8 ms·

Hey Gruber, what about the users?

31 points by brilliant 16y ago

pistoriusp 16y ago
We must be using different Internet or maybe the website I browse aren't flash heavy. I cannot recall a single instance where I thought... "Damn! If only I had flash on my iPad/ iPhone."
- daleharvey 16y ago
  I have a htc desire that supports flash and havent once though, "Phew I am glad my phone supports flash". I am considering finding out how to disable it, the battery life isnt awesome and if my laptop is anything to go by, flash is pretty high on that culprit list.
  - doron 16y ago
    In the options of the browser, under plugins. I have set it to prompt, best of both worlds.
    - daleharvey 16y ago
      oh brilliant, thanks
- jonknee 16y ago
  Try browsing for a new car or clothes. For whatever reason both of those verticals are highly dependent on Flash and as such unusable on the iPad. I would have thought luxury brands would have figured out by now that iOS demographics trend affluent and should be valued. Update: Case in point... http://hugoboss.com http://hugoboss.com - usable mobile site, but you can't see or buy any of the clothes! http://bananarepublic.gap.com/ http://bananarepublic.gap.com/ - "Flash required" error message and the same goes for the other Gap brands http://gucci.com http://gucci.com - it's just a black screen http://dior.com http://dior.com - "Flash required" error Etc etc, it's nutty. Car sites are a little better and usually break in more subtle ways (videos that don't work is common). Cadillac actually has a nice iPad optimized site, so kudos there. http://mazdausa.com http://mazdausa.com - redirected to a really low-fi mobile version with much less information. A step up from WAP, not much. http://bmwusa.com http://bmwusa.com - same as Mazda, a really horrible mobile site that is a column about 200px wide http://www.miniusa.com/ http://www.miniusa.com/ - "Flash required" error page
  - bonzoesc 16y ago
    Not sure what kind of grocery-getter you were looking at, but the Audi USA site let me ogle and price hot an R8 on my iPad just fine.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      Audi USA's site is broken in Mobile Safari--the menu bar stays in position when you move the page which covers up text. Looking at the desktop version it appears they always want it to be on the bottom of the page, but Mobile Safari behaves differently enough for that to break. Oh and did you check out the R8's photos and video page? Flash required error. You can't even see a photo gallery of the car.
  - silvestrov 16y ago
    It seems like those sites are exactly the kind of products I prefer to look at In Real Life, and not just as pictures on a computer. Due to broken bones which forces me to stay at home, I've bought clothes online and it has resulted in a significant number of unpleasant surprises which are trivial to avoid in a physical shop. My (Danish) experience is that the shops that provide the most useful information are the shops that avoid Flash and uses plain html pages (e.g. Amazon, smartguy.dk). Flash-based sites almost always makes it impossible to add "I probably want to buy this" bookmarks in the browser, so a lot of items don't get bought by me. So even when the browser supports Flash, the site starts out with a significant handicap (looking at you, H&M) ... and I don't have the patience for the transition animations that most Flash developers think is a must-have.
    - jonknee 16y ago
      I typically browse online before making it to the store. If I see Hugo Boss has a nice looking new collection and I need a new suit I can then drop by the store. Maybe it's just that I don't like shopping, but I always do my research first. Also, looking at my outfit today it was entirely bought online except for my socks and underwear. No broken bones either, I just find it convenient for clothes that don't need tailored.
- markkanof 16y ago
  There have been a number of occasions when I was glad to have Flash. A lot of restaurant websites are built entirely in Flash. Granted this really applies to my phone more than it does the iPad. Usually if I am looking at something on the iPad I can go grab my laptop for Flash, even if it is a pain. But having Flash on my phone has definitely come in handy. I also ran into a problem with YouTube the other day. I couldn't find a video that I knew was there. Turns out it isn't available through the YouTube app, only on the regular website. Granted you could argue that is a complaint about YouTube, but if I had Flash on the iPad then I would just be going to the normal YouTube site and would not have experienced that frustration. Basically I don't have a need for Flash on a regular basis. But there is still a lot of "legacy" content out there that is encoded in Flash and it would be nice to be able to access it.
  - loumf 16y ago
    Other video sites besides YouTube aren't fully there yet. I randomly run into embedded videos on blogs that are using Flash to embed -- it's not always easy to find the HTML5 version. It's been getting better.
- borism 16y ago
  Google Finance?
  - astrodust 16y ago
    Why not Wikinvest? They have an app: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/wikinvest-iphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/wikinvest-iphone/
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
raganwald 16y ago
I wish Dave would read and abide by "How to Disagree." The wisecrack about Gruber's minions takes a reasonable discussion and reduces it to Fox-Newsworthy labeling and ad hominem rhetoric. People who agree with Gruber are cut from much the same cloth as people who want the choice of whether to run Flash.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  "People who agree with Gruber are cut from much the same cloth as people who want the choice of whether to run Flash." Can't say I understand your sentiment. They are ideologically incompatible and driven by polar interests.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    In the wonderful Steve Jackson game "Illuminati," organizations have orientations like Conservative, Violent, &c. Conservative groups are aligned with other Conservative groups and opposed to Liberal groups, Peaceful groups are aligned with other Peaceful groups and opposed to Violent groups, and so forth. There's also an orientation called "Fanatic." Fanatic is a special case because it is its own opposition. So Joggers, Trekkies, and White Supremacists are all opposed to each other by virtue of being fanatic groups. Fnord.
