so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
Is it just flash that behaves badly on Mac? Does anybody have problems with Divx, namely Divx Webplayer? I have quite a few probs when streaming a video on Firefox with Divx.. like the Beach Ball of Death appearing, the fan going crazy, the browser crashing..I'm on a Mac mini..
so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
Huh.
From both side's I didn't see any prove that is the hell or the heaven, maybe hellway to heaven.
Anyway, I would like to know what you mean with stupid things and who are the 'to many people'?
Are those the developers? Even if some developers develops something stupid, it shouldn't crash.
'You are not one of them' , of course every developer needs to optimize, But so should Adobe.
And you can't deny that they are behind with this, far behind where they should be now.
About you, show us your work, we can decide if it is true!
I don't understand Adobe's stubbornness. With Microsoft IE jumping on the HTML5 bandwagon it's pretty clear that Flash is moving fast towards the exit.
Now would be the perfect time to pull all efforts off from Flash and start thinking about a kickass WYSIWYG HTML5 development tool.
There lies Adobes future and major chance to shine again with bright glory.
But I'm afraid they'll going to let pass this opportunity as well.
Adobe's philosophy of looking backwards seems much better suited with the printing industry. Maybe they would be better off by selling their whole ex Macromedia "new media" division to someone with a more futuristic vision, and just stick to the old CMYK world instead. This is an area where Adobe is pretty much unchallenged, and where their conservative approach in fact is rather a plus.
Acrobat is pretty much settled as the backbone technology of the global printing industry. InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are mature products that will not require huge innovation steps, but could greatly benefit from improved stability and speed.
There still are enough challenges for Adobe to master, after that dead horse called Flash...
Perhaps the one good outcome of this will be at all of Adobe will now collectively see what a resource- and battery-hogging piece of software this is on mobile phones..
What evidence is there that HTML5 works on phones and is not a battery hog?
Tests of computers running Flash and HTML5 showed that there was no significant advantage to HTML5 over Flash 10.1. They couldn't even test HTML5 under Safari on a Windows machine because it wouldn't run.
I think Adobe is right about hardware acceleration. Apple won't allow anyone but themselves, access to HW acceleration on the iPhone or iPad, so even if HTML5 becomes ubiquitous, only Safari will run it well, Firefox and any other browser on those platforms will probably never perform any better with HTML5 than if they were running Flash - presuming Apple would allow them on, which is very unlikely.
I don't believe Steve Jobs' disingenuous utterances on this topic where they concern performance, he has another agenda entirely.
Quote:
Mozilla’s European president, Tristan Nitot, whether Firefox for mobile could ever grace the iPhone, and he straight out crushed our hopes and dreams of a rival for mobile Safari.
“The issue is more with Apple than with us because they control the App Store and because they refuse applications which compete with something that is already on the phone. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a version of Firefox running on the iPhone,” he told us.
Firefox 4: first look!
Mozilla’s so sure the iPhone is a dead end that it’s not even looking into developing a version just in case, he continued: “We’re not investing time and energy in this direction because we’re pretty sure it would be blocked by Apple, so we’re better off using our time in terms of development to do things on open platforms”.
So they're going to embarrass themselves further and punish their entire employed staff?
Adobe has lost it. They realize the only thing they had going for them at all was public perception, and as that begins to change, they begin to panic. Understandable, when your business has degrade to the point of producing almost nothing, but still appearing to be an active company.
What evidence is there that HTML5 works on phones and is not a battery hog?
Tests of computers running Flash and HTML5 showed that there was no significant advantage to HTML5 over Flash 10.1. They couldn't even test HTML5 under Safari on a Windows machine because it wouldn't run.
I think Adobe is right about hardware acceleration. Apple won't allow anyone but themselves, access to HW acceleration on the iPhone or iPad, so even if HTML5 becomes ubiquitous, only Safari will run it well, Firefox and any other browser on those platforms will probably never perform any better with HTML5 than if they were running Flash - presuming Apple would allow them on, which is very unlikely.
I don't believe Steve Jobs' disingenuous utterances on this topic where they concern performance, he has another agenda entirely.
