The lack of Flash on the iPod Touch and the iPhone is understandable, they have lower performance processors because the nature of the device fits into small places.
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
Yes, sure it is a a large iPod Touch if you like. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Apple is obviously striving for common, consistent, perhaps identical experiences between their touch devices. That makes a lot of sense.
You acknowledge that it makes sense not to include Flash on iPhone and iPod. The web experience on the iPhone OS has been a pillar of the platform. What incentive would Apple have for breaking the consistency of offering between their touch devices, simply then to get Flash only on the iPad? If one does Flash and the others do not, that consistency is broken.
You also acknowledge that Apple would have to change their engineering specs just to get Flash on the iPad usefully. Why would the spend extra money to do this, which would in turn break the consistency with their other devices?
It´s a no brainer why iPad supplies have been constrained on purpose and the 3G model is weeks away. Apple is giving web sites time to convert as to have minimal impact on iPad users, and to create the sense the device is being sold out everywhere, that itś in high demand.
Websites started converting as soon as the iPad was announced. It wasn't but a couple of weeks (if that) before there were almost daily announcements of yet another major website converting over so it would be easily read by the iPad. If by "constrained on purpose" you mean the buying public eating them up, then yes. Current estimates have Apple as having sold a million already. By the 2nd weekend my local Apple store had sold out of all but the $500 model. 3G arrives tomorrow in the US, next month worldwide.
There is such a thing as underestimating popularity. Look at the World of Warcraft launch back in 2004. They expected to sell their 250k copies of the game over the course of the first 3 months. Instead, they were sold out by the end of the first weekend and they had serious server problems. If Apple underestimated the popularity of the iPad, hey it happens.
Quote:
Originally Posted by agl82
[SIZE="2"]MPEG LA, of which Apple is a member, owns patents regarding the implementation of said codec and has the right to charge royalties for its use.
Looking at the MPEG LA site, Apple is not a member, they are a licensor. In other words, they pay MPEG LA to license products from them. They do not get money from MPEG LA licensing things to other people.
You managed to reply to my comment without confronting its central thesis. Steve Jobs claims that Adobe's Flash technology is proprietary. This is a fact. Flash IS proprietary. However, Steve also claims that HTML5 (which includes H.264 for video playback) is an "open standard". His words:
"...we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript ? all open standards."
This is undeniably false. H.264 is a proprietary codec which must be licensed from MPEG LA. It is not "open" in any sense whatsoever. Steve Jobs is, therefore, a liar.
I'm not qualified to opine on the subject of this thread, but regret that some who do can write with a passion that seems out of scale.
How about "mistaken," "in error," or simply "wrong?"
You mean the product that Ballmer kind of demonstrated but that isn't going to hit the market now? Wonder why? Wonder what the battery life would have been like on that thing.
Thompson
Uhm...the Slate hasn't been cancelled. The HP Slate is listed as having a 5 hour battery life
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpotOn
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
Except it couldn't as there is still no full version of Flash for mobile devices published. Try again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by backtomac
IMO, if they wish to blunt the success of Android they need to make the iPhone available to ALL US carriers. They are plenty of users who simply will not choose ATT as a a carrier, regardless of the device.
Hear hear! AT&T wanted ridiculous amounts of deposit when my credit rating is fine. Sprint signed me right up no problem. I'd love to see a WiMax version of the iPhone released for Sprint. C'mon Apple, my period on my LG Lotus is more than up, we have just been waiting for better phones to show up to bother upgrading
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
This ego maniac control freak you speak of, has brought to the world macosx/unix based/most secure personal operating system to date, iPods/iPads/App store. What has microsoft brought to the world? blue screen of death and norton anti virus subscriptions.
Not to mention several tech sites. Which people do read. Not just geeks.
My guess is that you consider yourself a geek and observe that some non-geeks also read tech sites. (I'm in that same camp, by the way.) But if we were to ask someone who claims NOT to be a geek (e.g. my wife) they would probably say that if you are reading tech sites then you are, by definition, a geek. Since more people consider themselves non-geeks than geeks, most people would probably disagree with your statement above.