    - drivebyacct2 16y ago
      How is wanting a choice being fanatical? Is the rhetoric really so poor that simply wanting the choice of using flash is considered fanatical?
      - raganwald 16y ago
        Have we circled around to some kind of violent agreement? I suggested that calling people "Minons of Gruber" is poor rhetoric. You're saying that calling people "fanatical" is poor rhetoric. Our arguments appear to be twin children of different mothers. But just to make a very small point, I am not calling anyone fanatical. I talked about a game where it was possible for fictional groups of people to have something in common yet be opposed to each other. In that game, this happens with groups the inventor describes as fanatical. In this particular case, I am suggesting it is entirely possible for people who agree with Dave and people who agree with Gruber to have a lot in common yet appear to be opposed in the debate. You asked how this can be the case when they appear to have opposed interests, and I will now repeat what I said above without trying to be charming. The fact that two people appear to be opposed on a single issue does not automatically exclude the possibility that they have a great deal in common with each other.
tjogin 16y ago
Even if Apple wanted the iPad to support flash, how could they? A working mobile flash implementation does not exist, certainly wasn't even close to existing at the time the iPad was released, and the lack of it doesn't seem to have affected sales. How could you possibly complain that the iPad doesn't support software that doesn't exist? Let's postpone this discussion until when Adobe can show off a flash runtime that a) exist and b) doesn't suck. Is that too much to ask?
- JoelMcCracken 16y ago
  When I see people jailbreaking their iPhones to support flash, and flash works well, then the community should talk. Can't agree with you more.
  - cjlesh 16y ago
    Check out: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-your-jailbroken-ipad-for-real/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-y...
    - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
      Sorry, I'm not trying to say that this wasn't yet possible, just that I want to see a number of people doing it. Are the reports good? does it work very well?
- jonknee 16y ago
  > Even if Apple wanted the iPad to support flash, how could they? Give Adobe the green light to dust off their previous work and complete it. No one will make a serious effort at Flash for iOS before gaining approval from Apple.
  - tvon 16y ago
    I think the idea is that the non-iOS Mobile Flash players are sub-par.
- 16y ago
napierzaza 16y ago
I think it's less about whether Apple has Flash and more about how Gruber deals with dissenting opinions. I've seen him do hit jobs on bloggers for their opinion and small-time indy programmers for their design with no provocation.
- pohl 16y ago
  What qualifies as a "hit job" here? A dissenting post with a link? Isn't that what the "global conversation" on the world-wide-web is supposed to be all about?
avar 16y ago
I don't own an iPad but I think Apple's non-support of Flash is great. It's shipping the first major web browser in the last decade that's explicitly not supporting flash. So it's helping to make Flash more irrelevant every day, by forcing developers to finally consider that delivering their content in some executable binary blob isn't a reasonable thing to do on the web. Thanks, Apple!
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Browsers don't support flash, the Flash plugin for a browser supports flash. It's not about the browser, it's about the platform or the operating system. A Flash SWF is not an executable binary blob. Many parts of the SWF spec are even open.
  - schultzor 16y ago
    Does the openness of the spec even matter when effectively only one party can write and ship a usable plugin for it?
    - beej71 16y ago
      I think so. It's important because people theoretically can write plugins for it. Writing a Flash player is a lot of work, and there's not much reason to do so if Adobe has most computers covered already.
    - drivebyacct2 16y ago
      Gnash, swfdec, lightspark, scaleform, smokescreen and others that I'm forgetting are making progress. Most of them are highly compatible with the simple image and video use cases that dominate well over 95% (at least of my) use of flash.
      - protomyth 16y ago
        A third-party cannot ship a flash plugin that supports Hulu. Not working 5% of the time causes nasty support issues.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
"My perspective is that of an iPad user. I like the damned thing. But I feel like a pawn, and I don't like that." I'm tired of seeing people complain about this. Apple has made their intentions clear from iPhone 1, day one. You are buying a read-only pass into the walled garden. If you don't like it, pick up a Galaxy Tab on VZW (arguably a better network) or wait for Motorola's dual core tablet later this year running the more tablet-centric Gingerbread. But cut it out complaining "as a user" about Apple. Also: "Maybe if (hint hint) Gruber had comments on his blog, his minions wouldn't feel the need to vent on the sites he points to? Just a thought." ...this again? Really?
- tjogin 16y ago
  Dave should be able to sympathize with John, given that he's deleted quite a few comments off of that page (no cussing either).
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    What were the comments about? Why were they deleted? Critical of the author, content, etc?
- mithaler 16y ago
  Adding to that, by the time I clicked on the post, the comments on it were disabled.

