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Hey Apple...Adobe has learned its lesson! We want Flash
- Thread starter TapHappy
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I completely understand that just because I don't want/use something, doesn't mean that other people feel the same. That being said, I have never once come across a time where I needed flash on my iPhone and if it's going to be somewhat sluggish, or bog the phone down in any way at all then I really don't want it, to be honest. Further, didn't the MacBook Air gain almost 2 full hours by Apple not shipping with flash. What does that mean for the iPhone?
Apple is already pushing the envelope with acceptable battery life. Yes, they have done a wonderful job improving the battery itself over the years but at the same time, the phone keeps getting more powerful so the battery life ratio has been the same throughout. I'd love for my phone to not have a mandatory charging session every single night, and if they add flash I fear it will be even worse.
Apple is already pushing the envelope with acceptable battery life. Yes, they have done a wonderful job improving the battery itself over the years but at the same time, the phone keeps getting more powerful so the battery life ratio has been the same throughout. I'd love for my phone to not have a mandatory charging session every single night, and if they add flash I fear it will be even worse.
The next version of the player which just moved from beta to release candidate Flash 10.2 is delivering 10 fold performance improvement. If Adobe delivers very soon what people seem to have tested successfully already, Flash will not consume more resources than HTML5 when used for the same exact purpose.
Flash on mobile devices is hot garbage. I really want Flash but not whats currently available on some devices. I'd rather do without if its going to be that ******. And it is...if you argue otherwise your just full of it.
Hopefully one day it will be great to use in which case I would really like it.
Hopefully one day it will be great to use in which case I would really like it.
For video on websites updated to support stage video.
Depending on what the purpose is, of course.
Most of the time the Flash Player becomes a resource problem it is because something very fancy is being rendered and most of the time it is related to vector, animations, video and or effects put together with full control over alpha transparency. Adobe took the matter very seriously and there will be a showdown this year with the result of the hard work from the engineers at Google, Adobe, Nvidia, Youtube working together to make Flash a better choice. Flash performance issues will vanish this year. With player 10.2 there is no difference whether the video is just playing or all kind of stuff happens on top of it. With full alpha. Flash is powerful and it needs to be handled not killed. Did you know the Flash VM is faster than the JavaScript (HTML5 relies on it)? I had an argument with a co worker at Disney, I ending up proving that I was rendering the company's social marketing stats and graphs simply faster than any other VM.
The purpose is to do everything we need to deliver engaging experiences. HTML5 comes short and H.264 is just one sad episode of the mess HTML has been for decades.
Not anymore, you will see, give it a chance, Adobe took this very seriously and they are pushing innovation right now, it will become obvious into 2011.
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It's an accross the board improvement, Adobe worked with the best engineers and tech companies to optimize Flash everywhere from web to mobile to desktop and tv.
The purpose is to do everything we need to deliver engaging experiences. HTML5 comes short and H.264 is just one more sad episode in the messy history of HTML over the last decades.
Flash was just fine outside of a Mac or Apple device but this year it is going to keep it up delivering faster and richer experiences.
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No, the 10x performance improvement that you claimed is only for video that has been updated to support stage video.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/12/flash-video-gets-dramatically-more-efficient.html
What does that have to do with what you were responding to?I think most Linux users would disagree with you there. If Adobe deems our platform of choice to not be as important to them as Windows, we get a suboptimal experience.
I wouldn't mind having Flash just so that I can watch some odd video and audio here and there but I wonder if letting developers keep relying on Flash to deliver engaging experience really help us all.
Just look at Android phones. Many of them don't even have Flash-enabled Froyo installed. Flash or Air is really a cheap way to support multi platform with results that are often half baked and not optimized for any particular OS, let alone touch ones. HTML5 is at least a true open standard that will be supported by all browsers without any plugin. We cannot say the same about Flash which is a proprietary platform controlled by a single commercial entity.
As a side note, I do know there are now fair number of sites with Silverlight apps, yet I don't see any Android fans yell "we need to support Silverlight to get TRUE full web experience. Google is doing a disservice by leaving Silverlight off its platform."
Exactly. I suspect that many people would feel very differently if Microsoft started to politicize Androids lack of Silverlight support and/or demanding that Google install the plugin onto all Android devices because without it they're not getting the "full web experience".
