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Apple's Hiring of Kevin Lynch Questioned Amid Concerns Over His Staunch Defense of Flash
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Lets also not forget that Lynch accepted his job at Apple despite all this publicness over flash. If he had such a beef toward Apple and their business he wouldn't have even bothered with an interview.
I think Lynch's attitude toward Flash may have been a bit over the top in his defense of it, but I think we can boil that down to "it was his job" The same could be said about Grubers other criticism - that as CTO he was leading the direction of Flash. We don't know how much he may have to do with that though. For all we know Lynch may have argued about improving it or at least not ignoring the problems about it. Lynch probably was smart enough to know that he probably couldn't just kill it suddenly even if he wanted to. And that could have been Adobe at large. If Adobe's executives wanted to keep Flash around, Lynch might not have the fight in him to stop it.
I don't know how Lynch privately felt about Flash, but he is certainly more than just Flash anyhow.
I think Lynch's attitude toward Flash may have been a bit over the top in his defense of it, but I think we can boil that down to "it was his job" The same could be said about Grubers other criticism - that as CTO he was leading the direction of Flash. We don't know how much he may have to do with that though. For all we know Lynch may have argued about improving it or at least not ignoring the problems about it. Lynch probably was smart enough to know that he probably couldn't just kill it suddenly even if he wanted to. And that could have been Adobe at large. If Adobe's executives wanted to keep Flash around, Lynch might not have the fight in him to stop it.
I don't know how Lynch privately felt about Flash, but he is certainly more than just Flash anyhow.
Comparing flash to objective-C is like comparing Apples to airplanes.
Flash is a platform and Objective-C is a programming language. And I don't know what you mean by things running much better and smoother in flash because if you are talking about web apps vs phone apps then again its not even a proper comparison. If you are comparing flash apps (web "apps" running on the android or other mobile platforms) vs native apps (written in Objective-C) then I have no idea where you've been for the past 5-6 years.
Again, comparing Apples to Airplanes, in flash you use things like action scrips and such, which is a bastardized version of javascript (which even javascript is hardly a "GOOD" programming language). Compared that to XCode, the development environment that help launch over 800,000+ apps on the app store, not counting the Mac App Store Apps AND all the apps that preceeds the mac app store. Yeah I'm sure all those developers (including myself) hates XCode and wish we were using flash.
Its not just Flash. Adobe is a horrible company. Adobe is lazy. Adobe releases crappy products that make Macs crash. And they don't fix it because they are too lazy.
That is the opposite of Apple.
He will not be a good fit.
Trashing a guy for advocating Flash while working at Adobe is crazy, how is that even news? Let's see what he's actually doing at Apple before rushing to any judgements okay?
I also don't get the severe hatred for Flash; I like Flash, what I don't like is what a ton of people used it for, namely over-complicated, and often slow, websites, and streaming movie players.
It's still a great platform for making simple, accessible vector animations and games. But really Adobe has significantly mis-stepped by not positioning Flash as a platform into HTML 5 by converting the Flash program to bundle a .swf with Javascript that can read and present it as HTML 5. This would not only have made it a lot easier for people with existing Flash content to continue to be available on devices not supporting Flash, but also secured them a place in the HTML 5 space with a set of rich application tools (Flash and Flash Builder).
Now it's in a kind of weird space where it's trying to compete in terms of gaming performance, but in a space where Javascript is become more capable so quickly that Flash simply can't last given how slow it's been to adopt new features. It's still good for vector animations and simple games, but that aspect of it hasn't been improved by Adobe in years thanks to their focusing on steaming video and 3D games, neither of which Flash as a platform is all that great at.
I also don't get the severe hatred for Flash; I like Flash, what I don't like is what a ton of people used it for, namely over-complicated, and often slow, websites, and streaming movie players.
It's still a great platform for making simple, accessible vector animations and games. But really Adobe has significantly mis-stepped by not positioning Flash as a platform into HTML 5 by converting the Flash program to bundle a .swf with Javascript that can read and present it as HTML 5. This would not only have made it a lot easier for people with existing Flash content to continue to be available on devices not supporting Flash, but also secured them a place in the HTML 5 space with a set of rich application tools (Flash and Flash Builder).