By the way: that was mostly tongue-in-cheek above. But the following is true...
Personally, I think agl82 has gotten all the info on this topic that he can possibly get. If he doesn't a difference between open web standards and Adobe Flash at this point I doubt he never will. ... There is an agenda here and it comes the day after Adobe has made some real changes to Flash for Mac OS X, and rather quickly too boot. What is the next move for Adobe and Apple? ...That is just MacTripper trolling under a new alias.
Hey, I really like many of your more substantive posts but I've noticed this thing you do a lot lately where you get tied up in long discussions about "who (user x, y, or z), really is."
It's really distracting, it's against the forum rules, and let's face it ... unless you run the board, you don't really know these things to be true. Broad assumptions presented as fact are poison to proper debates.
I think you are getting away with this kind of thing because of you do contribute a lot of good stuff as well and because you don't say anything overly negative about these folks, but making posts about the person, instead of the topic (ironically like I'm doing right now! ), is actually against the rules.
I hope you take it as the well intentioned criticism I intend it to be and I won't bother to say it again, but please stop doing the "forum intrigue" thing. Thanks.
From reading your post it seems that you agree with me. If Apple provide developers with good tools for wring iPhone apps they'll naturally gravitate to them.
But I think there is another agenda here at work. Apple wish to make it difficult to write apps that can easily be ported to several platform in order to blunt the the success of Android. IMO, if they wish to blunt the success of Android they need to make the iPhone available to ALL US carriers. They are plenty of users who simply will not choose ATT as a a carrier, regardless of the device.
Adding the other US carriers will solve that problem.
At one point, this was what I was thinking as well, and that they were doing it to hamper development of apps across platforms to lock apps into the Apple ecosystem.
On further thought, it seems the reasons are likely different. There is a subtle difference. When using cross platform tools, the best they generally do is to meet the lowest common denominator of all supported platforms. For Apple, more than any other company, experience is important. Allowing apps that only meet the basest commonality across platforms is simply allowing an inferior experience. You are free to continue to develop and release your apps for any and all other platforms, but if you do it for the iPhone and you have to do it using Apple tools, then perhaps you are less likely to handicap your app.
The web is Apple's main competitor to iPhone apps. Also Google depends on people staying on the web. One conspiracy theory might go that Apple knows that Flash makes the web passable, so they are trying to kill it, to lower the quality of the web, weakening competition with iPhone apps, and in general getting people off the web and in to apps (iAd!) to disrupt Google's ad revenue/plans.
While I'm fairly certain that what you are saying is true, it must really kill Adobe that the reasons that Apple gives are ALSO CORRECT. Flash blows for mobile devices for a multitude of reasons.
Everything Steve does in public is carefully orchestrated, this letter is no exception.
There's nothing wrong with careful orchestration, in and of itself. Even when you are right, it pays to carefully express yourself. Look at you for example: you are not careful, and you look like a fool because of it. We can't even tell if you are right, because you're too foolish to prove it.
To my knowledge, I never said they were synonymous. Steve Jobs is the one who implied they were synonymous by using "HTML5" in his letter as opposed to "H.264". Adobe's Flash technology will mainly compete with H.264 for video playback. HTML5 is just a spec for markup language on the web. I understand the difference, but Steve Jobs doesn't want you to.
I didn't say you SAID they were synonymous. I said you were writing AS IF they were synonymous. My meaning is this: you keep using qualities of H.264 to disprove something that Steve Jobs said about HTML5. You are either making a mistake or deliberately misleading. Either way, I'm just pointing out the error for others to see.
Perhaps, but Steve Jobs claiming H.264 is "open" is an absolute falsehood. It is nothing of the sort. That's why Firefox and Opera are not adopting it.
"H.264 is neither free nor open-source. If...you want to use H.264 to serve HTML5 video in your browser, you need to pay MPEG LA, the owners of the codec, a $5 million licensing fee. This has raised some eyebrows by the likes of Mozilla Firefox, who want HTML5?s video compression standard to be the free, open-source Ogg Theora. Their argument, summarized, is it?s foolish to build the next decade?s internet video standards upon the back of a licensed codec when there?s a free alternative that works nearly as well."
