Adobe exec defends Flash, says Mac improvements are coming - Page 4

If there was a software that produced HTML5 multimedia with an ease of use rivalling Flash I'd definitely take a look. Apple should go for it. Perhaps SproutCore is the foundation of a forthcoming product?

I was once a Flash user but I never liked it. If there is ONE point that makes me turn away from Flash it's the buggy user interface. If I was Adobe I would be embarrassed.

Missing Apple software:
- Advanced QuickTime content authoring (QT isn't just playing movies, right?)
- Simple Quartz Composer - and a strategy for using QC objects anywhere on the Mac. Keynote, QuickTime Authoring, iChat etc.
- Apple Photoshop (they've been picking on Adobe for a long time haven't they?)
- HTML5 multimedia authoring

Adobe bought the code base from Macromedia so the alleged issues existed long before they got involved. And so what anyway? You guys are counting CPU cycles like girls count calories. A Ferrari cost around $300k, is that too much? Just go get some more money - what's the problem. Want Flash to run on your netbook... Sorry no can do. Go get some more ram and CPU power.


Face it nothing performs or has the features to compare with Flash. Even for simple video play back. The HTML5 viewers are not up to the task I'm afraid. Well I guess if you just want a stripped down player maybe. Even Dreamweaver, which is arguably the best web code authoring environment available can't do WYSIWYG completely because code is conditional. How do you display if this condition show picture else if this show log in box else error message. To think you can code anything advanced with WYSIWYG is simply naive.


You might want to look at Flash it already does a lot of that. And the basic SWF protocol is already open sourced.

It seems that the trolls on here couldn't care less about Flash, they just seem to be Apple-haters in general, which makes their arguments meaningless and rather pointless to argue with them.

The issue here is that Apple has decided to not include Flash on the iPhone platform, which regardless of Mac OS X numbers, has a huge share of mobile Internet usage compared to all other platforms out there. I believe Apple has sold some 75 million devices in 2.5 years which currently account for 50% of the world's mobile Internet traffic.

Anyone who thinks Adobe is not worried about that is completely delusional. A majority of the mobile browsers in use are based off WebKit or Opera, both of which excel at adopting new standards. Any ad agency that targets mobile devices can look at the numbers and say, if we create the ad in HTML, CSS, Javascript, it will run on almost 100% of the mobile devices out there right now... Or if we create the ads in Flash, it may work on a fraction of them.

And while the mobile market is small compared to the "desktop" market, it will continue to outpace desktop sales and if Flash isn't as ubiquitous in the mobile space as it is on the desktop, then there's no reason to default to it. This of course scares the hell out of Adobe who makes all of its money from selling development and content creation tools.

To me this appears to be an attempt on Adobe's part to just try and "make peace" with Apple regarding Flash. If Adobe can make Flash stable and less of a resource hog on Mac OS X, maybe they can get Apple to allow them to create a version for the iPhone platform or at least an iPad version. Fat chance, I say.

Personally, after two and a half years of surfing the web on my iPhone, I can honestly say there's only been a handful of times when I was upset over not being able to watch some video, because there was a Flash only version. For the most part though when I do come across a Flash video on a website, 90% of the time I can easily switch over to the YouTube application, search for it, and watch it there.

Well, just how much horsepower should you need? I have a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 2.5 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and a GeForce 6600 with 256 MB VRAM. Flash runs like crap on it.

Yes, Flash has sucked ever since Adobe acquired it, but so what? They've had plenty of time to fix it and haven't. What's even more bizarre is that it was one of the core technologies they were after from Macromedia, and it would seem to be important to their business, and yet it's still a dog.

We all know Flash on Mac is crap. The problem seem to be that Flash get garbled-up and you'll have to restart the browser to make it fly again.

However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.

I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.

I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.

That's a big issue, the tools. Having a standard that is capable is not enough, someone needs to release the tools to get the stuff made.



Not an IDE, but an alternative Flash runtime...
http://paulirish.com/work/gordon/demos/



This is Apple's issue with using a proprietary runtime on the iPhone and iPad. They would have no control over the perceived stability of the platform. Perhaps, if Flash just worked, there wouldn't be a problem, but could you imagine the impact it would've had if every time you opened mobile Safari and the damned thing crashed?

