Why Apple is betting on HTML 5: a web history - Page 2

Besides the fact that you give no links to back up anything you are stating.

Most of the paragraphs are very long sentences. Use a period every now and then and it will make the reading a lot easier.

You're chart gives no links to support it (as has been the case in most AI articles of late).
The writing on AI has become like Fox News. Biased, not giving links to support statements and more opinion based.

Give the Facts, give links to support your statements and leave your opinion out of the article. That's what reader input is for.

They have to run QuickTime in iTunes. Not one major site uses QuickTime to stream video.

The fact that YouTube has to encode their video format specifically for the iPhone once again shows the closed loop that Apple users have to live in.

Even Disney & Pixar use Flash and not QuickTime. What the hell does that tell you since Jobs has more than an interest in both companies.

Statcounter is a toy analytics report based on hobbyist blogs.

If you look at Net Applications, it ranks:

IE6: 25%
IE7: 21%
IE8: 15%

I think the idea tho, is that IE users are not quick to upgrade in the way that users who choose a browser are, such as Firefox/Safari users. And a huge % of the Win PC IE market share is corporate users who are told what version to use. MS is finding that it's hard to introduce standards compliant modes in IE 8 because it has sold IT shops on custom sites tied to IE6 conventions.

As for your devotion to Flash, it has a few problems. First, it was managed by Macromedia for years. Adobe didn't write it, nor has it worked very hard to make it work on anything apart from Windows. It does not work "well" on Windows, it just works "less worse" than on Macs and Linux. It also does not work at all on mobile devices. For that, Adobe sells a "Flash Lite" that does much less.

The reason Flash is used for video is because HTML development, as the article notes, stopped around 2000. Flash has benefited from there being no better alternative. With HTML 5 supporting rich media, rich app features, and everything else, there is no longer any need for FireFox, Safari, IE, and Opera to build one rendering engine for the web, and then bundle another closed rendering engine for Flash content. That's completely pointless anyway.

And regarding market share, WMP had overwhelming market share before iPod/iTunes took over. Netscape had market share before IE. Yahoo had market share before Google. Symbian had overwhelming market share before RIM and the iPhone hit.

Web developers are going to be falling all over themselves to learn and apply HTML 5. They are not going to also maintain parallel expertise in Flash to carry forward an identical set of features, just out of fondness or nostalgia for Adobe. Particularly with 50% or more of all mobile traffic going to affluent users with a phone that ignores Flash.

You can't write that post to me, personally. I'm not AI, and I didn't write the article.

Quicktime is a wrapper for the standards being used. Quicktime runs a number of those. Much of this doesn't require Flash to run. All Google did was to encode YouTube video into H.264, a standard, which Flash is not. Nobody should need Flash to run video.

You also only stating an opinion, but what is fact is that major companies that are the main players in this environment and will probably be around for the next 5 years, are positively focused on making HTML 5 a standard. Only Adobe is out in the cold at moment.

Also your opinion about QuickTime, you do not know anything about iTunes and its interface with QuickTime. Everyone that has iTunes has QuickTime. Nearly 70% of the paid music subscription community has QuickTime.

Try and think rationally when you write, instead of getting on a rant and focusing on how I can oppose someone's opinion today. I read majority of your posts and that what it seems you always doing. I like Apple, but I will state my opinion against them, if they do something that I feel is wrong.

You just go on rant when Apple is mentioned and obviously dislike the company. Why should I listen to your biased opinion.

You asked what my "problem" with the article was. I told you.

I don't know or care who writes the articles on AI. The writer of the article needs some serious grammer lessons as do the proof readers (if there are any) before they are posted.

AI's recent habbit of giving 4 aricles under 1 posting also creates nothing but confusion in the room and it takes the reader input in too many directions.

If an article is worth posting than let it stand on it's own merit.

Example.
Google responds to AI's article, Aliens land on Earth, Palm didn't meet the streets estimates.

What kind of forum is that going to create when you have 3 different subjects that have nothing to do with each other and everyone posting their "opinion" on one or multiple subjects?

You are one to talk about Fox News and "opinion based." You are abusive and rude, you shout down people who know what they are talking about, and you have eaten up 15 of around 45 posts. Are your feeble opinions really worth having to endure your high volume, abrasive shout downs? I don't think so.

If the article was too opinionated, anyone reading it would be aware of that without you "informing" us. Perhaps you should find some outlet for your frustration that doesn't involve being such a loud, bothersome nuisance. I don't see any facts or interesting opinions you've added to the comments, just a bunch of low quality, "you lie!"/ town hall-style shout downs.

