Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right

[alent1234]

It's still nice to have a choice on the ability to run Flash or completely ignore it though, right?

*shrug* World keeps on spinnin'...

Except after reading some geniuses post here they would be at the genius bar trying to exchange their iPhone because it's not working

 

[southernpaws]

As far as the idea that users should be given choice...

If the option is there, people will use it. and then when it fails or performs poorly, people (the general consumer, not the savvy) will just attribute it to the phone itself.

choice or not, it still reflects poorly on the product. I say leave it off.

 

[bossxii]

Either way having options to use or not doesn't matter if the websites don't optimize their content for mobile devices, flash based or not. Buddy at work loves his Evo but after installing flash 10.1 was pissed he still couldn't watch Hulu, still can't watch the majority of flash content he wanted to because his phone is simply not powerful enough to process the content. Slide shows, lock ups and reboots ensued... right up to the point he uninstalled flash.

Adobe can talk the talk but they have yet to deliver the goods.

 

[samcraig]

Adobe can talk the talk but they have yet to deliver the goods.

You just said that websites need to adjust for mobile flash and then you blame adobe? That doesn't make a lot of sense. I would imagine that if websites offered lower bandwidth (ie. Lower bit rates and different compression settings) it would be less of an issue for decoding.

 

[kdarling]

Nothing is slower than being stopped by a total inability to do something.

So even Flash lite is handy to me:

I like being able to see Flash based restaurant menus. Even if a bit slow at times, it beats the heck out of not seeing anything at all.

 

[JediZenMaster]

+1. I'd still enjoy having the ability to use it. I'm sure nobody expected flash to work very well at all on a mobile device.

I seem to recall posts where people were pretty much expecting a desktop flash experience on their mobile device.

Either way having options to use or not doesn't matter if the websites don't optimize their content for mobile devices, flash based or not. Buddy at work loves his Evo but after installing flash 10.1 was pissed he still couldn't watch Hulu

That's a hulu issue and isn't it? I mean who can blame them for blocking it on a mobile device. They are a for-profit business So it makes sense that they would want people to use the mobile app and pay 9.99 for access to hulu on a device.

 

[UCLAKoolman]

The only thing I want in Flash is the video playing elements. I could care less about the interactive environments.

The fact that I'm missing out on so much video content on the iPhone is upsetting.

And the point if this article is that flash on android phones is not capable enough to view the majority of this video content.

 

[DeathChill]

Used flash to watch some episodes of South Park during a long boring night at work on southparkstudios.com. Worked flawlessly. It's not perfect but I'm happy I have the option (I'm free to uninstall it or use it only when I want it).

You didn't read the article, did you? That website does not use Flash for mobile devices.

 

[Dr McKay]

Wasnt this a beta they were trying? Give them time, Flash is stable on PC's, not so much on Mac. But I guess as it was optimized for PC.

 

[shandyman]

i've had an iphone sine it came out and personally don't care about having flash on it, as i've never encountered a time where its come up being needed. flash was a big thing a few years ago, but it's on its way out, HTML5 is on its way in, why support flash when its on the decline, its a waste of time and effort...

 

[wreckshop]

I seem to recall posts where people were pretty much expecting a desktop flash experience on their mobile device.

Well that's just dumb. You dont even get the desktop web browser experience on a mobile device.

 

[Carniphage]

Wasnt this a beta they were trying? Give them time, Flash is stable on PC's, not so much on Mac. But I guess as it was optimized for PC.

If they can't get Flash working on a 4 Core Mac Pro without it heating-up and turning the fans into wind turbine....

...perhaps they might struggle a bit to get it working on a cellphone handset.

The clear story here is that Flash only works well on mobile, if the Flash content has been specifically re-authored for mobile platforms.

I think highly technical people will quickly recognise old flash sites and avoid them, but less technical people will just encounter problems and frustration.

So web sites that actually care about attracting a mobile audience still need to re-build their content for mobile. And given that they will reach the biggest audience by avoiding Flash, it's a no brainer. Trash the Flash.

C.

 

[woofermazing]

If they can't get Flash working on a 4 Core Mac Pro without it heating-up and turning the fans into wind turbine....

...perhaps they might struggle a bit to get it working on a cellphone handset.

The clear story here is that Flash only works well on mobile, if the Flash content has been specifically re-authored for mobile platforms.

I think highly technical people will quickly recognise old flash sites and avoid them, but less technical people will just encounter problems and frustration.

So web sites that actually care about attracting a mobile audience still need to re-build their content for mobile. And given that they will reach the biggest audience by avoiding Flash, it's a no brainer. Trash the Flash.

C.

OSX has been limited software decoding for some time. Apple blocked access to the necessary API's, so there was really nothing for Adobe to fix. A week ago they finally were allowed to update flash player to enable hardware acceleration, but it is still only limited to certain models with a recent GPU. Kind of retarded since sub-2009 graphics cards should be more than capable.

 

[Carniphage]

OSX has been limited software decoding for some time. Apple blocked access to the necessary API's, so there was really nothing for Adobe to fix. A week ago they finally updated flash player to enable hardware acceleration, but it is still only limited to certain models with a recent GPU. Kind of retarded since sub-2009 graphics cards should be more than capable.

