Steve Jobs slams Adobe Flash as unfit for modern era - Page 8

This may have already been said but, at first glance the two most important complaints of Adobe's Flash is it is not modern and a resource hog...

...but I see it as Jobs has spent his life 'corralling' incompetant programmers from producing substandard software, apps, interfaces, etc.

All one has to do and pickup any camera, smart phone, cable box, digital picture frame, flat screen TV, stand alone GPS unit or any electronic device not made by Apple and 'navigate' through their crappy, clunky and clumsy SW. It's Sh*te.

Stevo does not want his Apple platform infected with inferior code! Simple as that!

You know this started really simply. You said you doubted the Slate was even coming out and wondered what the battery life would be like.

"You mean the product that Ballmer kind of demonstrated but that isn't going to hit the market now? Wonder why? Wonder what the battery life would have been like on that thing."

Then I pointed out that its leaked specs from an internal presentation (most companies aren't in the business of lying to their own employees) listed it as having a 5 hour battery life. If HP would make official announcements about it I would link to that. You were wondering, so I supplied the current information available on the web. I appeal to a leak b/c the leaked device is the one being discussed. We could talk all day about how well Flash works on current netbooks and tablets, but that would still have no bearing on the Slate.

Other people brought the Slate up as a topic. I never stated that was proof of how well it would work, but at one point someone else on this thread had said the Slate would probably only have 1/5th the battery life of the iPad, which would be 2 hours. If their battery is rated for 5 hours, that would mean only 40%, which is extremely rare. If you don't like leaks, fine. I don't care really. I was just providing you with the currently stated information that people have been discussing for a month now. Personally, even if it does launch w/the stats provided, I doubt it will do half as well as the iPad.




Is it jailbroken and multi-tasking or stock?

It would be twice as bad with Flash... assuming that your main use case is web surfing.

Thompson

So you think that Adobe's flash is the ONLY developer tool excluded by the new Apple SDK agreement? And then accuse me of not being knowledgeable?

That's rich. And totally uninformed.

Are you really a software developer?

The iPhone is toward the top of battery life ratings, yet you still complain about it and still want Flash on the iPhone despite it making the battery suffer even more. Do you not see this helps supports Flash not coming to the iPhone and completely dissolves your argument?

red5 is open source and handles 95% of the media server needs. what now?

you're buying into the lie that flash reduces battery life which it's proven not to. also, my iphone is being replaced by a 4G EVO from sprint, a company not supersaturated with traffic and a phone that's not limited by a narrow view of what a phone should mean to the bottom line of a company.

Certainly not there yet. You may already be aware of this, however, regarding OSX HW acceleration for H.264 (HW decoder), Adobe's Tinic Uro outlines the status and limitations (including the frame stuttering) in the beta that was released yesterday here.

This is the most informed and savvy post i've read on this whole troll spam filled thread

Well, fair enough. My apologies. This is one of those things that happen on message boards sometimes. You see, from my perspective, that post is NOT how it started. But now I can more easily see where you are coming from, since that's where you jumped in.

If you want more context, go back and look what I was responding to at that point. "SpotOn" had just offered the HP Slate as PRESENT TENSE evidence that Flash is not a problem. You came in just in time for my facetious response, and I (mistakenly) took your information as a continuation of the earlier debate. I honestly thought you were holding up the HP Slate as a valid example of a mobile device that suffered no performance degradation from Flash. I couldn't fathom that conclusion from the evidence you offered, but there it was (or so I thought).

Note: FWIW, I still have my doubts about the HP Slate hitting the market any time soon, if ever, and I also question how good its battery life REALLY will be under the load of Windows and Flash. HP has to realize that if the battery life is only 5 hours and the OS is too "filesystem like", that it will get laughed out of the contest just like earlier tablets have been.

And, note to self: don't be facetious in print. It doesn't come through.

Thompson

Show us this proof that using more power doesn't require power. We'll all be waiting right here in reality for you to return.

You can test this yourself so lying isn't going to win any favour. Unplug a laptop, any laptop, then open up Chrome or Safari. Play a YouTube video using HTML5. Check the battery time remaining. Then play that same YouTube video using Flash. Check the battery time remaining. Repeatable, empirical evidence.

Mr Gilbert's mind is made up, don't distract him with the facts.

OMG, I'm prescient!

iPad Competitors Begin to Disappear Even Before Being Released



"SpotOn, please pick up the white courtesy phone."

I think I am going to print some copies of this document and take it with me to the Apple store. So when people are looking at the iPad and talk trash about it not supporting Flash I can educate them with it.

One that hasn't been released, just yet. Or the iPad? Or an unreleased iPod Touch?

Flash for Windows is actually not half bad. Flash on the Mac has, for a long time, been terrible. Very recently (under a year) Adobe began ramping up the speed of development for mac with flash 10.1 and Gala apple is getting some pretty good Flash builds for the first time. This is, of course, mostly because Adobe is finally feeling the heat.