This entire post is utter nonsense. First of all Mozilla has nothing to do with HTML5 vs. Flash, secondly, ham-handedly lumping together two different ways of attacking Apple in the same paragraph reeks of troll behavior.
Firefox is not on the iPhone because Mozilla cannot create it. They can't use the development tools that Apple provides to create a Mobile version of their browser. Even if they could, extensions are out of the question. There is no need or purpose for it, which is why it doesn't exist, and never will.
so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
You sound like yet another Flash developer, with no real argument, just the fact if Flash goes, so does your work.
I'm guessing there is a ton of money in this debate for Abobe, why else put some much negative effort into something, that appears to be heading out the door?
So, if they can get it work, and work great, just how much money does this mean for Adobe? And hey, I'm not against them making money, I'm just saying ?
They'll need to make a boatload just to off-set all of the bad press they are getting. And hey, why aren't the stock holders up in arms. All of the money they are spending is coming from somewhere.
I may be preaching to the choir here, but I don't get the big deal with having Flash on mobile devices. I was trying to convince some friends that even if you had the option of Flash, you probably would want it disabled. Security, resource hogging and stability issues are a given. But perhaps more importantly is *how* Flash is used on the web:
1) Video. Almost all video uses some sort of Flash player. Some articles continue to tout that since 90% of video uses Flash, it therefore won't work on mobile devices without Flash. I did some testing on my iPhone and was pleasantly surprised to find that all the video sites I could think of simply work great on the phone as it downgraded gracefully to a native format that uses hardware decoding.
2) Flash ads. OK, Flash ads suuuck! Boy they are annoying. Enough said.
3) Site navigations. How do you hover to drop down a menu on a touch interface? You can't. Pretty much all decent sites that use Flash navs fall back to conventional navs when Flash isn't available, which is perfect for mobile devices.
4) Games. Most of the better Flash games have free, native app-store equivalents which run better than the Flash version. Games requiring pointers and keyboards to interact would be awkward on a mobile device.
Being a developer, I totally see Jobs' point about not wanting a third party middleware shoe horned into the development environment. Something some folks don't understand is that Flash wouldn't be an alternative to Apple's APIs, it goes on top of it. So as Apple adds features, a Flash developer would have to be at the mercy of Adobe to provide an update to pass that feature through. Lastly, knowing Adobe's track record of security and stability problems with Flash, you know they will have to issue important updates down the road. What would happen to all those apps approved before that update? Would Apple have to pull hundreds/thousands of apps each time an update is issued so the developer can rebuild their app and resubmit it? What about people who already bought those apps? It would be a mess.
One last point. I think it's smart to not even offer the *option* of Flash for a couple reasons: First of all, if its anything like how it works on OS-X, it will crash occasionally and then users will complain and blame Apple. Crashing on a laptop is one thing, but crashing on a mobile device can be especially frustrating. Also, if Flash were optional, it would give developers an excuse for not making native versions of content. So you'd see things like "enable Flash to continue" which would be lame. Don't even make it an option unless it is really going to be 100% useful and stable.
OK, that's my rant I've used on my Android friends. :') Interestingly, they really still want the option of Flash even if the experience may suck. For a while I was in the same boat, but for the reasons outlined above, I think even having the option of something half-baked would be bad news.
Great post. I was especially interested to read points 1 and 3, in that sites revert to non-flash equivalents where flash isn't available. I'd always thought hover-over menus and flash videos fell over (or would fall over) but on your testing it sounds like that is not the case at all.
One thing that Flash does is help keep Linux available as a desktop computing option. All web content is available to Linux users in part thanks to Flash.
If that content switches to HTML 5 and H.264, then Linux users won't be able to view it with an open-source browser. The only option would conceivably be Google Chrome, once that version comes out of beta for Linux.
. . .if Warnock and Geschke were still calling the shots.
Warnock's more of a geek than Jobs, but I think he'd at least have more appreciation for the "aesthetics" of the iPhone ecosystem and respect it. He'd probably also have the chutzpah to eat some crow on the Flash acquisition and recognize its limitations and be able to simply move on.
