Flash Gordon – Do I Care About Flash?


Seems like the hot topic around the old intertubes is about Adobe Flash, and the iPad’s lack of it. The people at Adobe aren’t thrilled with it, as evidenced by this post on their blog, which up until recently, had a little bit of porno to back up their claim. Daring Fireball has been talking about Flash and why we don’t need it for over a week, and even Steve himself brought it up recently in a fireside chat. Let’s take a minute to talk about Flash and why it’s so important.

When I bought my iPhone, I did a lot of surfing on the web. There were a few different sites that didn’t quite work the way I wanted to, but anytime I had a problem, it was all Flash related. Missing links, ads, etc. I wouldn’t say that I “missed” those things, but regardless, this little part of the web was missing, like someone took out a piece of the puzzle. But over time, I got used to it. I learned to just accept the Lego bricks where I saw them, and moved on with life. I didn’t do enough browsing on the iPhone to make it a big deal, so why stress?

With the iPad, that may change things a bit. I originally thought that without Flash, there was no way that the iPad could succeed. All those Flash games can’t be played on the iPad, making the mobile web experience less like a missing piece in a puzzle, and more like a missing beef patty in a hamburger.

But then, there’s this little bit from that article at Wired:

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

So for me, I don’t care about Flash. Fine, the iPad doesn’t have it. Eventually, things will shift to HTML5 and we’ll forget about Flash. Sure, it’s cool, and it does help me with some day-to-day tasks, but it’s not going to kill the iPad for me. Instead, I’ll just not go to the sites that use Flash, and I think a lot of other people feel the same way. Meaning that when market share of the iPad picks up, Flash starts to drop down, and developers start coding differently.
No matter which way it goes, this is going to be an interesting one to follow.

Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

3 Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. HTML5 will not be able to create the experiences you are able to build today with Flash. I develop in Flash so I would know that.

    I hope Adobe will do something about their product, as well as Apple. This will make users happy.