Dont want Flash

Doherty notes that by December 2009, as many as 7 million iPhone users had tried to download Flash. Figures had reached 3 million by June of that year.

Source: iPodNN

I found out about this statistic about a month ago, didn’t think much of it. This morning @bjango tweeted some perspective on this statistic that I wanted to share.

Perspective:
7mil = ~10% of all iPhone/iPod owners attempting once.
7mil = ~0.02% of all app downloads.

Source: @bjango

Those figures add up pretty well when you combine iPhone and iPod Touch sales.

I know I have gone to that page, by accident. I wanted to see if a site had a Quicktime version of a video and in the process I clicked on a “Please install Flash” badge. I didn’t want to go there but I did. There’s no way of determining how many of those 7 million wanted to go to the Adobe site. Im sure you could kill a few 10-100 thousand visits because of misdirection or a forced redirect.

10% in comparison to the whole iPhone OS base is not much. It would look like 90% of iPhone OS user’s are either informed about the Flash and iPhone OS situation or just don’t need Flash on their mobile device. Knowing that most, if not all, Flash embed objects on the web have some type of “Download Flash here” fallbacks in place. This is a low figure and actually may show that people maybe don’t care about Flash?

Just an example of how information can be hidden from you. When you know the proportion of the metrics at play then you will know the truth.

An interesting conversation broke out on twitter between a co-worker @keithpitt and a user @JarZ.

@JarZ: But breaking compatibility with many, many websites by omitting flash is just silly and unnecessary, imo.

We’ll thats not the devices fault. As a web developer myself, whenever I have to use Flash I always have a fallback. Since recently everything had Flash some people got slack and didn’t set these fallbacks. It’s not the fault of the device but of the web developer, the lack of foresight and testing.

@JarZ: Because plenty of web pages are broken without flash. Even apples launch of the ipad suffered from that when showing NYT page

Suffered? I wouldn’t call a blue Lego suffering. Im pretty sure Steve knew that would happen, because they do rehearsing. Plenty are broken? Not really, plenty may have components or bits that are broken but please see the comment before regarding fallbacks.

@JarZ: but making up other excuses is bullshit. It’s not crashy/slow/etc on other mobile devices. Why is apple so different?

Sure other devices have Flash, although this being Flash Lite. Hey and you cant deny the stats. Apple reported that on Safari, most crashes were by plug-ins including Flash.

@JarZ: seriously, it’s a business decision, nothing more. Apple are welcome to make that decision on their own products.

Apple is a Business. Im sure it was a business decision. I detect a little emotion in this tweet. Probably trying to make Apple feel like this juggernaut exterminating technologies in its wake. Including Adobe in the development cycle of the devices a) would have cost more time b) meant a 3rd hand in the pie c) possible agreements and contracts which will fall through when we switch to HTML5.

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The first FormSpring question.

If Farmville wants to hit the mobile market it could. If I was them I would build a web application built for mobiles. Using Javascript for animations and any basic effects. Although its worth remembering the device we are dealing with here.

Mobiles dont have a lot of graphical ompfh nor not a lot of memory. So Farmville Lite would be a good option.

It’s up to the developers and owners of Farmville to decide what they want to do. But making a light and mainly text based option would be best for them to start from. Then as graphics and memory is improved, so can their application.

I did a test to see how consuming Flash was on a computer.

Now it would be wrong of me to just blatantly say “You’re battery will die before the video ends” when using Flash on a mobile device. I know Flash would have a cut down version for mobile, I know that.

So we cant really compare these results outright. But lets not totally throw out the test. It’s an indication.

But there is one thing I have to point out, its obvious but overlooked. Flash is made by Adobe, the iPhone and iPad are made by Apple. Apple knows how to get the best efficiency out of their device, Adobe doesn’t.

It’s like getting a mechanic that specialises in Ferrari’s to go and do maintenance on a Porsche. Sure the job would be done but it wouldn’t be efficient.

Using Flash on mobile would chew through your battery. Watching video’s would be worse because of the fetching via cellular network and outputting of the video itself. It’s just not right. So at the end of a day you would go to ring your mates only to find your iDevice has powered down because its flat.

Devices cant be compact and fast when they need a bigger battery and have to run a plugin on every web page.

I did a test. A test to measure the usage of energy comparing Flash and Quicktime (native OS player).

Test Environment:

Macbook Pro 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo (early 2007)
3 GB RAM
128MB ATI Radeon X1600
Snow Leopard 10.6

Using iStat Menu’s as a source for the live values.

Starting Values:

CPU Amps: 4A
CPU Watts: 3.68W
CPU Temp: 58˚C

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If you have an iPhone think about this. How much personal data is on that device? All your Contacts, SMS’s, Call Records, Emails, Notes, Photos, Videos, Web History, Passwords?

Now what would happen if someone got access to all that information? Well you would have your identity stolen. All of that information is more than enough for someone to create a duplicate of you and start taking out loans in your name.

Yep it’s a scary thought. If my iPhone was stolen I would run to the nearest computer to perform a remote wipe from MobileMe.

So what happens when you introduce a platform that anyone can develop or publish some code into an executable/SWF file put it on the web (by hacking it onto a popular site) and then have your device then browse that page. Yep, if an exploit exists your device will be owned.

This is the issue that Flash can not overcome. And a reason we can speculate of why Apple is not adding it to their devices.

So what if Flash actually made it onto the iPhone. We’ll you would have 42.48 million devices walking around with all this personal information ready, waiting. Hackers and Identity Theif’s would jump at the chance to be apart of the biggest gold rush of available personal information. So where would you target?

A native application? Nope. Apple checks every one before shipping and to get an App on the store you need to be verified and have a CCard.

By stealing the device? Plausible although MobileMe with its tracking and remote wipe (also available on MS Exchange for business) can stop the theifs in their tracks.

Flash, easy to develop and no moderation required? YES. There is no Apple filter here and anything could waltz in and get what they want, without you even knowing!

So there is a very big case on why Flash should NEVER EVER be on a personal mobile device.