Flash is slow (well… yes kind of… maybe)
Sure its true that flash can be a hog. Flash optimists will proclaim that developers that write bad code are the ones giving flash a bad name. Who knows?
Flash can’t do hover (some say)
Of late, the latest and greatest is reason is that flash doesn’t support the hover event or something. And just in a rebuttal claiming that reason is moot. Doesn’t matter if this is true or not. I think we’re all beating around the wrong bush.
Steve Jobs is deflecting
IMO all the technical reasons for why flash is not on the iPhone and iPad are simply convenient excuses which deflect from the REAL reason why flash is not available on the iPhone/iPad.
The Real Reason
Flash apps would compete with the app store. It’s that simple. If flash was allowed on the iphone how much developers would write flash apps instead of native iphone apps? Plenty
Apple make their money from the apps not the devices (although the early iPhone adopters were gutted for $400 a piece)
Eventually most manufacturers will be capable of making a smartphone that is comparable to that of the iPhone’s software/hardware. Q: Which smartphone will people buy?
A: The one with the biggest 3rd party app platform
Developers will flock to the platform with most the users and users will flock to the platform with the most apps. Its a network effect
The real reason is strategic not technical
And then there’s the iPad CPU
iPad uses a proprietary Apple-designed CPU which means you can’t run linux or any other OS on your iPad nor can you hackintosh your intel netbook with the iPad OS. Could it be that this is also a strategic business decision and not a technical one?
We’ll see if the new version of Flash (10.1, which fixes the CPU-hogging problem and crashing problem) changes anything in regards to Flash on the iPhone/iPad. There’s still time for Apple to support it before the iPad releases and/or with a software update.
There’s nothing really proprietary about the A4 chip in the iPad. Fist of all the A4 is not a CPU, it’s a SoC (System on a Chip) that has an ARM Cortex-A9, and a GPU on it.
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/1/27/apple-a4-soc-unveiled—its-an-arm-cpu-and-the-gpu!.aspx
Hey ur right. I knew i was saying something dodgy when i mentioned the A4 cpu. I had an itchy feeling that “proprietary” wasn’t the right thing to say. Fixing the post now. thanks man