Your iPad Is Not Ready for Flash but It’s Ready for Porn
Los Angeles, CA – There’s this girl whose name is Kate. She’s about twenty years old. She is blonde, pretty, sporting an outstanding breast implant.
She smiles uninhibited in front of the camera. She is one of the many girls coming to Los Angeles from all over the country every year, looking for a chance of a career in the porn industry. Her partner is a familiar face in the field, a muscular guy covered in tattoos, looking like an grown up version of Big Jim. He is wearing a Lakers cap, a singlet and a pair of kaki shorts. The setting is a wonderful villa in Santa Monica with a garden, a swimming pool and a tennis court.
The two exchange a few introductory words and then the scene changes, it reaches the apex, following the usual script, rated too high for families. Seven minutes and twentyfour seconds later our Big Jim lays exhausted on a wicker deckchair while Kate happily jumps around and says bye to the camera. The video has almost six hundred thousand views, thirty comments and four stars on average. And you can easily see it on your iPad.
In a recent e-mail exchange with Ryan Tate, Steve Jobs has declared he wants an iPad that’s free from porn. This sentence felt a little out of place, it sounded like a sort of manifesto I’m honestly having troubles understanding. The question is simple: how? And even more: why?
If Apple can have a sort of censorship on downloadable applications within the Apple Store, it certainly cannot control everything that happens in the whole web galaxy. In fact, YouPorn, Tube8 and many other similar sites have already converted their videos from the Flash format to HTML5 thus making them perfectly usable on the Apple devices, among which you can of course find the iPad.
Actually I think that the point behind this wave of Puritanism apparently circulating throughout the corridors of Cupertino, has to do with the personal crusade led by Steve Jobs against Adobe Flash technology.
One thing is for sure: if the iPad does indeed win over the competition as a platform for the fruition of Internet content, it will be up to those who manage entertainment websites to choose whether to stay with Adobe Flash or to catch a growing business opportunity. Needless to say they will probably go for the second one and we’ll see a mass migration to HTML 5. Maybe these events will not mark the decline of Flash as a technology but for sure they will force Adobe to find a convincing strategy on what the future of their flagship player will be.
Maybe, again, there is something more Machiavellian to it than just Jobs looking for a porn-free iPad or a Flash-free iPad: and it’s Job’s vision of a Flash-free web.
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Wao, Funny post, there its a quote in the web that say more or lest that for every thing thats exist there also a porn vertion or it.
I will be actually how you say hard to control the content and no matter how hard he try the porn will always find his way true the divice. Saing no make every body work had to have it in there divices, so as how you say also soon porn page are moving to html5 so nothing to do.
In the point of adobe well they already have to know that they will have re arange the flash network so they will not die, and juts ajust there selft to new tecnology. becuase if not there will be always new and better option for Flash.
Nice post good job
Hi Hector, I agree with you.
Thanks!
“there its a quote in the web that say more or lest that for every thing thats exist there also a porn vertion or it.”
=> Rule 34: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rule%2034
(c) 4chan ;)
You’re making this way too complicated.
Jobs was talking about not wanting porn in the *app store* for the same reasons that Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and lots of other companies don’t want porn in their stores. Is it censorship? Puritanism? Nope, it’s a business decision.
what Tom said. (that was the obvious reference/meaning of Jobs’ words in that email to Tate)
This is not longer a discussion about choices and benefits, it’s simply a plain stupid crusade against Flash. While Adobe is focusing on how to improve Flash for mobile devices, ppl at Apple are just focusing on how to promote the hatred even more. It all comes down to each and everyone’s choice and what works best.
I’m not sure I agree 100% on what you said. It feels a lot like the chicken and egg progression.
We’re talking about a “stupid” crusade here but we should also critically look back at the past. In fact, Apple decided not to support Flash on their mobile devices and its decision has been bashed and criticized constantly for three years despite the flaws of the technology on the mobile side.
In 2010 the iPad is announced and again it lacks support for Flash. The bashing is refueled. The hatred you say Apple is promoting is a misconception by users who just go for extremes (the majority, but still…). Behind choices at this level there is no simple emotional vector. And in the last three years we’ve hardly seen the same effort on the advancement of Flash for the web that we have seen on every other framework (html, css, javascript and so on).
But as you said, and this I completely support, it all comes down to each and everyone’s choice. The market, so far, has given a clear answer.
