Adobe Executive Kevin Lynch Discusses Flash on Mac, iPhone, and iPad

[TheAshMan]

I'm sure that is accurate, but

I'd like to know who the "top websites" are, and how many there are of which 85% use flash. It seems a bit of a throw away statement.

The reason for that is because it is used is for advertisements, hardly a requirement to experience the web. Organizations use it for ads because it is animated and attracts the eye (hence the name), so it is more effective, but it is also annoying. No doubt that Flash is a great platform for applications on the web and is a benefit to us all, but only when you want to use it. It shouldn't be a requirement for the majority of content any more than RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media Player or Silverlight should be. Apple is rejecting Flash on mobile devices for multiple reasons including their business growth, but it works out that they align with ours. Open standards is the way to go.

 

[CylonGlitch]

And there goes millions of dollars of revenue for Apple. Why allow a browser-based application to take over their business?

And here is a message from the Adobe CEO saying that Flash for Mac SUCKS and that they F'ed up... and you still wear the tin-foil hat thinking that it is all a conspiracy.

Just like iTunes would NEVER allow DRM free songs because it would cut into their profits, right?

 

[inlovewithi]

Lol

I knew that when Jobs called Adobe lazy, that the mac fans were going to start repeating over and over on the Internet. The guy is smart, getting people to spread the FUD that he wants to spread. Manipulating, but overall smart.

Forget that Apple doesn't want to work with Adobe to make flash better on the Mac.

Apple hates flash because it would cost them money.

 

[kirky29]

I use ClickToFlash on my Mac and the only time I do 'Click to Flash' is on movie streaming sites, such as YouTube and MegaVideo. If some of the smaller ones were made into HTML5, then the Internet would be a lot happier!

Just the other day I accidentally clicked on a Flash banner and - boom.
SAFARI QUIT UNEXPECTEDLY

 

[Eddyisgreat]

And here is a message from the Adobe CEO saying that Flash for Mac SUCKS and that they F'ed up... and you still wear the tin-foil hat thinking that it is all a conspiracy.

Are you talking about Kevin Lynch? He's Adobe's Chief Technology Officer. Shantanu Narayen is the acting CEO.

Anyway I've met Kevin on a few occasions. He's a great visionary but can admit when he's wrong.

 

[TMay]

i think there is some kind of movie website... that people have a cheap membership and stream movies... netmovies?... netfilms? netficks? can't remember...

Silverlight on the mac.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Are you talking about Kevin Lynch? He's Adobe's Chief Technology Officer. Shantanu Narayen is the acting CEO.

Anyway I've met Kevin on a few occasions. He's a great visionary but can admit when he's wrong.

Oops, sorry, you are right, wrong title. CTO.

I'm not bashing him, in fact I respect him for coming out and saying what he said. I was referring back to pmjoe who thinks it is still Apple PR fud.

Forget that Apple doesn't want to work with Adobe to make flash better on the Mac.

Is it really Apple's responsibility to make Adobe more money? If Apple really felt that they HAVE to have flash, they would because it would make Apple more money, but there is little incentive for them to do so. It's Adobe's job to get their act together.

I own CS4 and in all honestly, there are things that make it look like it is very poorly written. Back when the move to Intel, it took Adobe over a YEAR to update their code because of the way it was coded. One of the main Adobe developers even said that things are very badly coded.

Sounds like Adobe is good at selling their stuff and taking people's money, but not the best at putting out solid stable code.

 

[mikethebigo]

Everyone is so against Adobe, but I'm not siding with Apple on this one. I've read that Flash isn't as good on the Mac because Apple hasn't programmed the right API's or given the right level of access for Flash to use hardware acceleration. Of course the CPU is going to take a hit if Flash can't do that. The iPhone, iPad, and all Macs have nice graphics chips, and I bet if they made it possible for Adobe to use them, Flash would be a non-issue.

I mean, look at the Nexus One. It multitasks while running flash. The CPUs we have in these devices are ridiculously powerful. Apple is definitely doing this because they don't like Flash and they don't like the potential revenue loss from supporting Flash. That is all.

 

[zweigand]

Oh, *NOW* they are interested in fixing Flash on the Mac. I see how that works.

 

[DocNYz]

I hate to say this but SilverLight runs rings around Flash, at least on my machines.

Seriously. How ridiculous is it going to be when silverlight AND bing are the defaults that work well on our macs over adobe and google?

