Originally Posted by
nagromme 
id rather see actions than words. Show me flash working well (not slow, not hogging battery, not hogging ram, not crashing) on any mobile device, and show me flash working well on os x. Otherwise you cant expect it to be on the iphone. But none of those things can be shown todaywe only have statements about the future. Later, when flash runs badly on those other devices, apple (and we the users) wont be in the middle of the mess.
Anyway, one thing many people overlook:
current flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen, and this cannot be solved by apple, adobe, or magical new hardware.
that's not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes (all of which are very real), nor because flash mostly means ads. It's because of the
mouseover problem.
many (if not most) current flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. Actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It's pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of flash content. (examples: Steering a game character, and video players where clicking pauses but hovering brings up additional controlsa very common arrangement including on hulu. We can imagine workarounds adobe might come up with, like special gestures to learn that make the flash part of a page act differently from the rest of the pageassuming the user knows which is which! But theyre poor, awkward solutions, especially in the middle of a game.) new flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want
existing flash sites to work. All of them, not some of them here and there. Thats impossible no matter what.
All that apple and adobe could ever do is make current flash content visible. It would be
seen, but but very often would not
work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate blue brick icons.
I know adobe wants flash to somehow make sense on mobile devices. Maybe someday it will. But it does not make sense now, except maybe as a tool for making standalone apps, newly designed with touchscreens in mind. (and that is coming to iphoneits nothing to do with the browser.)