That said, if h.264 becomes the standard it should be licensed for free for organizations like Opera and Mozilla, and if possible free for all. The tools to code and manipulate h.264 could be sold for a fee, but the distribution and playback should become absolutely free. Only then we can start talking about a free and open web. If you want to have flash, and if flash lets you do something html tags don't let you do, or don't do as easily go ahead, but the standards should be free and open (at least for playback).

I thought you were speaking to the plight of Adobe's Flash hopes for iPhone (because that is the topic of this thread). But since you were being more inclusive, let's just be honest: neither of us can get exact numbers. But I am certain that the lion's share of the Apps available at the App Store were written using the iPhone SDK in XCode. And for those Apps that were created some other way, everything I said before holds true: it is simple enough to write them using XCode, and if they really have a market, they will be rewritten. (And no, not by me.)

You just keep finding little things to nitpick to extend your argument. The fact is that I have experienced the very pain that Steve talked about at the end of his missive. Third-party developer tools prevent rapid response to technology changes, especially if they have ties to multiple platforms. You present the flip-side of the argument, but you have not once demonstrated that you even understand THIS side of the argument, let alone given a decent rebuttal to it.

Thompson

I wish I could line up all the "Ha ha this vaporware I saw on the gadget site will totally kick Apple's ass game over man LOL" folks and just slap 'em. They never learn, and lunge at every concept video and leak as if it were shipping hardware. People have been talking about Courier like it made the iPad irrelevant, and pointing out that it wasn't anything more than rendered concept videos didn't seem to dissuade them.

Not that any of this will shut 'em up next time someone has some pretty pictures to peddle...... I really like that Apple doesn't do "concepts." They do shipping products.

OMG
OMG
YOU ARE
YOU ARE

How magnificent you must feel

Kudos and thanks for finding that, it's going to be a fun day for me, armed with that information

BTW it's the start of my day here 7:00am.

That's a worthless argument. Adobe has had almost 3 years to make Flash usable on mobile devices (more if you count pre-iPhone time). Why should Apple base their plans on Adobe's oft-delayed promises?

In addition, 'our software is slow, but hardware will catch up' has NEVER been a winning strategy. Software tends to bloat at a rate comparable to CPU improvements.


Adobe has had years and hasn't fixed Flash. Apple was happy to let it go at that, but have you seen all the Anti-Apple sentiment being drummed up and all the whining from Flash developers and Adobe? Does 'screw you, Apple' ring a bell?

Then look at these forums. Dozens of people who never posted to the forum before suddenly show up defending Adobe - even though most of them don't know anything about Macs or Mac OS X. Can you say 'Adobe shill'?

The noise was getting loud enough that Apple was right to defend itself by getting some facts on the table to try to counteract all the lies being spread. As just one simple example, how many times have you heard that Apple blocked Flash on the iPhone? Hundreds? Thousands? More? And, yet, there IS no version of Flash that is capable of running on the iPhone. NONE. And it's not just the iPhone - it's EVERY mobile device. There are no mobile devices that run full versions of Flash today - and even the beta only runs on the tiniest percentage of current phones. Yet Apple is being accused of blocking Flash. It was about time for Apple to set the record straight.


Apparently, they do. Some 'Developers' are apparently content to make crappy apps that don't work well. I believe I read that the largest reason for AppStore rejection was apps that just wouldn't run - something like 30% of rejections. Now, that's not all of them. There are some great developers - but they're already using Obj-C and don't have any complaints.

Apple's users expect a certain quality and want Apple to deliver it. If something works badly and their phone has a short battery life, Apple gets the blame - so Apple is entirely within its rights to set standards. You may not like the standards, but that's too bad. Go build your own mobile device. It's more important to Apple to keep CUSTOMERS happy than the small number of whiny developers who can't be bothered to learn any more than Flash scripting.


I wonder what planet you've been living on. When the iPhone 3GS came out, it was widely regarded as the fastest phone available. Some of the new Droid phones are starting to catch up, but side-by-side tests say that they're not ahead. And Apple has a new phone coming out in a month or so.

Less features is partially true, I guess. Apple focuses on the user experience. They made an iPad to be light, efficient and usable. If you think that a tablet is better with 4 USB ports, SD slot, CF slot, a few more memory card slots, VGA, DVI, parallel port, maybe a serial port, full blown desktop OS, and 3 pound battery, go ahead and buy one. That's not the objective for Apple. Apple is focused on providing the best user experience - and sometimes that does mean less features - so it's not a negative.


You've already proven that you're a liar by claiming to have run the application when you didn't. Why should I give you my daughter's ID - so that she can find her entire platform erased?

