Lee Brimelow, Adobe’s official Platform Evangelist for Adobe Flash is somewhat perturbed that Apple has apparently decided to follow up their refusal to build Flash into Mobile Safari with a ban on software developed with Flash (or other proprietary platforms) running atop Cocoa Touch on the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0. (Thanks, daringfireball.net …)
In a post on his independent personal blog (which is titled TheFlashBlog and carries the Flash logo prominently, despite his “personal opinions, not Adobe’s” disclaimer), Brimelow rants that “this is a frightening move” and that “any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this.”
Adobe’s John Dowdell has similarly decided to claim his employer has some sort of moral high ground because mean ol’ Apple won’t support Adobe’s favorite piece of bloated, mobile-unfriendly (some would say everything-unfriendly) little piece of proprietary crapware.
I’l leave The Macalope and Daniel Eran Dilger to do the job of torpedoing Brimelow and his ilk. They are first-rate ilk-torpedoers, even if turning those two loose on a couple of Adobewhiners is like watching Bambi vs. Godzilla again — fun, but over so quickly. (And yes, that YouTube link to Bambi vs. Godzilla works fine from my iPad!)
I don’t think I’ve made any secret of the fact that I don’t really miss having Flash on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. But I’ve been hearing a lot from people who are having a better browsing experience in Mac OS X without Flash as well. And I am mightily sick of the crap coming from Adobe’s people, official and “unofficial”, on the subject. So I’m cutting the ties altogether. I’ve just downloaded ClickToFlash and I’ve installed it on my primary iMac — the one I’m using right now.
From now on, I will at least control when and where I use Flash while browsing. It will be interesting to see if I miss Flash at all, and how many times I really find the need to click one of those silvery boxes I will see in place of Flash-laden content. (And it is nice to see that neither Tumblr nor Disqus Comments which power this little site require Flash, nor does the old couchapple.tv site…) (Rats. Tumblr’s little photo slideshows are in Flash. I’ll have to fix the few places I use them. Small price to pay.)
The graphic badge above is my personal reminder that I am OK with being Flash-free. I have a bunch of real blue Lego blocks, and I plan to add some stickon letters and a pinback to one so I can wear my badge proudly offline as well. (What? Oh, like youdon’t have a bunch of blue 2X2 Lego blocks lying around your house, too! What kind of a geek are you? OK, go here… and remember that Uncle CouchGuy took care of you in your moment of need.) Since some Flash shills and lazy developers want to engage in breast-beating and whining, I think we should show them that not all of us are unhappy about a decidedly Flash-absent existence.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am tired of the whiners and the self-serving people who’d want bitch about mean ol’ Apple not letting them crap in their pretty clean sandbox. But otherwise I am a long-time Adobe booster. As an early convert to desktop publishing (before the phrase existed, in fact), I’ve used Adobe software for many, many years and I want to continue doing so. But I sure wish they’d get a clue that their overpriced Creative Suite is getting less and less relevant to publishing as it is today, as they spend more time protecting their old ways of doing business than developing things that make sense for users. I saw Quark die the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts, and I’d hate to see that happen to Adobe.
Adobe, please give us great tools that make things work for standards that make sense such as HTML5. Please shut down the whiners instead of sending out your evangelists to fan the flames.
Meanwhile, I’m OK with the Blue Block. How about you? If so, feel free to grab and use the BlueBlockOK graphics attached here. A link back to this page (http://www.blueblockok.com) would be appreciated.
