It has been a long standing question with the iPad users, why iPads do not support flash? For many, it is really astonishing that such advanced devices like iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch do not support flash programs. You just cannot view, run or use Adobe Flash videos, games and websites that use Flash for navigation on your iPad, simply because these iOS touch devices are not designed to do so, rather they fully support the HTML 5. Now the question is why Steve Jobs took the stand to completely stay away from Flash; is it simply because apple doesn’t like flash or there are also some technical issues that come in-between the two brands? The next discussion hopefully will be able to provide you with a proper answer to the question.
Steve Jobs Doesn’t Like Flash?
According to Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash” published in the month of April, 2010, Apple was the first big customer of Adobe, developing the post script language for the Apple’s new Laser writer Printer. For many years Apple was a 20% stake holder of Adobe and they accomplished many projects together before they were drifted to different niches; and still these two brands work together to support their joint creative customers. So, according to Steve there are not really any disliking issues between these two brands. Now, let us take a look at the technical issues, why Apple decided to stay away from Flash when it came to its touch devices.
- Lack of Stability, Reliability and Security: One of the most common reasons is that flash is not stable and requires browser plugins to run smoothly. Not just that, it also gives load on the processor. Flash has also been found to raise security concerns and different types of performance issues when running on mobile devices.
- Battery Life: The battery requirement of a mobile device is a crucial factor for its usability. Apple has always taken care to come up with new ways to support longer battery life; when they implemented the Retina Display, they also expanded the battery to maintain the same battery life for use. Adobe Flash has issues of eating up huge battery on mobile devices and so, it is natural for Apple to have taken a negative stand on this product.
- UN-friendliness with the Touch Devices: Flash is designed to work best in PCs using mice, and not for touch screens that use fingers or stylus. As iPad is a completely touch based device, so Flash will surely create a poor experience for the users.Touch is the future, so optimizing the device for something that does not support touch, is not really a good business decision.
- Adobe Dropped Support for Flash: We do not expect to see flash on iOS touch devices in the future also as Adobe has already dropped their support for mobile Flash and switched the support to HTML 5 in 2011 as Flash continued to have issues on mobile devices.
So, now you know that iPad’s do not support flash and the basic reason behind are technical issues rather than the rumors like apple doesn’t like flash.
The answer why Steve jobs have not used flash for any of his devices is clearly explained in the above post.
There are no relative issues between Adobe and Apple , even the two have worked together for a longer time. The reasons are lack of stability, and security, battery life, unfriendliness with touch devices etc. Even the Adobe has also dropped flash for mobile devices. Apple always uses HTML 5 instead of flash. The reasons are just technical but most of the people still believe in rumors spread around.
Thank you for switching.
I never liked apple ipad in the first place
Good … You share a great post………. 🙂