In the last 6 or so months every iDevice user was and is complaining about the lack of flash and multitasking. The big bang was produced when the missing plugin lego piece appeared on the New York Times page while Steve Jobs was demoing the iPad last month. But do you know why you want Flash and multitasking on your iDevice, or its just easier to throw the stone and bitch an whine all day?
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Since the iPad event last month, we got a lotttt of emails regarding these “issues”. We got to a point where receiving these kinds of emails is like talking to a 5 years old who is constantly asking you ” but why? but why? but why? but why?”. So…
Why do you want Flash?
Yeah sure, Flash is here to complement HTML where that isn’t sufficient in offering a more full-fledged media experience. But Flash has a ton of cons and any Mac user will tell you how much they “love” Flash. Especially when you are watching a video on YouTube, and Flash suddenly decides it needs a break, and just crashes.
How about the poor performance of Flash, in general? Even though Flash performance CAN be controlled by developers, most of them rarely do a good job. How many times did you visit a Flash-heavy site and no matter how much horse-power you computer has, you had to wait for ever for that site to load?
How about ads? Most of the people are complaining now, when they see a random ad in a app. What do you think it will happen if Flash would be available on iDevices. You will have more ad time, and less real stuff time ( playing a game, do your thing in an app, reading a site w/e ).
What about malware? You do realize, that once we are invaded with Flash ads, some/most of them will discreetly serve up malware right? And it will be only a matter of time, until someone will target iDevices only.
What about battery life? Real-life example… on my 1st gen unibody MacBook Pro, the battery last around 3 hours WiFi enabled, 1-2 browsers running, IM clients and maybe Photoshop. If i mess with YouTube, it only lasts around 1 hour. What do you think it will do with your iPhone? The iPhone battery sucks anyway, why would you want to kill it even faster with Flash?
But OMG, i can’t even watch videos, and I’m allergic to that missing pluggin lego piece. Well, just jailbreak your damn iDevice. If you do that, you can install 3rd party packages that will transform that lego piece, into a play button. And guess what, when you tap on it, a player will pop-up and voila… the video is playing.
The iPad issue is a bit more sensitive because it has a bigger screen, therefore it offers a slightly better video watching experience. But still, an issue should be that the iPad lacks a front camera, and NOT that is lacking Flash ( and multitasking ).
And besides, HTML5 is growing really fast…
Why do you want multitasking?
Do you have a strong reason why you want multitasking, or you just want to play Pandora in the background? The vast majority of iDevice users, do not need to swipe between 20 applications on the fly. You should really ask for something else, multitasking-wise, from Apple.
The iPhone needs to know how to save the state of apps, so when you go back to a particular app you take it where you left it. That should be a no-brainer and it also simulates multitasking.
So, the only reason you would want multitasking is to be able to listen to Pandora while you browse the web or what ever you do. C’mon, that is it, don’t lie to yourself.
You don’t need your Mail and Contacts app opened at the same time. You only do one thing at the time, you are not Napoleon ( and just between you and me, Napoleon wasn’t a multitasker either. He gave strategy orders to his generals while he was looking on the map. Yeah, big effin multitasker ). Nobody is a multitasker. Multitasking means doing a lot more work in a lot more time. Focus on one thing.
But returning to my previous statements… if you are in the middle of doing something in an app, saving that state before leaving the current app, is important BUT the app doesn’t need to run in the background as long as the task switching is fast enough.
98% of the people just want to browse the web, write an email, call somebody, and maybe write/edit a document, but they are whining about the lack of multitasking, just because a “top notch site” their geek friends read, is blaming Apple ( or anybody else ) for all sorts of BS reasons.
Multitasking will just slow everything down, and it is just a feature that satisfies the geeks in this world.However, if you are one of those people that want multitasking so you can listen to Pandora while browsing the web, write an email, call somebody, and maybe write/edit a document, just fire up your iPod.app and listen to your favorite music while you do all that stuff.