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I've been "using" Flash on my Nexus One for about 3 weeks now. Before I go on, Flash is optional as in use the "On Demand" feature. This prevents it from loading until you want it. Why don't you know about this? Are you being truthful in your post?

To address your no comment about videos and touch input, which is only showing your ignorance, try any of Vimeo's video content. It's already been updated for Android. It works great. But maybe I shouldn't take your comment about Flash video so literal. Were you using that as a blanket statment for all Flash content, weather it's used for video, animations, applications, etc.?

Your comment about touch input in general is also completely farce and doesn't add up with reality. It was disproven early on;
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/05/12/top-flash-misperceptions-flash-cannot-run-on-touch-devices/

There are a few video examples on this site showing touch input with Flash; http://theflashblog.com/

On the topic of input and Flash, I noticed that Flash games that uses the arrow keys, are handled by my Nexus One's trackball. Try games like Flash Pac Man to see this in action -- a game that was never intended for a portable, but yet it works and controls perfectly on my Nexus One;
http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/media/pacman_flash/

I'm looking at the BBC player right now. I found a sneak peek video of "The Choir" -- never heard of this show. I selected fullscreen mode and I'm not having any problem sliding the progress bar, let alone pausing and adjusting the volume and I have fat fingers. What's your excuse?

Conclusion? What? The only thing conclusive here is your ignorance. Do you even understand what Flash actually is? I'm assuming no, because your comments are as if all Flash content is set in stone and it can't be reworked/tailored for other platforms, which is the farthest thing from the truth.

Anyways, Jobs was hardly right when it comes to other platforms and Flash -- especially the Nexus One, but when it comes to his portable iDevices he's probably telling the truth, considering my 2G Touch can't even display a wallpaper with this iOS 4 update, I guess it wouldn't be able to handle Flash either.

I didn't think that Flash was a problem because of Apple's high "Not Invented Here" mentality. I thought it was because they want to to keep applications that are programmable off of the iPhone to prevent device hijacking and other not so fun things from happening to customers' iPhones. Anyone have some concrete information on this?

Adobe wasn't able to produce a decent player for OS X in terms of security and performance. Do you think they are going to keep up with iPhone updates? They won't, but they don't care either, because anything special on one device, can't be ported to another. And their intention is to get a piece of the mobile market cake, not just to run on the iPhone. So the expected result will be applications featuring the lowest common denominator of all devices. So it's basically, you let me get to a position of power over your platform and I will give you sub standard applications in return. Not a good deal.

So foreseeing that, Adobe used the cry baby Lee Brimelow to create public opinion against Apple. Example: Flash is slow because evil Apple won't provide accelerated h264. That's a lie, you have accelerated video using the Quicktime API (which they finally use in the next Flash player), but don't expect a security nightmare like the Flash player to get direct hardware access just because you are Adobe. Not even if you really really want the chance to control the video codec to keep your options open.

And then there is the "work for a more ethical company", and "screw you Apple". No Adobe, YOU go be ethical creating a decent player for OS X, and forcing your tools into someone else's platform.

I didn't think that Flash was a problem because of Apple's high "Not Invented Here" mentality. I thought it was because they want to to keep applications that are programmable off of the iPhone to prevent device hijacking and other not so fun things from happening to customers' iPhones. Anyone have some concrete information on this?

Adobe wasn't able to produce a decent player for OS X in terms of security and performance. Do you think they are going to keep up with iPhone updates? They won't, but they don't care either, because anything special on one device, can't be ported to another. And their intention is to get a piece of the mobile market cake, not just to run on the iPhone. So the expected result will be applications featuring the lowest common denominator of all devices. So it's basically, you let me get to a position of power over your platform and I will give you sub standard applications in return. Not a good deal.

So foreseeing that, Adobe used the cry baby Lee Brimelow to create public opinion against Apple. Example: Flash is slow because evil Apple won't provide accelerated h264. That's a lie, you have accelerated video using the Quicktime API (which they finally use in the next Flash player), but don't expect a security nightmare like the Flash player to get direct hardware access just because you are Adobe. Not even if you really really want the chance to control the video codec to keep your options open.

And then there is the "work for a more ethical company", and "screw you Apple". No Adobe, YOU go be ethical creating a decent player for OS X, and forcing your tools into someone else's platform.

But let's talk more about the Flash Player on the Mac. If it is not 100% on par with the Windows player people assume that it is all our fault. The facts show that this is simply not the case. Let's take for example the question of hardware acceleration for H.264 video that we released with Flash Player 10.1. Here you can see some published results for how much the situation has improved on Windows. Unfortunately we could not add this acceleration to the Mac player because Apple does not provide a public API to make this happen. You can easily verify that by asking Apple. I'm happy to say that we still made some improvements for the Mac player when it comes to video playback, but we simply could not implement the hardware acceleration. This is but one example of stumbling blocks we face when it comes to Apple.

