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Flash Support Confirmed For Android 2.2

Posted by Soulskill on from the but-it's-so-much-easier-to-just-write-a-rant dept.

farble1670 writes "In an interview with the New York Times, Google's Andy Rubin confirmed that Android 2.2 will have support for Flash 10.1. Quoting: '[Rubin] promised that full support for Adobe’s Flash standard was coming in the next version of Android, code-named Froyo, for frozen yogurt (previous Android releases were called Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair, and are represented outside Building 44 on the Google campus with giant sculptures of the desserts). Sometimes being open "means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying," he said.'"

48 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe good... maybe bad by MasterOfGoingFaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope it doesn't turn out that Flash is the x86 code of the Internet age.

    While I dislike Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web. This will be interesting to see what happens with Flash, given the growing gap between devices that support it and those that don't.

    --
    Place nail here >+
    1. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by ThoughtMonster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...and how is .h264 an open standard, again?

    2. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by sonicmerlin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I recommend you read arstechnica's rebuttal of Steve Jobs's claims. Pot, meet kettle indeed. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/pot-meet-kettle-a-response-to-steve-jobs-letter-on-flash.ars

    3. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While I dislike Apple's my-way-or-the-highway approach, I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web.

      The problem I have is while they dress it up as sticking to their guns on open standards, their true motive is they want people to write to the proprietary technology of iPhone apps instead of flash apps. They make legitimate criticisms of Adobe as tying up the web in a proprietary technology while at the same time clearly moving to punish any developers that would want to target iPhone+others using cross-platform tools rather than limited and proprietary iPhone only apps.

      I can't get excited over the concept of rooting for either Adobe or Apple in their little pissing contest. I dislike what both want the industry to look like.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    4. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's weak, because the rebuttal talks about H.264 not being open, but Steve Jobs didn't claim it was, he called it an industry standard, not an open standard.

      And Flash isn't an industry standard? When all the industry leaders - and nearly all the industry followers - support it, it seems to me to be a de-facto industry standard.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    5. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You know .mp3 was made available under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms - at first. Once it was popular the IP owners started putting on the squeeze. At the very beginning .mp3 licenses were pretty much free. Not so any more.

      According to Wikipedia, only the IETF and ITU-T refer to their standards as "open standards". Everybody else just calls them standards, even though they all require the reasonable and non-discriminatory terms of these so-called "open" standards, because that's what they are - standards. The only reason they are open is because you have to lay them out when you apply for the patents. Pretty much all definitions of the word "standard" require reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Else they can't be a standard, by definition.

      Hey guess who owns the rights to the h.264 standards? Why, it's the ITU-T! This "Open Standard" stuff is just smokescreen to trick the Open Source proponents into feeling like they aren't getting screwed over by these corporations. An "Open Standard" is absolutely no different than any other official industry standard. It's not really that much different than de-facto standards either, their openness and wide-use is what tends to make them standards in the first place.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    6. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by paimin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Keep up, it's not Flash vs h.264, it's Flash vs Javascript and HTML5. Video format is not at question here. You're looking for the h.264 vs Theora war, that's in a different article.

      Apple being douchey about video formats doesn't change the fact that they are fully supporting open web scripting standards.

      --
      Facebook is the new AOL
    7. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Junta · · Score: 2, Insightful

      all standards pertaining to the web should be open

      Note that qualification in Steve's message. There has been noise about flash as an 'app' platform beyond 'just' web, and that is something Apple has a *lot* to lose on. Longer term, perhaps HTML5/WebGL/CSS/Javascript poses a long-term threat to their 'apps', but Flash represents a more clear and imminent threat.

      Apple is in some ways worse than Microsoft (perhaps because Apple is allowed to get away with it) when it comes to standards. It would be wise to keep in mind the motivations of the players as they present their rhetoric to the world.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    8. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Junta · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You probably complained about that.

      Way to presuppose something about my stance that conveniently demonizes me.

      I really didn't have much to say on the matter. When it released, I tried it out, thought it was a harbinger of good things to come, but it lacked some features that made me wait until a less button-averse set of manufacturers really got into the game. I actually had to wait longer than I thought before I got a WebOS device that pretty much fit my requirements, which is a testament of how far ahead of the game Apple was in technology. iPhone was a disruptive (in a good way) technology in a cell-phone industry focused on milking the status quo.