I'm guessing there is a ton of money in this debate for Abobe, why else put some much negative effort into something, that appears to be heading out the door?
Of course there's a lot of money involved. Just think how much Adobe must be paying all the shills on this forum for starters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JavaCowboy
One thing that Flash does is help keep Linux available as a desktop computing option. All web content is available to Linux users in part thanks to Flash.
If that content switches to HTML 5 and H.264, then Linux users won't be able to view it with an open-source browser. The only option would conceivably be Google Chrome, once that version comes out of beta for Linux.
Do you really expect that html 5 in Webkit won't make it to Linux? I don't know, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a beta already available.
Sold my iphone and bought a Nexus one, best upgrade ever. It's only a matter of time before people realise there are much better alternatives to the iphone.
so they admit they don't have flash available for phones yet, just like Steve said?
People keep using this as a talking point, as if it's got such an eye opening message about this whole situation. Flash is in development, and Steve Jobs is flat out saying he doesn't want it on his device, all before he's even seen it work.
So the point is simple: While people think it's some amazing point to make that there isn't a device with flash yet, they completely fail to see the irony in that Steve Jobs has no problem dismissing it entirely when HE HASN'T SEEN IT WORK. He simply says he doesn't even want them to even develop for it.
Adobe giving away Android devices with flash to their employees sends a message: They've got it working and can't wait to show Steve Jobs is wrong.
I have owned the original iPod touch 1g, an iPhone 2g, and an iPhone 3GS. Back in November I was able to sell my iPhone 3GS to a friend and pick up a Motorola Droid. I now use the Skyfire browser on Android 2.1, which can take flash videos and convert them to HTML 5 viewable in the browser. This really works well and I should be able to get 2.2 with actual flash support by the end of summer. Although I'll probably just disable it, however its good to have it when needing to view a flash page.
This is the main problem with the iPhone platform. Apple doesn't give it's users enough choices. As a former iPhone user, I wouldn't like being spoon feed the "correct" software from Apple. HTML 5 is a great video standard but does not replace all the features of flash. And you can support HTML 5, like Google, while also allowing flash players on your mobile platform. Apple should of allowed a flash player to be installed through an app, and if costumers thought is was buggy or drained their battery life they wouldn't have to use it.
The openness of Android is great, but also a weakness as stability and seamlessness is not quite the same as the iPhone platform. However the amount of control Apple keeps over the OS only hinders its growth and development. To me the iPhone is still only and iPod while my android device is more a computer. If Apple opens up and give more developer freedom, and more aggressively updates the iPhone's hardware, it could really be a great proprietary competitor to android. Until then I think Android is really the superior platform as Apple simply cannot keep up with the innovation of multiple companies producing handsets for android. Apple really needs give their customers what they want, not tell them what they want, then maybe my next phone will be another iPhone.
I have owned the original iPod touch 1g, an iPhone 2g, and an iPhone 3GS. Back in November I was able to sell my iPhone 3GS to a friend and pick up a Motorola Droid. I now use the Skyfire browser on Android 2.1, which can take flash videos and convert them to HTML 5 viewable in the browser. This really works well and I should be able to get 2.2 with actual flash support by the end of summer. Although I'll probably just disable it, however its good to have it when needing to view a flash page.
This is the main problem with the iPhone platform. Apple doesn't give it's users enough choices. As a former iPhone user, I wouldn't like being spoon feed the "correct" software from Apple. HTML 5 is a great video standard but does not replace all the features of flash. And you can support HTML 5, like Google, while also allowing flash players on your mobile platform. Apple should of allowed a flash player to be installed through an app, and if costumers thought is was buggy or drained their battery life they wouldn't have to use it.
The openness of Android is great, but also a weakness as stability and seamlessness is not quite the same as the iPhone platform. However the amount of control Apple keeps over the OS only hinders its growth and development. To me the iPhone is still only and iPod while my android device is more a computer. If Apple opens up and give more developer freedom, and more aggressively updates the iPhone's hardware, it could really be a great proprietary competitor to android. Until then I think Android is really the superior platform as Apple simply cannot keep up with the innovation of multiple companies producing handsets for android. Apple really needs give their customers what they want, not tell them what they want, then maybe my next phone will be another iPhone.