From http://theflashblog.com/?p=1641

OK, I am Mac fanboy, call me that, if you like. I use iMac at office/job (I required from the company one), I use macs at home everywhere. Sure I have some Linuxes and some OpenSolaris around and zero Windows (at least you can respect me for this). :-) Now, there was lots of debates for the iPad is an XXXL iPod-Touch with some little iPhone capabilities. Fine, let's summarize for a various market targets all together.

This kind of folks browsing an Internet, watching videos on the webs, writing emails and might use some office suites.

• You want to work with docs. You found a great iWork right there. You've done your presentation and such. But you find yourself miserable, once you starting share them with others: iWork has very poor compatibility with MS Office and zero compatibility woth OpenOffice.org suite, which gains popularity. Adding here that using iPad on a desk is an utterly horrible experience due its curvy shape on a back - you've got the picture.
• You want to watch videos. You found a great QuickTime player and it just works. But you find yourself annoyed for the iPad does NOT utilize 16:9 screen and can not play 1080p HD videos. Needless to say, you can not use Hulu or similar services, only YouTube. Well, at least you can watch this.
• You want communicate with your friends. While some kind of Google Talk is fine, you will find you're unable to just place the thing on your lap and simply, laying on the sofa, talk through the videocam to your friends. Because there is none of it. You're unable to call your parents, because there is no Skype available. There is no iChat to collaborate something by sharing desktop or just talk through the video.
• You want to find yourself using GPS. It is just great: you have it available there. But you will also find it is assistive GPS using 3G. That means, if you are on a dead zone for your 3G, then your GPS simply kaput and you will be not able to use it at all.
• You are fine having none of that above and you also OK with 13" black&white TV set at home as well. But you have a simple money management software that greatly runs on your Mac OS X and you use it for years. Now you have to migrate all that stuff? No, you want to keep your Macbook instead.
• You're power user and you can do some development for yourself. iPad is clearly not for you here! Why? Think of it: you need some utilities for your home. You can make some great utilities with average GUI using Java (YMMV) over, let's say two-three evenings (I can do this just easily). Java, because I want the same thing on other platforms and I don't want to fuck my brains with memory allocations in C/C++/Objective C. But even you hate Java just wait, just calm down and wait... So I got NetBeans (YMMV), I use clicky mouse to toss up some shitty GUI there (YMMV), hang some events, toss up it with some database, let's say H2 and I have a little app (about 300K jar) that just does what I need. You can use what ever you like, but I use Java as an example here. OK, fine, you say I can do the same with $foobar? No! Because no such thing. Only Objective C. Can I do it for myself easily? Not at all! Because I need to sign an NDA with Apple and buy their SDK and headbang my head into the wall learning all this crap very hard. Why? Because developers are banned from sharing code samples and knowledge: that's NDA is for.
• You want to share your iPad with your family member. But there is no multi-user concept at all. It is strictly personalized thing.

What we've got here? A device, that is designed for fun, but completely unable to do so.

Definitely, only a black magic can help here to enjoy that poor thing... But Tim Cook must smoke something very strong. I want to smoke that stuff too: must be a good shit...

@Reda not going to rehash this too much because I said it in my other posts. Apple is not cooperating in our attempts to improve the performance of the Flash Player on the Mac. Microsoft is, and in FP 10.1 we cut the CPU utilization in half for watching video. Same with other mobile device manufactures. We would love to work with Apple to do the same but they are making a strategic decision not too so that they can increase their revenue. Hey thats business.

The same is true for iPhone games. Further, the overwhelming majority of Flash games will be unplayable on a multitouch device. They just aren't designed to be played by nothing more than clicking the mouse.

Huh? You obviously haven't been playing much Flash games, have you? Mouse-only Flash games have been around since forever. They constitute quite a significant portion of Flash games and would have no problems running on a stylus/tablet device. Try visiting Ferry Halim's awards-winning Orisinal games. Tapping on touch devices/tablets is no problem too since those are just normal mouse calls on Flash. No problem with em running on multi-touch too since since the upcoming Flash Player 10.1 (coming out on both desktop and mobile devices) has multi-touch support.

Regarding Mac performance, from what I know, there's an certain class & method needed by Adobe engineers to do certain acceleration on OSX, but access isn't being given by Apple's APIs. With Linux acceleration (Flash has now been using the GPU for acceleration for a while), there's quite a number of complications like incompatibility with Compiz Fusion enabled (See this entry by Penguin.swf, one of the lead Flash engineers working on Linux -> http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html.

Check out John Gruber's excellent post at http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash:
I've been hard on Flash Player for Mac OS X, but this performance situation is not entirely in Adobe's hands. On Windows, Flash makes use of hardware decoding for H.264, if available. On Mac OS X, it does not. This is one reason why Flash video playback performs better on Windows than Mac OS X, and also why H.264 playback on Mac OS X is better through QuickTime (which does use hardware decoding).

