Flash-on-Mobile: Re-Examining the Controversy
Linked by David Adams on Mon 22nd Feb 2010 08:37 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless While it's been a low-level grumbling for years, the issue of Flash on mobile devices (and particularly the iPhone/Touch/iPad ecosystem) has reached fever pitch over the past few weeks, with Steve Jobs as self-appointed Flash basher-in-Chief. The OSNews crowd, that is, dyed-in-the-wool technologists have, by and large, not been big fans of Flash, with its spotty availability and performance on alternative platforms, resource hogging, and instability. And though it's quite useful for web video and other specialized interfaces, it drives the tech savvy crazy when it's used for utterly superfluous multimedia bling. So we've had a lively discussion of the pros and cons of Flash, and whether device users should be free to make their own decision about whether it's worthy to install on their iPads. But we're leaving out an important detail. As Daniel Eran Dilger, a Flash developer, points out, almost all the important existing Flash infrastructure won't work anyway. Update: A worthwhile rebuttal to this point of view.
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Sorry, but roughlydrafted???
by kragil on Mon 22nd Feb 2010 09:11 UTC
kragil
Member since:
2006-01-04

roughlydrafted is most idiotic Mac fanboy site in existence. _Everything_ they write has bias written all over it and the people that comment on that site are no better.

And anyways, for most people Flash is video. Moving all the news site etc to HTML5 is a lot of work. Having no mouse pointer doesn't really matter.
Sure there are lots of Farmville etc. players, but compared to Flashvideo users that number is tiny.

As usual, RD blows up pointless things to make Apple look good. That is what they always do. Just look at their video about multitasking.

Edit: I hate the current Flash implementation (probably more than most geeks) but pointless points are still pointless.

Edited 2010-02-22 09:17 UTC

Reply Score: 4

Thom_Holwerda Member since:
2005-06-29

You're right about RoughlyDrafted. Everything appears very well-researched, and it usually is, but it's totally unreliable. They will go to extreme lengths to twist and turn any fact just to make Apple look good. You never know what's real and what isn't.

Reply Parent Score: 4

darknexus Member since:
2008-07-15

RD doesn't come off nearly as foolish as you do with that comment. I could say the same about Slashdot, and yet occasionally good and well-thought articles pop up their too. Read the content without letting your hate get in the way. Even the worst sites can have a gem in them.

Reply Parent Score: 4

kragil Member since:
2006-01-04

Sorry, but part of being human is learning from past mistakes and reading RD was one of mine.

I will wait for Ars or some other proper site to tackle the issue if it really is one. RDs spindoctoring and biased nonsense does not deserve to be taken seriously even if they are right once every decade.

On topic: 99% of the flash content on the web people want is video and there is no reason why Flash for mobile shouldn't be able to play almost all of it.

Reply Parent Score: 1