Now it's in a kind of weird space where it's trying to compete in terms of gaming performance, but in a space where Javascript is become more capable so quickly that Flash simply can't last given how slow it's been to adopt new features. It's still good for vector animations and simple games, but that aspect of it hasn't been improved by Adobe in years thanks to their focusing on steaming video and 3D games, neither of which Flash as a platform is all that great at.
And this guy now works for Apple? Really, I can't believe it.
There must be something hidden we can't see.
But I guess, he's just another Browett.
Hopefully, there will be no new hiring for OS X or Mac Hardware.
...isn't this all water under the bridge anyhow, considering that Flash as a mobile platform died when Adobe dumped Flash for Android?
In other news, Steve Jobs publicly rubbished 7inch tablets, USB3, multitasking on tablets... good job he's not coming back, then! Now wait for the U-turn on 5" smartphones...
well flash works fine on my phone and I can stream football games while im at work so there are some reasons.
Flash is a terrible piece of software. Haven't used it on my Macs in over three years and don't miss it at all.
Think all Adobe software is bloated and poorly writtenglad that I no longer have to use Acrobat, Photoshop, etc.
Hope Kevin is a good hire, but his software pedigree doesn't bode well for Apple.
Think all Adobe software is bloated and poorly writtenglad that I no longer have to use Acrobat, Photoshop, etc.
Hope Kevin is a good hire, but his software pedigree doesn't bode well for Apple.
If Kevin Lynch is a Bozo, than whoever hired him is a Bozo too, yet if the person that hired him was Tim Cook, than that means that Tim is a Bozo, and if Tim is a Bozo, than that means that the person that hired him is a Bozo, and that would mean that *GASP* Steve Jobs was a Bozo, which would mean that God was a Bozo, because it was 'God' that brought Steve back to Apple Computer...
OMG!!!
OMG!!!
To be fair to Flash, even today it is STILL worth defending, because there's no equally quick and reliable way to reach anywhere near as large an audience with anywhere near the level of motion, audio, interactivity, and easy of future changes. The tools to compete with Flash will improve, but they're not there yet. Nor is the base of really modern best-in-class HTML5 browser users.
If someone wants an interactive learning piece, game, or whatever, and they choose HTML5 instead of Flash, they are limited in what they can do, they will have results that act badly for many desktop users, and they will spend FAR more money to get something FAR less easy to edit in future. Some companies have the budget for that. As both a Flash AND HTML5 developer, I find most companies don't. And 3D Flash has no serious competition at all.
There IS no cost-effective way to get interactive content with no limits (audio, 3D) onto all platforms. Cannot be done. The ideal is probably Flash, plus a lesser HTML5 fallback that is at least useful, plus an iOS app plus an Android app. Big bucks!
So, Flash will live on a while longer.
Flash on mobile... should not be defended. Lynch was wrong to beat that horse so long.
If someone wants an interactive learning piece, game, or whatever, and they choose HTML5 instead of Flash, they are limited in what they can do, they will have results that act badly for many desktop users, and they will spend FAR more money to get something FAR less easy to edit in future. Some companies have the budget for that. As both a Flash AND HTML5 developer, I find most companies don't. And 3D Flash has no serious competition at all.
There IS no cost-effective way to get interactive content with no limits (audio, 3D) onto all platforms. Cannot be done. The ideal is probably Flash, plus a lesser HTML5 fallback that is at least useful, plus an iOS app plus an Android app. Big bucks!
So, Flash will live on a while longer.
Flash on mobile... should not be defended. Lynch was wrong to beat that horse so long.
The Australian government warned that using Apple Maps data could be deadly. That's pretty extreme. The bad data likely has caused other problems that have not risen to an official warning from a major country's government.
Yes indeed, the underlying mapping data Apple is using is bad. It does NOT Just Work. Indeed, if you trust it to just Work, you could end up dead.
What about Java? Why not use Java instead of Flash? Or did Larry Ellison's ego kill Java too?
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But the maps in my Garmin aren't a whole lot better, and neither are the online maps at maps.google.com. Even Yahoo maps suck at times. People need to know how to use them, but yes, there have been some glaring missteps lately... But everyone has bad times at some point in their lives.
Indeed. Don't people understand that when a license expires, it is gone for good? It cannot be renwed or extended. No new licence can be entered into.
What could Apple have done? The license just expired. That is the end.
