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Adobe Discontinues Development of Flash Player on Mobile Devices
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Oh please. Don't act as though Adobe couldn't have possibly improved flash's performance prior to Apple's criticisms. Hardware acceleration for video playback is only one piece of the puzzle. Adobe could've easily added their stage video "feature" to previous versions of Flash a long time ago. This is not even mentioning the fact that there is a lot more to Flash than just video and even so much as a simple moving ad could end up taking a bunch of your CPU. Also at the same time Adobe implemented hardware acceleration into Flash on Mac OS X was the same time it was implemented into Windows, so what was Adobe's excuse for waiting so long on Windows? Both Mac OS X and Windows were given hardware acceleration support at the same time with Flash 10.1.
Flash is garbage and I can't wait until the day I can fully uninstall this POS from my Mac. The fact that people still defend this terrible, terrible plug-in baffles my mind.
This is definitely true, but the key problem is that lack of hardware acceleration. Look at the comparisons in CPU usage with HW acceleration on/off and you'll see how much of an improvement it makes.
Stage Video is only one piece of the puzzle. That was introduced in Flash 10.2 and improves video performance by actually tailoring the Flash player to handle it. Hardware Accelerated Decoding was possible before 10.2, it was just harder to implement. Flash Player 11.2 (there is a beta out right now) will include multicore decoding of video. This will help performance on machines that can't do GPU decoding (like the MacBook in my signature).
There was a gap between the two, simply because Mac OS X gained support later.
Flash has supported general hardware acceleration on Windows since Flash Player 9 (for scaling etc. but not for decoding of video).
It's not just Flash that has suffered because of the lack of API - VLC also needed it.
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I'm about 98% of the way there.
I've moved the Flash plugin out of the main Internet Plug-Ins folder on my Mac to a separate folder in iCab. If I use a different browser (Safari, Firefox, whatever), Flash content will not render. If I need to view a site with Flash content, I fire up iCab. While this seems like an inconvenience, it turns out that I'm firing up iCab less than once a week.
On my iPad, I have the iSwifter browser to view sites with Flash content. I think it has been a couple of months since I last fired up iSwifter.
Flash is nearly dead to me.
I was never arguing that hardware acceleration didn't make an improvement. But the fact of the matter is that Adobe could've made other improvements OUTSIDE of just hardware acceleration before they needed Apple to whip their ass into gear to start getting the plug-in at an acceptable performance level.
The point is that Adobe could've done this a long time ago and they didn't. They could've put a lot of improvements into place a long time ago but they didn't.
I'm sorry but there was hardly a gap between the two. Adobe could've introduced hardware acceleration with Flash under Windows a long time ago. It was introduced into Windows with Flash 10.1 and was later introduced to Mac OS X a mere security update later to Flash 10.1. That does not look good for your case of blaming Apple when the reality is that performance was garbage on Windows when Adobe could've done something about a LONG time ago.
Ignoring the insult, you're missing the fact that while the feature was available in Macs prior to Snow Leopard, it was not usuable by Adobe for Flash until 10.6.3 and VDA got introduced, something we're trying to explain to you. QTKit, the way to access hardware acceleration for H.264 decoding did not allow Adobe to do post-processing on frames.
The fact that Mac OS X didn't support it until virtually the time Flash 10.1 was ready to go demonstrates how late the API was compared to other platforms.
You can't avoid that fact.
Apple was behind its competitors and they were actively criticising Adobe when they could have been doing something to help.
The other MAJOR problem with Apple's implementation of the API is that it:
a) Only works on Snow Leopard+ (ignoring all PPC users as well as Intel users on Leopard and Tiger)
b) Works on a small subset of GPUs (some GPUs which have the hardware to do the decoding aren't supported by OS X).
These problems did not exist on Windows. Flash did and still does support Hardware Accelerated Decoding on Windows XP, Vista and 7. The support on Windows also covers a much wider range of hardware - which is shocking given that Apple controls their computer's hardware configurations so tightly!
The ball was and still is firmly in Apple's court over whether or not every Mac user with appropriate hardware can use the feature.
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Mac OS X supported hardware acceleration a long time ago, It just wasn't open to the likes of Adobe. That doesn't change the fact that Adobe had access to this API under Windows for a long time and they never used it. Even IF Apple had had the API open prior to Adobe supporting it, Adobe would still have not introduced support for it until 10.1 as present with the way they treated it with Windows. Apple can criticize Adobe as much as they like seeing as how Adobe can't defend themselves by attacking Apple for not providing the API when they've had access to this for years on a different platform without putting it to use. If Adobe isn't going to put it to use on Windows what makes you think they were going to put it to use on Mac OS X?