Comments
It no longer matters what Adobe does.
so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
Hey I found this Android phone running Flash in a bar. Anyone want to buy it?
Great I am curious! What kind of bar, did you find flash running in a menu bar, or did you find it in a gogo bar? And how was the beer?
so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
Huh.
From both side's I didn't see any prove that is the hell or the heaven, maybe hellway to heaven.
Anyway, I would like to know what you mean with stupid things and who are the 'to many people'?
Are those the developers? Even if some developers develops something stupid, it shouldn't crash.
'You are not one of them'
And you can't deny that they are behind with this, far behind where they should be now.
About you, show us your work, we can decide if it is true!
Now would be the perfect time to pull all efforts off from Flash and start thinking about a kickass WYSIWYG HTML5 development tool.
There lies Adobes future and major chance to shine again with bright glory.
But I'm afraid they'll going to let pass this opportunity as well.
Adobe's philosophy of looking backwards seems much better suited with the printing industry. Maybe they would be better off by selling their whole ex Macromedia "new media" division to someone with a more futuristic vision, and just stick to the old CMYK world instead. This is an area where Adobe is pretty much unchallenged, and where their conservative approach in fact is rather a plus.
Acrobat is pretty much settled as the backbone technology of the global printing industry. InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are mature products that will not require huge innovation steps, but could greatly benefit from improved stability and speed.
There still are enough challenges for Adobe to master, after that dead horse called Flash...
Perhaps the one good outcome of this will be at all of Adobe will now collectively see what a resource- and battery-hogging piece of software this is on mobile phones..
What evidence is there that HTML5 works on phones and is not a battery hog?
Tests of computers running Flash and HTML5 showed that there was no significant advantage to HTML5 over Flash 10.1. They couldn't even test HTML5 under Safari on a Windows machine because it wouldn't run.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives..._new_tests.php
I think Adobe is right about hardware acceleration. Apple won't allow anyone but themselves, access to HW acceleration on the iPhone or iPad, so even if HTML5 becomes ubiquitous, only Safari will run it well, Firefox and any other browser on those platforms will probably never perform any better with HTML5 than if they were running Flash - presuming Apple would allow them on, which is very unlikely.
I don't believe Steve Jobs' disingenuous utterances on this topic where they concern performance, he has another agenda entirely.
Mozilla’s European president, Tristan Nitot, whether Firefox for mobile could ever grace the iPhone, and he straight out crushed our hopes and dreams of a rival for mobile Safari.
“The issue is more with Apple than with us because they control the App Store and because they refuse applications which compete with something that is already on the phone. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a version of Firefox running on the iPhone,” he told us.
Firefox 4: first look!
Mozilla’s so sure the iPhone is a dead end that it’s not even looking into developing a version just in case, he continued: “We’re not investing time and energy in this direction because we’re pretty sure it would be blocked by Apple, so we’re better off using our time in terms of development to do things on open platforms”.
Adobe has lost it. They realize the only thing they had going for them at all was public perception, and as that begins to change, they begin to panic. Understandable, when your business has degrade to the point of producing almost nothing, but still appearing to be an active company.
What evidence is there that HTML5 works on phones and is not a battery hog?
Tests of computers running Flash and HTML5 showed that there was no significant advantage to HTML5 over Flash 10.1. They couldn't even test HTML5 under Safari on a Windows machine because it wouldn't run.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives..._new_tests.php
I think Adobe is right about hardware acceleration. Apple won't allow anyone but themselves, access to HW acceleration on the iPhone or iPad, so even if HTML5 becomes ubiquitous, only Safari will run it well, Firefox and any other browser on those platforms will probably never perform any better with HTML5 than if they were running Flash - presuming Apple would allow them on, which is very unlikely.
