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Just like they did before when all the cool kids were mocking antennagate (funny how a couple million dollars of free cases will silence critics so quick), Motorola is flinging the proverbial poo at Apple in their latest full-page ad for the Droid 2 found in the New York Times. This time they take Apple to task on Flash, which actually was in vogue before the whole antenna thing but has sort of settled down as the two sides more or less agreed to disagree.
The ad reads, “Flash websites? There’s a phone for that.” That should ring familiar to anyone who has repeated or mocked Apple’s successful “There’s an app for that” campaign.
Now I have nothing against Flash for mobile — in fact, you may recall my stance that it likely will do more good than harm — but is it a selling point worthy of a full page ad that snidely jabs at the competition? Probably not. Still, we give Moto props for exhibiting their grapefruit sized testicles once more.
[via MobileCrunch]
Haha Motorola is great…
Why sympathetic towards Apple? Had Jobs done what Android is doing(open source/Platform)instead of trying to have total control, he could own the smart phone world. This anger that some exhibit towards Jobs is deserved.
@Josh: Locked down devices and horrible customer support is great?
I love to see folk stick it to Apple lol. But honestly so far he’s been rather right about Flash and I’m not trolling. I knew it would be crap before he even said anything because its crap on Linux. I’m not really getting the experience out of it I wanted. I was thinking you could get a movie to show full screen with usable controls. But it only shows tiny controls that are built into the movie player itself and in many places I can’t even use them. Can we PLEASE hurry up and move to HTML 5 for video. Yea it will take the pressure off Apple but I’d really like to watch video content on websites reliably.
hahaha love it!
lol, perfect
Wasn’t Motorola kissing Apple’s ass circa 2006/2007 to allow their moto phones to be iTunes compatible? what happened?
I love the ad. We all know uncle Jobs won’t hold back so why should anyone else. People like Jobs are criticizing flash on mobile. Heck, I prefer to have the option to use it rather than not having the option at all.
I’m the proud owner of an evo with flash support, and I keep it turned off. It takes pages forever to load, and the browser to lock up and foreclose often. I hate to gives jobs credit for anything but he right on this issue
That’s pretty good.
I can’t imagine not having flash on the web. Now back to Mafia Wars…
Flash may not be perfect on my Moto Droid, but it allows me to do and see many things I wasn’t able to before. Does it need improving? Yeah. Am I happy I have the current version? Yeah.
@Storm14K aka Phil
I agree.
In order to provide a “complete” web browsing experience you should also provide Flash support. However, when it comes down to it, Flash sucks…a lot. It sucks the most on Linux, but it also sucks on Windows. I presume it sucks on a Mac, but I don’t have a Mac so I can’t comment. It is _waaaay_ too processor intensive. Sure, with 10.1 we _finally_ get hardware acceleration (on limited hardware), but it shouldn’t need hardware acceleration. So, it is no wonder that the experience is abysmal on phone. It will eat your battery for lunch, and the performance will be sub-par. I don’t have anything against Flash per-se, but I believe it is a crime that Flash’s performance has been so awful for so long, and that it is still so popular. There is a reason why FlashBlock is so popular…
I guess they can’t use the ol antennae swipe with this model. My droid 2 had the nasty habit of constantly dropping calls and dropping down from 3G to 1X all the time. Had to return it…
Does flash on my phone eat my battery? Yes it can. Does flash on my phone have stutter issues? Yes it does. Does flash on my phone sometimes crash the browser? Yep.
Do I like the fact that if a news site or tech site has flash I can actually use the site? YES SIR!
Suck it Apple.
Face it, of course it will eat your battery. But we KNOW this. The thing is, it’s OUR CHOICE to use it or not. That’s what this is all about, CHOICE. I don’t need a babysitter telling me what’s good for my phone and what’s not. And you people who say “Well, most users will expect the full experience of flash that they are used to..whaaaaa”, get real. I think most people realize they are on A PHONE. My wife is not tech savvy and she can handle these facts. DUH.
-Brad
@ SirWally & Storm14K,
I too must agree, Flash sucks. However, it’s still here and a large amount of web content still uses it. So for Apple to abandon Flash so early, especially when HTML5 hasn’t reached the approval stage yet (and not expected until 2012) isn’t a very smart move. Even when the HTML5 standard is out, it will take a while for Flash to die off in favor of the newer standard.
Lets rewind 10 years and look at phone technology then. Picking on Motorola because Flash sucks seems kind of silly when you think what will be 10 years from now. It has to start somewhere. You might as well be one of the first instead of one of the whiners.
I’m surprised at the amount of whining on this post.
Can you access alot of Flash based sites and play Flash based games that you weren’t able to before?
I swear, give someone a free dinner and hear them complain it didn’t come with free dessert is pretty lame and sad.
/Flash works great on my Droid X, by way of manual upgrade to 2.2
Totally agree, destardi. I’ve had no Flash issues either, and I’m on Droid1 with FRG22 Froyo, and I love it.
I don’t condone anyone exhibiting their testicles, grapefruit-sized or otherwise.
That is all.