I'd rather hear from people who know something than a "NonVendorFan" who is enraptured with Flash (!) and doesn't know how to exchange his phone for a model he likes. If I were a moderator I'd do us all a favor and delete your account. Along with the Tekstuf troll.

Now thats a fact!!!

I enjoyed the article, not for his opinions but for history lesson on HTML, which was very informative to me, who is a non-IT person but always interested in history.

In other words. QuickTime is a proprietary plug in that is required to run a "standard" that may be wrapped in it.

Doesn't the article posting mean that HTML 5 will make the need for proprietary plugins like QuickTime go away.

Your posting suggests that Apple doesn't even support what this article is trying to say.

To run iTunes you need QuickTime.

You didn't. You wrote that post as though I wrote the article and you were telling ME to write it better. I said, tell us exactly what was wrong with it, other than your beliefs about Flash. You didn't do that.

In other words, since you think the article was so inaccurate, give us all the examples of what he wrote that was incorrect about the history. Then give us the corrected information.

Since you don't know the difference between Quicktime and Flash, and the purpose, why bother to discuss it?

All I can say is that on my end-of-line DSP service, every Flash video jirks and sputters every second, while Quicktime loads and stays, so I can actually watch in continuity! Also, you should dig back and look at this site's stories of Bill Gates directly stealing Quicktime and the copied code being shown in a law suit-MicroSoft had to cough., admit to the theft, then change the code, rewrite it uniquely to "create" WMVs! SOUNDS FAMILIAR?
It is actually good to study history! You find all kinds of truths that people deny and pretend that Windows is a unique and useful tool! Send just one penny for every mouse MS has sold to it's actual inventor, Douglas Engelbart, so he can amass his own fortune.

Just randomly snatched this point out while scanning over replies.

HTML 5 is going to be adopted. It will be awesome at first for controlled environments—a looser variant of what Apple is enjoying right now—but in time, when enough browsers support the features, people will be able to turn to them. Microsoft has been working harder to support web standards over their latest versions of Internet Explorer and if they keep at it, things should be a little more pleasant under HTML 5. If they stubbornly screw around like they've done in the past, they'll complicate adoption of whatever features lack backward compatibility while the internet waits for them (unless IE somehow loses market majority, which isn't going to happen while it is default in Windows and Windows is so dominant in the market).

Quicktime is anything but dead. Where did you get that idea? If you're trying to think of Quicktime as a direct competitor of SilverLight and and Flash you've missed the mark, and badly. If you're talking about streaming video, Quicktime is doing just fine. And despite some effort to make the embedding tags in HTML 5 proprietary to some kind of video format (stupid) it seems that won't be the case, so it is a non-issue anyway. HTML will allow embedding of various formats just as it has allowed in the past.

Apple has done awesome things with HTML 5. For the open internet they can continue to use Quicktime as the standards should remain open, just as they always have been, and for their closed platform they can continue to use whatever they feel like using.

Edit: Sorry, reading above I can see that you really don't understand this subject. Sorry dude. It shows.

Do you really not understand the difference between video being delivered in a format that requires a flash plugin and video being delivered in an industry standard format like H.264?

In both cases, browsers have to display the video. In the first case, their only choice is a flash plugin, which a 3rd party had to develop for that platform. In the second case, the individual browser developer is in control of how it's displayed.

For example, Apple can use quicktime. They can also build devices with power efficient hardware that handles the H.264 decoding. They are no longer reliant on a 3rd party to do the development, however buggy, to display video that isn't tied to a standard and doesn't have hardware built to offload the CPU.

The result is better playback, longer battery life, fewer crashes.

Do you mean The Source?

I disagree with just about everything you say and how you say it but I do agree about multiple subjects in one AI post being confusing.

Interesting article. After reading the debate going on here, let me preface the following question with the disclaimer that I have no technical computer expertise and am doing my best to understand the general concepts of this article.

It sounds like the main point of this story is the strategic importance (to each of the companies involved) of control over the future internet standards for video. It also sounds like RealPlayer and WMV are assumed to be dead ends and the battle is between Silverlight (MS), Flash (Adobe), and H.264 (Apple & Google?). (Is the HTML 5 battle between H.264 & Ogg Theora (Mozilla?) decided then?) With Flash having the current lion's share of the market by default but Silverlight & H.264 being newer & better and fighting to be the contender?
Somebody correct me if I misunderstand please.