OK. So it's not 'pretend'. It's only vaporware. Let me know when it ships.
More importantly, let me know when they ship a version that EVEN ADOBE thinks will run on a 600 MHz processor like the iPhone 3GS or 400 MHz like the iPhone 3G.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I went all over that site and never saw the activity above 58% for a second or two peak most of the time is was in the low teens and even single digits even with all the animations. So I don't know what might be wrong with your set up but I certainly don't see the same CPU usage you report.
What type of computer? If you're using Windows, your comparison only proves the point. (Not to mention that I don't believe you - my daughter uses that site all the time and it's ALWAY over 100% CPU usage and the computer gets hot enough within seconds that she can't hold it in her lap). ALWAYS. And everyone else I know who uses the site has the same experience.
But even if you're right and it 'only' went to 58%, isn't that pretty absurd for a computer with the amount of power that I have that it can't even handle a simple web page without using 58% of the CPU? You're not embarrassed to be advocating such a crappy program? Not to mention how many millions of dollars worth of energy it wastes?
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
You know, until there actually IS an HP Slate and we can all see the performance, it doesn't really seem appropriate to use it in an argument (especially in the present tense). That's just lame.
Not yet, no. For now, they still use Macbooks and my MacPro for that. (I still need to check on that App!) I'm thinking that time will solve this: Poptropica will most likely build an App (at least for iPad if not iPhone).
No doubt about it: the lack of Flash is a handicap at this point in time. But I understand the reasons and I have hope that most (if not all) of the handicap will be rectified in time.
You also acknowledge that Apple would have to change their engineering specs just to get Flash on the iPad usefully. Why would the spend extra money to do this, which would in turn break the consistency with their other devices?
I´m not arguing for Flash on the iPad, the device can´t handle it in itś present form factor.
My point is Steve is making a media fuss because he needs web sites to create iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) friendly versions of their sites in addition to the Flash versions for more normal computers.
What type of computer? If you're using Windows, your comparison only proves the point. (Not to mention that I don't believe you - my daughter uses that site all the time and it's ALWAY over 100% CPU usage and the computer gets hot enough within seconds that she can't hold it in her lap). ALWAYS. And everyone else I know who uses the site has the same experience.
But even if you're right and it 'only' went to 58%, isn't that pretty absurd for a computer with the amount of power that I have that it can't even handle a simple web page without using 58% of the CPU? You're not embarrassed to be advocating such a crappy program? Not to mention how many millions of dollars worth of energy it wastes?
I'm using a Mac Pro. The site very well may use more cpu in the actual game but since it is a pay to play situation I only viewed the demo. And no I don't think 58% is too much. Driving your daughter to the mall uses way more energy than a Flash game and is considerably less beneficial. Don't play the green environment card unless you do everything else in your life accordingly. And I can say that with some conviction since I am a practicing advocate of saving energy.
The reason that ALL manufacturers shy away from the term 'laptop' is that they are too hot to use on your lap. So to avoid misrepresentation of the intended use of the device they have switched to calling it a 'notebook'.
Sure Flash uses a lot of energy but performance has its costs. An SUV uses more gas than a Prius but can haul a 2000 lb. trailer. If you want a lot of interactive animations there is no better solution than Flash. If you don't want animation in your browser, then don't use Flash. Simple.
Comments
The lack of Flash on the iPod Touch and the iPhone is understandable, they have lower performance processors because the nature of the device fits into small places.
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
Yes, sure it is a a large iPod Touch if you like. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Apple is obviously striving for common, consistent, perhaps identical experiences between their touch devices. That makes a lot of sense.
You acknowledge that it makes sense not to include Flash on iPhone and iPod. The web experience on the iPhone OS has been a pillar of the platform. What incentive would Apple have for breaking the consistency of offering between their touch devices, simply then to get Flash only on the iPad? If one does Flash and the others do not, that consistency is broken.
