$5 US Flash player for iPad and iPhones

[tomriddle]

In my opinion I think that phasing out support for Flash on iOS was a pretty bad move. It causes some pain for us web developers out there, especially for mobile sites that want to embed youtube videos. We need HTML5 video player fallbacks just for the iPad and iPhone, and even then it doesn't entirely work the way I want all the time. Photon sounds good though I didn't know it had existed, it's just a shame that not everyone is using it. Back to the drawing board for me.

[Cloud]

My iphone 4 is away at apple at the moment for repairs (it decided to reset itself when updating software and then got locked) and to my surprise I actually miss it, not a massive apple fan (some of you may have noticed) but I do actually miss it as I have had to resort to my blackberry, which I can now say is awful in comparison. So I think though flash would be good on there it is not necessary.

[pauland]

As a Flash developer, I would say Job's stance on Flash was a pretty smart move for Apple - as more about protecting the itunes and the appstore, than it was about conserving battery life.

As others have said, other tablets play flash perfectly fine.

Apple protects it's itunes franchise in other ways too - the HTML offline support won't cache audio (and no doubt video), either, so you can't make an offline product that relies on loading an audio file, except as a native app. Other platforms don't have this restriction.

Returning to the flash playing app - technically it's a cheat that works quite well. Flash doesn't actually run on the iPad; what is happening is that when in "flash mode", the browser uses an external server to run a version of firefox on that server and it then streams back a video of the flash content back to the iPad. Flash never actually runs on the iPad - the app is essentially a clever browser using an external server to render the flash content.

Clever idea.

[gwpriester]

Very interesting. Thanks for the clarification, Paul.

[pauland]

Perhaps not strictly relevant, Jobs stance on flash and the championing of HTML 5 is most likely responsible for Adobe's halt to further development of the flash browser plugin on the mobile platforms and no doubt aided their decision to open-source one of their enterprise development technologies and redirect development priorities.

Jobs dealt a serious blow to Adobe on the mobile platform. A lot of people have lost their jobs (and fair to say new opportunities have arisen) as Adobe was forced to re-access priorities.

As someone living amongst this turbulent change, I do think Jobs was a smart cookie, even if I have felt the aftershocks of the decision to bar the flash player on iMobile.

[freddime2]

Perhaps not strictly relevant, Jobs stance on flash and the championing of HTML 5 is most likely responsible for Adobe's halt to further development of the flash browser plugin on the mobile platforms and no doubt aided their decision to open-source one of their enterprise development technologies and redirect development priorities.

Jobs dealt a serious blow to Adobe on the mobile platform. A lot of people have lost their jobs (and fair to say new opportunities have arisen) as Adobe was forced to re-access priorities.

As someone living amongst this turbulent change, I do think Jobs was a smart cookie, even if I have felt the aftershocks of the decision to bar the flash player on iMobile.

I agree with you that Jobs is too smart if not apple won't earn a dime but I think $5 seems very good for iPad and iPhones if it's usefull