Is so, then my question is why doesn't Apple just buy Adobe and end future development of Flash in favor of H.264? (Wouldn't it also be good for them to own Display Postscript out right anyway since it is at the core of OS/X?) Not that I understand corporate finances either, but it looks like Apple has 10 times the market value as Adobe and could just buy Adobe with cash and still have a pile in the bank.

Wow. It looks like a new chew-toy has been dropped on the floor and all the dogs are fighting for the chance to give it a squeak.

I was working on a simple project about a year ago where I had to animate a large dot moving back an forth on the screen a certain number of times. When I was first talking to the client about this I was thinking in the back of my head how easy this would be to do in Flash.

After I compiled the Flash project I ran it an noticed that the animation did not run smoothly. The dot had little jumps as it went across the screen. At first I thought this was because I was using Safari, so I booted up FireFox and ran it it there. I saw the same problem. So I thought maybe it was a Mac thing, since I new the Mac version of Flash sucked. So I booted up my Windows box and opened up Windows Explorer and ran the Flash in there. Damn, the exact same thing.

This wasn't anything complicated mind you. I had a gradient background. A radial gradient on the dot and all it had to do was ease in and out from one side of the screen to the other 10 times. So, with no other option and not really thinking that it would work, I created the exact same setup using JavaScript. Low and behold it worked perfectly, not just in Safari, but in all the other browsers as well. Give it a try and see for yourself.

I'll admit that I have never been a big fan of Flash. Other than it's animating ability, I never liked using it for websites. It goes against standards, it's content is hidden from search engines, it doesn't act and is not as familiar as a normal web browser to end users, etc. Which I guess is fine if you plan on using it to develop a customized or proprietary web app or something. But for the average business, its not really needed. Especially since you can do most of the same stuff with Javascript now.

HTML 5 is just going to be another nail in the Flash coffin. Most web designers are familiar with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The Same can't be said about Flash.

In the diagram on page 1, shouldn't Javascript frameworks be above WebKit and below Rendering Applications?

Also, we have to be careful about purist academics here. Separating view from content is good sometimes but not always. For example if your site is only a few pages, or is large but static, it's easier to just make completely separate desktop and mobile versions than to define a data model and write declarative programs (stylesheets) to lay it out for many devices.

Part of being an open standard is being useful to the largest number of people, and when these standards bodies define many thousand page solutions with large enterprise sites in mind they alienate a large amount of the web, which is little guys. This is what W3C forgot with XHTML and why HTML5 has a much better chance.

H.264 is based on MPEG-4 which is based on the QuickTime container format (Microsoft's proposal to base it on WMV was rejected). So every site using H.264 is using QuickTime technologies, if not the QuickTime player itself. Google does not encode content specifically for the iPhone - they can save a lot of bandwidth if they play H.264 via Flash as well.


Disney and Pixar use Flash for what?


No, but Google holds a lot of power in this area after purchasing On2 this year. On2 originally developed the VP3 codec, which was then released into the public domain and turned into Ogg Theora. It is old technology that cannot compete with a modern codec like H.264 but Google, if it so wished (and assuming no patent complications), could make public the more advanced VP7 codec and turn it into a viable open source competitor to H.264.

it may be, but in that case apple should share some resources like they do with other companies and giving them a hand and a couple of apple engineers. clearly, with adobe, they never wanted that.

lack of x64 is just a point of no interest. if they were able to make photoshop x64, and it's extremely fast, i believe they could make flash player x64 if they wanted to. the big problem they don't want to yet.

What a boon it would be if Apple bought Adobe and drag this neandothal company into the 21st century. They killed Macromedia and ever since have contrived to constrain progress whenever they could. Imagine what Apple could do with Acrobat et al. Mouth-watering.
Just watch Microsoft do it first.

I always read Solipsism's posts here with great pleasure. Just saying.

I beg to differ. The article is a very concise, erudite and understandable version of events.

Flash is a disease, a cancer on body of the web. HTML will excise it.

NonVendorFan has successfully monopolised this discussion with his nonsense. Who is concerned about grammar? Why does he disagree with EVERYTHING? What kind of chip does he carry on his shoulder?

I think we can expect to see NonVendorFan carried off by the men in white coats any minute now...

Well, if you are going to be so critical you need to go to basics yourself my friend. Learn the difference between 'You are'; 'your'; and: 'you're'.

Numbnuts.

The guy (NonVendorFan) has no clue about which he spouts such aggressive nonsense (and since some of the more informed AI users have appeared he has disappeared...)

He is right about the multiple topics in the single post though - I just don't like that.