You're making up lies again. I said that the page uses no animations - which is true. But the demo is quite different than testing it on the real thing. For example, my daughter's Webkinz world has 85 different animals and thousands of items in nearly 100 different rooms. Obviously, that's going to be a little different than running a demo. I guess the fact that you don't understand that means that you're incompetent - as well as a liar.

Regardless, it has now been established that you are a liar. You said that you ran the Webkinz game when all you did was run a game. Yet you used that silly 'test' to accuse me of lying because you only got 58% CPU usage (on a more powerful system than mine) when I got 120% running the full game. Sounds like you need to collect your check from Adobe and crawl back into your hole.


He's not just arrogant, he's dishonest and slimy. A company the size of Adobe should be embarrassed to have him making that kind of response.


I don't doubt that.

But it will keep a much larger number of crappy apps off the platform. If 99% of Flash apps are crap, I don't mind losing the 1 good app in order to keep the 99 lousy ones off the platform. Especially since the good app developer is free to write his app in code that will work even better than the Flash code. If he wants to make money off the app store, he will do that.


OK, then maybe you can explain to me how Adobe managed to break the laws of physics.

When I run Safari and stay away from Flash sites or use clicktoflash, my computer never gets hot and CPU usage for Safari is 10-20% max. As soon as I go to a Flash site, the CPU usage shoots over 100% and the bottom of the computer gets very hot.

Now, if the computer is getting hot and the CPU is doing much more work, where is that coming from if not from the battery? I'm really interested in the mechanism they're using to create heat and power CPU cycles that doesn't use the battery.

There are 600 games developed using Unity. Will they pass mustard (muster) under the new SDK? It seems like that is still unknown.


I have given a rebuttal but you refuse to acknowledge and/or understand it. For the last time, Apple do not have to restrict the tools developers use. They just need to make tools available that leverage the strengths of iPhone OSX. Developers aren't stupid. If Apple's tools are the best, ( and produce the best apps), then developers will naturally gravitate to them. If Apple's tools produce apps that leverage new technologies that result in better apps, users will buy them. The iPhone platform is very robust and shitty apps written for the 'lowest common denominator' (SJ's words) simply will not survive.

The current SDK prevents developers from suing Flash to develop iPhone apps. It also prevents, at least under the strictest interpretation, developers from using Unity and monotouch or other assembly languages. At least that is the fear that developers have who use those tools.

I have faith that developers will try to make the best apps that they can and therefore will use the proper tools for the job. Maybe not every developer, but enough that the platform will continue to flourish. Developers have to remember that if they don't utilize the latest and greatest technologies that Apple promotes for the iPhone platform, someone else will. The barriers to entry for developing iPhone apps are very low. A single person can and has developed successful iPhone apps. This isn't like developing for the Mac where apps tend to be more complicated, have different HW to support, more complicated testing is usually needed and there are hurdles for distribution to overcome.

I also have faith that users will support the best app available for a given task.

I think SJ is more of an hypocrite then liar.

Liar is the one who has stolen apple and claims he hasn't done it.

Hypocrite is the on who has stolen apple and accuses another apple thief, failing to mention that he has stolen apple too.

SJ didn't say h.264 is free, he simply missed to mention it isn't free.

In my book, that is the finest example of hypocrisy. Not that he is the only one in the business, mind you, but he seems to be the most exposed one.

Since when was Steve Jobs ever the 'good guy'? He has always been a shrewd business man who has been right more than he's been wrong.

I honestly don't know if Steve, or Apple's position on Flash, is right or wrong. But, I applaud Apple for staking out their position publicly instead of letting the press and blogasphere endlessly speculate on Apple's motives...

Nope, can't pass the mustard, because the site uses Flash.

Did you mean, "pass muster"?

There is nothing wrong about what he stated, the facts. If Steve would have claimed Apple is different but admits where they are close and where they are open. They even go as far to adopt open standards and support them. I think confusing the two issues is a basic argument at best.

Yes.

Well, there was desktop comparative between Flash video playback and HTML5... not sure if it was here or on Anandtech.com, though. Anyway, much as I recall, HTML5 was doing better on Mac but results (CPU utilisation etc.) were almost identical on Windows, where Flash is hardware accelerated for some time already.

If that can translate to mobiles, I would expect that Flash can be as efficient... if done properly. But we yet have to see how well is Flash going to be executed on Android and WP7

Don't be embarrassed. Most people make this mistake because we're also familiar with

"cut muster" and "cut mustard" both being used.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cut_the_muster

To proceed in your spirit:

You think you are that funny? Really?

How about we wait and see Flash on Android before we make any conclusion?

