Inside Apple's iPad: Adobe Flash - Page 7

It probably will eventually fade into obscurity. It is unlikely to ever die.

But in the meantime, it works great on 80 or 90 percent (or some other huge percent) of the computers that access the 'web.

The point is that when color TV s came out, folks still watched and bought BW TVs for many years after color became available .

Flash will be with us for a while longer. If someone wants to cut themselves off from stuff like watching TV reruns on the 'net, that's perfectly fine.

But I find it a bit silly to discuss whether its "survival" is "justified". It will survive forever.

Off with it's head!!!

They will be angry that Adobe snubbed them. That's basically the situation with Flash on the Mac. It works fine on Windows, but not on the Mac.

Off with it's head!!!

Adobe choosing not to advance Flash and Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, etc. choosing not to rely on it as much is the market deciding.

And after all the postings in this thread the other, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that the only reason Mac users want Flash gone, is because the almighty Apple was ignored.

It'll end up like Java or Shockwave. When was the last time you went to a site that required either one?

Saying that Flash works great on Windows is laughable. Performance is simply acceptable on a modern computer.

True, and I have no problem with that. That is a perfect example of the market working.

However, iGenius said that Adobe should either be a good corporate citizen and give Flash up (when they currently have what 75% of the market) or

a standards board should rule that HTML 5 is the industry standard, essentially shutting Flash down by government fiat.

neither of those options is the market working.

Open up a netbook, go to YouTube and play a video. Now change to HTML5 and play that same video. Game. Set. Match.

Gotcha.

I just can't understand why people want to kill Flash.
It's a great tool, and even if it does seem a bit expensive, at least it works.

It's likely because of 2 things (the 2nd more probable):
1) SJ says so, so all Apple lovers agree immediately
2) Mac users have a grudge against Adobe because of the sluggish plugin

I love HTML5. I think it will GRADUALLY replace Flash. However, if you want it to
have any major place in the internet, JS+CSS (DHTML) must be sped up.
Also, the HTML5 video codec must be free from patents (and free in terms of money).
H.264 does beat OGG in lots of ways, but does that mean we use it as a standard?
MPEGLA is infamous for charging extreme licensing fees for even the simplist of their products.
All they are trying to do is to secure their place in standards, and then when the majority has
joined, change the licensing fee to a significantly high price. Then, the Internet will halt, because Apple/Microsoft/Mozilla will have to charge for their browsers.

(And I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 as I type this. Macs are way too slow for my general use, as well as Windows... )

So how do we fix the HTML5 <video problem?
It's all on a line. Recently, Google bought On2, which has a very nice codec AND beats H.264.
The question is this: will they change the rules and make it FOSS and free of patents? Or will they take it for themselves, and charge licensing fees for it? Only time will tell.

If the codec does become FOSS, Flash is guaranteed an accelerated death. Adobe is scared already by the <canvas element. As a full time web developer, I really see the potential for that element. It really becomes the Flash killer. There are kinks here and there which really should be fixed before HTML5 becomes official, but otherwise, it's almost ready!

Please, DON'T think Apple can kill Flash. SJ is just a whiner who sees and tries to kill competition.

Flash will wither with time, and at the same time, HTML5 will grow.

I'll accept acceptable.

Hey - You've got me mixed up with some sort of nutcase. I never said anything like that.

Flashmageddon!

Esteemed experts, now that its about over for Flash I need to port numerous sites and web apps from Flash to the new technology.

First up is a record label site with integrated music player. Site loads its data async in binary format from mysql using AMFPHP. Also it loads a collada model of a helicopter and animates it in 3d as part of the navigation. Can anyone point me to a replacement 3d engine in javascipt that can do this? Also there are video layers within the 3d, and animated flash sprites mapped as textures to some of the other 3d models.

Then I have a multiuser system with a broadcast app that sends live video to connected users via Flash Media Server, which records the video stream on the server for later on-demand use, and allows the broadcaster to control aspects of the remote synchronized clients via a shared object on the server. I can get the Flash out of the server by porting to the excellent Java based, open source Red5 server, but I need a replacement for the client system that gets the video stream and sends it to the server, as well as connecting to the server shared object. Can someone point me towards that?