More on this topic in one of our next posts though, stay tuned :)
@Tom, @Yitz
This post was obviously a provocation because from the mail exchange with Tate it was pretty clear that Jobs was referring to the App Store (the service “he” controls) and as CEO of a company it’s a totally legitimate policy decision.
On the other hand, we were also trying to point out how often porn has been one of the greatest trend setter in terms of technology advancements and this case will probably make no difference.
Because remember: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWEjvCRPrCo (if you don’t know this you’ll probably have a good laugh)
Agree with you, my vision is, Flash was there even before iPhone/iPad, and it will still resume going on, iPad was just a new targeted platform, on the other side, Flash is still doing things, i think HTML5/jQuery and js won’t be able to do, look at this simple example http://www.pixlr.com/editor/. We all appreciate Flash, SilverLight for helping creative making nice things on the last few years, and still.
I think there’s an app for that (that Flash Pixir thing), or there soon will be on the iPad.
I agree with Tom also. Apple doesn’t want porn in the app store, but there is nothing from stopping porn content being available on the internet.
I think the iPad is the platform that aspires to be self sufficient. They do not want to rely on another delivery system such as Flash to deliver content and software applications. That means they have to rely on someone else to update their software to be in line with their platform. (Just look a Microsoft Office on the Mac. It sucks. Its latest version is 2008!)
The iPad has apps that will do everything required to satisfy the platform. They have the entire software development industry and media industry flocking to make these apps, not to mention every other man, woman and child with an idea and an eye to make money.
They have the delivery system for every media, content or app you can imagine. Apple doesn’t need Flash. Flash needs Apple.
I agree with @Tom above. This is a smart business decision. I thought his explanation for why they do not want porn in the app store is just that, a good business decision.
His explanation is pretty great too: “You might care more about porn when you have kids.” So true.
just for curiosity… could you tell me the address of the video? I want to try it on my iPad.
ROFL!! THIS IS HILARIOUS
Hahah we cannot share our sources, I’m afraid! :D
Tom is absolutely right. It has nothing to do with censorship. Strictly a business decision. Yahoo was faced with this same decision when it started to get popular. Even though porn pulled in huge money for them, they decided it wasn’t for them. Slammed the door on it and the rest is history.
nice read :)
jobs bows before american prudery affecting the users in old europe too, thus increasing sales and looking clean and shiny. on the other hand no porn-addicted is harmed as he can access his content anytime. so this is a win-win situation. only the poor app-devs count a loose (who would pay for porn anyway?). i therefore agree its a business decision.
if my kids would search for porn and are interested even after having a first peek, then they are old enough :D having a porn app installed, i wouldnt let them take the pad though. i think they shouldnt be spoiled willfully, but if they really want to know, they would find their way to graphic detail anyway.
btw check out this ad-busting from germany on this topic:
http://www.cultofmac.com/no-porn-on-ipad-artist-strikes-back-nsfw/44955
Maybe he said in a meeting “no more flash on our devices” and someone just misunderstood “no more flesh”?
Oops
These things about Apple and censorship are kind of silly. They’re not trying to ban porn, just not purvey it. That’s all. There’s nothing that goes around erasing dirty videos from your machine. There’s nothing that stops Safari from going to countless picture sites, erotic story sites, and — now — a growing community of HTML5 porn sites. In fact, you could argue that (a) Apple is more open to porn than most businesses in America, in that all their computer devices are not blocked from showing porn and (b) that this move by Apple to avoid Flash will serve to bring the world into HTML5 (starting with the porn world). And HTML5 is really a pretty amazing technology, compared to today’s standard. Does Microsoft sell adult software? Does Adobe? No. What they sell is a platform that can access it. And Apple is no different — iPad as well as everything else can get you to more porn than you can choke on, just not via the software they put their name on. That’s all.
You’re alright!
Interesting article ! :)
And as Nicola Armellini pointed out, that’s impressive how the porn industries is a kind of fuel for technology.
If all porn websites, which represents something like 40% (or even more) of the web traffic, turn into html5, one of the consequence could be a significative update of old browsers (who said ie6 users were pervert ? ^^) for all users that don’t usually care about updating their softwares but in this case it would become a “necessity”…
Though it’s not the end of Flash, I think that would probably makes a difference in users habits, and by this way some kind of technologic advancement.
Nice post! Going to add you to the RSS feed
Really appreciated :)