The iPhone gets enough flack for not having Flash. If it did have Flash and was slow, buggy and crashed all the time, can you imagine the number of Apple/iPhone haters that would be around blaming Apple for it!?

We all know Flash on Mac is crap. The problem seem to be that Flash get garbled-up and you'll have to restart the browser to make it fly again.

However, being a designer I make a lot of flash banner-ads. I'm using a MacPro, MacBook Pro and a 27" iMac. I do all the publishing and testing (which include 'live' testing) on my machines. Sometimes, especially when using transparencies and gradients I get complaints from the PC-guys and the sysops that the banners are too processor-intensive.

I also read an article somewhere recently that 8 out of 10 IE crashes on Windows Vista was Flash-related.

I honestly believe there is too much backwards compatibility, processor hugging bugs and too little in the way of optimisation for flash to survive in the long run.

First,

Flash workes very well on both my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Mini. I have virtually no problems and I am using the Flash 10.1 beta.

Second,

Do you really think that a switch to HTML5 would is any way change the annoying ads? All that would happen is the ads would switch from Flash to HTML5 so this argument is a moot point...Period...

I really do not understand why all of the Apple fan boys hate Flash so badly... I think it works just fine on my computers...

Hey welcome to the forum. The deal with transparency and gradients can be optimized a bit in your Flash file. Here is the golden rule of Flash optimization: NEVER scale anything unless you have to. For example if you made your gradient the exact size you needed in Photoshop and then saved a png it will save you a ton of processing over just bringing some other file and scaling it in Flash. Also the same for transparency. Don't scale it, ESPECIALLY if it is vector type. I know this limits the beauty of your design but life is full of compromises.

What is really illogical about these Flash haters is that they are probably perfectly content to have WoW use up 200% CPU all night long. But if Adobe bought Warcraft it would instantly become the most wretched piece of software ever written.

This is exactly right, and why all the previous posts citing Apple's MacOS market share are irrelevant. Adobe have screwed themselves, and I think it's too little too late as far as fixing Flash on the Mac. That ship has sailed.

Ummm. They are animated Gifs.

Ed

Believe it or not, it is Flash swf running inside a javascript framework therefore we have Flash running on iPhone.

Flash doesn't run well on any of my PPC based Macs. Also, in my experience, Flash has never performed well on the MacOS. This dates all the way back to the Macromedia days.

The bottom line for me (and many other Mac users evidently) is that it runs very poorly and causes applications to crash frequently. What part of that don't you understand?

If it's that easy, what's all the fuss about?

Somehow, I think it's not that easy.

Seriously though, until HTML5 becomes standard and all sites switch it won't really matter. Flash isn't terrible on my 2007 Macbook, but it's nothing to write home about. Are animated GIFs also done using Flash cause Safari seems not to like those very much.

I'd like to see some improvements, but don't have much hope. Shame I need Flash to view my content!

Yep it is that easy. The code is still in beta but looks very promising. Right now it only runs simple time line Flash files, nothing complicated but plenty good enough for ads which is likely to be the first commercial use of the technology. I doubt the developer wants to be known as the guy who ruined the iPhone but it probably will happen anyway.

But if I'm a Creative, and Adobe couldn't care to fix its flash player on the platform I am using (which could include building flash content), what confidence do I have that they will fix the Creative software that I am using?

This is nonsense.

There is nothing illogical about it. Mac users have been relegated to second class citizenship by Adobe many years ago, and we're FUCKING sick and tired of it.

What part of that don't you understand?

We're also sick and tired of websites slinging mostly garbage content using buggy Flash technology that causes our browsers to crash. Flash can't die soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, running a MacPro with 8 cores and 10 gigs of ram.


Most everything you say here is just nonsense.

HTML 5 viewers are actually far superior in every regard than Flash video. Your comments about WYSIWYG are just ... bizarre. Not sure what you are even getting at. My point was simply that an animation builder needn't export to Flash, it could also export to CSS.

I'm not surprised that you don't understand what I meant partly because I didn't state it very well but mostly because you don't understand the nature of programming conditional statements.