You also acknowledge that Apple would have to change their engineering specs just to get Flash on the iPad usefully. Why would the spend extra money to do this, which would in turn break the consistency with their other devices?
It´s a no brainer why iPad supplies have been constrained on purpose and the 3G model is weeks away. Apple is giving web sites time to convert as to have minimal impact on iPad users, and to create the sense the device is being sold out everywhere, that itś in high demand.
Websites started converting as soon as the iPad was announced. It wasn't but a couple of weeks (if that) before there were almost daily announcements of yet another major website converting over so it would be easily read by the iPad. If by "constrained on purpose" you mean the buying public eating them up, then yes. Current estimates have Apple as having sold a million already. By the 2nd weekend my local Apple store had sold out of all but the $500 model. 3G arrives tomorrow in the US, next month worldwide.
There is such a thing as underestimating popularity. Look at the World of Warcraft launch back in 2004. They expected to sell their 250k copies of the game over the course of the first 3 months. Instead, they were sold out by the end of the first weekend and they had serious server problems. If Apple underestimated the popularity of the iPad, hey it happens.
[SIZE="2"]MPEG LA, of which Apple is a member, owns patents regarding the implementation of said codec and has the right to charge royalties for its use.
Looking at the MPEG LA site, Apple is not a member, they are a licensor. In other words, they pay MPEG LA to license products from them. They do not get money from MPEG LA licensing things to other people.
You managed to reply to my comment without confronting its central thesis. Steve Jobs claims that Adobe's Flash technology is proprietary. This is a fact. Flash IS proprietary. However, Steve also claims that HTML5 (which includes H.264 for video playback) is an "open standard". His words:
"...we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript ? all open standards."
This is undeniably false. H.264 is a proprietary codec which must be licensed from MPEG LA. It is not "open" in any sense whatsoever. Steve Jobs is, therefore, a liar.
I'm not qualified to opine on the subject of this thread, but regret that some who do can write with a passion that seems out of scale.
How about "mistaken," "in error," or simply "wrong?"
You mean the product that Ballmer kind of demonstrated but that isn't going to hit the market now? Wonder why? Wonder what the battery life would have been like on that thing.
Thompson
Uhm...the Slate hasn't been cancelled. The HP Slate is listed as having a 5 hour battery life
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
Except it couldn't as there is still no full version of Flash for mobile devices published. Try again.
IMO, if they wish to blunt the success of Android they need to make the iPhone available to ALL US carriers. They are plenty of users who simply will not choose ATT as a a carrier, regardless of the device.
Hear hear! AT&T wanted ridiculous amounts of deposit when my credit rating is fine. Sprint signed me right up no problem. I'd love to see a WiMax version of the iPhone released for Sprint. C'mon Apple, my period on my LG Lotus is more than up, we have just been waiting for better phones to show up to bother upgrading
Please, kind Sir, tell me what I don't understand. I understand that Steve Jobs conveniently failed to mention that Apple will make money when a content provider pays the $5 million license fee since they hold patents on the technology. I understand that their "open" industry standard H.264 is just as closed and proprietary as Flash. I understand that Steve Jobs is an egomaniac and a control freak who can't stand the thought of using truly "open" and "free" standards.
This ego maniac control freak you speak of, has brought to the world macosx/unix based/most secure personal operating system to date, iPods/iPads/App store. What has microsoft brought to the world? blue screen of death and norton anti virus subscriptions.
Not to mention several tech sites. Which people do read. Not just geeks.
My guess is that you consider yourself a geek and observe that some non-geeks also read tech sites. (I'm in that same camp, by the way.) But if we were to ask someone who claims NOT to be a geek (e.g. my wife) they would probably say that if you are reading tech sites then you are, by definition, a geek. Since more people consider themselves non-geeks than geeks, most people would probably disagree with your statement above.
By the way: that was mostly tongue-in-cheek above. But the following is true...
Geekness is in the eye of the beholder.
Thompson
Hit the nail on the head!