At the end of the day the people who are hurt by Apple's technical (not political) decision are dedicated Flash developers - they're also the ones who are kicking and screaming about this issue. Most normal consumers couldn't care less if their phone supports "Flash" - they just want to enjoy their content. If your content doesn't work for an iPhone user, he or she will just go to one of 50 other sources - half of which build apps specifically to cater to iPhone users anyway.
It really doesn't matter about the merits of Flash (which, I will grant you, there are more than a few). It doesn't matter about it's PC adoption rate, either. The web has transitioned to from the desktop to mobile, and while Adobe let Flash decay on the desktop browser, the web moved on to new technologies that provide a better mobile experience.
It's funny you compare the situation with Silverlight because I remember very well how Microsoft marketed it: the flash killer. After Macromedia refused 6 billion from Microsoft and sold to Adobe for 3 or 4 billion instead, Microsoft came up with Silverlight. All you have to compare is the penetration and the capabilities to understand why Flash stands even stronger a few years after Microsoft's war. Today Steve Jobs is taking a shot at it, I say bring it on because he is screwing with the wrong group of people, a lot of us kick ass at what we do and we are not going to be happy with a markup language.
The most of us was concerned for a few month about middle of last year because Steve's blow was vicious and it did hurt but it took only a few months for the large companies to get to the bottom of HTML5 and say no thank you. So the dedicated of us are way too busy working, just check technology job boards, there is more work than developers available. It is a question of principle, I work hard to do what I do and if HTML5 would do it I would be among the first generation as I was for CSS 10 years ago, DRM 7 years ago and Flex 6 years ago, never was interested in straight Flash prior to that and I've done HTML for 11 years by now.
Because most consumers do not know when it is Flash and when it is not until they buy an iDevices and most people do not have any problem outside of Mac.
You are making a case for the FTC without realizing it
If you understand the whole meaning of numbers related to application and entertainment and you put that in perspective with what you just describe along with the course of event and timing between Adobe's releases and Apple's change of terms and conditions, you will see that there is ground for a serious look from the feds.That is one sided and you are ignoring the current advances of Flash and where it is going with the whole industry united as a consortium, it is called Open Screen Project. It is not up to Mac users to decide what is best for the rest of the world, it can decide for itself.
If you listen carefully to the video of the demonstration for Flash Player 10.2 you will heard the engineer say that the technology was demonstrated the day before for mobiles by Adobe's CTO and is going to be ported to all desktop and laptop devices, PC and MAC and Linux as the player is now the same everywhere since 10.1.
Have you downloaded the beta? Have you tested it and are you able to certify that most of the problems related to performance are not solved, or that the demonstration is a lie? Because I tried it and I was able to push it pretty far, I also read good reviews even from Mac supporters.
And what is the percentage of Linux users? But in any case current pushes to Flash Player 10.2 include Linux.
That is not you to decide.
The new Flash player has been and will be on all Androids for a while and others will update, but once again you are ignoring the current advances of Flash, have you tried the BlackBerry PlayBook at CES? There are a lot of great developers out there building up for it because RIM did not try to kill us, it helped Adobe make Flash strong enough to be the favorite programming platform. So did Google, Motorola, HTC, Intel and many others.
We have to keep in mind that never a W2C recommendation will catch up with a standard like Flash, a small part of Flash being proprietary makes its strength, no one can mess with it, no Google and no Apple can pull it here or there like HTML5, there is no such thing as half the industry having a word to say about where Flash goes, that is up to some of the best rocket scientists in the world at Adobe and the community of developers.
It's funny you say that because Steve Jobs claimed it publicly and right after Adobe published the following he came back on record to say that open is not good. Make up your minds guys because Flash is way more open than anything Apple:
http://www.adobe.com/choice/flash.html
The whole Flash drama is the fruit of Steve Jobs charisma.
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+1. There are times when I really want to access a website that's got a Flash menu, and it's great to be able to do so when _I_ decide.
There's also nothing wrong with promoting HTML5 if that's what people want to do, but I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite my face.
I've had mobile Safari crash far more times on HTML than I've had mobile Flash do so.
Why? Would you suddenly start hanging out on Flash sites, staring at menu animations for an hour? It's not going to affect your battery unless you use it.
First off, most of us have Flash set to display only when WE click the little box placeholder. Don't need/want to see it? Don't click.
Secondly, most sites that use Flash, use it for an entry animation and then that's pretty much it. Or it's just used for videos that you click on.