Post #47

Post #37

Who cares about grammar? I am just glad they don't struggle with spelling in this day of auto correction and instant dictionary look up.

Guys, it's LTD. And yes, I post on Macrumors as well.

Solipsism is more or less correct about MR, though. I've gotten several PMs over there asking me to please please oh please stop voicing my lack of interest in GV because if I continue to do that, I'll be preventing the supporters from ever getting it. And they really want it. Despite the fact that no one off these Mac sites cares about it or has even heard of it. Yes, that's right. I've gotten PMs asking me to stop posting because it'll make it harder for them to get it.

Anyway, enjoy the HTML 5 thread.

I think you are mixing up MPEG-4 part 10 (AVC), the video standard, with MPEG-4 part 14, the container format specified by MPEG and which is heavily based on, but not identical to, mov.

edit gh

Perhaps I missed it, but the most important Mac-related issue here was not discussed.

HTML5 is being solidly promoted by Apple and is opposed by Adobe.
The money and power behind shaping standards is in development tools.

There will undoubtedly be pressure on Apple to built an HTML5 app that takes on Dreamweaver.

Flash doesn't work for most mobile computing platforms and isn't always the same on every PC. It is also block on nearly every government computer (millions of computers I might add) because of the security threat. Active content is not a good thing, though it might appear slick, it's an opportunity for Cybercriminals. I hope and pray for its demise. Otherwise, I agree the article was really too detailed for this medium, it's like the guy took a chapter from his book and dropped into AI. <yawn>

What does the recession have to do with HTML5? LOL your logic belies the argument, you have no idea what you are talking about. flash is clunky and slow even on PC. You simply can't compare the power of an 80 KB HTML, CSS and javascript document to the same 5MB document created in flash. Yes flash will continue to be around for a while but as time passes the need for it will dwindle as the for-mentioned standards evolve. I suppose you're one of those guys that believes Cold Fusion will beat out PHP as well. Forget it. are you even a programmer? If not why are you arguing a pint you know nothing about? My programmers despise proprietary tech and almost for no other reason that is why Adobe's model will have to change. Flash is slowly a dying model. Anyone who designs for the web (not just mac "fanboys" LOL your such a tool to even bring that up) will be able to do so much more with open source and streamlined standards like HTML5 Flash will not be needed.

Your argument that "everyone" uses flash is weak at best. Sure most computers have it installed but the application of flash is generally such that it could be replaced in about 5 min's with similar HTML5, CSS, etc. How many all flash site are out there? hardly any. and how about flash stores? even fewer. The most flash get used for is video, photos/ slideshows and annoying splashpages. trust me no one is married to flash especially web developers.

So funny that people are getting worried about Flash going away.
I have to say I hate Flash based video. Often it doesn't even work properly, scrolling through Flash video sucks, you typically can't download it. Overall, it's a terrible user experience.
In a free system, when something is available, standard, open, and works better, it will inevitably become the norm. We should be rejoicing. Personally I can't wait, literally, I don't have Flash on my computers and I don't miss it at all.

I'll ignore your general ignorance about the nature of Fash, Video in general, QuickTimeand how it works with codecs, etc. and just provide this link to the movie presentation page at Pixar:
http://www.pixar.com/shorts/bdn/theater/index.html
(Note the QuickTime nameplate)

wow... you drank the whole punchbowl of apple kool-aid. jobs wants you to believe this is all about cpu cycles, that while a chumby can run flash, his iphone can't (ha). the fact is that flash being a resource hog is due to poor flash development (memory leaks, etc) and not the flash player. yes the flash player runs better (is more optimized) on a winblows box, but on a properly developed site, it runs very well on a mac. yes, adobe is guilty of giving us mac users a substandard flash player... i would agree there.

jobs excuses are merely causing a distraction to the real problem, he doesn't want applications to be run on the iphone that threaten his 30% markup (and control over distribution), plain and simple. this is about money not cpu resources.

html 5 and css 3 are very interesting and offer up some promise in the years to come, but do you really think that it mysteriously doesn't use any cpu resources? when poorly developed sites start popping up, you think that all those memory leaks won't hit the processor --- maybe even worse than flash??? one thing is for sure, getting all browsers to display html5/css3 content will never happen with the same code, developers will have to hack their code to look the same across all browsers (welcome back to 1998).

I found the article very informative, especially things like:

...American NCSA, which had been funded by congressman Al Gore...

Where else but America, could a person, alone, fund an entire government agency (on the salary of a public servant)?

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