I don't believe Steve Jobs' disingenuous utterances on this topic where they concern performance, he has another agenda entirely.
This entire post is utter nonsense. First of all Mozilla has nothing to do with HTML5 vs. Flash, secondly, ham-handedly lumping together two different ways of attacking Apple in the same paragraph reeks of troll behavior.
Firefox is not on the iPhone because Mozilla cannot create it. They can't use the development tools that Apple provides to create a Mobile version of their browser. Even if they could, extensions are out of the question. There is no need or purpose for it, which is why it doesn't exist, and never will.
so you mean you are willing to throw away photoshop, indesign, illustrator updates and go back to stuff like Corel or Gimp? lol.
or if you are just referring to flash, then you are also aiding the death of firefox, opera or any crazy browser that still doesnt have support for the h264 codec. even if its not just about flash video, flash 10.1 has proved to be much more faster and efficient than html5. the only other problem with flash now is that there are too many people using flash that are doing stupid things with it(i'm not one of them, i optimize my flash projects very well and make sure that it uses as little cpu as much as possible while achieving a WOW experience to the user.)
You sound like yet another Flash developer, with no real argument, just the fact if Flash goes, so does your work.
So, if they can get it work, and work great, just how much money does this mean for Adobe? And hey, I'm not against them making money, I'm just saying ?
They'll need to make a boatload just to off-set all of the bad press they are getting. And hey, why aren't the stock holders up in arms. All of the money they are spending is coming from somewhere.
Skip
Buying Macromedia sucked and now this.
I may be preaching to the choir here, but I don't get the big deal with having Flash on mobile devices. I was trying to convince some friends that even if you had the option of Flash, you probably would want it disabled. Security, resource hogging and stability issues are a given. But perhaps more importantly is *how* Flash is used on the web:
1) Video. Almost all video uses some sort of Flash player. Some articles continue to tout that since 90% of video uses Flash, it therefore won't work on mobile devices without Flash. I did some testing on my iPhone and was pleasantly surprised to find that all the video sites I could think of simply work great on the phone as it downgraded gracefully to a native format that uses hardware decoding.
2) Flash ads. OK, Flash ads suuuck! Boy they are annoying. Enough said.
3) Site navigations. How do you hover to drop down a menu on a touch interface? You can't. Pretty much all decent sites that use Flash navs fall back to conventional navs when Flash isn't available, which is perfect for mobile devices.
4) Games. Most of the better Flash games have free, native app-store equivalents which run better than the Flash version. Games requiring pointers and keyboards to interact would be awkward on a mobile device.
Being a developer, I totally see Jobs' point about not wanting a third party middleware shoe horned into the development environment. Something some folks don't understand is that Flash wouldn't be an alternative to Apple's APIs, it goes on top of it. So as Apple adds features, a Flash developer would have to be at the mercy of Adobe to provide an update to pass that feature through. Lastly, knowing Adobe's track record of security and stability problems with Flash, you know they will have to issue important updates down the road. What would happen to all those apps approved before that update? Would Apple have to pull hundreds/thousands of apps each time an update is issued so the developer can rebuild their app and resubmit it? What about people who already bought those apps? It would be a mess.
One last point. I think it's smart to not even offer the *option* of Flash for a couple reasons: First of all, if its anything like how it works on OS-X, it will crash occasionally and then users will complain and blame Apple. Crashing on a laptop is one thing, but crashing on a mobile device can be especially frustrating. Also, if Flash were optional, it would give developers an excuse for not making native versions of content. So you'd see things like "enable Flash to continue" which would be lame. Don't even make it an option unless it is really going to be 100% useful and stable.
OK, that's my rant I've used on my Android friends. :') Interestingly, they really still want the option of Flash even if the experience may suck. For a while I was in the same boat, but for the reasons outlined above, I think even having the option of something half-baked would be bad news.
Great post. I was especially interested to read points 1 and 3, in that sites revert to non-flash equivalents where flash isn't available. I'd always thought hover-over menus and flash videos fell over (or would fall over) but on your testing it sounds like that is not the case at all.
