No Flash on Apple’s iPad

I'm writing this from my iPad. I thought that I could live without flash, but it turnes out that about every other site I go to uses flash for various purposes, not just video. You don't realize it because everything just works on a pc. For example, I was just on Lexus.com. It turns out that all of their virtual tours are in flash. So of course i couldn't see them, which was very frustrating. Next, I decided to check out the news. I hit a link which took me to abc.com where I was presented with a huge blank space where a news video was supposed to be. On and on, I am finding that I simply cannot use this thing for much of anything.

Another issue is that amazingly, apps crash on my iPad way more frequently than aps do on my windows 7 laptop. My laptop easily does 20 things at the same time, flash included. My iPad does 1 thing at a time, and it doesn't do any of them as well as a laptop does.

Update: I just tried to post this from my iPad, but when I hit the "Post" button, nothing happened. I suppose this is another iPad browser limitation. I had to email this text to myself, along with the link to this page, so that I could post it from my Windows 7 laptop. If you are reading this, and are thinking of buying an Ipad, count yourself lucky. Take your money and instead buy an iPhone. If you already have one of those, then take your money and go get a brand new Dell Laptop for $450, or go to WalMart and get a Acer with a dual-core CPU, 4GB, a 250GB HDD, and a huge 15.6" screen for $350. If you already have a nice laptop, then consider donating your money to Charity. It will go to much better use.

No HDMI
No Avi files
No Flash
No Multi-Task
No Camera

Just NO, NO,NO,NO from Apple.

This is not a computer for school, or home it doesnt support 90% of the web, being flash.
This is not the standard we should for a tablet or slate.

Flash is not 90% of the web... 90% of the web might contain Flash objects but that's nowhere near the same as saying Flash is 90% of the web. It's also NOT a standard... it's proprietary! Don't you guys know the difference? For christ sake... I've been browsing websites for years now with ALL Flash content blocked and I haven't missed out on anything important. :) So come on people... quit bitching about stupid shit like Flash. You're not going to turn anyone who hasn't already made up their mind enough to make a difference.

We gave it some thought...here is why we think Apple decided to not support Flash:
http://www.rainydaymagazine.com/RDM2010/RainyDayEngineering/Week11/RDEMar1510.htm#NoFlash

We think they are right.

Agreed... it all boils down to the simple fact that people want most what they can't have. They can sit there and claim all they want that they will not be purchasing an iPhone/iPad for its lack of Flash but in reality, a good percentage of them will purchase it anyway and sales will be high regardless.

And you're correct, the iPhone "does" multitask its core applications. And multitasking on the Droid is limited to (I believe) only 6 apps (iPhone has 4, phone/mail/music/safari). :)

I agree, Brian.

I don't get the must-have-Flash people. Nor the multi-tasking people. Here's my $0.02:

If Flash was such a vital element, such a deal-breaker, than why have millions of iPhone users all over the world been giving their iPhones (and iPod Touches) the highest satisfaction rate, after ~3 years on the market, as recently as October of last year with J.D.Powers -- all without Flash? it doesn't make sense.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/08/j-d-power-iphone-is-no-1-again/

People didn't think they needed Flash until someone told them so (i.e. Adobe). People barely knew it was missing. And 50% at least of Flash is for annoying advertisements and spam.

On multitasking:

The iPhone OS definitely does multitask. It just isn't unlimited and for 3rd party apps. The core suite of apps do multitask, and the kernel does, too. Apple knows that 85% of people will overtax their device with needless and stupid combinations of too many apps at once, and when it crashes and reboots (been reading the Android/Nexus forums?) people tend to blame the manufacturer -- not their own over-taxing of the phone.

For most people, as long as they can
answer the phone
while browsing the Web or doing email and
maybe listening to music
they are happy campers. (try that on a Droid by the way)

One of the most popular apps for Android is task management and killing, and a common suggestion for people with problems is "are you running too many apps?". It must be a geek thing, but the vast majority of people don't want to muck around as if they were administering a Linux box.

Note: I do not own an iPhone, and I don't consider myself anti-Android, I just get tired of all the mis-informed "me-toos", where people repeat what they read without much thought or research.