      However, my complaint is not that they 'allow' native apps, it's that they game the industry to give developers little choice in the matter in a fairly anti-competitive way. Not only do they force third parties to use native apis by shooting down and forbidding cross-platform toolkits, they also restrict feature-set and approval processes to protect first-party software efforts from third-party efforts on their platform (i.e. no IM background capability in their new 'multitasking', which seems to be reserved for upcoming iChat enhancements). I have no idea why they would give such a crippled multitasking experience after so long a delay, but it seems clear they still don't want third parties to have capability they use themselves.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    9. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is a rebuttal from Ars, because they requested that he be a guest writer. The article itself also frames it pretty clearly for you, so there is no need to frame it again.

      While he is absolutely on the extreme end of the open source argument (he thinks just the software being open isn't good enough, but that everything supporting that software should be open as well), he nails the hypocrisy of Jobs's letter.

      First, despite what the ITU-T calls it, h.264 is not an open standard, there is nothing about them that is different than any other proprietary industrial standard. It has very restrictive licensing terms that are not publicly available. They can and will sue you if they catch you implementing h.264 without paying them for the privilege.

      Second, every time Jobs uses "Adobe" in his letter, you can replace it with "Apple", and every time he uses "Flash" you can replace it with "Cocoa" or "iPhone OS" or "App Store". Thy are completely interchangeable in the complaint, so Jobs very plainly is not at all interested in maintaining free and open standards on the web. Apple is no different than Adobe in this regard, they are both struggling for control over their users.

      Contrast that with Google, who is saying "Yeah, you can use that if you want, we don't mind, but look here's something even better and it's free!" Obviously event he great Google isn't perfect, but they at least don't share the pot-kettle relationship of Apple and Adobe.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    10. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Mr2001 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And I still find it funny that the whole "open" Android crowd is cheering that they get a closed plugin.

      An open platform means anyone can develop for it, even proprietary software. Contrast it to Apple's closed platform, where you can't get that closed plugin because Steve has a chip on his shoulder. There are open source Flash players that could, theoretically, be ported to Android just as Adobe is doing (if anyone felt strongly enough about "closed plugins" that they were willing to port an open one). Again, that's something Steve won't let you do on the iPhone.

      Also, most Android phones already ship with closed applications from Google. That's what the scuffle with Cyanogen was about, which is why installing CyanogenMod now involves backing up those closed apps and then restoring them after flashing the new OS.

      --
      Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
    11. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by BitZtream · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Perhaps you should realize that your definition of 'open standard' isn't one that anyone outside of the OSS community subscribes to.

      It is available to anyone to implement anyway they care to without any discrimination in who gets to buy it for what purpose.

      You can fully examine the standard.

      Just because it costs money does not mean it isn't open.

      OSS people have just gotten retarded and confuse 'open' and 'free' as if they are interchangable, and then have several different definitions of free that are used in various situations to promote the OSS agenda.

      You really need to get some perspective if you want OSS to continue to be meaningful, the more you act like irrational jackasses by making retarded statements like you just made, the more every sane person in the world realizes they don't want listen to some fundimentalist nutjob such as yourself.

      h264 meets pretty much everyones definition of an open standard outside of the minor collection of GPL zealots out there. Just because you have your own retarded/warped definition of open standard doesn't mean anyone else gives a shit.

      Learn the difference between open standard, open source, and free because you clearly don't know the difference which is pretty much standard operating procedure for GPL zealots.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    12. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can thank apple's open source work on WebKit for a big part of that.

      It's worth noting that since it was made open-source, Apple has been more of a hindrance than a help to the development of WebKit, with their constant attempts to force control of it in spite of the community's desires.

      You clearly did not read the letter from jobs. He does discuss the proprietary nature of iPhone OS.

      Clearly, neither did you. He touts h.264 as an open web standard, which despite what the ITU-T group likes to label it, it is not. At the same time, they are making veiled threats at Ogg Theora, which is an open web standard. That's some great promotion of "openness on the web" there.