If that content switches to HTML 5 and H.264, then Linux users won't be able to view it with an open-source browser. The only option would conceivably be Google Chrome, once that version comes out of beta for Linux.
Warnock's more of a geek than Jobs, but I think he'd at least have more appreciation for the "aesthetics" of the iPhone ecosystem and respect it. He'd probably also have the chutzpah to eat some crow on the Flash acquisition and recognize its limitations and be able to simply move on.
I'm guessing there is a ton of money in this debate for Abobe, why else put some much negative effort into something, that appears to be heading out the door?
Of course there's a lot of money involved. Just think how much Adobe must be paying all the shills on this forum for starters.
One thing that Flash does is help keep Linux available as a desktop computing option. All web content is available to Linux users in part thanks to Flash.
If that content switches to HTML 5 and H.264, then Linux users won't be able to view it with an open-source browser. The only option would conceivably be Google Chrome, once that version comes out of beta for Linux.
Do you really expect that html 5 in Webkit won't make it to Linux? I don't know, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a beta already available.
so they admit they don't have flash available for phones yet, just like Steve said?
People keep using this as a talking point, as if it's got such an eye opening message about this whole situation. Flash is in development, and Steve Jobs is flat out saying he doesn't want it on his device, all before he's even seen it work.
So the point is simple: While people think it's some amazing point to make that there isn't a device with flash yet, they completely fail to see the irony in that Steve Jobs has no problem dismissing it entirely when HE HASN'T SEEN IT WORK. He simply says he doesn't even want them to even develop for it.
Adobe giving away Android devices with flash to their employees sends a message: They've got it working and can't wait to show Steve Jobs is wrong.
This is the main problem with the iPhone platform. Apple doesn't give it's users enough choices. As a former iPhone user, I wouldn't like being spoon feed the "correct" software from Apple. HTML 5 is a great video standard but does not replace all the features of flash. And you can support HTML 5, like Google, while also allowing flash players on your mobile platform. Apple should of allowed a flash player to be installed through an app, and if costumers thought is was buggy or drained their battery life they wouldn't have to use it.
The openness of Android is great, but also a weakness as stability and seamlessness is not quite the same as the iPhone platform. However the amount of control Apple keeps over the OS only hinders its growth and development. To me the iPhone is still only and iPod while my android device is more a computer. If Apple opens up and give more developer freedom, and more aggressively updates the iPhone's hardware, it could really be a great proprietary competitor to android. Until then I think Android is really the superior platform as Apple simply cannot keep up with the innovation of multiple companies producing handsets for android. Apple really needs give their customers what they want, not tell them what they want, then maybe my next phone will be another iPhone.
I have owned the original iPod touch 1g, an iPhone 2g, and an iPhone 3GS. Back in November I was able to sell my iPhone 3GS to a friend and pick up a Motorola Droid. I now use the Skyfire browser on Android 2.1, which can take flash videos and convert them to HTML 5 viewable in the browser. This really works well and I should be able to get 2.2 with actual flash support by the end of summer. Although I'll probably just disable it, however its good to have it when needing to view a flash page.
This is the main problem with the iPhone platform. Apple doesn't give it's users enough choices. As a former iPhone user, I wouldn't like being spoon feed the "correct" software from Apple. HTML 5 is a great video standard but does not replace all the features of flash. And you can support HTML 5, like Google, while also allowing flash players on your mobile platform. Apple should of allowed a flash player to be installed through an app, and if costumers thought is was buggy or drained their battery life they wouldn't have to use it.
The openness of Android is great, but also a weakness as stability and seamlessness is not quite the same as the iPhone platform. However the amount of control Apple keeps over the OS only hinders its growth and development. To me the iPhone is still only and iPod while my android device is more a computer. If Apple opens up and give more developer freedom, and more aggressively updates the iPhone's hardware, it could really be a great proprietary competitor to android. Until then I think Android is really the superior platform as Apple simply cannot keep up with the innovation of multiple companies producing handsets for android. Apple really needs give their customers what they want, not tell them what they want, then maybe my next phone will be another iPhone.
Excellent post