Personally, I think agl82 has gotten all the info on this topic that he can possibly get. If he doesn't a difference between open web standards and Adobe Flash at this point I doubt he never will. ... There is an agenda here and it comes the day after Adobe has made some real changes to Flash for Mac OS X, and rather quickly too boot. What is the next move for Adobe and Apple? ...That is just MacTripper trolling under a new alias.
Hey, I really like many of your more substantive posts but I've noticed this thing you do a lot lately where you get tied up in long discussions about "who (user x, y, or z), really is."
It's really distracting, it's against the forum rules, and let's face it ... unless you run the board, you don't really know these things to be true. Broad assumptions presented as fact are poison to proper debates.
I think you are getting away with this kind of thing because of you do contribute a lot of good stuff as well and because you don't say anything overly negative about these folks, but making posts about the person, instead of the topic (ironically like I'm doing right now!
I hope you take it as the well intentioned criticism I intend it to be and I won't bother to say it again, but please stop doing the "forum intrigue" thing. Thanks.
From reading your post it seems that you agree with me. If Apple provide developers with good tools for wring iPhone apps they'll naturally gravitate to them.
But I think there is another agenda here at work. Apple wish to make it difficult to write apps that can easily be ported to several platform in order to blunt the the success of Android. IMO, if they wish to blunt the success of Android they need to make the iPhone available to ALL US carriers. They are plenty of users who simply will not choose ATT as a a carrier, regardless of the device.
Adding the other US carriers will solve that problem.
At one point, this was what I was thinking as well, and that they were doing it to hamper development of apps across platforms to lock apps into the Apple ecosystem.
On further thought, it seems the reasons are likely different. There is a subtle difference. When using cross platform tools, the best they generally do is to meet the lowest common denominator of all supported platforms. For Apple, more than any other company, experience is important. Allowing apps that only meet the basest commonality across platforms is simply allowing an inferior experience. You are free to continue to develop and release your apps for any and all other platforms, but if you do it for the iPhone and you have to do it using Apple tools, then perhaps you are less likely to handicap your app.
The web is Apple's main competitor to iPhone apps. Also Google depends on people staying on the web. One conspiracy theory might go that Apple knows that Flash makes the web passable, so they are trying to kill it, to lower the quality of the web, weakening competition with iPhone apps, and in general getting people off the web and in to apps (iAd!) to disrupt Google's ad revenue/plans.
While I'm fairly certain that what you are saying is true, it must really kill Adobe that the reasons that Apple gives are ALSO CORRECT. Flash blows for mobile devices for a multitude of reasons.
Thompson
Everything Steve does in public is carefully orchestrated, this letter is no exception.
There's nothing wrong with careful orchestration, in and of itself. Even when you are right, it pays to carefully express yourself. Look at you for example: you are not careful, and you look like a fool because of it. We can't even tell if you are right, because you're too foolish to prove it.
Oh well.
Thompson
To my knowledge, I never said they were synonymous. Steve Jobs is the one who implied they were synonymous by using "HTML5" in his letter as opposed to "H.264". Adobe's Flash technology will mainly compete with H.264 for video playback. HTML5 is just a spec for markup language on the web. I understand the difference, but Steve Jobs doesn't want you to.
I didn't say you SAID they were synonymous. I said you were writing AS IF they were synonymous. My meaning is this: you keep using qualities of H.264 to disprove something that Steve Jobs said about HTML5. You are either making a mistake or deliberately misleading. Either way, I'm just pointing out the error for others to see.
Thompson
Perhaps, but Steve Jobs claiming H.264 is "open" is an absolute falsehood. It is nothing of the sort. That's why Firefox and Opera are not adopting it.
"H.264 is neither free nor open-source. If...you want to use H.264 to serve HTML5 video in your browser, you need to pay MPEG LA, the owners of the codec, a $5 million licensing fee. This has raised some eyebrows by the likes of Mozilla Firefox, who want HTML5?s video compression standard to be the free, open-source Ogg Theora. Their argument, summarized, is it?s foolish to build the next decade?s internet video standards upon the back of a licensed codec when there?s a free alternative that works nearly as well."
http://www.cultofmac.com/h-264-will-...ugh-2016/28982
Welcome to AI, now run along.
