

The day Apple won the Flash fight - Kavan
http://gigaom.com/apple/the-day-apple-won-the-flash-fight/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

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watty
Fluff article, really despise these immature "wars" and biased blogs. I own an
Android phone, iPad, Touchpad, and a Windows laptop. I use the best technology
I can and let results decide my decisions rather than brand loyalty.

The new Media Server is for video content only - your iOS device will still be
missing Flash content. Competent websites have already solved this problem.
I'm all for HTML5 taking over as long as browser compatibility is maintained
and developer tools improve for both designers and developers. For now, Flash
wins in the performance, cross-browser compatibility, and developer tools.

<http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/>

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jinushaun
People seems to forget that Adobe is a company that makes tools. For Adobe, it
has never been Flash versus HTML5. It's about giving tools that people are
willing to buy or upgrade to. Even if the iPhone had never existed, Adobe
would still be adding HTML5 and mobile support for their products.

~~~
grahamr
I think it was Adobe that forgot it was a company that makes tools. They did
make it Flash versus HTML5, and are now realizing that they should have been
agnostic as a toolmaker.

~~~
watty
Flash existed long before HTML5, there was no platform for the tools. They
revolutionized the web and HTML5 is catching up

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doomlaser
I find this a little ironic as today Apple also chose to highlight a Flash app
as its iPad Game of The Week: <http://yfrog.com/nxvz8p>

Machinarium is a popular flash game that runs on iPad through Adobe AIR for
mobile. My guess is we'll see a lot more native Flash games on the app store
as processor speed increases, and even more impressive work when Flash 11
ships its Stage3D GPU acceleration for mobile (part of the Molehill project).

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tomlin
> Basically, Adobe is acknowledging Apple has won when it comes to Flash.

Why does this article have to have a "vs." narrative? Is it possible that
Adobe just wants to succeed and will do what it takes to gain profits?

And I'm not so sure Apple has _won_ just yet. If a device were to gain the
traction necessary to gain enough marketshare (you saw a bit of this with HP's
TouchPad), _we support Flash_ is a pretty decent incentive for the average
consumer who isn't caught up in the HTML5 vs. Flash war (read: every average
person).

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wmeredith
Uh, I'm pretty sure the average person doesn't know (or care) what Flash is.

~~~
watty
Agreed, my mom still doesn't understand why her "Smilebox" doesn't work on her
iPad (video slideshow software).

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Causalien
From an ActionScript developer's point of view it still takes too long to
develop anything interactive in html5. So for the sake of time cost/income,
I'll continue to push interactive content out in flash, while using html5 for
linear stuff.

With the recent news of unity for flash, the whole thing is about to embark on
a new adventure.

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0x12
Apple did not win anything, Adobe just decided to support a device which has a
large enough user base to be 'worth it'.

If Apple had sold a few hundred thousand of these then this would have never
happened.

~~~
kentbuckle
Isn't that the point of the article? Apple sold enough devices to get Adobe to
change their content delivery strategy?

~~~
watty
This is just for video, most websites already support non-Flash video using
one of the hundreds of Javascript frameworks.

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too_many_gregs
This article is written very childishly and is completely devoid of anything
non opinion. This person is obviously neither a market strategist, nor a
competent reporter.

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funkah
Before the iPhone it seemed like everyone agreed that Flash sucked, but after
iOS that was taken to be some kind of Apple fanboy position. Which is to say,
plenty of people with no particular allegiance to Apple have been unhappy with
Flash for a long time, so there is no need to paint this as some kind of
unilateral war on Apple's part. Flash is crappy and it's finally, slowly
dying, that's all.

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tomelders
I've been racking my brain to try and make sense of why som many people seem
to have forgotten just what Flash did to the web, and that's it. Pro-Flash is
the polite face of Anti-Apple.

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MatthewPhillips
I don't know what you mean about what Flash did to the web. A lot of
restaurants and small businesses had bad flash web sites built. Before flash a
lot of people made websites with tons of animated gifs, but that didn't cause
me to hate animated gifs.

~~~
Kadrith
Animated GIFs have never crashed my browser or cause it to perform horribly
though.

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recoiledsnake
It's been more than a year after Jobs' post disparaging Flash and promising
that HTML5 can fill much of the gap.

While it has improved, HTML5 on iOS still lags behind a lot. Apple wins the
Flash fight when Angry Birds can run on HTML5. Maybe that is what they're
afraid of.

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doomlaser
Angry Birds already runs on HTML5. <http://chrome.angrybirds.com/>

~~~
recoiledsnake
But does it work on Safari on iOS?

~~~
doomlaser
No, because HTML5's canvas performance on mobile browsers is comparable to
Flash's performance on mobile browsers.

~~~
doomlaser
Incidentally, Flash still outperforms HTML5's Canvas on both desktop and
browsers.

[http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/17/flash-outperforms-
htm...](http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/17/flash-outperforms-html5-on-
mobile-devices/)

