What People Keep Forgetting about
Wow, reading these comments... it seems like people are so tied up in pissing and moaning about "Flash Good/Flash Bad", they're ignoring the bigger picture(s):
1. THIS IS NOT ABOUT FLASH. Jesus Harold Christ, people. Can we please look at what is actually going on? Multitasking eats power but is convenient. iPhones already have poor battery life. Apple figures out a way to implement multitasking on their platform without forcing you to keep your "wireless" phone plugged in at all times. They mandate best practices which include using the only compiler they know will support this. (Other companies do this, too. Quitcherbitchin.) A senior Adobe employee goes ballistic and acts very unprofessionally. End of story.
2. In an UNRELATED move, Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone for reasons that, frankly, are valid. Flash is a useful tool, in my opinion. But that's it; it's a TOOL. Not a religion. It's not your significant other. It's not some poor starving Haitian orphan. It's tool. Nothing more. In some instances, it is a good tool. In some, it's buggier than a tropical swamp. In the case of Apple, Adobe's actions have been less than stellar. It makes sense, in my opinion, to not allow Flash on the iPhone--or any mobile device. Heck, I'm thrilled it's not on my BlackBerry. Some people, however, seem to take it personally that we live in a resource constrained world. I wish I could magic all of you up a phone that has a quad core, multi-gigahertz processor, several gigs of RAM, a terabyte or so of storage AND a 2 year battery life. I can't. Not yet. Neither can Apple. Or RIM. Or Microsoft. Thus, tradeoffs have to be made. To capitalize on the outrage of people who don't seem to understand (even though they should) this basic fact of life, a senior Adobe employee has chosen to try and confuse issues 1 & 2 in an unprofessional manner.
Oh, and three asides:
1. The day Flash finally is supported by my BlackBerry is the day I'll start building a way to block it. I like my battery life, thanks just the same.
2. My mum has an older MacBook. She likes watching videos of cats playing chopsticks, etc. Safari on her MacBook was crashing on the average of once a week. I switched her to FireFox. Same deal. I switched her back to Safari and installed ClickToFlash. Not a crash since.
3. The last time I bought a new laptop, I had to "upgrade" Adobe Suites. (Yes, I use some of their products professionally.) The Adobe upgrade cost me the same as my new computer. Something's wrong here.