All PPC users have GPU's that aren't even capable of hardware acceleration and the latest implementation in Lion supports all GPU's possible of it. What's shocking is that Adobe has had access to this API for YEARS under Windows and they never used it.
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It's nothing to do with the company, there just wasn't the support there in the OS.
No company or organisation could use the API because it didn't exist!
Yes there was, there was support in the foundation of Mac OS X for hardware acceleration. It just wasn't an open API.
Which API was this then?
If there was such an API, not making it available to developers is appalling.
I would ask you to back up your troll comments with some facts, but on second thought asking a fandroids to back up their vitriolic with some evidence is asking for a bit too much. They'd rather not tax their brain trying to come up with some facts when it's so much easier to just bleat whatever some hit-mongering hack of a journalists posts on a random blog.
Adobe didn't care about iOS until the iPad. In fact in an interview on AllThingsD, Adobe's CEO said that his company had moved on and that they had written off iOS. He even said that he expects Android to surpass iOS in tablets, all because of Flash giving Android users the "full web." Evidently, Adobe believed that Apple's refusal to support Flash would be their undoing.
For the record, I completely agree that if Apple had supported Flash, then Adobe would have continued to support it. But that's the whole point. Apple did not think Flash was a good product so they did not support it.
"Via the latest 10.6.3 update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple seems to be finally allowing third party developers to access the low level H.264 decoding power of the GPUs within its Macs. "
http://www.neowin.net/news/apple-opens-hardware-acceleration-for-flash-other-third-party-software
Doesn't matter if you think it was appalling because either way you look at it Adobe wouldn't have supported it until 10.1, the same time Apple opened access.
That doesn't mean what you're saying it does!!
They're saying that the OS has never provided it, but now does.
That doesn't mean that Apple has had access to it.
In OS X, if there's an API for something, any developer should be able to use it - even if it's not "public". The only place you can't do that is on the App Store - Apple checks each App to see if it uses "private" APIs.
If the API was private prior to 10.6.3, any code targeting it would probably work on versions prior to that (which is of course not the case).
It's crazy that people are actually excited that Flash on mobiles failed. When Adobe began its efforts to bring Flash to cell phones, it was widely popular and the best available option. Now things have changed, and Adobe is changing. Were they late? Yes, but that doesn't mean Flash hasn't been huge for the Web.
No.
They're saying that Apple has just now allowed third party developers access to the API.
Apple has always had access to it and used it in QuickTime.
No.
They're saying that Apple has just now allowed third party developers access to the API.
Apple has always had access to it and used it in QuickTime.
I'd have thought that QuickTime would use QTKit
You're using one writer's choice of words as your entire proof for a huge claim here without any further sources to back it up.
Further evidence that you're wrong: QTKit (and QuickTime) supports far more GPUs than VDA does.
Why does VDA in 10.6.3+ work worse than the VDA Apple has been using since about Mac OS X 10.3?
How on earth did they pull that one off? Spend ages making a new API and then make it worse than the old one? Simple - they didn't.
They didn't what? Maybe you forgot that Snow Leopard was an entire rewrite of the OS including some core foundations that Apple has previously put in place and with a rewrite comes removal in functionality. Play a video in QuickTime on an older Mac and check your CPU usage. Then play that same video in Flash and check your CPU usage.
QTKit was not introduced until QuickTime 7 which was way past 10.3.
This is all besides the fact that ADOBE COULD'VE INCLUDED THIS IN WINDOWS A LONG TIME AGO. Something you seem to be conveniently ignoring for your argument. You claimed that it was entirely's Apple's fault for Flash's poor performance when this clearly isn't the case in the slightest as the performance was **** on Windows when they could've done multiple things to improve it.
I'll accept that, but aren't you doing the exact same by ignoring me when I say that Apple was relatively slow with their API?
Apple could have done (and still could do) a lot more than it is doing to benefit not just Flash users, but users of any Application that needs to use the same API.
The issue here is not Adobe VS. Apple, it's Mac OS X VS. Other Operating Systems.
They were relatively slow with opening the API up to developers. I never said they weren't. That doesn't change the fact that Adobe could've done something with it on Windows when it was available to them for years. Apple had no part in Adobe's laziness with the API in Windows and the point still stands that hardware acceleration under Flash was given at the relatively same time on both Mac OS X and Windows.
This is not a thread about Mac OS X vs other operating systems. This is a thread about Flash.
Adobe has got something that will kill HMTL 5. Adobe has got a Cloud based Flash engine which will use no CPU power at all.
For mobile devices, this cloud based flash is the future.
The regular Flash will still be supported for Android. And the source code for android Flash will be made available also if someone wants to make a new version.