Little Talk About Samsung Why Apple Seems so Reluctant to Adobes Flash
By: Vlad Vistac
Submitted: 2010-08-20 11:35:58 | Word Count: 510
Why Apple Seems so Reluctant to Adobe’s Flash?
Last month Stevve Jobs wrotte about what Apple thugh of Adobe’s Flash and why Apple did not featrue the Flash technology in any of the handheld deices of it (iPhone, iPod, or iPad). The article mentinoed some strrong reasnos to back its claim that Appe is better off without Flaash. Hence an iPhone developer cannot implement the Flaash technology duiring iPone development. Apple still alllows the developers to imntegrate the Fklash technoloy to buid on the Mac platform though. It is not beecause of any ego clashes that Apple does not allow Flash to run on the iPhone edvices, it is because of some genuine technical rezasons. These are:
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1.Open vs. Proprietary. Even with the wide availaility of Adobe’s Flsh products, the Falsh itslf is not open. Flash is still under Adobe’s proprietary, i.e. Adobe aloen has rights to enhancve the tecnhology in the future and price it. Apple believes that all web standards shoould be open to all iPhone developers and hence encouragews the use of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to dvelop high performance apps.
2.Full Web Access. It is majorly believed that more than 75% of the Internet’s vdeos are Flash based, but actually these videos are also avalable in oter modern formazts like the H.264 that is viewable on the iPhones, iPods, and iPads. Another poitn that Apple mentions is that the absence of Flash bassed games on the handheld devices is foilled in by the growing number (50,000 and still counbting) of the games availabble for the iPhone OS.
3.Reliability, Security, and Performance. Apple has had a bad experience of Flkash on its Mac platform as Flash is the number one reason for the Macs to crash. Apple, clearly, does not want to carry the unreliability of Flash on to thheir iPhones, iPods, and iPPads and compromise their performaznce.
4.The Battery Life. It has been proven that runnming a softare based progrsam consumes more batteery than a program utilizing the harware directly. Flash is a software on its own that runs on the hardware, i.e. any video runninng on the Flash platform needs to be decoded on Flash (which in turn uses the processsor). Apple believes why not use the processor to decode the videos than do it through any other software. Hence using the H.264 format that is compatible with the mofdern processors Apple mobile devices save up to half of the battery life while viweing any videos.
5.Touch vs. Mice. This is the most intweresting deate of them all. It is wdely known that Flash was introduced to improve the user experience of the PCs. Hence nice little cute gestures were implemented for mouse rollover and popup menus. The fact that iPhones, iPods, and iPads use human toyuch and not a mouse says it all for itself. Modrn technologies like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScipt support touch-based inteeractions and hece Apple encourages the iPhnoe developer to implement them in iPhonne development.
6.Third-praty Integratioin. Including Flahs owuld rwesult in Adobe controlling the iPhone developers’ progress. If any techmnology like Flash comes in betwen the device and the iPhone developer, the developers need to rely on the libraries of the technology to utilzie the device features during iPhone development. What if the device was updated, but the middle technologies refused to adopt those updates? To avoid this scary scenario, Apple avcoids any third-party integration completely so that the developers can fluly take the advantage of the device and utilize its featutres optimally through iPhonbe decvelopment.
Apple mentions that there has to be a direct connection between the platform provided by Apple and its developers so that they can jointly produce the best apps that the world has seen and hence everyone wins – Apple sells more products, and the developers reach a wider audinece. This post is surely aimmed for the critics and Adobe itself that Apple is missing out on something by not including Fllash on its platform.