According to Adobe, though, this is because they can't. Heres an entry from their Flash Player FAQ:

Q. Why is hardware decoding of H.264 only supported on the Windows platform?

A. In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate when to support this feature on Mac and Linux platforms in future releases.

Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow posted a weblog entry addressing this:

But let's talk more about the Flash Player on the Mac. If it is not 100% on par with the Windows player people assume that it is all our fault. The facts show that this is simply not the case. Let's take for example the question of hardware acceleration for H.264 video that we released with Flash Player 10.1. Here you can see some published results for how much the situation has improved on Windows. Unfortunately we could not add this acceleration to the Mac player because Apple does not provide a public API to make this happen. You can easily verify that by asking Apple. Im happy to say that we still made some improvements for the Mac player when it comes to video playback, but we simply could not implement the hardware acceleration. This is but one example of stumbling blocks we face when it comes to Apple.

Why don't you check out the current Ars Technica poll on how many people would like to have Flash on the iPad:

Polls like this have the problem of people are just going to say yes, after all, why not? The proof is in the pudding, and the iPhone and iPod touch have done just fine without Flash.

I'm not saying that people don't actually want it, but it really doesn't matter all that much.

And yes, Flash is a gaming platform unparalleled on the browser. You may not like Flash games, but a lot of people do. Flash has also ushered back the golden age of game development in the 80s where you could have just 1-3 people teams pumping out fun games

The same is true for iPhone games. Further, the overwhelming majority of Flash games will be unplayable on a multitouch device. They just aren't designed to be played by nothing more than clicking the mouse.

Btw, re: Flash's sub-par performance on the Mac, it's not all Adobe's fault. See this post from Lee Brimelow of Adobe (scroll down to comment #62):

http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703 [theflashblog.com]
"Apple is not cooperating in our attempts to improve the performance of the Flash Player on the Mac. Microsoft is, and in FP 10.1 we cut the CPU utilization in half for watching video. Same with other mobile device manufactures. We would love to work with Apple to do the same but they are making a strategic decision not too so that they can increase their revenue. Hey thats business. Another thing to note is that the site you showed is filled with Flash and just because it takes up a lot of CPU doesnt mean that kids will not want to play with it. Give people the option is what Im saying."

That's absurd. Apple isn't keeping Flash running poorly for financial reasons. Apple has a specific way to accelerate video on Mac OS X. If Flash can't utilize this, that's Adobe's fault. Of course, the way Flash works, it doesn't really have a way to interact with QuickTime, but it seems they should be able to do something with OpenCL.

What's more, Flash on Linux also isn't accelerated, and Adobe has full access to the source code there. The problem isn't openness or financial incentives, it's in how Flash interacts with the system. Adobe keeps taking jabs at Apple about openness, or insinuating financial motives, simply because they know it will resonate with a certain audience.

News Flash bro.

You may not like/need Flash, but a lot of people like it, maybe most.

Why don't you check out the current Ars Technica poll on how many people would like to have Flash on the iPad:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/poll-technica-do-you-want-flash-on-the-ipad.ars

And yes, Flash is a gaming platform unparalleled on the browser. You may not like Flash games, but a lot of people do. Flash has also ushered back the golden age of game development in the 80s where you could have just 1-3 people teams pumping out fun games, unlike in the late 90's to early 2000s before the explosion of casual gaming where to push out a game in the industry meant spending millions of dollars with tens to hundreds of developers per project, and it was all 3D, 3D, 3D and idea rehashes.

The ease with which authors can ties together together animation, illustration, design, sound & interaction on Flash is has no equal. Not everyone is a developer and that's why HTML5 will not kill Flash.

Coding slick GUIs and programmatic animation ain't an easy task and designers/animators/multimedia artists without programming backgrounds can't pull those off easily. Flash changed that.

H.264 video is also here now with YouTube, but Mozilla Foundation ain't willing to pony up for the proprietary codec so don't expect to see an H.264 bundled video player on Firefox soon. These HTML5 in-browser media players ain't as easy to reskin and meld with other interactive elements as Flash though so you can go stay in your bland Jakob Nielsen-esque world for all everyone else cares.

Btw, re: Flash's sub-par performance on the Mac, it's not all Adobe's fault. See this post from Lee Brimelow of Adobe (scroll down to comment #62):

http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703
"Apple is not cooperating in our attempts to improve the performance of the Flash Player on the Mac. Microsoft is, and in FP 10.1 we cut the CPU utilization in half for watching video. Same with other mobile device manufactures. We would love to work with Apple to do the same but they are making a strategic decision not too so that they can increase their revenue. Hey thats business. Another thing to note is that the site you showed is filled with Flash and just because it takes up a lot of CPU doesnt mean that kids will not want to play with it. Give people the option is what Im saying."

It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple.