TechRadar still banging the Flash drum in iPhone 4S review
TechRadar bungs up a balanced, positive, in-depth review of the iPhone 4S, but, on page 5, gnnhhhh:
Oh, and let’s not forget our favourite refrain for an Apple iPhone review – the lack of Flash video. We’ve no idea how Apple has managed to survive all of these years without adding in some kind of Flash support, but those little error boxes strewn all over the internet still grate a fair bit.
HTML5 video support is built into the iOS browser, but that’s still a long way from being an oft-used video format for the web, so iPhone 4S users will have to put up with a substandard internet performance compared to their Android counterparts when it comes to web video.
The browser in iOS 5 has superior JavaScript performance to that on Android. From a usability perspective, it’s also superior. Also, the majority of web video is now HTML5, and so while you do get those blank boxes now and again, they’re becoming less common. Oh, and many Android devices choke so badly on web video that it’s like watching a slideshow. But even on those devices that manage to play web video acceptably, I’m not sure we’re really talking about “substandard internet performance” compared to Android. On balance, the pros and cons cancel each other out.
Still, now Microsoft’s nixed support for Flash and other plug-ins in Windows 8’s Metro version of Internet Explorer, Flash’s days as a broad internet presence are numbered. Increasingly, it looks like the tool will become like Director, an authoring environment for rich media and games. Whether that’ll be enough to stop people bitching about next year’s iPhone still not including Flash support in its web browser (the horror!) remains to be seen.
Apparently the iPhone 4S doesn’t have a physical keyboard or a memory card slot? Substandard.
It also doesn’t have the name “iPhone 5” but instead uses the substandard and evolutionary-not-revolutionary “iPhone 4S.”
1/5
Also heard the iPhone 4S doesn’t have a DVD Rom. Apple’s doomed. Oh wait, but…
Wow. Look, I own and use an iPhone, but I’m not fanboy for any brand. You talk about java or some other technical nonsense being “more gooder”, but this is NOT a technical or performance or useability issue.
This is about censorship.
I cannot view a significant portion of the internet on my iPhone. I have to go home and fire up big daddy computer, or borrow a droid. This includes all kinds of sites, and in my case, usually has nothing to do with video.
Apple has chosen to censor the internet because (la la la la – fingers in my ears – I don’t care why). That’s relevant and important, and I disagree that with the passing of some months or years we should just forget about it.
“You talk about java or some other technical nonsense being “more gooder”,”
No, I talk about superior JavaScript performance. Far from being technical nonsense, JavaScript underpins a huge amount of interactive website components.
“I cannot view a significant portion of the internet on my iPhone. I have to go home and fire up big daddy computer, or borrow a droid. This includes all kinds of sites, and in my case, usually has nothing to do with video.”
Sites that, note, generally work really poorly on any smartphone, because Flash is a joke from a performance standpoint, and also because the vast majority of Flash content is designed for pointers and not the touchscreen.
“Apple has chosen to censor the internet because”
No it hasn’t. It’s chosen to not support proprietary plug-ins (in fact, all plug-ins) in Safari for iOS. Microsoft is doing the same with IE in Metro.
“(la la la la – fingers in my ears – I don’t care why).”
Clearly, you’re not a fan of battery life, then.
Poor performance or not, the solution “Everybody will be forced to fix their websites because I am Apple and I declare them broken” is pretty lame. If the whole world fails to comply immediately (is that even possible?), the end user suffers.
When I’m out and about and need to view a web site, I’m often already putting up with some SERIOUSLY BAD network performance. Waiting an extra minute or two for bad flash performance, too, really is a non-issue. Inability to access a page is a very real issue.
There are better ways to solve the flash resource problem than internet censorship. A simple on/off toggle in the settings would give us the choice between accessing the whole web, or just accessing a lot of the web faster.
I cannot see any way to support Apples No-Flash position.
“There are better ways to solve the flash resource problem than internet censorship.”
Job repeatedly invited Adobe to create a version of Flash for iOS that didn’t suck. That Adobe has yet to even create a version of Flash for OS X that doesn’t suck should tell you something.
“A simple on/off toggle in the settings would give us the choice between accessing the whole web, or just accessing a lot of the web faster.”
Most users never touch settings, so you’re either asking Apple to spend engineering time on something most people would never use, or something that would adversely affect browsing for many people and that most wouldn’t understand why. That’s lose-lose for Apple.
And while I admit it can very ocassionally be frustrating when happening upon a Flash website, the point will be moot sooner or later anyway. For web design, Adobe’s back to concentrating on non-Flash solutions, and sites are transitionaing away from the technology en masse. That might not be fast enough for you, but I understand why Apple made this decision, and I think it was the right one to make.