Flash Is Not Ready For Phones.

[shakenmartini]

A few thoughts:

1) Flash itself is not the problem... but the implementation sure can be. Adobe's supposedly working with the ARM cpu makers to add hardware support.

2) Funny memory: do you recall when Jobs showed off the National Geographic website, and it had a static image of a big cat in one section? And then it was discovered that the real NG website had a Flash menu there? So the iPhone should've shown a "download Flash" icon, but Apple had made a copy of the website and stuck in an image in place of the Flash?

3) For that matter, I'm pretty sure that the Apple website used Flash, or at least a bunch of QuickTime sections, until the iPhone came along.

I still recall the Jan '07 debut, when Jobs coyly avoided the Apple website in the iPhone's browser. (He was about to click it, but then offhandedly commented, "Oh you know what it looks like" and went someplace else. That was one of the very best car salesman pieces of handwaving and audience misdirection he's ever done.)

The reason he didn't go to the Apple website for another couple of months, was because he knew it would look awful on the iPhone, without QT or Flash and because of the huge usage of frames it had at the time, which would've made navigation a real pain.

They completely rewrote the Apple website in those months before the actual sales launch put the iPhone in consumers' hands.

Yes, and thankfully so that quicktime and flash are gone from apple's website.

Plug in architecture for the web it completely a 1990's approach to browser design. I don't know why HTML has stagnated for so long, but I honestly cannot believe it is 2009 and we still don't have a <video> tag, and that we are only now discussing it.

Even the way javascript is handled, is a poor design, IMHO (i.e. a separate engine for it). HTML or javascript had any foresight they would have come up with a much better solution.

 

[fishmoose]

The funny thing is this thread could be in the OS X section named "flash not ready for OS X" and I would agree.

Thank god for clicktoflash webkit plugin.

 

[Maclver]

I wasThinking the exact opposite. I hate how silly and overcrowded they make their screens. My mom has an htc touch and the interface is just obnoxious. I think by "plain" you realy mean "simple"

I mean come on all I want to change is the ability (w/out jailbreaking) my dock and the wallpaper on the home screen.. what is so hard about that.... the first color cell phones could change the wallpaper on the main screen

 

[fishmoose]

I mean come on all I want to change is the ability (w/out jailbreaking) my dock and the wallpaper on the home screen.. what is so hard about that.... the first color cell phones could change the wallpaper on the main screen

Having a picture behind the app icons would be reallly ugly imho. Unless you only want to change the colour from black to white or something.

 

[RiCEADDiCTBOY]

Was that video a joke? Why would you bother to include flash if that's what it looks like? It's worse than not having it at all because you're promising people something you can't deliver.



so true. Flash sites are so frustrating... I'd love to be in the room when a web developer decides flash is the way to go for a new site. I mean, what are they thinking?

2advanced.com is a great example of why Flash can and is awesome. however, i do agree that flash shouldn't be used for everything - but, it does have its purposes and usefulness

 

[RiCEADDiCTBOY]

Having a picture behind the app icons would be reallly ugly imho. Unless you only want to change the colour from black to white or something.

i agree...apple really didn't give the consumer much flexibility with the ui

 

[kas23]

The funny thing is this thread could be in the OS X section named "flash not ready for OS X" and I would agree.

Thank god for clicktoflash webkit plugin.

Can someone post me some examples of websites I can go to (provide me some links) that supposedly my MBP won't be able to handle? I'm curious.

 

[fishmoose]

Can someone post me some examples of websites I can go to (provide me some links) that supposedly my MBP won't be able to handle? I'm curious.

It can handle it, but the CPU usage will go up making the fans to kick into high gear, YouTube does it for me.

 

[John.B]

Can someone post me some examples of websites I can go to (provide me some links) that supposedly my MBP won't be able to handle? I'm curious.

Fire up Activity Monitor, then hit Flash-heavy site like ESPN and report back what happens to your CPU utilization and fan speeds after about a minute. That's CPU cycles that aren't available to other applications.

 

[kas23]

Fire up Activity Monitor, then hit Flash-heavy site like ESPN and report back what happens to your CPU utilization and fan speeds after about a minute. That's CPU cycles that aren't available to other applications.

What does this mean for my real-life internet experience though? Does the site lag or crash? CPU useage going up just means CPU useage is going up. Therefore, if you don't like the how much Flash hogs your CPU, stop staring at Activity Monitor.

