The real reason why Flash is not on the iPhone,iPad and iPod Touch

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?

Published in: on February 22, 2010 at 7:15 pm  Comments (3)  
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