      Basically, you can exchange "Apple" and "Cocoa" or "App Store" for every single instance of "Adobe" and "Flash" in Jobs's letter. Open standards proponent my ass!

      Combined with the performance issues, crashing issues

      What crashing and performance issues? I haven't experienced any on my Android. I personally like flash, it would be nice if something less proprietary were better, but it does a lot of things that simply cannot be done in HTML5 (even with h.264), JavaScript, and CSS. Adobe will fix any touch issues eventually, they have a very strong incentive to make it work well, so that's really only a "for now" issue. HTML5+h.264 isn't even widely adopted yet, so how is that any different than the "touch" issue for Flash?

      Saying we should be using h.264 instead of Flash because Flash isn't an open standard is like saying we should buy Lamborghini's instead of Ferrari's because Ferrari's are too expensive. Lamborghini's are just as expensive for all the same reasons as Ferrari's. It doesn't wash.

      --
      Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
    13. Re:Maybe good... maybe bad by DrXym · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Keep up, it's not Flash vs h.264, it's Flash vs Javascript and HTML5. Video format is not at question here. You're looking for the h.264 vs Theora war, that's in a different article.

      And HTML5 pretty much loses unless we're talking relatively sedentary content. That's not a slight on HTML5, it's just not built for timing critical stuff such as animation. I expect performance is all over the shop too from one browser to the next rather than the consistency Flash brings. Where it can hope to claw share from Flash is on the rich client side of things, but I expect games / anims are probably safe for a long time yet.

  2. Enjoying? by nicolas.kassis · · Score: 2, Funny

    More like forced to enjoy due to lack of suitable replacement currently. Flash sucks, programming flash sucks, Youtube and cie are awesome but require flash to work. I agree (for different reason as Jobs) that flash shouldn't be encouraged. I'm not too excited at the idea of having run on my phone. Now section 3.3.1 is a whole other ball game of dick move by Apple. A flash to native iPhone tool or any other language X to native iPhone app are useful is an stupid money grab by Apple. But that's their choice, I'll keep enjoying my android phone and try to avoid helping pollute the web by never developing with Flash. Yes my site looks like it was made in 1995 why do you ask?

  3. Adobe vs Apple by FuckingNickName · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In the left corner we have Adobe, who demonstrates the power of the web enhanced with cross-platform plugins, but makes little effort to cooperate on forming the albeit openly published Flash VM spec and makes a fairly unstable reference implementation (not helped by the lack of process isolation in browsers).

    In the right corner we have Apple, whose proposal of the extra-DOM canvas element to troll Adobe (rather than following the example of SVG) further complicated the monolithic monster that is W3C's HTML standard.

    In the centre we have consumers, who get to enjoy that there are so many standards to choose from.

  4. Re:thats nice but by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Informative

    This isn't the iPhone. There are other options available.

    --
    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  5. WTF Are You Babbling About? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I'll give them credit for sticking to their guns about open standards for the web"

    Tell us you're being sarcastic...

    No one could possibly be stupid enough to take Steve Jobs' rambling tirades against 'teh Flash' as some sort of effort to support 'open standards'.

    Flash allows developers and users to freely bypass Apple's tollbooth for content.

    1. Re:WTF Are You Babbling About? by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What I find particularly ironic about this thread is that Android's browser uses Webkit. That's right, the open phone that's the enemy of Apple's uber-evil closed system is running a fork of khtml created and supported by Apple. Without Apple, Android probably wouldn't be as good. It just goes to show, somebody modded +5 on slashdot doesn't need to actually need to know anything about technology, they just need to be able to denigrate whatever technology company is currently the market leader.

      --
      Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
    2. Re:WTF Are You Babbling About? by centuren · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What I find particularly ironic about this thread is that Android's browser uses Webkit. That's right, the open phone that's the enemy of Apple's uber-evil closed system is running a fork of khtml created and supported by Apple. Without Apple, Android probably wouldn't be as good. It just goes to show, somebody modded +5 on slashdot doesn't need to actually need to know anything about technology, they just need to be able to denigrate whatever technology company is currently the market leader.