 

[John.B]

What does this mean for my real-life internet experience though? Does the site lag or crash? CPU useage going up just means CPU useage is going up. Therefore, if you don't like the how much Flash hogs your CPU, stop staring at Activity Monitor.

I do other stuff with my Mac than just websurfing, often concurrently. By CPU usage going up, I mean pegged; fans at full rpms. If I didn't have FlashBlock, I'd know which sites had Flash content just by the sounds of the fans (the same way I'm always reminded which sites I have whitelisted in FlashBlock). I don't want my C2D processor turned into a single core, just because some developer or ad dork was too lazy to create an ad that wasn't a complete drain to my Mac's performance. Adobe could fix this if they wanted to, they just don't care. If they don't care how it runs on OS X, how are they ever going to get it to perform on the iPhone or Touch?

My guess is that you feel insulted because you develop for Flash?

 

[t0mat0]

Yes, and thankfully so that quicktime and flash are gone from apple's website.

Plug in architecture for the web it completely a 1990's approach to browser design. I don't know why HTML has stagnated for so long, but I honestly cannot believe it is 2009 and we still don't have a <video> tag, and that we are only now discussing it.

Even the way javascript is handled, is a poor design, IMHO (i.e. a separate engine for it). HTML or javascript had any foresight they would have come up with a much better solution.

Bit more than that? I thought the draft was in for 2 months time for HMTL5? (802.11n has been in draft for how long? Yet we're using it now too). You can use HTML5 now if desired... Certainly not everyone will pick it up, but the one's that do will get some good advantages of what they can do with their HTML pages, and video is a major one.

 

[Pressure]

What does this mean for my real-life internet experience though? Does the site lag or crash? CPU useage going up just means CPU useage is going up. Therefore, if you don't like the how much Flash hogs your CPU, stop staring at Activity Monitor.

Flash is the bane of everything mobile and more importantly, batteries. It is just not ready to make the transition to the mobile world.

Websites relying heavily on flash will make your internet experience feel sluggish and cut your batterylife in half (your milage may vary). This is especially true with mobile phones and low-end computers. They are just not powerful enough to give the end user a seamless experience.

In the end it will lead to many wasted CPU cycles and increased pollution (if you want an environmental angle at it as well).

I hate flash nearly as much as I hate Internet Explorer...

 

[kdarling]

If they don't care how it runs on OS X, how are they ever going to get it to perform on the iPhone or Touch?

Obviously by working on it. Just because they don't seem to care about the desktop version (who knows what Apple - Adobe feud is going on there), doesn't mean they can't do a nice mobile version.

There are a heckuva lot of ARM based mobile devices out there.

 

[John.B]

Obviously by working on it. Just because they don't seem to care about the desktop version (who knows what Apple - Adobe feud is going on there), doesn't mean they can't do a nice mobile version.

There are a heckuva lot of ARM based mobile devices out there.

Show me the "nice mobile version" of Flash on some other device. It doesn't exist, except in people's minds.

Just in case anyone forgot how we got to this point in the discussion, this is a link back to post #1 of this thread about engadget's experience with Flash on the HTC "Hero".

And people accuse Apple of having a RDF...

 

[redman042]

Flash is bloatware unfortunately. Adobe has to start from scratch to make it usable and nice on the iPhone, and I get the feeling Apple thinks this is pretty much a lost cause.

 

[kdarling]

Show me the "nice mobile version" of Flash on some other device. It doesn't exist, except in people's minds.

Agreed, it doesn't exist yet. All I'm saying is that the poor performance of the Mac version has nothing to do with what a newly written mobile version can do.

I'm not a fan of Flash on current handhelds. I've done some playing around programming with that, and was horrified at the slowness.

But there are 1GHz phones coming out now. Between that, rewriting, and hardware graphics support, I can see it eventually working okay.

 

[fishmoose]

Agreed, it doesn't exist yet. All I'm saying is that the poor performance of the Mac version has nothing to do with what a newly written mobile version can do.

I'm not a fan of Flash on current handhelds. I've done some playing around programming with that, and was horrified at the slowness.

But there are 1GHz phones coming out now. Between that, rewriting, and hardware graphics support, I can see it eventually working okay.

But the thing is, if Adobe can't find the passion to make it work okay on a top modern mac running the best OS out there, why should they find the passion to make it work proper on a phone?