I can't believe he has the balls to say flash doesn't crash macs. I've NEVER in the past 5-10 years, as far back as I can remember, had a single full mac crash where flash wasn't present. At first it would just crash safari and I could force quit that, but more and more recently it's actually been crashing my entire computer, something that never was an issue with Mac since, I don't now, 12 or 15 years ago????

 

[DocNYz]

Oops, sorry, you are right, wrong title. CTO.

I'm not bashing him, in fact I respect him for coming out and saying what he said. I was referring back to pmjoe who thinks it is still Apple PR fud.



Is it really Apple's responsibility to make Adobe more money? If Apple really felt that they HAVE to have flash, they would because it would make Apple more money, but there is little incentive for them to do so. It's Adobe's job to get their act together.

I own CS4 and in all honestly, there are things that make it look like it is very poorly written. Back when the move to Intel, it took Adobe over a YEAR to update their code because of the way it was coded. One of the main Adobe developers even said that things are very badly coded.

Sounds like Adobe is good at selling their stuff and taking people's money, but not the best at putting out solid stable code.

Serisouly, I've never had a product that needed as many updates/revisions as Adobe's. Especially for people that don't use it every day, every time they open it up it asks them to update and for non tech-savyy people that actually makes them update less frequently and causes even more problems. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Photoshop and have the entire design studio package, but their coding should improve over time and become more efficient and concise, not the other way around as we've seen.

 

[bdkennedy1]

I think it's too late for Flash. It needed to be rewritten from scratch years ago.

Now Flash is in the same place as RealPlayer when it started going downhill.

 

[deepen03]

For mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone, it's all about battery life.

Flash causes increased CPU usage.
Increased CPU usage causes a faster battery drain.
Faster battery drain causes end-users to complain about the device.

yea but atleast they should give us an option to use it! its my problem if the battery goes faster not apple's!

They should atleast give us Flash, but limited to only video content on the web if they are scared of people playing flash games and not getting apps from them. It annoys me to go to a site and see a white box with a question mark! I want to watch my videos! If Apple wants to compete with other phones like Android an Nokia, they should atleat give us a limited version of the plug-in restricted to just web videos and nothing else..

 

[talkingnewmedia]

From Media Decoder (NYT):

“Apple prevents any third party companies from developing plug-ins to Safari Mobile (on the iPhone, and as we gather from Jobs’s demo, on the iPad). This is true whether it is Adobe Flash Player, or whether it’s anyone else (Silverlight, Acrobat, Real Player, Windows Media, etc.). Mobile Safari has a notion of a plug-in architecture, but they only support it for their own Quicktime player and pdf viewer. This is why consumers do not get the full Web experience when browsing from Safari on an iPhone or iPad. It is not a technical limitation of Flash; it is a limitation imposed by Apple.

It is possible, however, to develop a standalone application using technology called “Packager for iPhone,” which will ship as part of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 later this year, and to deploy that application to the iPhone or iPad.”

 

[deepen03]

From Media Decoder (NYT):

“Apple prevents any third party companies from developing plug-ins to Safari Mobile (on the iPhone, and as we gather from Jobs’s demo, on the iPad). This is true whether it is Adobe Flash Player, or whether it’s anyone else (Silverlight, Acrobat, Real Player, Windows Media, etc.). Mobile Safari has a notion of a plug-in architecture, but they only support it for their own Quicktime player and pdf viewer. This is why consumers do not get the full Web experience when browsing from Safari on an iPhone or iPad. It is not a technical limitation of Flash; it is a limitation imposed by Apple.

It is possible, however, to develop a standalone application using technology called “Packager for iPhone,” which will ship as part of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 later this year, and to deploy that application to the iPhone or iPad.”

yea and Apple should lift that limitation like right about now.. If they want the iPhone to truly be the best out there, then Flash is the way to go. And I don't want full blown flash for games or anything, just restrict it to videos if Apple is worried. I just want to be able to go to a site and see it in its full desktop glory.. Thats what separates the iphone from the old mobile browsers. FLASH SHOULD BE AN OPTION FOR US!

 

[MMX]

Flash performance on my i7 iMac is below terrible.

 

[TMay]

The thing I love about being a Flash developer is that even if HTML5 kills flash on the web .. I still can use Flash to create Desktop applications that run on Mac/Windows/Linux ... and also Flash to create iPhone/Andriod apps.

So I say, who cares if HTML5 does better.. I'll just program in that also ... the future is mobile applications and Flash is far ahead there.

People quickly forget that the web isn't the only place Flash runs lol.

