RepTIDE

As much as I dislike Apple as a company I do tend to like John Gruber and his analysis.  He is an ass like me most of the time which probably helps.  This time though he goes to far.  He points out that some tests with Flash on the Android found that it could stream Flash video (H.264) over WiFi for well over 3 hours.  He then links to the Android specs and comments:

If you think that sounds good, note that the Nexus One is rated for 7 hours of video playback time.

First off, while I don’t like that Apple doesn’t offer flash on the iPhone/iPod, I have no love for it either.  I am not defending Flash here.  However, John is twisting facts and I am pretty sure he knows it.  “7 hours of video playback time” is not equal to “7 hours of streaming internet HD video”.  I would be surprised if, using a non-Flash source like the HTML5 <video> tag, the times would be much if any better.  The drag on the battery due to the WiFi will make the drain attributed to Flash seem very insignificant.

By Gruber’s reasoning then I would like to see him explain why, when the iPod Touch specs say I am supposed to get “up to 30 hours” of music playback time I only get roughly 8 hours in one charge when listening to Pandora.  I will tell you why “jackass”, it’s because of the WiFi.  While I won’t deny that Flash will drain the battery faster than the internal player we can’t blame it (solely) here.

It’s the same reason my wife’s Kindle can run forever with the WiFi disabled but won’t last a day with it on.  No Flash there, just soul sucking, battery draining internet access.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Flash 10.1 might just not be a battery hog on Android (engadget.com)
• Adobe: Flash interest is strong among iPhone and iPod Touch users (seattlepi.com)
• Flash 10.1 Beta 3 Brings Playable HD Flash Video to Even Netbooks With Crappy Graphics [Flash] (gizmodo.com)
• Could Hulu ditch Flash for the iPad? (dvice.com)

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