I dont need flash ads or games, but I do need to have access to any website on the net now, not later.

Be careful what you wish for. Flash ads blow, but Flash, at least, is easily blocked...

What, you think advertisers are going to stop trying to intrude when one tool is taken away?

Maybe Jerry has never actually used an iPhone yet? Poor guy.

maybe it's just me but my iPhone browsing experience has been nothing near horrible. I guess I don't miss all the intrusive ads that bring the browser to a grinding halt......

but I"m sure in 3 years or so .. it'll be ready for prime time.. and probably taking over in 5 years..

the problem is in the meantime .. Apple Iphone and Ipad owners will have a horrible browsing experience..

If you're interested in the use of local storage (whether by sites you visit or the third-party content they host), then Adobe just filed a statement with the FTC on that, and there's also been progress on browser integration for privacy settings: http://www.brafton.com/industry-news/adobe-slams-use-flash-cookies-seo-targeting-$1357341.htm http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/privacymodefp10.1.html

jd/adobe

Flash isn't coming to the iPhone or iPad. Topic OVER...

h264 has one undeniable advantage over theora -- h264 hardware decoders already exist in mobile devices, mainly the iPod/iPhone line. Apple is never going to change there.

Theora (the codec Mozilla currently favors) has one undeniable advantage for producers -- its license just says "use it, wherever you want, however you want, for free." In contrast, the h264 license is confusing, risky, costly, and totally at odds with web standards. Mozilla is never going to change there.

Interestingly, Apple's statement on those same principles is ( http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/ ):

"After careful consideration of the draft patent policy, Apple believes that it is essential to continued interoperability and development of the Web that fundamental W3C standards be available on a royalty-free basis. In line with the W3C’s mission to “lead the Web to its full potential,” Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers this statement in support of its position."

However, later in the same document they state that companies need exclusions for their own IP, which seems like Apple is trying to have it both ways. The solution is at the end of Apple's statement:

"While the current draft patent policy does state a “preference” for royalty-free standards, the ready availability of a RAND option presents too easy an alternative for owners of intellectual property who may seek to use the standardization process to control access to fundamental Web standards. A mandatory royalty-free requirement for all adopted standards will avoid this result."

The problem is that Apple, and the W3C, have punted on the issue of video codecs being a fundamental standard, which seems illogical -- <video/> without at least a codec is nonfunctional, so a fundamental baseline codec should be part of the standard. Without one, you can have W3C-standard browsers that cannot serve content in W3C-standard compliant pages -- a situation with black boxes that is little better than ActiveX or Flash. In other words, you have a worthless standard.

Apple holds all the cards here. They have the cash on hand, they have the clout both within MPEG-LA and within the W3C, and they have the investment in hardware to protect. With one stroke of the pen, they could start the process that would entrench h264 as the preferred video format for the internet for at least the next decade. Killing flash would be little more than a happy side effect for Apple.

Adobe has ARM versions of flash in the works, and actually ARM is helping them with it. ( http://tinyurl.com/6ysv63 ) I would expect a decent ARM beta early to mid this year. Of course, not an iPhone one, but Adobe cannot (officially) move that way without Apple's blessing, which Apple will not give.

http://www.diverse-group.com/menu/blog.html

That's relevant to an ARM based devices running iPhoneOS ; how exactly?

Flash is not the "real internet", it's just a vehicle for content delivery on the internet that uses to much CPU cycles, allows unauthorized cookies to be installed on a PC (any OS), is abused by web designers and takes to long to load in some cases. For those who want Flash on their mobile devices, understand that just because it will run Flash doesn't mean it will display the page. To this day there is still not a single smartphone that will display every web page properly. Anyway it seems that since many who don't know any better want Flash will get it and eventually find out that outside of being able to play a Flash-based games, seeing a few pretty animations and play some videos that they are not missing anything else or getting anything more worthwhile except for shortened battery like that those who don't use Flash won't get.

In any case Flash will be around for the foreseeable future as Adobe is not going to let it go lightly; but some of those ignorant statements by the CEO needs to stop along with the lashing out at Apple. If Adobe truly had a good product and everyone knew it, it would speak for itself but obviously Adobe feels threatened and rightfully so. The iPhone is the most popular phone since the Motorola RAZR, because people are willingly paying for it without it going on a buy 1 get 1 free sale like other phones do. Adobe sees this and realizes that the only way they can strengthen their hold in the internet space is to get on all Apple's iPhone OS-based devices. Since that appears to not be happening in the foreseeable future Adobe has chosen to simply make a lot of noise in hopes of scaring Apple into doing so. If Flash was actually an internet standard and worked really well and not just standard practice it might have made it onto the iPhone but since it's not Adobe should just take their loses and move along quietly. They have other products that that are truly important and necessary for many people.

http://www.precentral.net/html5-editors-draft-hits-w3c-flash-doesnt-break-sweat#comments

Much appreciated! I fixed the link in your original comment.

Firefox 3.6, OpenSuse 11.2 64bit.

Thanks, Matt (on Adobe team)

I doubt that will (or should) change Mozilla's mind. If you read the agreement, it applies only those those who serve internet video for free -- in other words, h264 will be free for you serving your own videos on the internet, but not if you distribute DVDs. Even on the internet, Major League Baseball has to purchase a license to encode, as will broadcasters, wedding video producers, and everybody else who charges for video. Ads are not mentioned one way or another, but it is hard to see content providers eager to jump on board that, especially if the fee structure may change in 2016.

More specifically from Mozilla's point of view, the original h264 license terms also held downstream viewers liable; if a provider encoded something without a license, and you viewed it, you could be required to purchase a license, as a viewer. That point was not addressed in the recent MPEG-LA license change at all, and I suspect that part is as big, if not bigger, a sticking point to the Mozilla foundation.

http://tinyurl.com/ylpbe6r