I'm confused about iPad and Flash Video.

Ok, so my family are looking to chip in together to get my mom an e-reader for her birthday. Then we thought we'd look at the iPad. It's twice the cost, but it seems to do so much more. However, if we're gonna spend the money, I know she'd like to be able to watch Hulu shows and YouTube stuff.

In another post here someone mentioned that the iPad WILL play flash, although the Apple rep I talked to said it will not. If you have to do anything special or jump through hoops to make it work, then I'm not interested, but what is the case then and how do you make it work if at all?

 

The iPad/iPhone will NOT play Flash videos of any kind. Period.

The iPad/iPhone will play YouTube videos just fine however, either through the built in application, or via weblink (which opens it in the built in app).

 

I'm not sure how you'd get it to work. It's not officially supported. I'm a linux user and in most situations like that youll need to either add another system emulator or hack it. Neither of which are very smart ideas.

PS if youre looking at something with extra features there are lots of other things to choose from. Smart devices makes a 5inch and 7 inch screen device that supports flash and much much more and supports ebook formats

 

kindle. will be easier on her eyes

 

If that's the case, then forget the iPad. I mean she'd primarily like the e-reader, but the ability to watch shows would be nice. My step-dad always hogs the TV, so she could read or watch what she wanted. But she mainly reads, so no big deal. I'd prefer not to spend the extra money if I can help it. The kindle looks very nice.

 

Like i said smartq 7 isn't bad choice either but its up to you

ps. expandable memory via sd cards

 

but many websites are running html5 now.

see what her favorite websites are and see if they are "iPad ready".

 

the ipad supports html 5 though, which allows watching videos on websites like the New York Times and many others. There's a list over at apple.com. You can also watch stored movies (like ice age, shrek, 2012 etc) on you ipad (through quicktime player).

 

Jailbroken iPad maybe what they were talking about that it would play Flash...

 

Just to clarify. YouTube videos will play directly inside the web page in which they are imbedded or you can watch them in the YouTube app. While flash is not supported on the iPad and iPhone there are alternatives. ABC has a free app that includes full episodes with limited commercials. Netflix has an app as well. You can always purchase (dirty word) tv shows on iTunes and there are rumors that hulu is working on an app but I wouldn't hold my breath. In case you are wondering I have no issues with eye strain over several hours of reading on the iPad.

 

I have the Kindle and love it but I think the iPad would have been a better buy for us had it been available at the time.

The thing with the Kindle is that it just does one thing but it does it very well, an ebook reader. With the iPad I can read a book, surf the web (I know the Kindle has some support for surfing but it's atrocious and painfully slow), listen to music, read and reply to email, view and edit documents, watch YouTube etc....

No, the iPad does not support flash content (and most likely never will) but YouTube works (just like it does on the iPhone) and Hulu is in the process of making an iPad app.

I've always liked the e-ink display on my Kindle but from talking to a few friends of mine who now have both they say the iPad as a reader works very well too (no eye strain complaints) and of course it supports coloured content (digital magazines and the likes).

The only draw backs that I see with the iPad compared to the Kindle is the price and the weight. The Kindle is very light; one of my friends mentioned that after holding the iPad for a while it gets a little tiresome. But if price is not a deciding factor, the iPad is the better choice IMO.

EDIT: I forgot to mention battery life difference. The Kindle lasts me about 1-2 weeks between charges but the iPad I'd guess would need almost daily charges. Not a huge deal for me but it might be for some.

 

The battery lasts 10 hours, easy. You can always get the dock and use it as a digital photo frame while it charges too.

 

So Apple is making all these sites jump through hoops to make a dedicated app to watch their content, why not just support Flash to begin with? I don't think she'd be interested in having to launch different apps for each site just to get it to work. Kinda silly.

Her birthday isn't until July, so guess I'll just wait a couple months and see what else is available. Otherwise it looks like we'll be going with the kindle.

 

I think that flash really cpu-intensive. Flash will kill the battery and it is sluggish.

 

Flash isn't light on battery use but it also removes significant control from Apple. They can't block flash sites or monetize content if everything comes from Flash through a browser. Sure they're focused on user experience but flash doesn't fit their walled garden ecosystem. It makes much more sense for them to force content providers to create apps that are tied to the iPod/iPad/iPhone ecosystem since beyond the revenue they get, it also makes change costs higher. People can move from one iPad to the next but its much more difficult to go to a Android platform if they've invested significantly on iPad apps.

My $200 Acer Revo 1.6Ghz Atom could play Flash at 480p unless I scaled it to my 1080p television. It could do full 1080p WMV but couldn't do an iTunes trailer for the life of it even OC'd to 1.9Ghz and 3GB RAM. Mac OSX also doesn't deal w/ Flash very well...my 1.83Ghz C2D Mini can't play hulu smoothly on my 24" 19x12 monitor in OSX but does just fine in Win 7.

 

Umm, Apple isn't forcing sites to create apps for viewing their content. The companies are doing it on their own. Flash is a resource hogging, battery killing, poor way to watch video. The iPad is finally helping to push the use of html5 video which works much better.

 

Well, considering the standard is Flash, the companies are doing it on their own because Apple didn't include support for it. And if these companies want iPad customers to view their content they HAVE to do something. So the customer has to figure a way to display the content. Apple markets their stuff as easy to use and intuitive. But having to run apps for every site to display their content is far from that. It's adding extra bloat and unnecessary apps for something that could have already been done.

I guess Microsoft should just leave out DirectX support in their next Windows release and have all game developers write their own code to make their games run without a standard. Hello 1990!

Which is exactly what's turning me off from Apple. Sorry, but proprietary doesn't make it better, just more expensive. I guess I'm glad I asked because from the responses I got so far, it has turned me off from Apple entirely now.

