Apple Source: Adobe’s Flash Is “Too Buggy” For the iPad
4:45 pm, January 29th, 2010, Leander Kahney
The New York Times' homepage during Steve Jobs' demo of the iPad on Wednesday -- note the missing Flash video.
UPDATE: Adobe says Flash is not buggy and that Apple is protecting revenue streams from content like movies and games.
Flash will not be coming to the iPad — not now, not ever — says a source inside Apple who is part of the iPad development team.
Instead, Apple will rely on HTML 5 and CSS to play rich media, such as YouTube videos, on the web.
“Flash is too buggy and will crash the whole device,” says the Apple source. “Apple’s done no deal with Adobe.”
Adobe is already hopping mad about the omission of Flash on Apple’s latest device. In a blog post Friday, the company showed how porn sites would look on the iPad without Flash — more or less empty of content.
Adobe has already protested the lack of Flash on the iPhone. On Friday, the company’s Flash Platform blog pledged to find ways for Flash apps to run on the iPad. The absence of Flash on the iPad was obvious during Wednesday’s debut of the device. Showing it in action, Steve Jobs surfed to the New York Times website, which had a missing Flash plug-in displayed prominently on its front door. Jobs did not mention Flash during his presentation, nor has the company provided official word on why it’s missing from the iPhone and iPad.
The issue of Flash is important because so much of the web’s rich media is encoded in Adobe’s format. Critics point out that the iPad won’t be able to play most movies on the Web – a glaring omission for such a media-centric device.
Apple is betting that HTML 5 will fill the gap.
HTML 5 is an emerging standard for rich media that promises to do away with plugins. It moves away from single vendor technologies like Flash, Silverlight and Java FX. HTML 5 is already built into Safari, Firefox and Chrome.
But although YouTube and Vimeo are already using HTML 5 for their mobile video sites, it isn’t yet widely deployed. Some experts predict HTML 5 won’t be popular for at least three years, unless the iPad breaks records, of course.
Apple would likely use HTML 5 on the iPad in conjunction with CSS (which would reformat mobile sites to fit the iPad’s 4:3 aspect ratio, rather than the iPhone’s 16:9).
Neither Apple nor Adobe responded to requests for comment.
Appel didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Apple Tablet, News, iPad | Comment on this article
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Gee, I use a MacBook Air and the wife an I-Book, we never had a problem with Flash.
Too buggy for Apple, sorry not the truth. Apple has separated its mobile devices Phone, Touch, Pod and now Pad into a content controlled cage that it controls. Flash opens the cage door a crack and that could cost apple download and down the road money.
I will not be buying the I-Pad but not because of the lack of Flash or the A4 ARM platform. The I-Pad is like a Zebra a horse designed by committee
Geek, on January 29th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
I can’t imagine Flash not being figured out for iPhone or iPad, eventually.
http://www.ipadlot.com
Fretboard, on January 29th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Flash is too buggy even for desktop OS X. That’s why YouTube is switching to provide option for HTML5 videos instead of flash.
Lol iPod doesn’t do flash. iPhone doesn’t do flash, and somehow Apple is successful with them.
ObamaPacman, on January 29th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Looks like Apple demonstrated that it’s indeed possible to live in a world without Flash. About time, too. Adobe got too complacent. The world moves on.
Batguano, on January 29th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
“Flash is too buggy and will crash the whole device,” is NOT the reason. Selling apps in the app store is the reason. Apple has the right to any business model they wish, but it is a bummer to be missing flash on their portable devices. We develop flash/flex/air apps for enterprise and would love to have Apple devices as delivery choices. Other devices get the job done but none are as desirable as Apple’s.
Kurt, on January 29th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
This will cause problems, not for Apple, but for the poor people who will buy these things in their thousands. The general public have no knowledge and no interest in Apple’s spat with Adobe – probably never even heard of ‘Adobe’ or ‘Flash’. All they know is that – significantly – AFTER they’ve parted with their money – that a whole bunch of content doesn’t work with something that’s been touted as the ultimate web-browsing device. Instead it’s been replaced by blank blocks in web pages that have a crappy lego brick in them instead of a news report or music video or interview.
I’m a geek – I know what I’m getting (or not) – however a very large number of people are just going to feel ripped off instead.
I don’t understand why Apple is doing this when Macs with Safari run Flash without issue. The only thing I can think of is that there is some fundamental weakness in the iPhone/iPad OS that can’t cope with Flash and would take a ground-up rewrite to resolve. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced Apple has made a truely monumental f-up somewhere and they’ve just decided the easiest way to deal with is is from the opposite end of the issue.
Marky Mark, on January 29th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
I just want to add – no flash on the iPhone is a minor inconvenience becuase it’s a device of convenience. The iPad is offering a different experience for different circumstances – an apparently credible alternative to a laptop or desktop for browsing web content. In that case, lack of flash support is 100% a dealbreaker for me. If I can’t even watch embedded video on a site such as BBC News, what’s the use? It’s not remotely credible as an alternative. Rubbish.
Marky Mark, on January 29th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Hi Leander, could you identify your secret source, so we can assure its integrity?
(I know you can’t, but I had to ask… it’s one thing if it’s an engineer, another if it’s Phil Schiller etc… would give at least a little context on how to reply. I wouldn’t be surprised if an Adobe PR rep could not give you a “reactive paragraph” to an unsourced and unconfirmable quote like that!)
Or, put another way, if Apple truly believed this, then could they get it on the record so we all can talk together, instead of trying to manipulate the media like this? That “controlled leak” strategy doesn’t really seem viable anymore.
jd/adobe
John Dowdell, on January 29th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
For $500+, I expect to be able to browse the web un-compromised.