WP7 is not released yet. I would not be surprised to see Balmer on front pages when that happens. Not that it would be sexiest front page ever

And for the last time, if Apple allows development tools with cross-compile capability to take root, many developers will absolutely use it because they see it as a quick, easy solution. Perhaps at first, it would be. But the next time Apple wants to change the platform to a different processor, or make some API change, or update the operating system, the Apps that had been cross-compiled from Adobe's processor might break, and developers that rely on Adobe's system may have to wait some time for them to bring new capabilities forward. Such apps would languish and become stagnant. And the logistics involved with any change become magnified tenfold, just as I experienced with Metrowerks CodeWarrior throughout the OS 9 to OS X transition and then the PPC to Intel transition. With how fast the hardware and OS landscape is changing now, Apple simply can't saddle themselves with the extra baggage of the third party SDKs. This is not hypothetical. It would absolutely happen.

If the worst price to be paid for the user is the loss of a few crummy Apps (because the popular ones would get ported) and the price to the developer is learning XCode, then I'd say that's a good bargain.

Thompson

You seem to see this as just an 'Adobe' problem.

You do understand it affects development tools OTHER than Adobe. Right?

Its fine with me if we disagree on this but I want to know what your feelings are towards Unity and MonoTouch. Should developers be allowed to use these tools? Do you think they are allowed under Apple's new SDK agreement?

Apple has just released what is required for hardware accelerated Flash. How's that pushing Adobe for years? It is more like not letting them for years.

If Apple was honest about this, they could have let Adobe create (hardware accelerated) Flash for iPhone, do comprehensive public testing, publish results and then decide if that technology is going to Apps Store or to Trash.

But to my knowledge, they haven't.

So to me - and I do believe I'm reasonably unbiased, having MS Windows PC and Apple iPhone (and enjoying both) - it still seems major grudge SJ has against Flash is, in a nutshell, his attempt to limit interactivity on the web (kill Flash games and apps) and boost importance - and exclusivity - of Apps Store.

I believe it is only fair to hear another side:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/...ith-adobe-ceo/

Mr. Adobe responding to SJ's letter.

Nay, I am simply using Adobe as the particular example that happens to be relevant to this thread.


Absolutely. As a matter of fact, considering I gave another example from a completely different tool (CodeWarrior), time, and circumstance, I believe it should be clear that my understanding is generic in nature. How is it possible that you are still missing my point? It is exactly as Steve said in the sixth point of his letter: letting a third party put a layer between the developer and the platform (any third party!) is to invite these issues.


Well, since I've never used those particular tools I suppose it depends on whether an abstraction layer is added or Apple's APIs are obscured. Over at the MonoTouch web page, they claim that their tools satisfy the spirit of the new language. The relevant part: "We believe that several bloggers and journalists have misjudged MonoTouch by characterizing it as an abstraction with disregard for its actual features. As MonoTouch does not hide native APIs and is not an abstraction layer, we continue to believe that MonoTouch conforms to the spirit and intent of the terms spelled out in the developer agreement."

It looks to me like MonoTouch is trying to conform and doesn't anticipate a problem. Perhaps Apple will agree. I don't know enough about that particular tool to give a worthy opinion. Regarding Unity, the part that develops your (pre-compiled) XCode project for you seems nifty and most likely not a problem. But everything else? The bottom line is that Apple needs to look at whether these tools add new abstraction layers or hide the Apple APIs. That is not for me to decide, but I support Apple's reasoning in general.

Thompson

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Were curious if a "Ghost Writer" may been in on this


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Bet you the Mortgage

Some Staffer(s) may helped with info, facts, details, yada yada ... but

Steve wrote it



.

So, why is most of the code written in C? With reference to previous comment, C is certainly not 'modern', but it is not a resource hog because it does not do mandatory checks to save us from things like viruses, etc.

This is because C came out of a low-level telecommunications mindset, rather than a 'modern' high-level programming mindset. Oh well.

Fair enough.

I admit that there is still some uncertainty as to whether these tools are in compliance with the new SDK agreement.

But from the strictest interpretation they would appear to not be in compliance as the SDK requires code to be written in the original language of either Obj C, C, C++ or JS.

I think you underestimate the turmoil this will create but time will tell.

Unity has nothing to do with Flashit's strictly 3D.

Yes, it's unknown, but Unity thinks they're in compliance AND you haven't seen Apple publicly attacking Unity. That's not definitive, but it is certainly suggestive.


That is not correct. You've been able to use hardware acceleration on the Mac for many years - as long as you use the correct APIs (CoreVideo, OpenCL, OpenGL, etc). Other companies did just fine using Apple's proper APIs.

Adobe refused to do so because they would have had to hire some real Mac programmers, and demanded that Apple give them direct access to the hardware - which is ALWAYS a bad idea, particularly for a product like Flash which is so full of security holes, anyway.

Furthermore, hardware acceleration affects only video playback. If that was the only area where Flash sucked, you might have a point. But Flash sucks CPU cycles and battery life and crashes and opens security holes even on sites that don't play back video, so Flash's problems go far deeper than this.