31 points by brilliant 16y ago

We must be using different Internet or maybe the website I browse aren't flash heavy. I cannot recall a single instance where I thought... "Damn! If only I had flash on my iPad/ iPhone."

daleharvey 16y ago
I have a htc desire that supports flash and havent once though, "Phew I am glad my phone supports flash". I am considering finding out how to disable it, the battery life isnt awesome and if my laptop is anything to go by, flash is pretty high on that culprit list.
- doron 16y ago
  In the options of the browser, under plugins. I have set it to prompt, best of both worlds.
  - daleharvey 16y ago
    oh brilliant, thanks
jonknee 16y ago
Try browsing for a new car or clothes. For whatever reason both of those verticals are highly dependent on Flash and as such unusable on the iPad. I would have thought luxury brands would have figured out by now that iOS demographics trend affluent and should be valued. Update: Case in point... http://hugoboss.com http://hugoboss.com - usable mobile site, but you can't see or buy any of the clothes! http://bananarepublic.gap.com/ http://bananarepublic.gap.com/ - "Flash required" error message and the same goes for the other Gap brands http://gucci.com http://gucci.com - it's just a black screen http://dior.com http://dior.com - "Flash required" error Etc etc, it's nutty. Car sites are a little better and usually break in more subtle ways (videos that don't work is common). Cadillac actually has a nice iPad optimized site, so kudos there. http://mazdausa.com http://mazdausa.com - redirected to a really low-fi mobile version with much less information. A step up from WAP, not much. http://bmwusa.com http://bmwusa.com - same as Mazda, a really horrible mobile site that is a column about 200px wide http://www.miniusa.com/ http://www.miniusa.com/ - "Flash required" error page
- bonzoesc 16y ago
  Not sure what kind of grocery-getter you were looking at, but the Audi USA site let me ogle and price hot an R8 on my iPad just fine.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    Audi USA's site is broken in Mobile Safari--the menu bar stays in position when you move the page which covers up text. Looking at the desktop version it appears they always want it to be on the bottom of the page, but Mobile Safari behaves differently enough for that to break. Oh and did you check out the R8's photos and video page? Flash required error. You can't even see a photo gallery of the car.
- silvestrov 16y ago
  It seems like those sites are exactly the kind of products I prefer to look at In Real Life, and not just as pictures on a computer. Due to broken bones which forces me to stay at home, I've bought clothes online and it has resulted in a significant number of unpleasant surprises which are trivial to avoid in a physical shop. My (Danish) experience is that the shops that provide the most useful information are the shops that avoid Flash and uses plain html pages (e.g. Amazon, smartguy.dk). Flash-based sites almost always makes it impossible to add "I probably want to buy this" bookmarks in the browser, so a lot of items don't get bought by me. So even when the browser supports Flash, the site starts out with a significant handicap (looking at you, H&M) ... and I don't have the patience for the transition animations that most Flash developers think is a must-have.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    I typically browse online before making it to the store. If I see Hugo Boss has a nice looking new collection and I need a new suit I can then drop by the store. Maybe it's just that I don't like shopping, but I always do my research first. Also, looking at my outfit today it was entirely bought online except for my socks and underwear. No broken bones either, I just find it convenient for clothes that don't need tailored.
