Apple No Flash?

I don’t believe that flash is about to meet its maker.

Flash. Pass it on.


Apple and her allies’ conquest to topple flash are unfortunately misdirected and will only cause the developer world dismay. As developers and designers we know that all platforms and languages have there time before they become obsolete or recycled, it’s fact that nothing lasts forever and to try and kill something before it’s time is a declaration of war.

With the iPad unveiling that it DOES NOT support flash and Apple’s decision that application made in flash will no longer be supported in the App Store this makes developers angry at the hostile nature that Apple is taking. Trying to make people buy into HTML5 by killing the competition is a tactic out of spite for what happened in the past when Adobe abandoned Apple when it was failing. This is basically a tag back saying, “Hey, we hate you for what you did and by the way, WE WILL RUIN YOU.”

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end for flash, out of the contrary it could mean a revolution. Apple argues that flash is buggy and too bulky in file size to distribute content efficiently yet developers argue that it’s a great vehicle to deliver content. I’d have to agree with the developers on that one, the simple suggestion that something is buggy is a mediocre excuse because all software is buggy, that’s why you have to update ever so often. As for content management that’s the developers fault. Flash gives developers the ability to load external data on call rather than have it all load up at once. If the medium to deliver content on call is there then it falls on the developer to use it properly to prevent long loading times and give the end user a smooth experience that it was meant to do.

Sure HTML5 has its ups but it’s the new kid on the block, on top of that why did developers stray away from its predecessor? It was limited. That brings me to the point that we are letting the mediums we use to deliver content limit us. HTML5 may have fixed the issues surrounding why developers felt limited but that doesn’t make developers want to go back. Want. That’s exactly what you want your users to feel, the simple want or need to use your language or program to produce their software. If the developers don’t want, they wont come.

Now the fact that Apple really Hates (notice the capital H) flash, it wont stop me from using their products even though I don’t like the direction its going in terms of the net, but having to many regulations and making people use a certain tool will make people, both users and developers dislike what you want to do. The end lesson is not to force your way into something but instead let people choose you, Flash is still a really strong format to make applications in and it’ll be years before we’ll see a major turn in this war.