      You can make that connection if you like, but as you said, it's a khtml fork. It's silly to speculate about what Android would be without Apple's support of Webkit, as Google could have done lots of things for their browser engine, including supporting and developing a khtml fork.

  6. Hey Google by Qwavel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm thrilled that I'm able to use whatever software I want on Android. The problem is, I don't actually want Flash - I just wanted the ability to decide for myself.

    So, that's great that you will be supporting it, but please let me turn it off or uninstall it from my phone.

    Thanks.

  7. Choice is good by gun26 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unlike a certain dictatorial and litigious cellphone manufacturer, Google is giving their users a choice. Flash haters certainly have reason for their dislike, but I think the decision of whether to use it or not should be left in the hands of users and webmasters, where it belongs. Good move on this, Google.

  8. Re:Hackers have a new window by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yawn. The same mantra was repeated again and again when iPhone was introduced and disallowed you to install native applications while you could do that on Windows Mobile and Symbian. According to Jobs native applications were the tool of devil and could bring down the whole GSM network.

    Guess what, there were no hackers to attack both systems then, there are none now. And the GSM networks somehow survived.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  9. I for one... by greatgreygreengreasy · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...can't WAIT to play FARMVILLE on my PHONE!!! instead of click click click click click I'll get to tap tap tap tap tap tap!

    --
    LRN 2 SWM
  10. My Thoughts by sonicmerlin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To be honest I'm rather surprised it's taken this long for Adobe to release a portable version of Flash for smartphones. I think this speaks to how cozy and lazy Adobe had become with their control of the market. Jobs's remarks were indeed hypocritical, but if he is to praised for anything it's for lighting a fire under Adobe's cushion.

    I also think Jobs's "letter about Flash" was far from coincidental. Now that his competitors will have a defining feature that makes their smartphone experience significantly more enjoyable, Jobs either had to relent or push on with an self-inflicted platform deficiency. The letter was just him setting down the battle lines.

    Competition is great, but Apple's use of their control of the iPhone hardware to control the iPhone software market is anti-competitive, and I for one am happy to see Google stick it to them.

    1. Re:My Thoughts by AndrewNeo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not only has Flash been available on other smartphones (Windows Mobile, N900, etc.) but it's also been available on Android phones with the HTC Sense UI. Now it'll be in every stock 2.2 phone, which will cover hopefully all newer Android-running phones (aka ones running 2.1 now)

    2. Re:My Thoughts by Invid72 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are confusing Flash lite, a limited subset of Flash with "Full Flash" in Adobe parlance, which is coming with 10.1. No shipping smartphone save the Nokia N900 ships with a full featured Flash runtime.

      The Maemo plugin is a sluggish performer from what I've heard too. Adobe really needs to hit the Flash 10.1 for Android release out of the park, or risk validating all of Jobs' criticisms.

  11. Re:Take that. by BrokenHalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Jobs loses this, we all lose.
    Don't buy Apple if you wish, but stick a fork in Flash.

    I won't deny that Flash is not everything we would want it to be, but Jobs obviously envisions a platform that is patented and locked down to the exclusion of all competitors. At least Flash has the merit of being multi-platform. On that basis alone, Jobs can go get fucked.

    Disclaimer: typed on a second-hand MacBook. Some of Apple's ideas and hardware are great, but Steve Jobs is a nasty piece of work, and whoever donated his liver should have been retrospectively aborted.

  12. What about the little guy? by sparkydevil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's extremely annoying to see Mr Jobs deny me access to customers based on his idea of perfection.

    As a small restaurant/club owner, I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site. Is Mr Jobs really suggesting that I should now create an app for my business instead?

    1. Re:What about the little guy? by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As a small restaurant/club owner, I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site. Is Mr Jobs really suggesting that I should now create an app for my business instead?

      So, let me get this straight: instead of doing the rational thing to maximize the number of users who could benefit from the content of your site by first presenting the content with the most broadly supported subset of HTML before building a "premium" presentation of the content that would be accessible to a smaller set of users using a technology that is less universal like Flash, you excluded many potential customers by building a flash-only site that they could not use from the many web-enabled devices (including the iPhone) that don't have Flash, and you blame Steve Jobs for limiting the reach of your app by not correcting your decision by bringing Flash to the iPhone?