markkanof 16y ago
There have been a number of occasions when I was glad to have Flash. A lot of restaurant websites are built entirely in Flash. Granted this really applies to my phone more than it does the iPad. Usually if I am looking at something on the iPad I can go grab my laptop for Flash, even if it is a pain. But having Flash on my phone has definitely come in handy. I also ran into a problem with YouTube the other day. I couldn't find a video that I knew was there. Turns out it isn't available through the YouTube app, only on the regular website. Granted you could argue that is a complaint about YouTube, but if I had Flash on the iPad then I would just be going to the normal YouTube site and would not have experienced that frustration. Basically I don't have a need for Flash on a regular basis. But there is still a lot of "legacy" content out there that is encoded in Flash and it would be nice to be able to access it.
- loumf 16y ago
  Other video sites besides YouTube aren't fully there yet. I randomly run into embedded videos on blogs that are using Flash to embed -- it's not always easy to find the HTML5 version. It's been getting better.
borism 16y ago
Google Finance?
- astrodust 16y ago
  Why not Wikinvest? They have an app: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/wikinvest-iphone/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/wikinvest-iphone/

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

raganwald 16y ago

I wish Dave would read and abide by "How to Disagree." The wisecrack about Gruber's minions takes a reasonable discussion and reduces it to Fox-Newsworthy labeling and ad hominem rhetoric. People who agree with Gruber are cut from much the same cloth as people who want the choice of whether to run Flash.

drivebyacct2 16y ago
"People who agree with Gruber are cut from much the same cloth as people who want the choice of whether to run Flash." Can't say I understand your sentiment. They are ideologically incompatible and driven by polar interests.
- raganwald 16y ago
  In the wonderful Steve Jackson game "Illuminati," organizations have orientations like Conservative, Violent, &c. Conservative groups are aligned with other Conservative groups and opposed to Liberal groups, Peaceful groups are aligned with other Peaceful groups and opposed to Violent groups, and so forth. There's also an orientation called "Fanatic." Fanatic is a special case because it is its own opposition. So Joggers, Trekkies, and White Supremacists are all opposed to each other by virtue of being fanatic groups. Fnord.
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    How is wanting a choice being fanatical? Is the rhetoric really so poor that simply wanting the choice of using flash is considered fanatical?
    - raganwald 16y ago
      Have we circled around to some kind of violent agreement? I suggested that calling people "Minons of Gruber" is poor rhetoric. You're saying that calling people "fanatical" is poor rhetoric. Our arguments appear to be twin children of different mothers. But just to make a very small point, I am not calling anyone fanatical. I talked about a game where it was possible for fictional groups of people to have something in common yet be opposed to each other. In that game, this happens with groups the inventor describes as fanatical. In this particular case, I am suggesting it is entirely possible for people who agree with Dave and people who agree with Gruber to have a lot in common yet appear to be opposed in the debate. You asked how this can be the case when they appear to have opposed interests, and I will now repeat what I said above without trying to be charming. The fact that two people appear to be opposed on a single issue does not automatically exclude the possibility that they have a great deal in common with each other.