I used to do some of the 3d stuff in Director/shockwave, and Java was good for some stuff that required serious coding on the client side, or accessing the local machine, but when Flash came along and did all this better, and especially when so many good opensource actionscript frameworks and code libs became available for Actionscript, those old technologies fell by the wayside. Now I guess its time to move on again.

If you folks can look at this list of frameworks and suggest replacements in Javascript/html I'd much appreciate it! http://www.adrianparr.com/?p=83

P.S. I'm frosty with JQuery/JQueryUI and Mootools. Love the stuff for simple things like image rotation, lazy data loading, accordions etc.

TIA

Tell me something though. Oh ps, can laptop owners get that power update they released for mac pros and audio?

Anyway, where are the complaints coming from?

We have Tiger 10.11, Leopard 10.8 and SL 10.2 and we never have a problem, especially with streaming.

Just curious. I mean the chips are intel x86 less the ipad and I could see how maybe laptops with non dedicated gpu as well as G4 might have problems but we've never seen any problems. Knock on wood. Praise God!!! (grin) as we would hate to seecptoblems all of a sudden.


Shout peeps.

A decade in "technology time" is more like 3-1/2 years real time.

Sorry my bad it was iBill who said it

Except that Flash video taxes you CPU, which you oddly forgot to mention when listing the system requirements... For 852x480 (480p), 24 fps video you need an [BIntel ]Pentium 4 2.33GHz, AMD Athlon™ 64 2800+ processor (or equivalent)[/B].

I bet now you're going to convince us that the 412MHz ARM in the original iPhone is faster than 2.33GHz P4? Before you start FUDing again remember there are plenty of sites detailing how much CPU Flash taxes on YouTube, Hulu and other sites.

So your point is that you're living in fantasy land and we're supposed to care about your delusions? There's no reason to think that the iPad will be any more locked down than the iPhone. It's the same OS, uses the same iTunes, and so on.


Exactly. The number of smart phones (and iPads, soon) is growing far, far faster than the computer market and is already a substantial share of the total advertising market.


WIndows Moblie 7 looks reasonably competent, but no one in their right mind would claim that it's a big leap over anything. Oh, and btw, WIndows Mobile 7 won't support Flash, either.


That's true of the overwhelming majority of Apple bashers. You've been here long enough to know that they're quite happy to go on and on about how much better Windows is and how the Mac won't do what they want it to - and then loudly brag that they've never used a Mac and wouldn't be caught dead using one.

Apparently, their egos are so fragile that they can't stand the thought of trying something that's outside of their own limited knowledge.


Really? Then why did Yahoo introduce html 5? Hulu is doing the same. NYT is dropping Flash. If you're really in advertising, maybe you can explain why an advertiser would give up a large percentage of their market simply so they can stick with flash when html 5 coding is no more difficult.


Maybe you should look at some of those sites showing Flash 10.1 running on Pre devices. Slow, choppy, and buggy. If that's good enough for you, go ahead and get a Pre. It's not good enough for Apple.


This is a ridiculous argument for two reasons.

First, customers would blame Apple when they got slow, choppy video and short battery life. Apple would get the blame for Flash's shortcomings.

Second, if Flash were available, the incentive for developers to code into html 5 would be near zero - no matter how much better it is.


That's one of the reasons. Another is that it doesn't run well on Windows, either. And it doesn't run acceptably on ANY mobile devices. Is that enough for you?


OK. So why does it bother you so much that Apple won't have Flash on the iPad. You're obviously not going to get one and you don't think it will have any impact on Adobe, so why does it bother you so much that you post dozens of messages on the subject?

Jealousy is a terrible thing.


For a sufficiently low definition of 'works', that might be true. Fortunately for its tens of millions of loyal customers, Apple isn't satisfied with 'it sort of limps along' and wants excellence. Flash is junk on every platform, but especially on Macs. But the average user sees their system slow to a crawl, fans rev up, and the computer gets hot enough to fry eggs and blames Apple. Apple simply said 'no thanks. We have no desire to have junk on our phones.'