Overall great 'letter', clear and to the point. Notice how he aligned with Google not only for web browsing but Android and Chrome OS as well.
You know it is not pretend stuff.
Adobe now taking beta testers for Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0
http://www.betanews.com/article/Adob...oid/1271687589
OK. So it's not 'pretend'. It's only vaporware. Let me know when it ships.
More importantly, let me know when they ship a version that EVEN ADOBE thinks will run on a 600 MHz processor like the iPhone 3GS or 400 MHz like the iPhone 3G.
I went all over that site and never saw the activity above 58% for a second or two peak most of the time is was in the low teens and even single digits even with all the animations. So I don't know what might be wrong with your set up but I certainly don't see the same CPU usage you report.
What type of computer? If you're using Windows, your comparison only proves the point. (Not to mention that I don't believe you - my daughter uses that site all the time and it's ALWAY over 100% CPU usage and the computer gets hot enough within seconds that she can't hold it in her lap). ALWAYS. And everyone else I know who uses the site has the same experience.
But even if you're right and it 'only' went to 58%, isn't that pretty absurd for a computer with the amount of power that I have that it can't even handle a simple web page without using 58% of the CPU? You're not embarrassed to be advocating such a crappy program? Not to mention how many millions of dollars worth of energy it wastes?
The iPad is a different story, it could have been just a hair thicker with a slightly larger processor and have Flash support, just like the HP Slate does, but Apple decided to basically create a large screen iPod Touch instead.
You know, until there actually IS an HP Slate and we can all see the performance, it doesn't really seem appropriate to use it in an argument (especially in the present tense). That's just lame.
Thompson
Did the letter quell your kid's angst?
Honesty...
Not yet, no. For now, they still use Macbooks and my MacPro for that. (I still need to check on that App!) I'm thinking that time will solve this: Poptropica will most likely build an App (at least for iPad if not iPhone).
No doubt about it: the lack of Flash is a handicap at this point in time. But I understand the reasons and I have hope that most (if not all) of the handicap will be rectified in time.
Thompson
You also acknowledge that Apple would have to change their engineering specs just to get Flash on the iPad usefully. Why would the spend extra money to do this, which would in turn break the consistency with their other devices?
I´m not arguing for Flash on the iPad, the device can´t handle it in itś present form factor.
My point is Steve is making a media fuss because he needs web sites to create iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) friendly versions of their sites in addition to the Flash versions for more normal computers.
Nobody but geeks will even know the letter exists. This is hardly national news.
It's on FoxNews and guardian.co.uk already. Not to mention several tech sites. Which people do read. Not just geeks.
...and on the BBC site Apple boss Steve Jobs explains ban on Flash
What type of computer? If you're using Windows, your comparison only proves the point. (Not to mention that I don't believe you - my daughter uses that site all the time and it's ALWAY over 100% CPU usage and the computer gets hot enough within seconds that she can't hold it in her lap). ALWAYS. And everyone else I know who uses the site has the same experience.
But even if you're right and it 'only' went to 58%, isn't that pretty absurd for a computer with the amount of power that I have that it can't even handle a simple web page without using 58% of the CPU? You're not embarrassed to be advocating such a crappy program? Not to mention how many millions of dollars worth of energy it wastes?
I'm using a Mac Pro. The site very well may use more cpu in the actual game but since it is a pay to play situation I only viewed the demo. And no I don't think 58% is too much. Driving your daughter to the mall uses way more energy than a Flash game and is considerably less beneficial. Don't play the green environment card unless you do everything else in your life accordingly. And I can say that with some conviction since I am a practicing advocate of saving energy.
The reason that ALL manufacturers shy away from the term 'laptop' is that they are too hot to use on your lap. So to avoid misrepresentation of the intended use of the device they have switched to calling it a 'notebook'.
Sure Flash uses a lot of energy but performance has its costs. An SUV uses more gas than a Prius but can haul a 2000 lb. trailer. If you want a lot of interactive animations there is no better solution than Flash. If you don't want animation in your browser, then don't use Flash. Simple.