I think Flash needs to be replaced too because of its shortcomings. But for the time being, it sthe predominant standard, and the latest flash offloads the work to the GPU. But for Apple to just say it sucks so we won't support it is shortsighted and arrogant, or just stupid.

 

HTML5 isn't video. It's just a standard tag that allows websites to embed videos of various codecs into it. This means a crappy codec could have you wishing for a Flash video which can use the same H.264 codec that Youtube uses for its HTML5 site as well as its iPod app. HTML5 hasn't removed the need for MPEG compression and the fact that its not fully open source.

If you've ever dealt w/ the open source Ogg Theora codec you know it's a lot heavier than MPEG4/H.264. If they start charging for H.264 which is expected at some point...companies will likely shift to Ogg and say goodbye to that iPad battery life despite being flash free.

Apple sure does love talking smack about not having overweight plugins but their Quicktime plugin is one of the heaviest and buggiest out there. It's ruined my browsing experience more than a few times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video

 

Which way works better depends entirely on the implementations. Flash video and the kind of HTML5 video that Apple supports both use the exact same codec -- H.264 -- so which plays better (or yields better battery life) just depends on the implementation of the playback engine.

On my Windows computer, using YouTube and Google Chrome, the playback performance is considerably better (lower cpu usage) with Flash than it is with HTML5. However, this could easily be different with other HTML5 browser implementations. And with other Flash implementations too... I've heard that Flash on Mac may not perform as well at the moment.

Feature-wise, Flash supports some features that HTML5 doesn't yet support, including full-screen video.

So while I prefer HTML5 video as a long-term solution, and I think that that's the way things will go in the long run, I also think it's a bit premature to just say that HTML5 works better than Flash.

 

If flash doesn't fit in Apples "walled garden" neither would HTLM5.

 

But HTML5 isn't there yet. It's not a complete replacement for Flash and has fairly minimal adoption for the upcoming months/yrs. It's a false competitor and the real goal is iPod/iPad specific apps. Basically web developers are faced with either rewriting their existing site in a technology that isn't finalized or they can go to the iPhone app model. Apple's making the argument that the App store is the better model since you can't exactly multi-touch/tilt a wheel HTML5 pages. Once in that app model, it gets much stickier to get back out given user base and need to develop specifically for the Apple ecosystem.

If you go try out some HTML5 demos you can find demos that can chug any computer...I tried one that can max my quadcore/8GB equipped desktop. Means there's still enough developer control to ruin the experience just like poorly written flash apps can.

 

Let's think about it this way...

Browser based cloud apps like Google Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and other AJAX technologies threaten to further commoditize the physical device. If the browser can do all things...then you're no longer tied to a particular brand, OS, or form factor.

The Apple App model is a resurgence of the fat client/desktop software model pared down to ubiquitous computing devices. Apple has always been about selling a combination hardware/software that is unique and exclusive to them. It let them sell at a premium even when they moved to commodity components. In the past it was desktop publishing software...when Windows caught up Apple almost died in the mid '90's. Then it was the iPod that effectively saved them from obsolescence. It fit into their walled garden DRM'd music store b/c Apple could make nice w/ content companies (Record labels). The iPad/iPhone is a continuation of that business model. Tie the hardware/software closely together and protect IP by keeping the model closed and make content providers happier. Just look at how eBook pricing has risen since the iPad came onto the market.

 

So if flash is so great how many smart phones use it (not the flash lite crap either)?

In 2008 Adobe announced that flash 10 would be coming to mobile devices. A year later they announced that flash 10.1 was finally going to deliver on the previous promise of true mobile flash. Finally on April 5 of 2010, yes this month, Adobe finally released flash 10.1 but only as a pre release candidate. Unfortunately the new flash player will only work on some devices due to hardware needs .

 

I don't think Flash is the end-all, be-all. Something new does need to take its place, or Flash needs to completely revamp it for ULV devices. But it's being used as it was never really intended to.

But my whole point is why ignore the fact that something exists and is pretty much the standard video player for web-based video. On the iPhone I understand, it is a pocket sized device so has to compromise on computing power, heat, battery life, etc. But for something as large as the iPad, it makes no sense.

 

My point is that even if Apple wanted to implement flash they couldn't since adobe doesn't have a full mobile solution available. Jobs was correct to call them lazy it's been over two years since adobe made their announcement.

 

Here's Flash 10.1 on Droid which is no more powerful than the 3GS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8wuJ129d0w&feature=related

Farmville on the Nexus One:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9whFavOb2U

Adobe showing off their Flash Pro platform running conversions to iPhone Apps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rebv7iXKufw

If nothing else it shows that Flash for desktop games aren't great on a sub 4" screen and specific mobile dev is needed anyway. The desktop version would probably work fine on the iPad w/ some reconfigured controls and auto-fullscreen but that's a day's work vs. a month of dev time to rewrite it in Objective C.

The last video shows that Adobe has essentially acquiesced and written their product to generate iPhone code but Apple has blocked it in OS4. I'm not certain of the reasoning behind this other than it exposes fewer people to Objective C and the iPhone GUI API's.

The argument that cross compilers are less efficient/poorly written is a bit dense given they have minimal standards to become an iPhone dev anyway and poorly written Objective C can be far worse than using a code generator to do the limited subset of functions.

 

All the videos are showing beta software. There is no current phones being sold with Flash 10.1 pre-installed because it isn't finished yet. Do you honestly think adobe could rewrite flash player to run on iPad within a month when they've been working years to get to beta in those videos? Farmville looked agonizing to play in that one video (slow to load and to respond). I notice that the other games they showed running were slow even while being very basic. If that is the best adobe can do, I can see why Jobs said no.