Why won't Hulu let me have the "whole of the Internet"?

I don't reside in the US.

I want my "whole of Internet".

Why is Hulu stopping me?

Good news from Adobe!

it looks like Flash 10.1 for Mac OS X will be Cocoa (with Carbon fallback for non-Safari browsers) and will harness Core Animation.

http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

@ jragosta, All excellent points.



I know you're joking, but I thought I'd mention that the BBC's iPlayer and Hulu can be used outside their respective countries with a country specific VPN service.

I don't necessarily want flash, what I want is to not have a white square with a blue plug-in instead of the content I am looking for. As stated in the article there is no reason to support flash light, period. If a more reasonable version of flash for mobile comes out and we are not in html5 world apple should build flash right in. Not doing so would amount to using market monopoly to block a competing standard - exactly what Apple was so pissed about.

YMMV, however, Flash runs acceptably on my MBP with Firefox in the sense that it does not crash. Flash crashes Safari on my MBP.

Flash runs fine on my wife's Dell XPS laptop - seemless video, no crashes, it does warm up a bit.

I installed the new beta flash player on my Dell Mini 9, and flash (Hulu) is now watchable. Fairly seemless video (which was not the case before), but the sucker does get hot.

I have an iPhone, and knew going in it did not support flash and never would. I bought the phone for lots of reasons, but flash was a non-issue.

Because, you don't reside in the U.S.

I've used enough machines to know you are lying about the CPU utilization but the part I find most humorous is you're rampant claims that it works so well on slow HW yet you use an Intel Core 2 Quad Yorkfield running at 2.83GHz with 12MB L2 to prove your point. Classic!


You still fail to realize that Apple is an OEM. As for driver support from OEMs they all have issues. Let's see if you can guess what machine is being talked about below...

And at last we arrive at the real bone to pick with this laptop: the horrible trackpad. At first blush it doesn't look too bad, since it's large, non-glossy and relatively unadorned. It's lacking buttons, like Apple's recent MacBooks, but that didn't end the world or anything, did it? Well, somebody botched this part bad. [They] apparently forgot that axing the buttons means making darn well sure the software is pitch-perfect. And it isn't. Whether Synaptics is to blame for its drivers or hardware, or [they are] for the configuration, at the end of the day [they are] the one that's selling this $1,700 laptop to people with a basically non-usable trackpad. You just love to set me up to smack you down. Masochistic, much?

Really? Is that your honest assessment, or are you simply mischaracterizing out of frustration? I've been reading all the postings and observing a fair share of apparent nonsense and bias (heavily weighted towards one group of advocates, though advocating may be too generous a term). But, I've also read sound business and technical assertions (more from those taking a contrasting position). I assume both positions are primarily composed of "Mac users." However, to arrive at an "inescapable conclusion" that it's "only" due to Apple being "ignored" ... really? That's just a very different reality from my empirical review of the postings.

Abster mentioned one reason, I think another is that the ad network isn't there yet either. A lot of ads for US only products and services, as well as public service announcements would be lost on non-US users. They would also need to have an in-region office to handle ads, as well as nearby caching/content distribution network.


Do tell. What government would that be again? I think you have a bit of an exaggerated view of it. No standards body can eliminate external standards by fiat, at least nothing that I'm aware of these days, certainly not the W3C.


It might be the case for some people, but I think it's an unfair characterization. In my case, I was FlashBlocking years before I had a Mac. I was disliking Flash as far back as 1999, because it had a goofy, easily malfunctioning installer (it didn't like Windows NT) and it took too much CPU on a Windows machine. It might have been called something different back then, but Macromedia had a long series of clunky animation protocols that sometimes made state of the art machines seem a few years old.

some of it is frustration, some of it is the truth. I understand why SJ doesn't want Flash on his products. From Apple's point of view, it makes perfect sense, and at a certain level I agree with him.

OTOH, for most of the posters here, the issue is that Flash sucks of a Mac, and admittedly it is not great. I understand the frustration. I also understand the desire for something new. But I also think that if Flash ran as well under Mac as it does Windows, 99% of the people here would not have a complaint.