      Maybe you need to consider that the problem here isn't with Steve Jobs.

    2. Re:What about the little guy? by Karlt1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As a small restaurant/club owner, I spent a lot of time creating a Flash-based website so that it would be more appealing to customers than an HTML site.

      What makes you think Flash would be more appealing to people visiting your website? When I go to a restaurant's web site I want to see a menu, the hours of operations, and maybe a picture of some of their entrees.

    3. Re:What about the little guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      using a technology that is less universal like Flash

      Flash is available on something like 99% of all computers, and that final percentage is mostly people who are actively avoiding Flash or using browsers that don't support HTML5 in any case.

      you blame Steve Jobs for limiting the reach of your app by not correcting your decision by bringing Flash to the iPhone?

      Something like 75% of all mobile devices will support Flash. Yeah, it's really his problem that iPhone users are going to be left in the cold.

      Steve Jobs needs to wake up and realize that there are just some things that can't be done without Flash. HTML5 is NOT a drop-in solution. In fact, in many ways, it's considerably worse than Flash.

      Which means that there's a good chance that his website simply will never be able to work without the features that Flash brings to the table. And in that case, you're basically telling him that yes, he should code a custom iPhone application to get that final percent-of-a-percent of an audience that uses the iPhone to browse the web, since there's no other way to duplicate his existing, fully functional code.

    4. Re:What about the little guy? by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Something like 75% of all mobile devices will support Flash.

      But not today. And his flash monstrosity designed for 1024x768 won't be very appealing on a 320x480, 4" touch screen.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  13. another flash article? by MadUndergrad · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is great! Now whenever I need to find out what does or does not support flash, I can just come to flashdot! Seems to be all that's posted here nowadays.

  14. Some of you keep forgetting something... by Spencerian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Flash wasn't built for mobile devices.

    If you want it to suck cycles on your desktop or most laptops, that's not a problem, for your PC or Mac has them and electrical power to spare, generally.

    But Flash sucks the electrical life out of mobile devices. This isn't theory, it's fact. Take your laptop off AC power and see it die after a few YouTube videos or Flash games.

    I'm not against Flash. I'm against it on devices that must be reliable and are built with limited processor and electrical power.

    Flash is the Web standard of .NET. It's sloppy. It's developer hasn't made great inroads to optimize it or secure it. It is flexible, but some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen. And only Adobe makes it.-

    If Adobe wants to side with another platform for Flash AND make it work, great. But apparently Apple doesn't want to be Adobe's guinea pig and it has every reason not to.

    Apple has already dealt before with competitors both inside and out who change their business plan and as a result, leave Apple twisting in the wind. It's good business practice not to let your business become overly dependent on others. Hell, Adobe was in that situation when Apple began to flounder. So why would Apple emulate Adobe in that regard?

    As for Flash on the Android? Let's see it, then. What doesn't kill your phone only makes it stronger.

    Perhaps Apple will have Billy Dee Williams in for some endorsements, standing over a person with a locked, overheated phone.

    " Problem with your Droid? "

    --
    Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
    1. Re:Some of you keep forgetting something... by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Informative

      Flash is the Web standard of .NET.

      I'm pretty sure that Silverlight is the Web standard of .NET.

    2. Re:Some of you keep forgetting something... by gaspyy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Flash 10.1 uses hardware acceleration for video, so presumably battery life will be longer.
      Also, on Adroid, Flash delivers better performance than HTML5/Canvas (http://visualrinse.com/2010/04/15/benchmarking-html5-vs-flash-player-10-1-on-mobile-devices/).

      Regarding "some of its features make little sense on a multi-touch screen" -- nothing springs to mind, care to elaborate? It does have rollover support but that doesn't mean that you have to use it. It has multi-touch support too...

      As for security... I can only recall 3 major flaws in the last 5 years; maybe there are more but it's still not more insecure than Java or IE.

  15. Re:thats nice but by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    But can you install them on any Android phone? Which I think is what he was after.

    If you can flash the device, then yes, you can install them on any phone. It's a replacement of the OS.