Adobe claims that it should be simple to get Flash on a touch screen smartphone. Adobe also claims to be working hard at getting Flash on smartphones and that Flash is "oh so popular" that it should definitely be on smartphone devices. If this is even remotely true... we would have it right now and it would be working great and it would be readily available direct from Adobe. Smartphones (including touch screen devices) have been around for how long now and we have yet to see a fully working and functional Flash platform??? "Obviously" it is not needed and Adobe does not have a very "high" interest in porting to these devices.

Oops I didn't see Brian's similar but shorter comment right above mine! ;-)

An overlooked but important issue about Flash on iPad is this:

Flash assumes a mouse, and much of what goes on in Flash games (and user interfaces) involves moving and 'hovering' the mouse in addition to clicking it. Touchscreens do NOT have the equivalent of a 'hover' state for the input device (your finger). There is no 'rollover' event either. You touch it, you got it.

Each touch of a touch screen is (generally) going to be treated as some sort of 'click' or 'select' event. This is a very important concept, as I have learned developing touch screen kiosks for visitor centers.

New games, designed from the bottom up, for touch devices are going to blow us away and more than make up for losing many of the current ones.

There are other reasons to dislike Flash, which I could expound on since I have programmed in it for years, but don't forget that many or most of these so-called 'must have' Flash games would not work (as-is) on a touch device anyway. That doesn't mean Flash could not work for development of *new* games, I mostly refer to existing games and menu interfaces and such.

Just wanted to throw out this as an alternative to the Adobe-bashing or Evil Apple theories one sees so often.

I would also like to see someone use Flash (what's out there right this very second) on ANY device that does not support "mouseOver" events (aka ALL TOUCH SCREEN ONLY DEVICES). :)

Seriously people... stop complaining about the lack of Flash. It makes for a HORRIBLE browsing experience and drains your battery. Enabling Flash also means enabling all those annoying ads! Flash has NEVER been good and now it's even worse that Adobe has it. See here: Adobe's Apology http://bit.ly/9APzpY

Adobe knows they made a mistake, they even apologized for it... but are they going to release a fix for it right now? Nope... they can't be bothered to. They're just going to wait until their final 10.1 release. How professional is that? :) Why would anyone in their right mind want that kind of technology, run by that kind of company, on anything?

That window not capable to display Flash was a big dissapointment on the official iPad presentation made by Steve Jobs. I bet he was not really happy saying that iPad is not really Flash capable. Still I think this feature was not included on purpose. You can have a look here for more information: http://www.thehdstandard.com/general-discussion/no-flash-support-on-apples-tablet/

Catalin
Professional Streaming Consultant

I STRONGLY recommend iPad to EVERYONE interested in running a successful online business! Since I invested in iPad I made over $100,000 profits. I can’t tell you how happy I am with iPad.

I am not a big tech guys outside of my desktop but I have held off on an iPhone for two reasons; 1) ATT, and 2) No flash. As much as I would love to own an iPad I will never get one without flash. Multi-tasking would be nice too but flash is a deal breaker. What are they thinking?

I’ve used Macs for over 20 years, but I think Apple missed the target big time with this. In addition to the unfortunate name, I see the following:

First, they apparently want you to purchase all content from Apple. They don’t mention that you can download free content. No thanks, no way. Then, no flash capability, no USB port, no multi-tasking, no user-replaceable battery, and a really ugly bezel. What was Steve thinking?

What does it do that a normal tablet PC won't do? Even one several years old and available for far less? Or a used netbook, for that matter. Show wide-screen movies? Not very well with the 4:3 screen dimensions they use.

My ten y/o Walkabout HH3 tablet pc holds my 800+ free ebooks, shows my videos, pictures, has GPS, wifi, and cost a lot less. Did I mention it's waterproof rugged, and almost indestructible?

I see that there are only two things of positive note with the iPad. That it uses an Apple-designed chip, and an SSD drive. Both went almost unnoticed in the hype. The SSD drive will soon be the industry standard and Apple doing their own processors should be a wake-up call for Intel.

