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Apple's Change of Heart On Flash
Dotnaught writes "In a blog post, Walter Luh, co-founder of Ansca Mobile and a former employee of both Apple and Adobe, recounts how Apple once promoted Flash on the iPhone then changed its mind because Flash didn't provide the optimal mobile user experience. 'I think that Apple came to the same conclusion I've come to — namely that Flash has its strengths, but not when it comes to creating insanely great mobile experiences,' he writes. Luh's piece ends with a pitch for mobile development using the Corona SDK, a Lua-based programming environment that strives to recapture the simplicity of early versions of Flash."
... to a mobile device, without using Flash. Go on, try it. I'm waiting.
For this reason, my company doesn't support the iPhone.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
There is a user experience when you use Flash? Who knew?
The first problem is that it's hideously slow, and bloated beyond belief. A hideous, disfigured freak of a software abortion. The second problem is a tad bigger, and, strikingly, it seems that everyone belching their thoughts on this point appear to be complete, clueless jacka**es: there is no ARM version of Flash. Let's repeat that: there is no ARM version of Flash; it does not run on any ARM based system. There, someone had to break the news to the morons.
I would say that it's likely bullshit that the flash test would do significantly better, which you don't really know, as you can't run the flash test on an iPhone. Also, I'd like to say it's likely to run slower than the HTML5 test, as the HTML5 test is running approximately 2x faster on my computer. Also, flash is an additional layer for the processor to deal with beyond the browser engine itself, lending to extra exchanges of information between browser and flash plugin.
What's amusing about this thread is the number of Flash fanboys breathlessly proclaiming that Flash needs the latest and greatest hardware to run, and then simultaneously bitching to Apple for not including Flash in their memory, CPU and power-constrained mobile devices.
I wonder if they realize the irony.
Go somewhere random
To give some perspective, the iphone renders the HTML5 test at about 0.5 fps.
Yeah, but I bet the iPhone renders the Flash test... not at all.
Look, HTML5 is new, and it may be that the standard will need to be improved some more and Apple's implementation needs to be optimized. For now, developers targeting these mobile devices should probably write native programs for best performance. However, I for one am kind of glad Apple is throwing their weight behind a standard rather than some proprietary plugin that, in spite of being around for 15 years, hasn't been shown to have more than limited use, runs like crap, and crashes constantly.