Lots of complainers in here…
Been loving Flash on the phone since my Hero back in December. It is just awesome now on the EVO with 10.1 and more CPU horsepower. People who are complaining about it are probably the same that whine about their battery life or that their gas mileage is bad in their Hummer. Maybe this offroad driving isn’t the smoothest ride just yet, but the iPhones will never leave the pavement because Jobs said so. Sure you can jailbreak your iPhone and get flash, but then the sucker restarts, freezes, etc. multiple times a day and you are back to the circular argument, but now with no warranty (like you could ever even get one to begin with on an iPhone.)
I don’t get it. If Verizon is looking to release the CDMA iPhone next year, why are they taking jabs at it? Why make a product look bad if you’re soon going to release it?
@Bob. Maybe because this ad is from moto NOT VZ.
I saw a video from someone at Verizon who stated that they will not be releasing said Apple phone. Thank goodness.
I love my Motorola Cliq. It makes me so much more productive than the Droid since it still runs Android 1.5 which means I don’t waste any time running the latest apps and games.
My middle finger, slowly extended to Motorola, for the continued lies. Here’s to Samsung and HTC hopefully blowing them out of the water.
Eddie Android wrote:
“Wasn’t Motorola kissing Apple’s ass circa 2006/2007 to allow their moto phones to be iTunes compatible? what happened?
When you’re in trouble you kiss ass, when you’re on the rise, you want to kick that ass you has to kiss.
Just look at Apple for the same behavior. They would have been dead in the late ’80 early ’90 if Adobe hadn’t continued to produce products from the Mac platform. Every other software company was dropping them. Now Jobs blatantly disses the company that saved them. I can also remember the days when they would berate Intel. Hmmm, I wonder what happened there?
@Storm14K and other flash haters.
By the time the vaunted HTML5 gets fully realized as an viable alternative, the current somewhat crappy flash will have had a LOT more time to mature. I’d rather have support for a NOT so great experience NOW then no support at all and no experience! I link surf from twitter quite regularly and my android phone lets me see ALL the videos linked, not just the ones that are in a Steve supported format. And if I remember correctly, when I was a kid the game was called “Simon Says” not “Steve Says”.
The stance that just because flash isn’t perfect it should be slaughtered and forgotten in favor of a standard that still had a number of years before it’s fully ratified and god knows how long before “it’s” properly supported, is preposterous and simply not logical.
I’ll keep my android lovin Flash using phone any day over the alternative. Good day to all!
O.
Tasteful and well deserved.
Phoenix & Brad 2, thank you for speaking the truth! You’re on point!
ROFLMAO! I would rather have the option to use/have Flash support on my mobile device than have that option outright denied to me. And now I have a Phone for that! I Love It! Keep it up Motorola! ;)
Kevin,
What planet are you from mate?
It has NOTHING to do with the huge advantages of having a phone that has flash over one that does not, but EVERYTHING to do with reminding the marketplace that there are more open, less repressive alternatives out there… so a very clever ad like this is HUGELY worthwhile… everyone knows the slogan and everyone will be reminded there are better options.
Mark.
I have to agree that the current flash experience is subpar. The worst part of it are the controls. Nearly impossible to use. Double tap will get the video to be full screen, but I actually like option of seeing the video in the sometimes smaller frame and resizing it to my liking. Being able to view flash slideshows and play flash games is something you can’t do with HTML. Plus, I get more crashes and errors with HTML5 than with flash on my Nexus One. I don’t understand why people complain when you can set the display option to ” on demand” so you can view only the flash content that you want to see. It won’t slow down your browser or crash your screen that way. I’m just glad Android gives me the choice to gave both and use flash how I like and when I like.
If you’re pro choice (flash-wise) say “yeah”! Yeah!
Oh yeah, and I have a friend with the apple phone 4 who has had to ask to use my DInc before because a page he was trying to view he couldn’t view on his phone due to flash. :P
Yeah for flash! Yeah for my EVO, the biggest phone I’ve ever used, that I swore was too big : )
Bumper silenced everyone? Another comment showing this websites biased. Would have been a perfectly fine article without that comment. Get off of Apples nutz! And YES anytime you can expose your competitions weaknesses, it is a perfect time to advertise it full-page or however you can.
Flash is terrible, and especially terrible on my phone. I’m glad I have the option to try to use it, but gladder still that Jobs is doing his best to kill it.
@Storm14K aka Phil:
HTMl5 will be fine for video, but what about games and interactive content? You literally cannot do all the things you can do in flash in HTML 5 without some gigantic ridiculous workaround.
Show me vector scaling in a dynamic flash game done in HTML 5.
I keep flash on On Demand and it works perfect for me and doesn’t slow down my broswer speed. Why do people complain because something doesnt begin in perfect condition? They eventually will improve it. Atleast they brought this to mobile. Soo ungrateful!
why does no one remember all those apple computer TV ads that were straight attacks on PCs????????
And those were prime time, millions watched. A simple poke from Moto is nothing compared to what Apple dished out with those damn TV spots. They were literally calling PCs dumb.
ha ha, suck on that Apple!
some of you people are just fucking stupid.the ad never says the word “apple”.all the ad says is you can view flash based websites with the droid 2.nothing more and nothing less.when you make shit something that it is not your just ignorant.SMFH.
Fuck snApple and Jobs. You’re time, has been.
Jaymes, your name is gay. Stfu, asshole!
Shit customer service, there’s a company for that.
So you get a phone that does flash and a company who haven’t got a clue how to treat their customers. Dump apple and moto look to other high end Android devices if you really can’t live without flash.