Android And Flash – Can’t We Just Be Friends?
I never really expected to be somebody that you would call a tablet geek. I frankly thought that apples were probably going to be a waste of time and that the PC was still want to be king for a period of time. I think I was alone here, as there were quite a few experts that said the same thing.
I never really thought that I would be a tablet owner, but then I received one for Christmas from a friend of mine and I immediately took to it.
I can say that I am a gadget guy, and obviously the fact that I started with a high-end tablet like the Asus Transformer Infinity, meant that I would either sink or swim right away. There would be no opportunity for me to complain about the technology, or the lack of hardware power, because really this is one of the best tablets you can buy right now. What’s more, the fact that you can use a keyboard is a huge plus for me. I will say that the keyboard itself is a bit of a piece of junk, but it does provide battery life and actually makes this a usable device. Very usable, in fact; I use it for reading books and when I’m cooking in order to read recipes, as well as to play a lot of the games that are available. I certainly won’t be talking about the IPad, of course, but that’s because I never really had any time for Apple products because I feel as if they are a lot of hype and mostly junk.
But Android is actually a phenomenal ecosystem as far as programmers are concerned. As a user, I’ve always been very impressed with the fact that most Android software is actually either cheap or free. Those are two characteristics that make the platform very attractive for almost anyone. So it really was a surprise for me that Adobe stopped supporting Android when it comes to Flash. I understand that they already have a number of platforms that they are dealing with, but I would imagine that Windows probably takes the lion’s share of resources that they have right now. There certainly are no lack of updates to the Windows platform, as evidenced by the fact that every time I turn on my PC, I am automatically told that there is a new update. It seems like there’s a new update every couple weeks, if not days. I really wonder just how many holes and garbage are in the new Flash program, because it seems like they just can’t stop patching it.
But to stop updating Flash for Android really makes no sense. I don’t think you have to be a crystal ball reader in order to figure out that Android is probably going to be a competitor to Windows very soon. In fact, I know a lot of people who simply will not bother buying PCs anymore simply because they just don’t feel the need to. The software has fallen behind hardware so much that if you have a PC from 2007, you are probably still okay.
This all means that Adobe is probably just not thinking about the future. I had to side load a version of Flash onto my tablet (it’s Jelly Bean), and it works fine, so it made me realize that it’s not as if this plug-in does not work anymore. It feels to me more like Adobe just got lazy and decided that they did not want to support this platform anymore. Unfortunately, so many major outlets are using this in order to broadcast video and other things. I wish that they would wake up because it all seems very nonsensical.
At this point, I’m starting to realize exactly why Apple has avoided adding Flash to any of their extremely popular products. Yes, it is quite obvious that they have a competitor in QuickTime (although not much of a competitor if you ask me), but just dealing with Adobe’s hierarchy must be a huge bitch.
That’s a real shame, because this company used to be something important. Now it’s just collecting royalties on software that really haven’t had any new features for the past five years.
Lame.