Other than those two items, I see a big worm in the Apple.

"First, they apparently want you to purchase all content from Apple. They don’t mention that you can download free content. No thanks, no way."

It was mentioned it supports protected and open source EPUB formats... not to mention the already supported PDF. With all the other reader applications and document viewers available on the AppStore I don't see where they went wrong here. :) The rest is subjective and personal preference.

At first I got so exited for the iPad...because it don't plays flash...I have to pass. :(
My Site is totally Flash and I can't show it to my customerson the iPad.

No flash on ipad. Then you're not getting the web as we all know it. Don't buy it.

No Flash video support, no sale. The least Apple could do was come up with a plugin for their browser that would enable Flash video playback. Flash apps I could care less about. But video is the deal breaker for me.

its a pretty dumb device, at best useless, but Apple fanboys will always find the right words to laud it and make it sound like the cancer cure.

in the uk apple Lied about accessing the whole Internet on iPhone and still have not rectified it. fine for iPhone but rubbish for a mac netbook

I keep seeing people complain about the lack of Flash on the iPhone. Apple is building a content distribution platform. The hardware is secondary to that. Adobe Flash competes against them in the goal, so it is out. Practically speaking though, streaming video, which is what 95% of Flash apps do, can be achieved using HTML5, which is natively supported on Safari on the iPad, can provide amazing video playback and processing capability. If you doubt that this technology will spread quickly through the marketplace, have a look at YouTube's HTML5 beta program. http://www.youtube.com/html5.

So, flash is not a real game changer for Apple. The iPhone does not support it, and it has not stopped 75 million sales of that device. I'm predicting it won't really affect the iPad either.

no flash means the ipad sucks. how could they get that so wrong.......... I really wanted one until i found that out. now im stuck with what i've got.

if 10 big traffic websites like NY times, Google, yahoo, AOL, youtube, facebook, DEMAND HTML5 in order to work, the update will take 10 minutes all over the world. none of you seems to understand the meaning of the worlds VIRAL MARKETING

Apple wants to control your streaming experience and DRM. The iPad is an iDRM storefront for Apple - it wants to dominate all digital media. Flash and Silverlight would allow others to try and do the same, therefore there is no support for it.

See more here: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/01/analysis_ipad_i.php

In a year no one will care. Everyone will use HTML5 and Flash will be legacy software. HTML5 is simpler and works better. And it works just fine on Apple devices.

I think you are massively underestmating how long the transition to html 5 is going to take. Also, there are still tons of things that you can't easily do with html 5 css and js that Flash does today.

Naive -- HTML5 will not become dominant for 5+ years. Flash is still far, far ahead for the time being.

I don't think so. Flash is here to stay because it offers vector drawing, motion/animation and event handling that will always be ahead of HTML5 + JS, etc. True, Javascript is growing, and for many applications now on Flex, one will wonder why to not build in HTML5, but Flash's capabilities go beyond its video codex. Next step for flash is building a way to create iPhone apps from AS3 : ) If anything, browsers will include Flash/ECMAScript capabilities as a default "plug in", and the Flash "plug in" won't be required anymore. Adobe will be fine with that, methinks.

Take a look at:

Building iPad Applications with Flash
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/building_ipad_apps.html

No phone, no flash, no multitasking and probably still no 64bit XP support. A giant Ipod Touch? No thanks.

and no webcam

Just stupid, i based weather or not i was going to buy this on if it had flash or not, I to can put up with it for my iPhone (well, honestly not really, it is a BIG sore point with me) but never ever will i put up with it on somethig like this. Way to go Apple, really stupid move, I'll wait to see what HP's slate will look like instead!!

Not a surprise through still a disappointment.

Flash is the worst presentation tool on the market. Its highly unstable, a huge security hole, it slows your machine & ruins your battery like nothing else--its just a plague on the web and it deserves to die. Apple & Microsoft are the only companies in the world with the power to make web developers stop using Flash. Lead the way, Apple--the future will be Flash-free, and the sooner the better.

Block Flash on Safari
http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

Block Flash on Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433