Comment by pessimizer 2 days ago
I didn't read a word about flash in the comment you replied to. They commented on the mention of wallpapers in your comment about flash, but they didn't mention flash at all. What they said is that you believed things that Apple said, that weren't true, about why they wouldn't allow wallpapers. They characterized this as a nitpick.
> It was so resource constrained that you couldn’t put a picture on your home screen because it would have taken too much memory.
This is the sentence in your original comment I had responded to (and I quoted it in my original comment, not sure where's the misunderstanding here). iPhone was resource-constrained, but not that resource-constrained.
I do agree with your characterization of Flash being slow and clunky at the time for the most part, hence prefacing my comment as "nit," although I do not for one second believe that's the primary reason Jobs killed it. If he wanted a fast Flash, he would have made Adobe dance to his standards.
And it made the UI slower - as confirmed by another comment and used battery.
> Untrue. There was a noticeable UI lag when scrolling between app pages. I've tried it in both the iPod touch and previous generations iPhones. It felt like how Android used to feel like back then.
How was Jobs going to force Adobe to get Flash to run on a first gen iPhone when they could barely get it to run 4 years later on phones with 8x the memory and 2.5x faster?
Apple struggled to get Safari to run.
As another counterpoint. Google and Motorola tried to release an “iPad Killer” with the Motorola Xoom promising it would have 4g and Flash. Adobe was late releasing Flash for Android tablets leaving the Xoom in the unenviable position that you couldn’t visit the Xoom product page from the Xoom itself because it required Flash.
Adobe Flash on mobile was always a clusterfuck
Haha I remember the Xoom. Company bought one at the time to test our product on, since it might be a big deal. Several of us were intrigued and negotiated who would get to take it home after work. After about 3 days it became clear that it was terrible and it was relegated to a drawer.
Wait...you're telling me I can't charm a cute girl with the Motorola Xoom and its amazing capability of being able to play a Youtube video in full screen?
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgOX9mb7V4o
PS: In reality the stuttering masses were probably using a respectable device that actually provided long term value (and probably had longer OS support than the Xoom haha).
They never said that about wallpaper. They did say that about Flash - my original comment.
And he was proven correct
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
But back to wallpapers - while the jail breaking community didn’t care, between performance (lot easier to redraw a black background), memory and battery life, background images would have adverse affects on the iPhone. it wasn’t that it couldn’t be done.