Let me try to spell it out more clearly.

Lets say you have a weather checking page. If it is sunny, show a picture of a sun, it it is cloudy show a cloud, if it is raining show a picture of rain, if you can't connect to the service show a message that says Please try again later. Now imagine you are coding that page what the hell do you expect the WYSIWYG environment should show? all of the above?

That might happen about the same time that fax machines are no longer found in offices. Right now you would be hard pressed to find an IBM Selectric in an office (although we do have one) so sure someday, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on the demise of Flash.

Sounds a little disengenuos to me. "We acknoledge there are problems and we are going to work on them to get it right. Oh by the way CS5 is coming, buy now!"

I hope Adobe is sincere, however I'm not holding my breath.

I guess it must be the older macs that had all of these problems.....

The little MacMini 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM seems to play all of the Hi def video I want from Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS, Edmunds Auto, etc just fine. I do run Firefox and not Safari... Maybe that has something to do with it as well.....

I did not convert to a Mac until June of this year. I guess coming from the PC side, I never gave flash a second thought. I almost always just worked. When I switched to the Mac it was the same thing, it simply worked fine and I never gave it a second thought. I did not realize until the iPad thing came out how much hate there was for Flash in the Mac community. I guess timing is everything...

If the older Macs can't run flash well, I guess that makes sense as to why all of you guys seem to hate it so much....

If Adobe can get Flash working better and more stable than before, go for it. They just have to prove it. Of course there will always be clowns that dislike it no matter how much they improve it. Those are the ones that complain just to complain. What?!?!?! Flash takes up 3% cpu? How dare they! They need to keep it below .1% or else it sucks...

How do you figure that. The majority of video on the web is not flash but rather whatever codec could be shoved into the avi format that week.

The Adobe CTO claims what Jobs had to say about Flash was "rumor?" Despite being quoted in every tech publication I've read?

If this guy isn't any more clued in to what a multi-billion dollar company CEO is saying about his product than that, it's pretty easy to see why Flash needs to go bye bye.

Nah, I got that part, but it was completely irrelevant to what I was arguing so I ignored it.

When I said what you were saying is "nonsense" I was referring to that stuff about how "nothing compares to Flash" in either features or performance. It sounds like an advertisement and it just isn't true.

Again, my argument about the WYSIWYG editor was not an arcane treatise on whether or not "true" WYSIWYG can be obtained due to the existence of conditional statements and live pages. It was simply that a tool used for making animations (Adobe's tools for instance), could be changed to output CSS instead of Flash.

Adobe's statements about how they want to be "open" and their whole open alliance are complete BS in light of the fact that Flash is a proprietary plug-in that doesn't actually even work that well. If they really did have the open-ness and interoperability of the web as their goal, they could easily drop the proprietary stuff and go back to doing what they have *some* talent at, which is simply making design tools. If they really did want to serve their customer base, they would make design tools that are platform and plug-in agnostic. that's what everyone has been asking for since about 1993.

The tools don't have to be proprietary, nor do they have to export proprietary stuff. It's their choice to be pushing Flash, and for them to try and make out like they are not doing anything nefarious is just silly. It's plain as day what their motivations are.

How convenient to ignore anything that is contrary to your beliefs. Twist it any way you want, you are only fooling yourself. If you have an 8 core then Flash should be no problem so I'm getting that this is more of an emotional battle for you.

WYSISWYG is for rookies. Experienced animators don't drag cute things across the stage, they code the actions by hand. It's easy to criticize what you don't understand.

Move from Carbin and go to Cocoa

Everyone breathe in, now exhale.

This matter comes down to user numbers and resources. As wonderful as our Mac computers are they are still the vast minority of global users. Adobe has no incentive to spend millions in fixing Mac related issues when they can put that money towards the other 95% of the market.

I hate that apps like Photoshop are 64bit and faster on windows but again 95% vs 5% of the market, guess who gets more resources thrown at it? It was my choice to play on the Mac side of the tracks and I accept it. Plus now that Apple is bashing Adobe on a regular basis and creating competing products (FInal Cut and now Aperture) I'm sure Adobe is even LESS interested in the Mac market.