A lot of the arguments used around here sound like the same naive ones people used against multitasking.
That is true however it is not going to hold true necessarily as we move from the Flash era to the Flex and AIR era, those two technologies are meant to develop full blow applications with an updated version of ActionScript that is now a full feature object oriented programming language. I personally believe we should drop all those automation software that people use to build Flash menus without knowing what they are doing or even seeing any of the code for it because that is how we end up with memory leak which are probably responsible for a lot of performance issues but hey sooner than later the same will hold true with HTML5. Menu in Flash with the rest in HTML is totally a case of compensation for the failure of HTML, for those use cases I believe HTML5 will and should take over but once again if you check Adobe's site for Flex and AIR and check how rich the Developer Center is you might see where Flash is at today and where it is going.
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I don't know, ask the MacBook Air who gains an addition TWO HOURS of average battery life when stripped of Flash.
It's like saying an iPhone gets three hours more battery life if it's stripped of YouTube. Sure, but then you can't see the videos.
What next? Should animated GIFs be removed from Safari just in case we hit a page with some? It all sounds a bit Chicken Little-ish.
Again, with mobile Flash all you have to do is set it to only work when YOU want. Easy peasy. My kid does it.
Sorry if I sound grumpy, but Apple uses the battery scarecrow way too much to cover up things they don't want to do yet. Starting with leaving out 3G in the first iPhone, then later on saying multitasking would use too much.
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You are making a case for the FTC without realizing it
Again with the insinuation that Apple is doing something illegal. What are you claiming is illegal?
What does that have to do with what I said. Yes, Flash 10.2 will be ported to mulitiple OS. What I said was that the 10x performance improvement that you quoted only applies to video that web developers have updated to support stage video. Each website has to update the video that they are delivering to see this improvement. Read the link I provided from Adobe!
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/12/flash-video-gets-dramatically-more-efficient.html
I have not downloaded the beta. I believe the demonstration was real. I do not use Flash. Is that not clear? The reasons I do not use Flash have nothing to do with performance.
That would be a big part of my argument. Adobe has to decide if my OS is worthy of their development. If they don't consider it as important as Windows, I get a suboptimal experience.
What in the world!? I never said either of those things, so I don't appreciate you attributing those quotes to me.
Flash is completely proprietary. Not a "small part". Adobe does release open specs (which has not resulted in any viable, alternative implementations), but they alone control the development of Flash.
Good thing the rest of the web doesn't operate on your philosophy of one company to control it all, or else we'd all still be using Internet Explorer.
Seriously, all of your complaints about Apple seem to be based on stuff that you make up. Steve Jobs never claimed that "open is not good." It's good for some things and bad in others.
Well, that's not true at all. Webkit being the obvious example.
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
I'm not sure why anyone wastes time trying to defend any other position. Battery life? Crashes? Then disable Flash by default, with an option (and adequate warnings, if it makes you feel better) to enable Flash.
Maybe you should read the thread (or one of the many other Flash threads) if you want to know why people are against the option to turn Flash on/off.
The quick answer: it provides a crutch for web developers instead of encouraging them to support alternative technologies. Apple's choice not to include Flash on iOS devices means more content for those of us who choose not to use Flash.
I am claiming that Apple's conducts in their context are probably a violation of anti-trust law or are at least unfair enough for regulators around the world to have a serious look at it, they did and probably still are. I documentated that pretty well over the course of this thread and Wired Magazine clearly established that FTC was seriously looking at Adobe's complain since they refused to provide the copy of the complain to Wired even though the magazine has legal right to claim a copy, the FTC said that they cannot release those documents because it will have an affect on the work of the commission. That was late last year, formal complain from Adobe was from late 2009 early 2010 so if it was over at that time FTC would have released the documents. It might take a year or two, I personally believe that they are compiling evidences and there is no doubt that Apple reversed the change of TOS under pressure from regulators, the same applied to the approval of Google Voice. Time will tell whether or not Apple was up to no good.
Yes sorry I was having two thoughts at once, you are right but part of my point is that you probably can't tell whether those changes do or not solve the large majority of issues people have with the player and you seem to be very distant from the Flash community so you really do not know how long it is going to take for the large majority of website to make the switch to it, the improvement is very significant and the motivation is pretty high.
That is your choice and you have the right to have it, Linux and Flash people are almost systematically bumping head but at the end of the day one is in the 90% range, Linux is a few points and Mac is 10 point. I am confident Flash will get to 90% of smart phones very quickly.