You are correct that Apple did not open up the API for decoding h264 in hardware until recently. But Apple certainly did provide APIs for scaling video playback.

Watch an old-school Flash stream on a Mac. Not h264. Just FLV stuff - and scale the Flash window to full screen. Then hear those fans roar. The Flash player is scaling video on the CPU! This has nothing to do with hardware decoding, it's just crappy programming.


C.

 

[alent1234]

You are correct that Apple did not open up the API for decoding h264 in hardware until recently. But Apple certainly did provide APIs for scaling video playback.

Watch an old-school Flash stream on a Mac. Not h264. Just FLV stuff - and scale the Flash window to full screen. Then hear those fans roar. The Flash player is scaling video on the CPU! This has nothing to do with hardware decoding, it's just crappy programming.


C.

how else was adobe supposed to decode it?

 

[alent1234]

If they can't get Flash working on a 4 Core Mac Pro without it heating-up and turning the fans into wind turbine....

...perhaps they might struggle a bit to get it working on a cellphone handset.

The clear story here is that Flash only works well on mobile, if the Flash content has been specifically re-authored for mobile platforms.

I think highly technical people will quickly recognise old flash sites and avoid them, but less technical people will just encounter problems and frustration.

So web sites that actually care about attracting a mobile audience still need to re-build their content for mobile. And given that they will reach the biggest audience by avoiding Flash, it's a no brainer. Trash the Flash.

C.

i have flash working just fine on a $700 lenovo laptop with intel HD graphics. and it works fine on a $299 Toshiba laptop with a celeron i just bought as a gift for someone 2 months ago. in fact the $299 toshiba supports hardware h.264 decoding in flash which is one of the reasons i bought that model

us iPhone users who use Windows read this stuff and laugh that some of you people pay all this money to Apple just to complain about all these limitations that Steve Jobs is imposing on you

 

[Carniphage]

how else was adobe supposed to decode it?

There is no hardware decoding for FLV.
The problem is scaling. Do you understand the difference?

C.

 

[alent1234]

FLV is just a container for a video format. in the case of protected content it adds DRM. the video format has to have support for acceleration. if there is no driver/OS/format support for hardware acceleration then its all going to be done on the CPU

playing back videos in iTunes/Quicktime on Windows in full screen has sucked for years because apple never supported hardware acceleration. MS has supported acceleration but it was their idiotic business strategy that led to the demise of Windows Media Player

 

[woofermazing]

You are correct that Apple did not open up the API for decoding h264 in hardware until recently. But Apple certainly did provide APIs for scaling video playback.

Watch an old-school Flash stream on a Mac. Not h264. Just FLV stuff - and scale the Flash window to full screen. Then hear those fans roar. The Flash player is scaling video on the CPU! This has nothing to do with hardware decoding, it's just crappy programming.


C.

Nothing is happening, just sitting around 20-40%.

Edit: Huh, how does OSX calculate CPU usage with multiple cores? Looks like it's summing the percentage of each core, which I don't think Windows does...

 

[Mademan12321]

yes but theres the bigger picture.

As far as professionalism, it doesnt fit into the bigger sales pitch which is that everything just works for nerds as well as people who use it as a personal communication tool and have busy lives and are not into gadgets.

there are no crappy elements of any kind built into the ecosystem and that is part of the appeal/obsession which ultimately wins over the consumers on a grand scale of reputation and expectation.

Proximity sensor: The only version of facetime that works is when I call people by mistake for the sensor not working.

Antenna: Holding it wrong and actual usage for travelers.

That is all

 

[Carniphage]

FLV is just a container for a video format. in the case of protected content it adds DRM. the video format has to have support for acceleration. if there is no driver/OS/format support for hardware acceleration then its all going to be done on the CPU

Do you understand the difference between decoding and scaling?

The Mac does not fire up its fans to decode a 320x240 video stream. It needs that power when Flash tries to upscale the video.

That's nothing to do with Apple. It's just an indication that Adobe can't be bothered to implement its legacy media player on other platforms with any degree of care.

The industry has been calling for a hardware accelerated version of Flash since the mid-nineties. So that it could be implemented on video boards. But Adobe has been deaf to those calls.

C.

 

[alent1234]

Adobe didn't own flash in the 1990's. back then it was just banner ads. the big flash video application was youtube

 

[Carniphage]

Nothing is happening, just sitting around 20-40%.

You are correct. Adobe finally introduced hardware scaling on Mac sometime in late 2009. They now have it on Linux too.

C.

 

[shandyman]

Proximity sensor: The only version of facetime that works is when I call people by mistake for the sensor not working.

Antenna: Holding it wrong and actual usage for travelers.

That is all

the antenna thing is overblown tho, as its only a fraction of people affected, mine is perfectly fine. but i will agree with the proximity sensor, that affects mine...

 

[phillq23]

As others have stated, most of the phones everyone is talking about use Flash Lite. I own a Nexus One with Flash 10.1 (non-beta). I streamed almost every world cup game to my phone over 3g while at work. Not one hiccup or any lag.