Until Apple can grab a significant portion of global users this isn't going to end anytime soon. We all chose to side with the underdog and there are always downsides to that decision.

Hear hear!! Click2Flash all the way baby!!

Though we've moved on the unfortunate truth is that many web sites have not. Also, some web appliances use flash quite heavily (Cisco WCS).

It's not a cop out, it's a compromise. Get rid of Flash without having to re-install it when you need to access some site that thinks Adobe is God & they do everything on their site in flash.

Wasn't iTunes compatible with Windows Vista before MS's own Zune software? Windows & multimedia have never played nice together, it's therefor not surprising to me that it might hit snags with iTunes.

Flash doesn't account for 85% of all web sites.

The reference is to the fact that 85% of the most popular sites has some bits of flash on it, not that it's created and housed inside the Flash Object container.

Well with my Dual 2.8 Mac Pro with 14 Gig of RAM and Flash STILL sucks badly and eats processor cycles, drastically. Flash needs to go the way of dinosaurs and HTML5 video as been great so far.

In 1997 us NeXT engineers told Adobe, Microsoft and Macromedia that Carbon [a transitional API] would be built to ease their transition to Cocoa [Openstep APIs modernized for the PowerPC platform then] and now Intel.

It's 2010 and the bulk of Adobe's product suites are 32 bit legacy code bases that have moved partially to Nokia Qt Toolkit [formerly Trolltech] and a bit of it has moved to Cocoa with Lightroom.

Instead of investing heavily into refactoring their code bases to house a Windows interface branch and a Mac interface branch relying heavily on dylibs of C/C++ code that can be shared in either branch they've chosen to maintain as much of their code as possible before they had to move to Carbon.

Carbon being in legacy three years ago [9 years longer than originally intended] now shows Adobe still hasn't refactored their code bases for a split world of platforms.

The recent alpha to 64 bit and using Quartz compositing and more shows Adobe screaming and kicking into the Mac space.

With each successive quarter Apple grows market share and Adobe loses opportunity to grow sales for their stock holders.

Apple no longer needs Adobe nor do they need Microsoft.

Microsoft was smart with their Mac Business Unit and will have Office for Mac in Cocoa. They know their profits resides mainly out of Office. They aren't going to weaken their bottom line anymore.

With the move to OpenCL1.1/OpenGL 3.x on both the CPU cores and GPU streams [Apple and AMD currently are the only two that have both CPU and GPU OpenCL working] Adobe is late again to making sure their apps are OpenMP compliant and capable of OpenCL working with hardware accelerated OpenGL 3.x compositing.

This is Apple payback to a three companies that strong armed them during the NeXT merger.

How 'bout them Apples?

Actually the issue isn't that Apple has decided not to include Flash but because Apple CAN'T include Flash. Desktop Flash requires more resources than what the iPhone can provide so they can't use that. Flash Player Lite doesn't give a full internet experience anyway so they decided no Flash is better than crappy players that either kill the device or don't allow it to do anything meaningful anyway. Adobe is 100% at fault here. At least Adobe could say to Apple "build your own player" and Apple would and they would make a killer version.

It sounds as though the big companies that use flash for advertisements are now putting pressure on Adobe to fix flash for the Mac. Because if it isn't on the iPhone that is a lot of customers that they are going to be missing their message. But it is, as so many have said, too little too late.

Many years ago Adobe made it clear that it was going to apportion their developer resources in proportion to revenue. So if Windows brings in 80% and Apple brings in 20% then that is how the developers will be apportioned. (The idea of this comes from Plato btw.) Economic rationalists who think of themselves as savvy tend to approve of this idea. But the idea is nothing short of stupidity and will kill the company that follows it. It is killing Adobe. One one side customers cannot be measured by how much they spend. Secondly, if you apportion fewer developer resources to a product you had better make sure that the difference in quality is reflected in a lower price as of course it never is.

The CEO of Adobe is responsible for this mess and should resign. The company needs a visionary head once more. It is good to see the company showing signs of panic but they need to take drastic action at this point and damage control will not cut it.

My g-d, you really are a worthless creep.

Well said, er written.