If you OS is Linux you made the choice to stand within a 2% community and you cannot expect Adobe to spend for you the same amount of money they spend for virtually everyone else and if you are on Mac you can't expect Adobe to spend as much for you as they spend for 90% of the world, especially when Apple play hard ball, make it hard if not impossible and then cry through the media, always getting the last word because of some big mouth popularity. Enough is enough with that crap.
You're right and I apologize, I mixed up quotes with fertilized-egg.
I will not even comment on the comparison between Adobe and Microsoft, once again there is a reason why Macromedia passed on 6 billion from Microsoft to sell for 3 or 4 to Adobe. You are free to prefer a standard that drags its leg while behind teared apart by the browsers and giants war, I am one of many professionals who trust Adobe and believe in Flash even more. You are free to turn Flash off of some devices but significant chunks of mobile users should not be depraved of Flash with no choice, it is simply not fair. But to be honest with the way things went for the past 6 months I am confident that Apple's position and past decisions will be insignificant for the evolution of Flash.
First Steve Jobs attacked Adobe for being proprietary, second Adobe respond with truth about what is open and community based and what is proprietary, third Steve changes route and focuses its PR on how open is bad. Look, I got digest of every single article and blog post naming adobe and apple together for the past 12 to 14 months and I have a pretty solid analytic mind so if you believe otherwise then fine, we will have to agree to disagree.
What is the point of that link exactly? What difference with Adobe's?
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home
Once again you are encouraging and praising unfair practices, that is stealing from us and who are you Flash haters? A share of 2% of the world for Linux? A fraction of 10% of the world for Mac? And you are going to take us over just because your CEO got lucky on a couple of products and abuses its temporary dominance to push his agenda on us? Good luck with that. There is no way in hell or heaven that you can do most of what Flash is best at and for the part you can do with HTML5 I take you anytime on a challenge and will prove you I will code twice as fast and way more solid than you possibly can. End of the day, for the same result HTML5 will cost large clients twice as much. You are going to have to fight that war based on merit, not Apple's PR power.
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I've read the thread. I understand that you'd like Flash developers the world over to drop their proverbial tools and come running to Apple's chosen workbench. Me-me-me is nothing new.
It looks like some of your quotes were crossed up as I did not post those things attributed to me.
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An invesigation is not evidence of wrongdoing. Please stop making insinuations of illegal conduct if you aren't going to make specific claims and back them up.
Which is exactly why I believe that the web should be based on open standards and not the business interests of a single company.
And you did it again in this post.
No one is deprived of Flash with no choice. They made the choice when they purchased an iOS device.
And by "attacked" you mean that he stated a fact.
Which is?
You just made that up. Well, I guess you made it up when you said it the first time a post or two ago.
He said that open has disadvantages in certain situations.
I was responding to your claim that "Flash is way more open than anything Apple." That is not true. Apple participates in hundreds of open source projects. The contributed the Canvas spec to HTML5 as an open standard. They are the primary driver of the Webkit project. Both examples are more open than Flash.
And there are hundreds more examples of Apple contributing, founding, and leading open source projects and open standards. Flash is neither open source or an open standard. It is not standardized. It's implementation is proprietary (Flash Player). And it's development is proprietary.
You don't care because you trust Adobe and you have a financial stake in the Flash platform. I don't have a financial stake and choose to stand on the principle of a web based on open standards.
It would be crazy to not acknowledge that people on this thread are trying to defend what is in their self interest.
As somebody with no vote on the issue, I like that iOS does not support Flash. I feel that Flash has been a sub-par experience on OS X and Linux for years. To the point that I took a stand and removed it from all of my machines. Yes, this does result in the loss of content, but the content that does work benefits from improved performance and stability. The problem is that removing the app from an OS that had it installed by default does not create sufficient impact to the install base to inspire change.
I understand that it is a self serving motivation, but iOS having no option for Flash directly leads to more content that works w/o it.
You may ask why I wouldn't just prefer a faster more stable Flash Plug-in? Well, I've lost confidence in Adobe. I don't want to take that short term win in fear of Adobe returning to the neglectful treatment of low market share platforms as soon as they get what they want.
To put it another way, I don't want all of my eggs in one basket. If Apple drops the ball, I can switch to a different platform. If Adobe drops the ball (as they have a habit of doing) I have no where to go.
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