/s
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According to Steve jobs, that is not correct:
Personally, I believe every word that The Steve ever said. It is NOT true that Apple users cannot access the full web without Flash.
Considering I'm a female that would be a no.
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Well if that's then it's not Apple's fault right? Just blame the companies that are providing them bad data.
I would think so.
Or he could be like Tim Cook - who came from another un-Apple like place. Fact is, we don't know.
you mean Apple, the company that hasn't fixed the macbook airs wifi issues for the last couple of years?
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sorry, but there is alot of crap written here about flash. I use it weekly at the minimum and ive never had all of these crashes everyone is talking about here. Its as though just because Steve didnt like flash that all the apple fanboys cant like it either. Cry me a river.
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it might not be in the play store but its still easily available to anyone that wants it for their Android device.
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actually they still had over a year to run when they removed it.
Java is extremely buggy and performs orders of magnitude more poorly than Flash. That's why no one really uses Java applets. Plus Java developers don't have access to something as awesome and powerful as Adobe Flash CS6.
Saying that Flash performs worse than HTML5 is like saying a Ferrari consumes a lot more gas than a bicycle. You can't compare the two, since HTML5 can't do nearly as much as Flash can, and especially not in the exact same way on every platform. That's exactly why Flash should only be used for certain things like games, and not banners and websites. The fact that people are silly and use a high performance tool to do low performance task is a mistake on their part, not on the tool's part. You won't cut paper with a chainsaw, either, that doesn't mean a chainsaw is always better than scissors.
Some may say that it was his job to defend Flash and that is why he did it.
But I see it another way. HTML5 is still quite new and there are not many really great GUI driven tools for which to create HTML5 dynamic content. That is to say there are tools but not to the level of sophistication that the Flash development tools are at (or were until very recently).
So the case could be made that Adobe could have very well made monstrous profits by supplying HTML5 authoring tools to developers in the same way they sell Photoshop and Premier to creative professionals.
Adobe clearly does not need to own the format and the client viewing software to make a profit as Photoshop and Premier clearly show. They use industry standard formats that a myriad of clients are able to display and Adobe is the de facto choice for Photo editing and a very strong competitor in video editing next to Avid and to a lesser extent Apple with Final Cut.
I believe the true reason they did not jump on the HTML5 bandwagon as soon as they could have done is because it just didn't fit within their roadmap at that time. To dump Flash and months perhaps even years of development on the Tools and Client side software would have cost them a lot of money they didn't yet have a toolset to sell to developers who were using HTML5 so it was much easier to keep pushing flash and act like HTML5 is no big deal as they had no answer to the HTML5 quandary.
And really with his position within Adobe he should have been able to fix their roadmap and setup a new team to solely work on HTML5. He obviously did not or was too slow to do so. That doesn't make him an A Team player to me that makes him at best a wimp an at worst an incompetent VP.
But I see it another way. HTML5 is still quite new and there are not many really great GUI driven tools for which to create HTML5 dynamic content. That is to say there are tools but not to the level of sophistication that the Flash development tools are at (or were until very recently).
So the case could be made that Adobe could have very well made monstrous profits by supplying HTML5 authoring tools to developers in the same way they sell Photoshop and Premier to creative professionals.
Adobe clearly does not need to own the format and the client viewing software to make a profit as Photoshop and Premier clearly show. They use industry standard formats that a myriad of clients are able to display and Adobe is the de facto choice for Photo editing and a very strong competitor in video editing next to Avid and to a lesser extent Apple with Final Cut.
I believe the true reason they did not jump on the HTML5 bandwagon as soon as they could have done is because it just didn't fit within their roadmap at that time. To dump Flash and months perhaps even years of development on the Tools and Client side software would have cost them a lot of money they didn't yet have a toolset to sell to developers who were using HTML5 so it was much easier to keep pushing flash and act like HTML5 is no big deal as they had no answer to the HTML5 quandary.
And really with his position within Adobe he should have been able to fix their roadmap and setup a new team to solely work on HTML5. He obviously did not or was too slow to do so. That doesn't make him an A Team player to me that makes him at best a wimp an at worst an incompetent VP.
So, if this were a sexist comment, potential ban. Racist, probable ban.
But against autistic? That's ok, we like ****ing bullying them.