Why doesn’t my iPhone have Flash?
Why should it?
Games! Videos! The Dr. Phil sound board!
I hate to say it, but for every one of those, there’s an app for that.
OK, fine. But there’s still lots of websites that use flash. Most of my
favorite local restaurants do! 99% of computers have it installed, and
Apple ships OS X with it!
Flash is all over the place on computers. But mobile flash has several
challenges. For example, dragging the slider on a YouTube video with
your mouse is easy - hold down the button and move the mouse. But on an
iPhone, dragging your finger just scrolls one direction.
So what? Apple has solved problems like that before - look at what they
did with copy and paste! It’s really good!
Wow, you’re really enthusiastic about this! You must be a fanboy. Why
don’t you just marry Apple and get it over with?
You’re the one who has dedicated 40% of his posts so far to them.
You’re… you’re right. I’ve come to a sad realization.
Here’s the thing: if Apple allowed flash, all sorts of new games would
be instantly usable, and it would be easier to make something in Flash
than learning Objective-C.
Possibly. But look at the performance of Flash on the Mac - it’s
terrible. If you’re on YouTube, your CPU will skyrocket, your computer
gets really hot and your battery life suffers. Do you want that to
happen to your phone?
But they’re solving problems like that already! Android is getting
flash. Sounds like you’re just making excuses for Apple. What do they
say when people ask about this?
Not a whole lot. But I don’t think their issue is with performance.
So if flash ran a lot better, Apple would still reject it?
Yes. It’s all about control.
You mean, Steve Jobs wants to control Adobe?
Not exactly. Apple wants to own the entire device from top to bottom.
They design the hardware, manufacture the chips and can change any part
of the software they want. They can reject any app for any reason just
to “control the experience”. They can fix any bugs that crop up, too.
Browser plugins like flash cause the vast majority of crashes on desktop
computers, and Microsoft and Apple can’t do a whole lot about it.
OK, interesting. That’s why the iPhone is really stable and there
aren’t any viruses affecting them - Apple has to approve every piece of
code that runs on it.
Pretty much. Flash would allow you to write something and run it
without Apple’s blessing.
You can still write an app in javascript, though, and anyone can use it
without Apple’s approval.
You sure can.
So what happens when javascript gets as fast as flash?
That will be pretty sweet! I’ll bet the next iPhone will have a faster
processor, so this could happen really soon.
You’ll be able to run all kinds of useful webapps still, right? Like
you can now, only faster?
Yeah, it will be neat. You’ll see games and stuff that are webapps
instead of native apps, and you won’t be able to tell the difference.
But won’t that “hurt the experience” if people no longer need the app
store? Apple can’t control every website.
That’s… a good point. I guess we’ll wait and see on that one.