promotional images on Apple’s Web site show that same content loading just fine,” Neil Hughes reports for AppleInsider.
“One in a series of rotating images on Apple’s main page shows a story from The New York Times, entitled “The 31 Places to Go in 2010.” In the image, a picture of a beach in Montenegro is shown. The picture is part of 17 images displayed at the top of the story in Flash,” Hughes reports. “When accessing that same page on an iPhone, the images do not load. Instead, it says ‘In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here,’ with a corresponding link.”
“It’s likely the iPad photos are simply renderings of the device, rather than actual screenshots taken of the Web sites,” Hughes reports. “For example, the URL bar for the Times Web site simply shows ‘http://travel.nytimes.com’ rather than the address for the actual story displayed.”
Hughes reports, “Apple has famously shunned Flash, with the Web plugin having no support in the iPhone Safari browser. The company has even encouraged developers to “stick with standards” and use CSS, JavaScript and Ajax instead of Adobe Flash. In short, it’s unlikely that Flash support will exist in the iPad when it ships in two months… While Adobe has pushed for years to have Flash on the iPhone since it launched, Apple has not budged. The company’s rejection of Flash and move towards alternatives such as HTML5 suggest the Web plugin will not likely appear on the iPad.”
Much more, including the promo images, in the full article here.
See also, 9 to 5 Mac’s coverage on the topic here.
Maybe because flash is expensive, is a memory hog, doesn’t work that well. HTML 5 has more capability and I think that is what Apple is moving towards.
Flash is a legacy, 90s, bloated and hated piece of shit technology. Glad Apple flushed it down the commode. It’s over for Flash … you idiots whining about it, get over it.
Jobs buried it in an unmarked grave already.
It could be the backup gif being displayed. I make many online ads and we always create backup content (that looks similar to the flash content) to be shown for those without flash – an ever increasing market nowadays.
Say No To Flash!
Some people have too much time on their hands..
Flash has been a web standard longer than AJAX. In the early days of the internet, it often leveled the playing field when platform and browser incompatibility made web development a nightmare. It doesn’t count because it is a plug-in?
I know a lot of people hate the ever-encroaching Flash ads, and the piss-poor use of boring animations that Flash has come to represent, but when used well, it is actually an extremely powerful development tool. One that every other full-scale browser supports, and one that web developers should be able to use.
Apple, you call the iPad the ultimate web browsing experience… the internet in the palm of your hands. Well, when I watched your demo, Mr. Jobs, I saw quite a few empty boxes on the sites you surfed.
Like it or not, Flash is an integral part of the internet.
That Steve Jobs showed a screen with a hole for a Flash movie is no accident. It was his way of giving Adobe a one-finger salute. It infuriates me that the idiots at sites like TechCrunch (which I urge you to boycott) are totally clueless about Flash, as are a lot of geeks.
If you ever wondered why your browser crashes, Flash is often the culprit. If you ever wonder why your MacBook (or even a Dull PC laptop you’re forced to use) becomes white hot when visiting a Web site, you can thank Flash for that. If you are running on batteries and not AC with a laptop, visit a Web site or view a YouTube movie, and wonder why your battery is draining so quickly, you can thank Flash for that.
And Adobe is serious about wanting to put Flash on battery-powered handheld devices? Please. If I want to fry eggs, I would rather do it on my cooktop, not my iPhone (or soon, iPad).
Let’s all support Steve Jobs in fighting the good fight. Any time you see an article slamming Apple about Flash, or comments by geeks about this, attack them mercilessly. Hunt them down like the dogs they are. Flash is evil. And I am becoming convinced more each day, so is Adobe.
Flash = FAIL
Vast majority of Flash content out there today (I’d venture a guess, 98%) can be completely replicated, with identical functionality and features, using modern standard web technologies (HTML5, CSS, AJAX, etc).
There is no question, Flash is an enormously popular tool for creating visually attractive content quickly and easily. Any idiot can learn how to make an interactive animated banner in one day. And many idiots actually do exactly that. Which is why the web is swamped with massive amounts of completely unnecessary Flash content.
It is safe to guess that iPad will become extremely popular web surfing device. Together with its smaller siblings, they will soon account for close to 100 million web surfing devices. At one point, web site operators will begin to realise that larger and larger percentage of visitors are now unable to view their flash content (meaning no “conversions”, nor click-throughs, nor even eyeballs) and are abandoning their sites. Lost visitors will always automatically translate to lost revenue. As soon as this number becomes meaningful, there will be a major effort to redevelop web content around Flash, in order to keep those iPod/iPad/iPhone visitors. And this is when Apple will win and Adobe (and Microsoft with their Silverlight) will lose.
Let us hope that iPad becomes THE catalyst in the massive clean-up effort of current web, littered by all the unnecessary Flash crap out there.
I want to make something perfectly clear: Flash may have purpose and there may be situations where it is a good choice (I can’t think of any, but I will allow for it, for the sake of the argument). However, I stand by my argument that 98% of today’s Flash-using web pages do NOT need it in order to display the content and functionality in exactly the same way.