Your statement is a bit confusing, only from the standpoint that you refer both to the Flash Player and the Flash development application as Flash. Many people, myself included, have weaned ourselves of Flash Player, but more power to you if you can create desktop and mobile apps with the Flash development system, especially when CS5 arrives.

My own opinion is that apps developed natively, whether that be iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome OS, or Windows 7 Mobile, will be superior to Flash CS5 apps. YMMV

 

[inlovewithi]

Everyone is so against Adobe, but I'm not siding with Apple on this one. I've read that Flash isn't as good on the Mac because Apple hasn't programmed the right API's or given the right level of access for Flash to use hardware acceleration. Of course the CPU is going to take a hit if Flash can't do that. The iPhone, iPad, and all Macs have nice graphics chips, and I bet if they made it possible for Adobe to use them, Flash would be a non-issue.

I mean, look at the Nexus One. It multitasks while running flash. The CPUs we have in these devices are ridiculously powerful. Apple is definitely doing this because they don't like Flash and they don't like the potential revenue loss from supporting Flash. That is all.

That is hard for many people to accept. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is also against HTML5, but only talk in a positive way about it because they know it's years away before it can start cutting into their revenue. In the meantime they can use HTML5 to bash flash.

 

[Ramius]

Wow... I did not know that Bill Gates had started working for Adobe.

 

[DocNYz]

yea and Apple should lift that limitation like right about now.. If they want the iPhone to truly be the best out there, then Flash is the way to go. And I don't want full blown flash for games or anything, just restrict it to videos if Apple is worried. I just want to be able to go to a site and see it in its full desktop glory.. Thats what separates the iphone from the old mobile browsers. FLASH SHOULD BE AN OPTION FOR US!

It definitely is limiting the iPhone/iPad as well as sales, but seriously, most sites I care about either will give you the option of both formats, rework it jsut for the iPhone (as Hulu supposedly is doing which will be incredible), or can suck it up and use H.264 which is amazing quality and works better for everyone anyway.

 

[G4R2]

I knew that when Jobs called Adobe lazy, that the mac fans were going to start repeating over and over on the Internet. The guy is smart, getting people to spread the FUD that he wants to spread. Manipulating, but overall smart.

Forget that Apple doesn't want to work with Adobe to make flash better on the Mac.

Apple hates flash because it would cost them money.

It's not quite as simple as Apple hating Flash because it costs them money. The revenue that Apple derives from the App store is just above break even so driving users to the App store doesn't necessarily translate to more revenue for Apple.

One major underlying reason for the tension that exists between Apple and Flash is differing views of how an OS should handle hardware acceleration. OS X, and Linux for that matter, don't like apps that bypass system API's in order to achieve hardware acceleration, which is what Flash would like to do. As a result, on OS X and Linux, Flash defaults to the CPU for its rendering which is why computers heat up and fans prepare for takeoff when Flash is invoked on these systems.

That's not the case for Windows which does allow Flash to circumvent the system API's and directly access the hardware.

Additionally, Adobe's development cycle directly influences how software that relies on it develops. A frequently cited example of this is Safari. Had Apple chosen to wait for a 64 bit implementation of Flash for Safari we would still be using 32 bit Safari. This would also likely mean 32 bit iTunes since both Safari and iTunes use the same web rendering engines. Apple decided to circumvent this by permitting plug ins to behave as their own processes separately from the browser, thus allowing Safari to exist as a 64 bit application while Flash is 32 bit. Many argue that this arrangement is a huge detriment to browsers that use Flash because no browser is fully optimized.

Guess who gets blamed for this? Not Adobe but whoever is making the browser. When a browser crashes few users blame the plug in that caused the crash.

Adobe, of course, in interested in making money itself from the dominance it possesses over certain media content on the internet. And few Flash users seem to be aware of this or care. On the contrary, they argue mindlessly in Adobe's defense and against their own self interests. And while it's true that Apple has its own corporate motives for shunning Flash and embracing HTML 5, the end result is that both internet users in general and Apple are in the same boat if for different reasons.

What all internet users should demand is that Flash be made open source and that all websites use open source standards to deliver their content. This will permit developers and manufacturers the ability to full optimize their products and deliver the best possible experience without having to wait for Adobe to get around to providing an optimized plug in. It would also ensure that all users have the best experience possible regardless of the product they are using.

 

[algengler]

No kidding

"Well, there's a lot of Flash content on the Web,"

That's why I use ClickToFlash to stop it from loading, unless I want it to.