tjogin 16y ago

Even if Apple wanted the iPad to support flash, how could they? A working mobile flash implementation does not exist, certainly wasn't even close to existing at the time the iPad was released, and the lack of it doesn't seem to have affected sales. How could you possibly complain that the iPad doesn't support software that doesn't exist? Let's postpone this discussion until when Adobe can show off a flash runtime that a) exist and b) doesn't suck. Is that too much to ask?

JoelMcCracken 16y ago
When I see people jailbreaking their iPhones to support flash, and flash works well, then the community should talk. Can't agree with you more.
- cjlesh 16y ago
  Check out: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-your-jailbroken-ipad-for-real/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/07/how-to-install-flash-on-y...
  - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
    Sorry, I'm not trying to say that this wasn't yet possible, just that I want to see a number of people doing it. Are the reports good? does it work very well?
jonknee 16y ago
> Even if Apple wanted the iPad to support flash, how could they? Give Adobe the green light to dust off their previous work and complete it. No one will make a serious effort at Flash for iOS before gaining approval from Apple.
- tvon 16y ago
  I think the idea is that the non-iOS Mobile Flash players are sub-par.
16y ago

napierzaza 16y ago

I think it's less about whether Apple has Flash and more about how Gruber deals with dissenting opinions. I've seen him do hit jobs on bloggers for their opinion and small-time indy programmers for their design with no provocation.

pohl 16y ago
What qualifies as a "hit job" here? A dissenting post with a link? Isn't that what the "global conversation" on the world-wide-web is supposed to be all about?

avar 16y ago

I don't own an iPad but I think Apple's non-support of Flash is great. It's shipping the first major web browser in the last decade that's explicitly not supporting flash. So it's helping to make Flash more irrelevant every day, by forcing developers to finally consider that delivering their content in some executable binary blob isn't a reasonable thing to do on the web. Thanks, Apple!

drivebyacct2 16y ago
Browsers don't support flash, the Flash plugin for a browser supports flash. It's not about the browser, it's about the platform or the operating system. A Flash SWF is not an executable binary blob. Many parts of the SWF spec are even open.
- schultzor 16y ago
  Does the openness of the spec even matter when effectively only one party can write and ship a usable plugin for it?
  - beej71 16y ago
    I think so. It's important because people theoretically can write plugins for it. Writing a Flash player is a lot of work, and there's not much reason to do so if Adobe has most computers covered already.
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    Gnash, swfdec, lightspark, scaleform, smokescreen and others that I'm forgetting are making progress. Most of them are highly compatible with the simple image and video use cases that dominate well over 95% (at least of my) use of flash.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      A third-party cannot ship a flash plugin that supports Hulu. Not working 5% of the time causes nasty support issues.

drivebyacct2 16y ago

"My perspective is that of an iPad user. I like the damned thing. But I feel like a pawn, and I don't like that." I'm tired of seeing people complain about this. Apple has made their intentions clear from iPhone 1, day one. You are buying a read-only pass into the walled garden. If you don't like it, pick up a Galaxy Tab on VZW (arguably a better network) or wait for Motorola's dual core tablet later this year running the more tablet-centric Gingerbread. But cut it out complaining "as a user" about Apple. Also: "Maybe if (hint hint) Gruber had comments on his blog, his minions wouldn't feel the need to vent on the sites he points to? Just a thought." ...this again? Really?

tjogin 16y ago
Dave should be able to sympathize with John, given that he's deleted quite a few comments off of that page (no cussing either).
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  What were the comments about? Why were they deleted? Critical of the author, content, etc?
mithaler 16y ago
Adding to that, by the time I clicked on the post, the comments on it were disabled.