Adobe heats up iPad Flash bash
The web without pr0n? Unthinkable!
Updated The Flash mob over at Adobe has escalated its attack on Apple for Cupertino's refusal to allow Flash on the iPad. If one picture is worth a thousand words, one Flasher has just launched a 12,000-word volley of derision.
On TheFlashBlog, Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow's web site for all things Flashy, you can now find his vision of what a dozen typical web sites will look like through the eyes of an iPad.
Two critical web offerings - news and porn - as seen without Flash
Yesterday, Adobe's group manager for Flash marketing took the serious route, chastising Apple for "continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers." Brimelow's take is lighter: pure, risable ridicule.
As he titles his collection of iPad-viewed pages replete with familiar Flash-error icons: "Millions of websites use Flash. Get used to the blue legos." ®
Update
Lee Brimelow has updated the post referred to above on his personal/business site, TheFlashBlog, and has scoured one of his parody images that only the bluest of bluenoses might have complained about. He also has added the following apologia:
I feel I need to set something straight to stop the rampant misrepresentation of this post. Firstly, this is not the official Flash blog of Adobe. I am one of hundreds of employees that blog. Secondly, regarding the screenshot of the adult website, that was added by me in an attempt to be humorous. Not surprisingly Adobe did not find this humorous at all and that is why I removed it. So there is no official Adobe movement to “play the porn card” like some “news” outlets are reporting. It is only an individual employee who overlooked the fact that some people are offended by the idea of adult content on the web. As for the main idea of this post, Adobe believes that something that ignores a huge part of the web cannot be the ultimate browsing experience. Personally I love Apple products, especially my iPhone, and that is why I’m so passionate about all this.
And he has - as one might assume, under pressure - bowdlerized the image above so that it now looks like this:
We must never, never admit that there may actually be pornographic content on the web
If Adobe gave Brimelow spankies, shame on them. And, Lee, if we here at The Reg contributed to the hot water in which you're now steeping, well, pardon our attention to your witty take on Apple's refusal to create an iPad that - in Apple's own words - "lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen."
Whether you, Reg reader, think Flash is a buggy resource-hogging doggie or a vital element that needs to be accepted by all browsers, you do have to admit that Brimelow's parody didn't deserve Adobe siccing the correctness police on his hiney. Sigh...
As the Wicked Witch of the West said when Dorothy threw that fateful bucket of water upon her, "What a world, what a world."
COMMENTS
To be honest
If this helps kill flash as the only way the website can be viewed - I could grow to like Apple a little (been browsing without flash for a couple of months now - it is surprising how little you need it if you aren't interested in adverts & videos)
Good example wrong site
The site on the right uses the pornotube VOD delivery platform which by the way is a good indicator of what GooTube will be in 6 months or so. GooTube tends to deliver the same stuff businesswise as them after 6-9 months delay.
So pornotube itself would have been a more appropriate example.
Anyway... We should get used to it. Welcome to Web 3.0 distopia - The web censored by the puritans - a kiddie (and anti-gov) safe media: no A size cup tits if porn, no subversive talk, no ordinary cittizen commenting when not desired. Comply. Consume. Porn only in missionary position. Dissent only when so permitted and when the tablet has allowed you to use the keyboard to dissent.
Apple is only "delivering the vision" of the North American (and by coincidence antipodean) taleban here, it is not actually authoring the vision. It is doing pretty good job though... When you combine it with what Google is doing we may end up screaming for Microsoft of Billy The Borg to come back.
Good Riddance to Flash
So people are bemoaning the fact that the iPad is closed and proprietary because it doesn't support a closed and proprietary standard like Flash?
Oh the hypocrisy.
Flash sucks big time. If HTML5 and Apple's iPhone and iPad's lack of support for Flash help eliminate it from the web it will be a good thing. The iPad has many shortcomings but lack of Flash support isn't one of them. Even YouTube supports HTML5 H.264 now.
Say goodbye to Flash and let's group the Flash cheerleaders together with the Visual Basic apologizers and just ignore them.
Ahem
The phrase is "I couldn't care less". And don't argue. I'm right.
Flashblock
I run flashblock on all computers I use, I only see a handful of sites where I see blank spaces.
It's usually used for video or some horrible navigation panel, in some cases really irritating flash adverts.
