Obligatory iPad and Flash post.
Now that I've gotten to play with an iPad a bit more, I understand a bit more why someone would be interested. I still don't want one.
I admit that I'm completely in love with my iPhone, so perhaps I'm jaded or there's a sense of been-there, done that. Still, I was on the iPhone for less than five minutes before I wanted one.
I'm an MacHead. I admit it. And I've never been a fan of Flash--I'm on record more than once complaining about it, loudly, since 1999ish--but web surfing on my phone without Flash-ability has definitely been an annoyance. But it's my PHONE. This is not a deal-breaker.
Something like the iPad bothers me more.
My friend Emre told me that you can make a ton of money reselling iPhones in Turkey, because there's such a huge demand for them. He has a friend who funds his vacations that way: buys five iPhones, sells them for the equivalent of $1K apiece while he's there, and he's covered his trip and then some.
The reason they're in demand is that 3G is the only way to access ALL the Internet--that is without government censorship.
What would they give for a 3G iPad, true Internet access in a screen larger than a deck of cards? Except it's not the entire Internet. There's no Flash.
Sure, Apple is right that they aren't required to provide access to the entire Internet. And people are right to question Adobe elevating Flash to a position alongside html, CSS, js and other web standards.
But Flash is a bit of a de facto standard, if not de jure. And whether censorship is corporate or governmental, to me, it's just wrong. We can tart it
So yeah, maybe I'll buy an iPad--when it supports the Plugin I Hate Most in the World. Because I may disagree entirely with your web architecture, but I will fight for your right to use it.
Somehow, that's just not the catchy ending I had wanted.
Labels: censorship, Flash, iPad, iPhone, nerdy stuff, Turkey
posted by Kyrce @ 4:34 PM
2 Comments:
Funny, I'm certainly NOT a Mac fanboy, but (surprise) I disagree. Two things suggest to me that Apple isn't trying to "censor the Internet".
First, if I'm not mistaken, Apple's OS X ships with Flash by default.
Second, Apple claims that Flash ruins device performance and drains battery life. Which is true about performance at least. So far, there is no such thing as acceptable Flash performance on a mobile phone.
Remember, anything a developer can do with Flash, he can do with Web standard technology or the iPhone SDK. Not supporting Flash is like not supporting Java (you don't miss that, do you?), there's no reason to include it, and there are a ton of reasons not to.
I don't think Apple is TRYING to censor the Internet. I think they are trying to make more money.
Censoring the Internet is just collateral damage--not intent. But I still think it's wrong.
And I'm not saying that Adobe hasn't been dragging their feet horribly--mobile flash should have been ready two years ago.
It doesn't matter what I miss or don't miss (but Java sadly has not gone away. Le sigh). It doesn't matter what we can do with Web standards (and please do remember that HTML5 is NOT complete, even if its close). It matters that large amounts of Web content RIGHT NOW is built in Flash and I can't see it if I want to use an iPad.
So I would much prefer people rewrote their content to standards, true. But wishing Flash didn't exist doesn't make it all go away.
AOL was fine in their limited Internet playground, it doesn't mean I wanted to hang out there.
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