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Playing Zynga Games on the iPad

Q:

My husband and I are considering purchasing iPads. But we are addicted Zynga gamers on Facebook. Will the iPad allow me to play my Zynga games on Facebook?

A:

I haven’t tested this, but, according to information Zynga posted a couple of weeks ago, none of its popular Facebook games, such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, will play properly on the iPad because they require Adobe Flash, which the iPad doesn’t support.

The company says “they may play on the iPad, but … won’t perform nearly as well as on your home computer.”

The company’s iPhone games will work, it says, though they haven’t been revised for the screen size and resolution of the iPad.

Q:

I’m about to purchase a device that will allow me to view YouTube, etc., on my flat screen TV. I don’t expect to want to surf the Web generally on my TV—just music and videos. So my question is, why not Apple TV?

A:

Apple TV works well for music and video that you either buy directly on the device from Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store; or stream or sync from computers on your home network. It also can stream videos from YouTube, play Internet radio and display photos from the device’s own hard disk, your computers, or a couple of online photo sites. However, it cannot access the large amount of video available for streaming from the Web, from sites such as those run by the TV networks, or others such as Hulu.

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Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com


comments so far. Add yours.

  • http://betterness.net/ kawika

    The websites farmvilleiphone.com and farmvilleipad.com were both reserved by the same company currently overseeing Zynga's official FarmVille website. It's not too far a stretch to assume that Zynga will be launching official apps for Apple's mobile devices.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1249539283 Guy Styles

    I am able to play Mafia Wars on the iPad in Safari. The only thing that holds me back, is the keyboard seems to pop up every time I use an ajax call (click a link) and there is no flash support, so I can’t use the properties screen.

    Although, I am able to run my Mafia Wars bookmarklets in iPad’s Safari which is pretty sweet.

  • http://dominatemafiawarsstrategyguide.com mafia wars guide

    very helpful post thanks … i can play mafia wars on my ipod with safari too

  • http://dominatemafiawarsstrategyguide.com mafia wars guide

    i can play it on my ipad

  • http://www.facebook.com/john.shue2 John Videographer Shue

    We Rule Quests is just as good if not better than Farmville on the Ipad.

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