People have given a variety of reasons, but in the end, the overwhelming majority come back to the reason that Flash sucks on a Mac, even for people who give those other reasons.

However, I don't think that because it stinks on a Mac (and as I have said I own Macs, and an iPhone), that gives me the right to state that Flash should be eliminated from the web by some standards board, or that Adobe should simply give up Flash, as some have advocated. I do not think that my displeasure as a Mac user should force the vast majority of computer users (i.e., Windows) to give up their current experience on the web. I do not think that a company should be deprived of a revenue stream because I do not have an optimal experience. If Adobe does not want to spend the money and resources to optimize the code for a Mac, that is their decision and their right, just as it is Apple's right not to allow Flash on the iPhone, etc.

OTOH, If Flash really is that bad then someone will develop a better alternative, and that will supplant Flash.

Thanks for the informative link. It seems to address clearly a couple salient Flash/web/browser technical issues and one business issue ("a joint effort between Apple and Adobe engineers").

Am I completely misreading hill60's comment? I could swear he's just joking about not having Hulu means he isn't getting the "whole of the internet" which is said by those who want Flash on iDevices at any cost.

I meant government in the sense of a ruling body. It is a bit of an exaggeration, true, but if HTML 5 was ruled the industry standard, how many people would bother with supporting both HTML 5 and Adobe? Probably not many, and that would have the net effect of eventually killing off Flash.


I should have said the "majority of Mac users" on this board. As I said, in the end, the majority of reasons for getting rid of Flash is because it stinks on a Mac. I agree. I also think that a replacement should be found. However, I think it should be done through the market.

Each site would make its own decisions as to what they support. No standards body can tell sites what to use or not. Flash is a plug-in using standard plug-in architecture, as long as Adobe supports Flash, it will remain available, it can't be killed except by abandonment by all those that use it.

How HTML5 gets exaggerated to some sort of anti-capitalist thing, I don't know, especially when most of the members of the WC3 are businesses.

Sort of joking, exposing the "whole of the Internet" myth, for what it is.

Therefore all these "whole of the Internet" whiners are getting upset over something that doesn't exist.

I can just use car parts, Transmission, Clutch & Handbrake to get me to where I want to go

What site uses 1080p? Or did you wander from the discussion regarding Flash?

HTML 5 is not necessarily anti-capitalist. How things are proceeding are capitalist, and completely fine by me. Adobe doesn't support Mac OS to its fullest, and Apple looks for an alternative.

I am not in the computer area, rather in the biomedical area, so it might be different. There you follow the industry standard. in any proceeding one of the first questions asked is "did you/it follow industry standard practices/standards?" If you did, you are in reasonably good shape, if not, you are screwed.

There is group that ratifies HTML and other open standards but what it sounds your suggesting is to force browsers to utilize it. Check out this browser comparison chart for HTML5. You can see that the support doesn't grow evenly. Also note that unique features that are added by one browser can adopted by the standards committee.

•

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...engines_(XHTML) Supporting both is great, if each are viable for that platform. So far, Adobe hasn't delivered Flash 10.1 to mobile devices or Mac OS X. When do we can evaluate how feasible it could become.

There won't ever be a blanket support or no support switch being made for something as complex as HTML5. aspects of HTML5 will be added when the developer sees fit. Right now, the video tag is looking great for many reasons. it's supported in every major browser, expect IE, in a partial capacity since not all values for the element are yet enabled. They may never be completely enabled.


It is going through the market, hence these heated debates we get into about Flash.

YouTube started adding 1080p playback for applicable uploads a few months ago. The bitrate isn't great but for a 'free' internet streaming service it's pretty nice.

edit: Looks like it might be 5Mbps, about the same as iTunes Store 720p. Anyone wanting to test different qualities can do so here: http://keepvid.com/

I see where you're coming from, I understand that. Web site technologies are very different. When a web site goes down or doesn't work properly, usually people don't die. Biomedical processes going wrong can hurt people. That, and I think it spreads the liability pretty thinly, and gives the impression that you're using the best knowledge available at the time.