 

[Journojulz]

(this is from an article I recently wrote, and I think it is appropriate to this chat thread) Apple is making a fortune selling iPhone apps through the iTunes store. Millions and millions of dollars pour in every month as users buy PacMan, Assassin’s Creed, and Angelina Ballerina Dress-Up (that app is my daughter’s, I swear).

Now imagine what would happen if Apple installed a Flash plugin for the iPhone Safari browser. Soon, somebody would create a really cool, Flash-based PacMan browser application.

Users could then go online on their iPhone and play PacMan, for free, through their web browsers. The programmer would get ad revenue without Apple as the middleman.

yes, yes and yes

This is the reason flash is verboten - it messes up their business model for apps and media streaming content.

Fortunately only 2% of the online flash is actually good web design - and that is where apps come in.

The rest is annoying ads or (usually pirated) media

Other objections - however valid - are incidental.

But don't worry - other smartphones are available.

I am sticking with the iphone - i really don't care much for farmville.

 

[AppleMojo]

Wow.

Again, every single anti-flash post here is nothing but dribble, spewing the same unimaginative kool-aid they drank in from their favorite tech-blog written with about the same understanding of technology.

Feel insulted? good.

Those who are not educated on the topic all seem to scream the same things about never seeing Flash, and how it must all be for advertisements, etc. Which, nullifies all future noise from your mouth and fingers as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't take any thought to spit out what you read in.

Now on to business.

I was discussing this very topic with a colleague of few weeks ago and he was telling me about how iPhone apps are killing the Flash market. He brought up an Example application on the iPhone called Airstrip and how it is revolutionizing the industry, and they chose Objective-C and the iPhone to bring it to the market, because no other technology could do it and he wanted to know why it wasn't built using Flash, if Flash was so great and was around before the iPhone.

Well, hop on over to http://www.airstriptech.com/ and take a gander at the use of Flash right smack in the middle of their home page. Also take note, that the other versions of their application for other platforms are built with Flex (AS3 and MXML) which of course uses the Flash player. These are just languages chosen for specific purposes. That's all.

The Olympics seem relevant at the moment, as well as use an advanced datagrid component delivered in Flash.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/teamusa/browser/index.html

How about another map / browsing component for the Olympics delivered in Flash.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/nations/region=4/index.html

The Olympic sites also deliver content using Java. There is a purpose for each.

I don't have to list these websites, the deniers are full of crap. Flash is everywhere.

What the majority of these kool-aid drinkers are forgetting is that developers ARE developing in Flash, which means there is an investment in time and education to produce even the most annoying of advertisements. It is a living, breathing industry.

Go browse and learn about AS3 (an ECMA standard Object Oriented development language - compiled, not script):

http://www.adobe.com/livedocs/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/

or just understand its history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript

Killing Flash is going to be very much equal to removing Python or Ruby from the industry. It isn't going to happen.

Now, if you've made it this far and you are interested in more facts, take a gander at this entry showing job trends and a few popular languages including Objective-C and Actionscript.

http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/02/01/cut-the-drama-flash-is-here-to-stay/

Regards to Adobe being lazy; Go educate yourself so you sound more intelligent on the topic:

Air on Mobile Devices:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201002/021510FlashPlayerMWC.html

Tinic Uro blogs about Flash performance / tech:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

And, we'll finish this off with the fact that more than 7 million people attempted to download Flash on the iPhone:

http://www.flashmobileblog.com/2010/02/06/iphone-stats-from-the-flash-player-download-center/

And don't get me started on HTML5 and it actually being considered a contender at its current product maturity level. a 1.0 or even 2.0 product will never catch up. The world turns.

I'm not going to hang out and bash with the less knowledgeable, so you are free to do that amongst yourselves.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: There are no personal attacks here, so if you are crying it isn't cause I specifically called you a ninny. Go hug your mother.

 

[Webhamster]

I'm fairly sure that Kevin is actually Steve Balmer with a mask on.

Well at least Microsoft is slowly waking up and starting to change their products. Adobe is still in the stage of hoping they can fool the world by saying that their products are great and pretending that they listen.

The CS4 bundle is filled with bugs since day 1 and some of them are still not fixed. Adobe is very aware of this (unless they simply ignore their forum) and still this guy has the nerve to say that Adobe listens to their end-users.

Steve keep up the good work of creating an Adobe free world. Maybe Apple can release iPhotoshop, that would really be a great thing.