    There are websites that tell you how to get in to the various rom-flash modes for each phone.

    A lot of the stuff they are doing, though, can be done with apps (including tethering for almost all devices and carriers), so I'm not sure what the point is, really. They do have kernel tweaks, but I'm not sure they're worth it.

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  16. Re:thats nice but by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are a lot of things Flash does that HTML5 will never do.

    What Jobs really wants is to replace Flash with Cocoa (since he knows HTML5 and JavaScript will never be good enough) so he can sell you all the dev tools and get royalties on any third party tools.

    What's the motto that is so selectively applied? Follow the Money?

    --
    Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
  17. Re:Verizon by bconway · · Score: 2, Informative

    The HTC Incredible, release two days ago on Verizon, is almost identical in spec and function to the Nexus One. It's already sold out in many areas and their online store.

    --
    Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
  18. H.264 badgers? by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Flash is a closed standard. But even if it was and open standard, H.264 would still beat it quite handily in video quality and file size (bandwidth).

    Would a vector animation like Badgers really be smaller as H.264? The closest contender here involves scripting a <canvas>.

  19. You can already disable Flash on Android 1.5.... by GameGod0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm thrilled that I'm able to use whatever software I want on Android. The problem is, I don't actually want Flash - I just wanted the ability to decide for myself.

    So, that's great that you will be supporting it, but please let me turn it off or uninstall it from my phone.

    Thanks.

    I'm not sure why this keeps coming up, since nobody that ever replies clearly has ever owned an Android phone. My HTC Hero, which supports Flash 7 out-of-the-box, has an option in its browser to disable plugins.

    You have the option to disable Flash on your Android phone right now, and it's FUD to keep suggesting that you won't be able to disable it again in the future.

  20. Re:thats nice but by suomynonAyletamitlU · · Score: 2, Funny

    So before you can put flash on your flash, you have to flash your flash? Or is flash not put on the flash?

  21. Re:Take that. by catmistake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure Jobs and Apple are quaking. Everything Google does turns to gold, even if they don't have the market experience to develop and successfully bring to market ... um... anything. What does Google sell, again? Oh yeah... advertising. No one sells web ads better. And this is going to make Android sweet.

    --
    The Admin and the Engineer
  22. Re:thats nice but by catmistake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's a little bit intellectually dishonest that those that have disdain for Apple and iPhone must always refer to Apple or iPhone when anything cell related makes the news. If Apple and iPhone really really sucked... no one would bother comparing everything to it constantly. The iPhone haters have turned the iPhone into the Gold Standard for smart phones. Nice work there... but it's so tragic. The more people that bash iPhone, the more free advertising it gets, and the more iPhones get sold. Android will forever be the alternative to iPhone, even if it becomes vastly more popular; when talked about, iPhone will always be mentioned. I'm gonna call it the Android bump. iPhone owes some of it's success to the Android bump.

    --
    The Admin and the Engineer
  23. Re:Take that. by JackAxe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But console manufactures don't care which middleware tool you use to build games for their platform. This is the clear distinction. A developer can use something like Gamebryo to build a 360, PS3, and Wii game as an example, where as with Apple this is not allowed.

    If Apple were actually consistent in which apps are excluded, that would be one thing, but they are not, so it's really hard to gauge what they'll allow one week from the next, especially when they change the language in their TOS.

    Anyways, I agree on the efficiency no matter what toolset is used. Let the customer decide if they like or dislike something and crap will always get flushed out. I certainly learned to not trust most content from the App Store as it's battery-hogging-crap, much of which was coded with Objective C.

  24. Re:thats nice but by aliquis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Flash doesn't things you just can't do with the web using any other technology.

    That doesn't matter shit for the user, only for the developer.

    Either you can view the content or you can't.

    Without flash you can't.

    Simple as that and rather inconvenient. Shit or not.

  25. Re:Hackers have a new window by rtfa-troll · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What was that whoosh? Low flying ducks again?

    Damnit; of course Apple's signing is the only thing protecting us from the void. That's why networks with Symbian phones (where the user can install just about anything they want) collapse almost every day of the week. Nothing at all to do with Apple being a bunch of control freaks.

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();