Why the Apple iPad has no Java or Flash

I'm sure the technical and emotional arguments that Flash sucks had an important role to play in why Apple didn't include it, but I like to think it's almost simpler than that: Flash expects (and often requires) the traditional keyboard and mouse interfaces. The iPad has neither.<p>Sure, the big Flash sites like YouTube could easily get away with translating touches to clicks and it'd probably "just work" for them, but how do you handle the millions of sites that depend on rollovers to reveal menus or full keyboards to control game characters? You can't. There's just no elegant way to translate that to the iPad.<p>HTML/CSS was designed to degrade gracefully in the face of changing client capabilities. Apple can more freely create a new environment that can still acceptably display HTML/CSS content because of that core design decision. Sure, some sites will do things that break even on an iPad (or iPhone or Android - there's no right click, still no ever-present keyboard or mouse, unusual screen resolutions, etc.) - but for the vast <i>vast</i> majority of HTML/CSS sites, the necessary information is still conveyed or available in some useful way almost by default.

<i>Personally I wonder why these people are still employed in the technology sector...</i><p>Really? This is the second line of the article, and you are questioning the professional competence of your readers?? What do you hope to accomplish here?<p><i>...but why not write down all the reasons before I get too arrogant and annoying.</i><p>Too late.<p>Okay, well... I read the article anyway, because I am actually interested in the subject. Unfortunately, the content was little more than a personal rant that would have been more accurately titled "Why Adobe Flash (and btw Acrobat) sucks".

This is fantastically good, it explains with convincing specifics why Flash is a bad idea on the iPhone OS ecosystem (and less so for Java, but that's much less of an issue).<p>Also points out how the insanity of Blueray DRM plus Apple's installed base of hardware makes Blueray a non-starter for them.<p>See also this <i>invaluable</i> essay on Vista and DRM: <a href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html</a>; it's what convinced me that Microsoft had turned against the users of its operating system.

<i>And moving Photoshop to Cocoa took so long that Apple lost all faith in Adobe's ability to deliver a good experience on Cocoa Touch.</i><p>This is bloody hilarious and looks like the author has no experience writing real applications. He seems to think a re-write of a complex app like PS is a trivial task.<p>BTW, before Apple can claim to lose faith in Adobe, it needs to port it's own Pro app, not consumer apps, like Final Cut Pro etc. to 64 Bit Cocoa. Apple itself hasn't migrated it's own Pro apps to 64 bit. Even Gruber seems to be relatively neutral on this: <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2008/04/64000_question" rel="nofollow">http://daringfireball.net/2008/04/64000_question</a><p>The one and only reason for no Flash and Java on iPad, and iPhone for that matter, is Apple likes closed system where they can control everything and don't want to give up their 30% cash cow. All other reasons are excuses IMHO.

"Flash cookies are pure deep evil and in use every single day."<p>LSOs in Flash are not strictly cookies. It so happens that many advertisers like to use them that way, but the usefulness for tracking across multiple websites can be easily curtailed by disabling 3rd party LSOs (so only swfs served from the website you're visiting can have access to LSOs). LSOs allow flash games to auto-save and let you pick up where you left off later. We use them to make the site faster for returning users <i>and</i> diminish load on our servers by storing certain information a user is likely to request on return visits in the LSOs.

In re to Java -- GOOD. I've never used a Java app I've particularly liked. Heck, is it even possible to code a decent GUI'd, non-sluggishly-responsive Java app?

Oh god. Here we go again. I think this dude should read a bit about Flash Player frame rates and how the Flash Player actually behaves inside the browser. <a href="http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/05/frame-rates-in-flash-player.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/05/frame-rates-in-flash-playe...</a>

There is one reason, and one reason only, Apple won't let Flash or Java on the iPad or iPhone.<p>It's competition to the App Store and they don't want you circumventing that cash cow.

<i>Free Flash games directly compete with the iTunes App Store. Apple could loose thousands of paying iPhone developers, with Apple hardware, if they added Flash support. And suddenly the exclusivity is lost since the Flash game runs everywhere else as well.</i><p>Would any flash games really compete with stuff in the app store? Games in the app store are made for the iPhone's touch interface, the flash experience would most likely suck in comparison. The only thing free flash games could compete with is free app store games.

I have not heard of this Blu-Ray/Apple issue before, anyone care to elaborate?

Amen !

Because: 1. This crap can't be compiled for ARM-based cpu. 2. Even if it could (it won't), it won't run fast enough. 3. Both technologies are outdated, even while still in use.<p>btw, each down-vote should decrement your karma =)