I hope Apple maintains their position and keeps Flash off the iPhone OS. If you want to greatly improve the stability of Safari, install Click to Flash which turns off Flash content. It’s fantastic.
Give me a break, @Standards. Please, given that you are an expert on such matters, define what an industry standard really means. Has Flash been submitted and officially approved by industry standards bodies? Has it received official commendation by standards organizations?
NO.
On the other hand, HTML5 IS a standard. It is a technology that has been approved by official standards organizations. It is more flexible, lightweight and extensible than Flash. By contrast, Flash is a convenience. People use it because it was available in the early days of the Web, and nothing more. But Flash (or, as it was originally called, FutureSplash) was never specifically designed for the Web, and especially never designed for handheld, battery-powered devices. Flash puts incredible demands on CPUs and uses excessive clock cycles to function. As a result, it puts tremendous processing overhead on Web browsers, and is actually highly inefficient.
So why do some geeks support it? Money. Being a Flash programmer can be lucrative. And these same geeks are comfortable with it. But if you have tried to program Flash, as I have, it’s a time-consuming nightmare.
I completely disagree with you, @Standards. I am afraid you are way off-base in your comments. The sooner Flash fades into the sunset, the better.
Is that truth in advertising? There are laws designed to prevent this kind of things. If this article is correct, it would lead the consumer to think that the iPad does display flash. I am surprised that this got past Apple’s legal department.
Well, I’ve got one positive thing to say about Flash – It’s not MeTooSoft’s Silverlight!
@Standards?
No. The correct is: “Flash WAS an integral part of the internet.”
From now on it’s not an integral part anymore.
Yeah, we should keep using the memory hog that crashes Safari at the drop of a hat… and force it to the iPhone and iPad to crash those as well.. all because Web designers insist on using it. That’s such a great standard.
Calling on ALL Mac users :
To disable Flash but make it easily available on occasions that you absolutely to make exceptions for, try Clicktoflash:
http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/
Kill Flash Now and enjoy a free flowing internet experience.
Still, it was pretty lame when SJ was on stage and he got the no-Flash-installed icon.
@ @Standards
It is true that Flash is not part of the W3C standards for the web, but very few current web technologies are. And Flash has certainly become a ubiquitous part of the internet. Beyond ads.
So, if you have a device that supposedly “Gives you the ultimate internet experience”, how do you justify that today (not a year from now, but today), a whole lot of content on the web is unavailable?
It’s true that I develop in Flash. I also develop in JavaScript, jQuery and strict HTML/CSS. Flash is a technology that is not an end all solution to web development, but it has its place with other web dev technologies. And if used judiciously, it is not the cycle hog it is made out to be. That is the fault of bad programming, or overwhelming animation. I agree… it’s annoying and sloppy.
And it really isn’t that hard to figure out, comparatively. Jeeze, if you program in JavaScript, you are 85% there.
Also, I am not sure what the big deal is with Flash and Safari on a Mac. I use Safari and visit Flash incorporated sites constantly, and Safari very rarely crashes, if ever.
HOWEVER, I am on an Intel based hot rod of a Mac, and when I had a G4 (and I have noticed even on G5s), Flash can be very sluggish. In these cases, I think Adobe really dropped the ball, and didn’t develop the Flash player to be optimized on OSX. I say this because I have seen Flash run the same sites on a POS underpowered Dell, running XP, and they run perfectly.
Apple has gotten in trouble before for misleading ads in the UK. Specifically iPhone ads showing how fast it goes. They had to pull them. I looked at the Apple UK site and it shows the same images as the US. I have a feeling once this gets more attention Apple will be forced to change the images on the UK site. I’m sure they UK will say they are misleading since those images on the actual device can not actually be seen.
Snow Leopard:
Lame is calling Steve Job’s action lame, despite the obvious intention ( as has been repeatedly pointed out ) of making the statement that Flash is not supported on iPad.
This just shows that NY Times will be adopting HTML5/H264 in the next 60/90 days.
“This just shows that NY Times will be adopting HTML5/H264 in the next 60/90 days.”
Exactly. And let’s all hope that Theora gets taken on as a standard as well, and that all browsers use both.
@Silly Rabbit
Yes, that’s what I was thinking just now.
That would be very cool of NY Times… (Obviously, the ads will probably still be Flash.)
Adobe does not define the Web. To say that Flash has been widely (and badly) used for a long time and therefore is part of the “web experience” is like saying IE6, ActiveX, popups, and phishing sites are part of the “web experience” and therefore must be supported and persisted. Does Adobe also support Silverlight? The Web became great based on non-proprietary, common standards. If you love Flash so much, download the AIR and run it on Windows. Who the hell are you to force your technology and opinion on all platforms? There are plenty of people want to or are willing to live without Flash, and they will support Apple financially. You don’t think the bean counters know this? I doubt anyone at Apple is losing sleep over losing Flash-loving customers.