Tariq Ahmed, on January 29th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
I just talked to Adrian Ludwig, a group product manager for Flash at Adobe, who gave me a very interesting perspective on the issue. Will be updating shortly.
Leander Kahney, on January 29th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
@John Dowdell. I can’t reveal the source, obviously. He/she swore me to secrecy. It’s not Phil Schiller. But they do work on the iPad software side.
Leander Kahney, on January 29th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Working for a University with a huge online population I was looking forward to this device for online education. Not having Flash is a deal breaker. We’ve invested way too much into the development of Flash content to abandon it. The line about being the best browsing experience you’ve ever had is a transparent lie.
So unfortunate. A swing and a miss. Let’s see what v.2 brings.
Jason, on January 29th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
iPhone is not 16:9. It’s 3:2.
Resolution is 480×320, right?
It’s simple, just calculate 480/320 = 1.5 (or 3:2).
newbie, on January 29th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Adobe has always made “Fat” software. Slow running, huge and finicky. Be it “AiR”, FLASH, or Reader/PDF. Their programs have gotten bigger, but rarely better. As a non-porn surfer, “Flash” does not bring richness to the experience.
Bill, on January 29th, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I’m reading this page at the moment and the only Flash content I can (or can’t) see is adverts. I agree that not being able to view embedded video on some sites will be a pain, but implying that Flash gaming would hurt App Store revenue is a bit insane. I still can’t think of the last time I played a Flash game in my browser, yet I do know that I’ve played Canabalt on my iPod, an app that originated from an online Flash game. Flash-based web content is also being slowly phased out, especially with the movement towards UI-oriented Javascript libraries, such as JQuery, and with adoption of CSS3 in browsers, neither of which require as much processing power as Flash.
Steve, on January 29th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Flash routinely crashes on all my Macs. In Safari. In Chrome. Even Air apps. Every few hours, ka-blamo, and there’s the crash dump, plain as day.
I _wish_ I was joking. It’s pretty much the punchline, unfortunately.
Joe, on January 30th, 2010 at 12:13 am
Flash is a piece of crap, its bloated and up until last week when I blocked flash, it would cause my browser to hang all the freaking time.
I have no idea what your doing “geek”, but Flash is a serious piece of crap, and Adobe needs to get on the ball and actually fix it.
Randy, on January 30th, 2010 at 12:19 am
HTML5 gaming isn’t ever going to be up to the Flash level, so basically this thing is only going to run games coded in Objective C. It’s closed, it’s proprietary, it’s everything everyone says they hate about Flash. Except Flash is actually open now; you can code in Flex, compile with Tamarin and never have to buy anything from Adobe. So this is actually Apple shutting down a more open standard in favor of their own.
I was really looking forward to the iPad; if it ran OS X, and I could launch Flex, compile my games and run them, I’d have bought one the day it came out.
I’m starting to think Apple sucks.
Josh Strike, on January 30th, 2010 at 12:59 am
Flash is rarely good for anything but porn advertising and occasionally a semi-decent Flash game once in a while. Adobe has gotten too complacent, too mediocre, that maybe even Microsoft (yes I said Microsoft!) can probably do a superior job at a Flash replacement if they really wanted to.
Flash is crap.
adobebloatware, on January 30th, 2010 at 2:42 am
Apple’s sending out people like the guy above to badmouth Flash. The bottom line is WE NEED A CROSS-PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY for heavy app coding in browsers. Java is just dead; so Flash is it. If Apple wants to write a better one, I’ll use it. But I can’t publish Objective C code to 99% of browsers around the world, and HTML5 is years from being a viable alternative. So either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re being paid to write this BS.
Josh Strike, on January 30th, 2010 at 2:54 am
Everyone should just Flashdance!
Noob, on January 30th, 2010 at 8:01 am
The complaints about the lack of flash sounds a lot like the complaints about the iMac lacking a floppy drive and using this strange new port called usb instead of the trusty old adb- and serial ports. Like it was back then, HTML5 isn’t a wide spread standard yet, but it has a lot of potential, and someone needs to push the users into adopting it.
And for all the people who desperately need flash on a mobile device, Android and Windows mobile is there to satisfy our needs.
olof, on January 30th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Dear Adobe,
Shut your mouth until you can make Flash:
1)NOT repeatedly crash my top of the line MacBookPro
2)NOT spin up my fans in the few moments it actually runs before crashing
sbi, on January 30th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Who’s Appel?
Darcy McGee, on January 30th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
We all know that Flash causing a lot of security problem nowsday.
Yes, Flash is buggy, especially compare to its competitor Silverlight.
Just browse to Secunia:
Adobe Flash Player 10.x
24 Vulnerabilities
where Microsoft Silverlight 3.x
0 Vulnerabilities (Yes, ZERO)
Saw, on January 31st, 2010 at 12:20 am
Leander, understood, I had to ask….
Now, considering that we now know he’ll speak with media counter to company policy and anonymously, could you ask him if he ever posts to web discussion boards pseudonymously…?
jd/adobe
John Dowdell, on January 31st, 2010 at 12:55 am
I think the move is political as it is technical.
I don’t like Flash either. Any instances of Flash movie running on my browser will make my MBPro’s fans spinning at their max. I wish the world could move faster adopting HTML5.
Gugur Daun, on January 31st, 2010 at 1:46 am
Flash 10 is nothing but buggy. I’m glad they are making a stand against Adobe who seems to be doing nothing to fix a year old issue.
http://getsatisfaction.com/adobe/topics/when_using_adobe_flash_player_10_why_is_there_high_cpu_memory_usage_100_utilization
Nick I, on February 1st, 2010 at 6:18 pm